Short Story: The Tide Pool Time Machine

 The Tide Pool Time Machine

Rufus was having the sort of educational seaside holiday that made him long for the simple pleasures of double maths lessons, detention, and other institutional boredom that at least had the courtesy to be predictably tedious rather than aggressively instructional.

"I don't know why they bring us on holiday every year," Matilda said, "we never get to do fun stuff like normal kids."

She stared at her younger brother, who was looking just as bored as she felt. "Should we say something?"

Rufus sat up straight, "Dad, we're bored. We want to have fun."

"Now, now Rufus," his father said while consulting a chart for every marine creature within a fifty-mile radius of the Devon coast, "we're going to conduct a systematic study of intertidal ecosystems! This is a rare opportunity to observe marine biodiversity in its natural habitat! This is all very exciting and educational."

Bartholomew Barnacle-Botherer was a marine biology professor who approached family holidays with the same scientific rigour he brought to his research into coastal ecosystem management. He had equipment. Serious scientific equipment. The sort of equipment suggested that they were planning to conduct advanced research rather than spend a relaxing day at the beach.

His mother, Professor Miranda Barnacle-Botherer, was currently setting up what looked like a mobile marine biology laboratory, absolutely no sign of a sun bed, a towel or a book to read. No, Miranda never did normal things like other parents, especially when on holiday.

"Remember, Rufus," she added while arranging what appeared to be a comprehensive collection of identification guides, "we're here to observe and learn, not to disturb the natural habitat. Every creature we encounter is part of a complex ecological web that has evolved over millions of years."

Rufus nodded dutifully because ten-year-olds have learned that agreeing with parental educational initiatives is the fastest way to get through them, and immediately began planning his escape to find something actually interesting to investigate without the burden of scientific methodology and proper observation protocols. 

"Matilda darling, please cheer up! This will be exciting when you get into it."

It never was, though, that was the problem. Rufus and Matilda would most often hide away from their parents whenever they could and steal moments of their own fun, usually in the sea or playing volleyball ball and sometimes making sandcastles. They just wanted normal activities on a normal holiday.

The beach they'd chosen for their "family learning expedition" was the sort of rugged Devon coastline that looked like it had been designed by someone with very dramatic ideas about what seaside landscapes should look like. Massive granite cliffs rose from the water like ancient fortifications, and the shoreline was dotted with rock pools that promised to contain the sort of marine life that made marine biology professors very excited and ten-year-old boys very bored.

"According to my preliminary survey," Dr. Barnacle-Botherer announced, consulting what appeared to be a detailed map of the local tide pool distribution, "the optimal specimens should be found in the pools closest to the low tide mark. We'll work systematically from the highest pools to the lowest, documenting species diversity and abundance patterns."

Matilda nodded her head to Rufus, indicating the perfect moment for them to wander away from their parents. 

Curiously tucked away behind a cluster of rocks, there was a large tide pool, perfectly circular, which was unusual enough to catch Rufus' attention, but more intriguingly, it was deeper than it had any right to be. Most tide pools were shallow depressions that you could see to the bottom of, but this one seemed to go down much further than the surrounding rock formation should have allowed.

The water was different, too. Instead of the usual clear seawater with the occasional bit of seaweed floating around, this pool was filled with water that seemed to shimmer with more colours than physics usually permitted. It looked like someone had dissolved liquid rainbows in perfectly ordinary seawater, and the effect was both beautiful and slightly unsettling.

"Brilliant," Rufus muttered to himself, because he'd inherited his parents' scientific curiosity even if he didn't share their enthusiasm for proper methodology. "Definitely not in any of Dad's identification guides."

Rufus looked around for his sister. She was lying on the beach getting a suntan, he knew she wouldn't be interested in anything that's not girly, pink or shiny, so he turned back to the tide pool.

He crouched beside the mysterious pool and peered into its depths, trying to figure out what was causing the unusual optical effects. The water was so clear that he could see all the way to the bottom, but the bottom seemed much further away than it should have been, and things were moving down there that didn't look like any marine life he'd ever encountered in textbooks.

Without really thinking about it—because ten-year-olds have a natural talent for acting first and considering consequences later—Rufus stuck his hand straight into the shimmering water.

The world went completely bonkers.

One moment, he was crouching beside a tide pool on a perfectly normal Devon beach in the early twenty-first century, and the next moment, he was standing in the same spot, but everything else had changed in ways that suggested reality had decided to take an unscheduled break from making sense.

The beach was wider, stretching much further inland than it had any right to. The cliffs were lower and differently shaped, as if someone had been doing major geological renovation work. And there were definitely more dinosaurs than he remembered from the tourism brochures.

"Oh," said Rufus, watching a small pterodactyl swoop overhead with the sort of casual grace that suggested flying reptiles were a perfectly normal part of the local wildlife. "Oh dear."

The tide pool was still there, still shimmering with impossible colours, and when he looked into its depths, he could see his parents in the distance, still setting up their scientific equipment in what was apparently a completely different time period. They looked very small and far away, like figures in a snow globe that someone had shaken too vigorously.

"Rufus!" his mother's voice echoed strangely across the temporal gap, sounding like it was coming from very far away and possibly through several layers of time. "Where have you got to? We're ready to begin our systematic survey!"

"I'm right here!" he called back, but his voice seemed to bounce off some sort of invisible barrier between past and present. "I've just gone back in time a bit! Nothing to worry about!"

They couldn't hear him, because temporal communication apparently didn't work the same way as normal conversation.

The pterodactyl landed nearby and gave him the sort of look that suggested it was considering whether he might be edible, or at least worth investigating as a potential source of entertainment.

"Nice dinosaur," Rufus said carefully, because he'd learned from nature documentaries that it was important to remain calm around potentially dangerous wildlife. "I'm probably not very tasty. Bit stringy. Also, I'm technically from the future, so eating me might cause temporal paradoxes."

The pterodactyl tilted its head thoughtfully, apparently considering the philosophical implications of time-travel-related dietary choices, then decided it wasn't worth the effort and flew off to bother something else.

Rufus looked back at the tide pool, which was now showing a different scene entirely. His parents were there, but they were wearing Victorian clothing and appeared to be having a heated discussion about proper fossil-collecting etiquette while examining what looked like ammonite specimens.

"Right," he said to himself, beginning to understand the situation with the sort of dawning comprehension that suggested he'd stumbled onto something significantly more interesting than his parents' planned educational activities. "Time-travelling tide pool. Obviously."

He stuck his hand back into the shimmering water, hoping to return to his proper time period, and immediately found himself in what appeared to be the 1960s, judging by the family nearby who were having a picnic while wearing the sort of clothing that suggested they'd raided a fancy dress shop's "groovy" section.

The family was engaged in what appeared to be a serious discussion about whether the Beatles were a passing fad or represented a fundamental shift in popular music, while their children built sandcastles and complained about the lack of proper entertainment options in an era before portable electronic devices.

Another dip in the temporal waters, and he was back with the dinosaurs, who seemed to be having a territorial dispute over a particularly nice patch of seaweed. A triceratops was facing off against what appeared to be a small pack of velociraptors, and the whole situation had the sort of dramatic tension that suggested it might escalate into the sort of prehistoric conflict that would be very educational but also potentially dangerous for time-travelling ten-year-olds.

"This is brilliant!" Rufus announced to the confused-looking triceratops, who paused in its territorial posturing to stare at him with the sort of expression that suggested it had never encountered a small human before and wasn't entirely sure what to make of the experience. "But also potentially problematic!"

The issue, he was beginning to realise, was that the tide pool seemed to be operating on actual tidal schedules, but temporal tides rather than normal oceanic ones. Every time the water level in the pool changed, he got bounced to a different time period, and judging by the way the water was currently behaving, high tide was approaching fast.

He watched in fascination as the scenes in the pool flickered between different eras like someone was channel-surfing through history with a remote control that had serious technical problems. Medieval knights were building what appeared to be an early version of a coastal fortification. Roman soldiers, looking very confused about British weather and wondering why they'd volunteered for assignment to such a persistently damp province.

Saxon families had heated arguments about the proper way to cook seaweed and whether it was worth the effort to establish permanent settlements in a place where it rained so much. Norman invaders were trying to figure out how to build castles on beaches without them washing away during storms.

Georgian ladies are taking constitutional walks along the shore while discussing the latest novels and complaining about the lack of proper seaside amenities. Victorian families conducting elaborate picnics with enough equipment to stock a small department store and having serious discussions about the moral implications of sea bathing.

Edwardian tourists discovering the joys of seaside holidays and wondering whether this "fresh air" thing was actually beneficial or just an elaborate conspiracy by people who owned seaside hotels. 1920s families embraced the new fashion for sunbathing while wearing clothing that covered approximately ninety per cent of their bodies.

1950s families had the sort of wholesome seaside fun that would later be featured in nostalgic advertisements, complete with proper picnic baskets, sensible clothing, and children who said "please" and "thank you" without being reminded. 1970s families discovering the joys of casual beachwear and wondering whether this new trend for wearing less clothing at the beach was a sign of moral decay or social progress.

"Rufus! Matilda!" His mother's voice was getting more concerned, echoing across the temporal divide with the sort of parental worry that suggested she was beginning to suspect that her son had wandered further than the next tide pool. "This isn't funny anymore! We need to begin our systematic survey!"

He could see them in the pool, moving around the beach in what was clearly a methodical search pattern. His father was consulting his laminated chart as if it might contain instructions for locating time-displaced children, while his mother was setting up what appeared to be a more comprehensive search grid.

The tide was definitely coming in now, both in his current time period and in the temporal mechanics of the magical tide pool. Rufus was beginning to suspect that he needed to time his return quite carefully or risk ending up permanently stuck in the Jurassic period, which would be very difficult to explain to his parents and would probably interfere with his education in ways that even the most progressive schools weren't equipped to handle.

He waited, watching the water level rise in the pool, until the shimmering surface was showing his parents in their proper time period and looking appropriately worried about his disappearance. They were now conducting what appeared to be a full-scale search operation, complete with systematic grid patterns and what looked like emergency contact protocols.

Then he took a deep breath, said goodbye to the confused triceratops (who had given up on its territorial dispute to watch the strange time-travelling human with fascination), and plunged his entire arm into the shimmering water.

The world lurched, spun like a cosmic washing machine, and deposited him back on the modern beach with a splash that soaked his trainers and left him feeling slightly dizzy from temporal displacement.

"There you are!" his mother exclaimed, rushing over with the sort of relief that suggested she'd been imagining having to explain to his school why he'd been eaten by prehistoric marine life or lost to temporal anomalies. "Where on earth have you been? We've been looking everywhere!"

"I've been here all the time, Mom", Matilda said, not moving and hoping she could escape the unescapable. She was enjoying doing nothing and building a tan to show her friends when school started back. They'd be so jealous.

"Very well," her mother said, "you may have a few more minutes while I find your brother."

Rufus, startling his parents, seemed to appear from nowhere.

"Just exploring the local temporal anomalies," Rufus said cheerfully, wringing seawater out of his sleeves and trying to look like he hadn't just spent the afternoon touring through British coastal history. "Did you know this beach has an excellent selection of historical periods? The Cretaceous was particularly nice, though a bit heavy on the giant reptiles. The Victorian era had much better picnic equipment, but the clothing was impractical for actual beach activities."

His parents exchanged the sort of look that suggested they were considering whether their son might need professional help, or possibly just a more structured approach to educational beach activities.

"Right," his father said slowly, consulting his chart with renewed determination. "Perhaps we should focus on the present-day marine life for now. Much more... scientifically manageable."

"Good idea," Rufus agreed, taking one last look at the temporal tide pool, which was now showing nothing more exciting than a few perfectly ordinary crabs and some seaweed. "Though if you ever fancy a quick trip to see some Victorian fossil hunters, I know just the place. They had excellent methodology, though their equipment was a bit primitive by modern standards."

As they all began their systematic survey of the non-temporal tide pools, Rufus couldn't help but grin. Sometimes, he reflected, the best educational experiences were the ones that went completely off the curriculum and reminded you that the world was full of impossible, wonderful things that couldn't be contained in laminated charts or scientific methodology.

His parents, meanwhile, made careful notes about marine biodiversity while secretly wondering whether they should add "temporal anomaly detection" to their standard beach safety protocols.