The Time Caterpillar

21 Jul 2008 18:49 by Mark

I am The Time Caterpillar!

I am not of your world.

Unless you too are a Time Caterpillar or one of the Fig Leaf People of the Inner Rings. No, you're probably not any of those.

I am not of your time either.

I am not exactly like your caterpillars but the physical resemblance and molecular smell are close enough for the term to fit. And my given name is unpronounceable to your single tongue although, when written down, through a quirk of intergalactic probabilities, it exactly forms your letters "Rupert Kingsley III". Weird, huh?

I have been on your world many times.

I remember the dinosaurs. Frightfully noisy, but organised and colourful. Like the gays. They would have been a great species to really get to know but there was a terrible kerfuffle when I emerged from my Temporal Cocoon.

Oh yes! I am The Time Caterpillar! And I travel the Time Strings and unravel the Paradox Knots in my Temporal Cocoon.

The dinosaurs were astonished to see me, naturally, although their great scientist leaders had detected the first Time Silks of my arrival using a rudimentary multiverse-homed particle detector. Nevertheless, their main kerfuffling arose from the imminent impact on their and your world of an asteroid launched from outside the solar system by the dinosaurs' mortal enemies, the Earwig Collective.

I could not help. Let me clarify: I am not forbidden from doing so by some Temporal Directive. I used to be but I travelled back in time and rewrote the directive forbidding such abuse. No, I could not help partly because I am small and found the dinosaur tools a trifle unwieldy but mostly because the dinosaurs claimed it was wrong for me to be involved in this conflict that had escalated from an affair-gone-wrong during an office party during the Triassic period.

I sought escape from this battle in the only way I knew: through time! For I am The Time Caterpillar! I gorged myself on a high-energy, nutrient-filled shell that spanned a great ocean in order to prepare myself for the Time Metamorphosis. Entering my Temporal Cocoon I then skipped millenia leaving the dinosaurs to their fate.

I later surmised that the shell was part of a non-aggressive shield designed to deflect asteroids and protect the noble dinosaur species and that I had inadvertently eaten it and hastened their swift demise at the hands of the Earwig Collective. I was not to know. I am not an earwig-dinosaur-war-historian expert or anything like that.

I am The Time Caterpillar!

We shall speak again.