I need to keep this short. I'm writing this post on an old telephone, which I have managed to convert to a Time phone (you will start to hear of these in about fifteen years from now) , my battery is low, I'm very tired and I am living in hiding - on the run.
(If you missed the beginning of the story it's here: https://steemit.com/travel/@stillgideon/my-adventures-in-time-travel)
I was telling you about how it started. How I discovered the Time Machine (for want of a better description - it was not at all what I thought a Time Machine would be) as I was clearing out boxes in my grandpa's attic.
There was a very dusty old box. A hat box tied with a very faded and motheaten ribbon which crumbled at my touch.
I blew away the thick layer of dust that had settled on the lid and it revealed the words, printed in gold - S.Nadler of London, Hatter.
I remembered grandpa had had a hat shop in Camden Town, but his name had been Harry. This must have been his father, Solomon, who started the business about a hundred years ago, in the 1920s or thereabouts.
Carefully I slid the lid off the box. For some reason my heart was pounding wildly, I couldn’t understand why. I don't believe in ghosts and I'm not easily spooked, but I had a deep sense of foreboding coupled with a rush of anticipation which seemed quite out of all proportion. It's hard to describe the feeling. Maybe some kind of premonition - because as I touched the box, a flood of images flashed across my mind - images, sounds, smells - something like a busy market, noisy with shouts and the clatter of wheels on cobblestones....
But I'm rambling and my battery is on 13 percent already - no chance to recharge until day light...
I opened the box. Now this is going to sound strange to you and you might find it hard to imagine. I couldn't understand what it was when I felt it. It was like a cold draft emanating out of the box. But the air was still. And it wasn't cold either, I noticed. Actually it was slightly warm and maybe it was seeping into the box. What it actually was, though I didn't yet know it was that inside the box there was less gravity. About half the strength of everywhere else on Earth that I'd ever been. So I had no idea what that should feel like and it was the last thing I would have expected to feel. Especially inside a hat box from a hundred years ago.
The inside of the box was dark and lined with red velvet. I could make out a round shape - maybe a ball. About the size of a bowling ball - and black. Blacker than anything I had ever seen. As if it was not only not reflecting any light whatsoever, it was also pulling light into itself, making it appear still darker. I peered very closely, thinking my eyes were playing tricks on me. It looked like a hole. A black hole in a velvet hat box. Of course, the idea that that was essentially what it was didn't cross my mind, even for a nano-second.
I reached into the box and put my hands on the object (somehow I knew it was an object, even though I could barely see it. A fine dust on its surface perhaps gave enough impression of shape) it was soft to the touch, like the smoothest of felt - and yet at the same time hard, like a heavy steel door - yet as I lifted it out of the box, I was amazed to discover that it weighed almost nothing at all. Also that it was in fact a semi sphere with a rim encircling the lower edge. It was a hat. A bowler hat.
I held it up to the lamp to admire it. It was a very fine hat. The finest hat I'd ever seen - not that I knew much about hats, and not that I could really actually 'see' it. I knew it was very special. Very special and exceptionally unusual and incredibly powerful. I don't know how I knew that, because really it was for all appearances an old bowler hat, albeit a very well made hat, from a time when people took pride in such things. Maybe it was the field of almost zero gravity that it had about it.
I sat gazing at it, thinking 'I wonder if it fits me. I should try it on...' when I happened to glance back to the box - perhaps saved by some primal survival instinct... There in the bottom of the box was an envelope, brown with age. What was written on it immediately caught my attention - firstly because it was written in very large capital letters, in red ink - but especially because it was addressed to me.
It said :
STILL GIDEON
!!!IMPORTANT!!!
WHAT EVER YOU DO
DON’T PUT THIS HAT ON
UNTIL YOU HAVE READ THIS.
Oh, I've just noticed my battery is about to die. I'd better send this quickly.
If you want to hear what happened next, follow me here on Steemit. I've found it the best way to communicate this way, but I'm risking a lot by using a Time phone. I hope I'll manage to write this story before they catch me. I fear Time may be running out for me456436/^fgfFfgFgygger6#gGHhHHV5679*&