ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS FUNKY
Adam was still screaming foul. And Nancy had single-handedly beaten up the Spanker gang using her baton, a fire extinguisher, and lots of dialogue from Shakespeare. And the purple goop-covered Stewie Spanker was still trying to wash himself off in the Burger Castle moat. That’s when the time machine reappeared.
Freddy opened the hatch and they climbed out. Everyone crowded around them.
“Where did you go?” asked a reporter from the Pookesville Tattler.
“We traveled into the future,” said Howie.
The crowd laughed.
“Do you have proof of that?” asked one of the judges.
“Sure, we can tell you everything that we —” began Howie, but Freddy quickly kicked him in the shin.
Freddy said, “No, we don’t have any proof, sir.”
Stewie Spanker climbed out of the moat and came waddling up. “You ruined the Patty Cakes restaurant and I’m gonna sue you for that.”
“I didn’t!” said Freddy. “Adam aimed it at the Burger Castle. You two planned it.”
“How can you accuse us of something dirty like that?” exclaimed Stewie Spanker. “I’m the mayor and the chief of police and a darn nice guy.” Then he roared, “So after we take every dime you have, I’m going to string you up by your thumbs and make you drink every last drop of that purple junk, you little jerk!”
“You had it aimed at the Burger Castle,” insisted Freddy. “All I did was move the directional control so it would shoot straight up.”
“That’s a lie, because it didn’t shoot straight up!” roared Stewie.
“Then someone else must have changed it after I did. I bet it was Adam.”
“A likely story,” sneered Stewie.
“Yeah, that’s right,” said Adam. “Harold Pumpernickel did all the work. I’ve never even been on that stupid volcano.”
“Yes, he has,” said a voice. “And I can prove it.”
All heads turned. There was Harold Pumpernickel holding a video camera.
“What?” asked an astonished Freddy.
“I filmed it with my spy camera,” said Harold. “Here, see for yourselves.”
He turned on the video camera and they all watched as Adam snuck in the volcano mouth and aimed the directional control.
“Only instead of moving the control clockwise so it would hit the Burger Castle,” said Harold, “Adam moved it counter clockwise so it hit the Patty Cakes.”
“I know what clockwise means, you little moron,” yelled Adam. “It means to the left. AND THAT’ THE WAY I TURNED IT”
“Actually,” said Alfred Funkhouser, “clockwise means to the right”
Adam’s eyes bugged out and he swallowed hard. “Whoops!”
Stewie looked at his son. “Adam, I’m ashamed of you. Why, I can’t imagine a son of mine doing something so underhanded and dirty. As punishment you get no more chocolate tornado milkshakes for a whole hour.”
“But, Dad! You were the one —”
“Not another word,” roared his father as he stalked off, still covered in purple goop.
The judges had all been huddled together while this was going on. Then one of them stepped forward. “We don’t exactly know where Freddy disappeared to, and he has no proof that he went into the future, so in the interests of fairness we can’t give the prize to him. And since Adam Spanker just admitted that Harold did all of the work on that fabulous volcano, he’s out too. So we’ve decided to declare Harold Pumpernickel, who did do all the work, the winner of the science competition.”
The crowd cheered and Freddy clapped louder than anyone as Harold received the trophy and check for a hundred dollars. Harold’s father put his son on his shoulders and paraded around.
Alfred came over to Freddy and put his arm around him. “Well, Freddy, how was the future?”
Freddy gulped as he stared at his father. But his father was the smartest person Freddy knew. As absentminded as he appeared at times, Alfred Funkhouser seemed to know everything.
“Let’s put it this way, Dad. Traveling into the past and future sounds cool, but it’s a lot smarter to stay in your own time.”
As Alfred Funkhouser left to congratulate Harold, Mildred Maraschino came up to Freddy.
“Oh, Freddy,” said Mildred, “I can’t thank you enough.”
“For what, Ms. Maraschino?”
“For bringing Silas back.” She handed him a book. It was a copy of The Entire History of Pookesville in 31 1/2 Pages. It was open to a particular page. Freddy read it quickly.
“It doesn’t say here that Silas Finklebean disappeared! It just says that he was a very successful inventor and a great father.” He paused and said, “He was your father, wasn’t he?”
She looked surprised. “Yes, he was my father.
Before my marriage my name was Mildred Finklebean. How did you know?”
“When we went to your cottage I saw a picture on your mantel of two people. One looked a lot like you as a young girl and the other looked like Silas Finklebean. That’s why I thought he might have left the gyroscope with you. And the little girl who ran out to see him when we brought Silas back to his time was the little girl in that photo, meaning you.”
She smiled kindly at him. “You are one smart young man.”
“I saw you over near the time machine before we went into the future. Were you the one who set the time dial to 2206?”
She nodded. “When I was a little girl I thought I heard my father talking to me. He said the number 2206 over and over. I thought I was dreaming.”
“He was sending you a message from the future using the QUIT.” Mildred looked puzzled and Freddy quickly added, “It’s sort of complicated.”
“Well, I never told anyone because they would have thought I was crazy. But when I saw your time machine today I recognized it from some plans that I saw in my father’s lab. I knew he was working on some sort of time travel thing, and it struck me that the number 2206 might actually be the year where he was. So I snuck into the machine and set the time dial. I could only hope that it would take you to him.”
“Well, that clears that up,” Freddy said, but then he looked puzzled. “But since we changed the past, the ’future’ never happened in the way it did before. So how did you even know about us?”
“Easy. Silas told me when he got back. Just like you remembered what happened.”
“Well, I guess that’s the mystery of time travel that we’ll never completely understand.”
Mildred took something out of her pocketbook and handed it to him. It was the “wishing” mirror her father had given her. “I wanted you to have this, seeing as how you helped make my wish of having my father back come true.” She gave him a hug and then left.
As Freddy watched her go, he heard a scream behind him. Storming out of the Burger Castle was his sister Nancy. She was covered in paint and carrying what looked to be pieces of torn canvas. Behind her came a photographer and reporter from the Pookesville Tattler, laughing their heads off.
“Freddy Funkhouser, I am going to cream you, you little rat,” she screamed.
“What did I do?”
“You know very well what you did, or should I say, didn’t do. The Nancy S. Funkhouser Imperial Theater and Museum? There’s nothing there, you little jerk!”
Freddy looked at Si. “What did you do?”
“Hee-hee,” laughed Si nervously. “It’s sort of a long, depressing story and I’m just too happy of a Fry to tell it.”
“I told you,” moaned a terrified Meese as he watched Nancy stomping toward them. “She’s going to massacre all of us.”
“Not me she’s not,” yelled Si. “See you in the future.” He and Meese took off running towards the time machine with the others in hot pursuit.
“Stop!” said Freddy. He, Howie, and the other Fries raced after them with Nancy right behind. But Wally, who was just inches ahead of Nancy, couldn’t stop in time. He slammed into the gang and they all sailed headfirst into the time machine and the hatch slammed shut behind them. Nancy pounded on the hatch futilely. “Come out of there, you creep, so I can annihilate you!”
Wally was right next to the control panel.
“Whatever you do, Wally, don’t hit the GO button,” warned Freddy, who was squashed in the back.
“What, this one?” said Wally as he pushed the button.
“WWWAAALLLYYY!” they all screamed together as the time machine blasted off once more.