The Undo Device
By Matthew Green
Jack stared at the exceptionally big bosomed broad’s chest and, bracing himself for the rich rewards that were sure to follow, came out with his favourite line:
"I would like to play with those!"
The response was less than favourable. Suffice it to say, he was left standing alone in the middle of a crowded public house, with nothing to show for his compliment but a bloody nose.
The Professor had been watching all this from his seat by the window over his bottle of babycham, which he was intending to finish by himself, and certainly not sharing it with any females, and decided that here was a man in need of his unique services. The fact that he would act as a perfect test subject was a side issue. At least, in his present state, after downing a full sized bottle of babycham in one swift swig it was.
He staggered over to a very downhearted Jack, who was feeling very discouraged as it was the fifteenth time in a single night that his dynamite line had failed to work. The fact that it had never actually worked was a side issue.
The Professor put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, who promptly turned around and decked him.
"What in gods blue jock strap did you do that for?" he demanded.
Jack helped The Professor up, who’s nose was now as bloody as hell.
"I’m sorry, I’m just a little jumpy, that’s all. I’m a jot peeved about my lack of luck with the lasses, that’s all," he apologised (apologetically).
"Well buck up son, because I have the solution to your problems," said he, producing a small black box from his pocket, with a large red button in the centre.
After waiting several moments for at least a gasp of admiration, and failing to receive one, The Professor pressed on.
"Have you ever made a mistake you wish you could undo? Think you could do things better if you only had a second chance?" (dabbing at his streaming haemoglobin), "Then this is your solution. The Undo Device."
"Who are you?"
"I’m The Professor. A mysterious character with no background story and no name to call my own. Anyway, why is The Undo Device worthy of the larger font, you may be asking? Well, allow me to demonstrate."
The Professor approached a young woman whom he wasn’t particular interested in, being the strict A-sexual that he was, and delivered his favourite line (although he had never actually had reason to put it into play. So why does he have a favourite pick up line? That’s a side issue, isn’t it?):
"Want to get jiggy with my big willy?"
And she did. Although The Professor had never intended her to use her feet as part of that jiggy-ness.
After The Professor had finished being violently sick, he stood up and positioned himself next to Jack, who was beginning to wonder why he hadn’t walked out on this nutter, and where the hell his mates had got to.
"Now watch this," enthused The Professor, pushing the big red button.
The pile of vomit mysteriously disappeared, and the woman who had departed after laying the boot in had magically reappeared.
Jack was quite perplexed, and voiced this in his next sentence.
"I must admit I’m quite perplexed," stammered he. "What happened?"
"I turned back the hands of time. The undo device allows the user to negate the last action they performed, and re-do all of their screw ups. Observe."
Jack watched as The Professor prepared to deliver his winning line, but was distracted at the last second by a pair of scissors and instead said:
"I would like to play with those."
"Why do people keep saying that to me?" came the crass mouthed cry of the cringing crone.
*
Finally getting a central part in the events of the story, Jack was wandering around the town centre of Oldfort, reasoning that, being that it was now ten o’clock in the morning (the next day), all of the attractive gals would be here.
He spied out a likely looking woman (it never occurred to him to lower his standards) and came out with his favourite line:
Actually, he thought better of it. That line had failed enough times already for him to know (with 57% certainty) that it wouldn’t work. So instead he said:
"Want to get jiggy with my big willy?"
The fem made a bizarre noise of pure contempt and walked away, but not without showing her disrespect toward him with a swift knee to the willy and karate chop to the neck.
This didn’t discourage Jack, he had very thick skin. He pressed the big red button and tried:
"Your sign must be the rabbit, ‘cause with a body like that you must be at it all day long."
This, obviously, failed.
Jack picked himself off the ground, brushed himself off and checked for broken bones. Satisfied that all was well, he pressed the button again.
*
The Professor swallowed a spoonful of ready brek, when he suddenly noticed that he hadn’t actually eaten the spoonful he had just swallowed.
"It’s too early in the morning for this," he muttered.
The Professor was just getting up to chase after Jack, when he found himself sitting back at his breakfast table.
"Bloody great," said he.
*
Somehow, jack had gotten it into his head that he would be able to score with any chick if he just came up with the correct opening line, and projected the illusion that he had bags of confidence.
The fact that he was buck-toothed and wore jam jar glasses was, as far as he was concerned, a side issue.
He’d given up on this particular woman and decided to go to ‘The Lamb and Spoon’ for a drink. He had been at it for more than seventeen hours, attempting to come up with new lines to get the single female he had tried it on with to drop her nickers.
Jack ordered whatever drink was fashionable at that particular time and sat alone attempting to drown his sorrows, unaware that his sorrows were amphibious.
The Professor ran into the bar, looking quite frustrated.
"Do you know how long it took me to eat my ready brek this morning? Do you?" he was raving.
"Er, no?" Jack didn’t care. It was not a side issue, it wasn’t an issue at all.
The Professor leaned forward.
"Seventeen dam hours! Seventeen hours to eat a bowl of oatmeal! Can you even conceive what that means?"
"Big breakfast?" Jack suggested.
"No, oh no, not a big breakfast. Johnny Vaughn (big breakfast presenter on english tv) doesn’t even come into it. Seventeen hours. I started eating at ten and finished at ten minutes past ten."
"Eh?"
The Professor’s voice was deathly low now.
"You’ve been abusing my invention. It was supposed to help solve world problems."
Jack considered this.
"And scoring with chicks doesn’t count?"
The Professor glanced around the room.
"Where is she?"
"Who?"
"This woman you took seventeen hours to get to go out with you."
Jack hung his head low.
"I failed."
The Professor burst into a fit of laughter (as you do).
"You really are pathetic, you know that."
He snatched the Undo Device from Jack, opened up the side and started doing things with the fiddly bits inside.
He looked at Jack again, stifling a laugh, muttered "Seventeen hours and he still didn’t score."
And he pressed the big red button.
*
The Professor watched Jack over his bottle of babycham from his table in ‘The Lamb and Spoon’. Time had been reversed to before The Professor had ever met Jack, and he was just about to deliver his favourite line to the big busted broad (later to be known as the ‘cringing crone’) when he stopped and thought about it. Instead he said:
"Can I have this dance?" the reality that ‘The Lamb and Spoon’ didn’t have a dance floor, or for that matter any music playing, obviously being a side issue to him.
The broad looked at him, appraised him, considered her options and decided on the best course of action.
She laughed at him.
Not your nice little ‘your very cute but I’m spoken for laugh’, but a crass, obnoxious, ‘I’d rather suck puke through a straw’ laugh.
The Professor laughed too.
"Pathetic," he said, downing his bottle of babycham, falling of his stool, smashing through the window and landing in the street outside.
The End