Unveiled

"Behold!" said Itami when he removed the cover to unveil the device in the middle of the hangar. "The time machine."

Dr. Darren Guillet's eyes widened. The red-painted machine looked like a riding lawnmower. It had a plain looking control panel, one seat, and a large dish to its rear.

Darren scratched his head. "Is this why you dragged me to the middle of Nevada?"

"Impressive, isn't it?" Itami folded the cover and left it on the floor. "This is a historic moment."

"You're joking, right?" Darren looked around, searching for hidden cameras. "You can come out now." Hearing only the echo of his own words, he turned back to Itami. "What is this nonsense?"

"Nonsense?" Itami raised his voice. "People said the same thing about the Moon landing." He climbed on the seat. "Yet Apollo 11 proved them wrong."

"Well..." said Darren, "if time travel is possible, then why didn't we see tourists from the future taking pictures of Neil Armstrong on July 20th 1969, when he took his first step on the Moon?"

"Always the skeptic." Itami bent over and opened a storage bin under the seat.

"If this is a historic moment," Darren gestured at the empty hangar, "why are there no time travelers here?"

"You don't understand." Itami smiled. "I've already been to the future." He took an item that looked like a TV remote from the storage bin. "I wanted to bring back a personal phase modulator. Those are really cool gadgets--they don't just turn you invisible; they put you slightly out of our dimension--but the licensing fees were too high. This is the next best thing; a phase negator." He pushed a button on the remote.

A large crowd of people suddenly materialized in the hangar, overwhelming Darren with thunderous applause and blinding him with camera flashes.