Time is a donut. Without start or finish. And hidden between the sugar glazing is professor Yifarasov foot, sweating like a sausage inside a microwave. The laboratory of the professor is full of huge metal machines and silver receptors, computers going bip bip, noisy steam machines twisting and moving, compressors and decompressors, cold floors and very tiny blinking lights.
It is late but the professor can not go home. That old message shouts inside the professor's mind. He looks at green coordinates on the black box receptor and changes the channel. The body of the proff is shaking. He tries to have at least some control over his sweaty leg. His leg is the leg of an old man. All these years, he has been working towards this day. But he still feels that time is running out, the professor is scared and he needs more strength.
Before the message, the professor worked in an astronomic station. A little building outside Paris with a single tower. There, the professor received radio signals from the black space. A big ear antenna. The professor loved to tickle the big swarm of stars and listen. He heard the universe snore, a red star explode, whispers of sweet icy dreams, a blue comet passing.
One night the professor stayed late. He wanted to hear the universe sleep. Gentle radio noise, waves going up up and then down and up and down again. But the universe was not sleeping it was awake. The universe looked back at the professor and screamed. A signal appearing on the monitor showed the death sentence. The signal came from beyond. There is no time to explain how those bouncing radio signals that traveled through void and stars, got translated into numbers, and then code, and then a message. But the message was clear and the professor understood it.
The message was a military order. Not everything was clear. A cold and wet race of beings announced the future destruction of our planet, with date and time. Who the aliens were we do not know. Space lizards? Quartz robots or 5 legged shrimps? it did not matter. Nothing could stop the execution. The why played no role. The giant ray gun slowly adjusted its aim to the coordinates of professor Yifarasov's office. Fire and death were coming from the dark sky.
The night that the message appeared, the printer was out of paper. So the memory of the professor was the only witness to the death sentence. No other station could corroborate the signal. No other witness. The professor's dishonourable dismissal from his job and his ban from all other academic institutions were not important. The only thing that the professor remembered was a date, a date that was getting closer and closer.
The professor worked quickly. The plan was straightforward but hard to implement. If nothing in the present could change the mind of our future killers then the only option was to go beyond the present. The professor spent every bit of energy within his body and put it to the same aim. The goal was to build a time machine. Every part of him was devoted to this purpose.
To the professor's surprise, he was successful. He managed to build his time machine. The only problem the professor had, was that the time machine was not perfect. The time machine could travel through time and space, but only with a single object and one object only. And this object was the professor's left foot.
It did not matter what the professor tried, the only thing that could get inside the time machine without breaking it was his left foot. With time becoming shorter and shorter, the professor had to be satisfied with what he had. There was no time to work on the time machine. So the professor acted.
He needed to find someone either in the future or the past that would take pity on humanity and help us to not be exterminated. He also needed to convince them with nothing more than his left foot.
And so regardless of the solar system. Be it inhospitable deserts with toxic vapours.. or green blue jungles with slimy three-eyed creatures.. the little left foot from the professor peeked from an invisible time traveling window. Different planets with different gravities. If it is silver mountains or purple skies with orange stars, it does not matter. It is always the same old foot shaking and getting sweatier, the background changes, but the foot is always the same.
The professor does not know where or to whom his foot is appearing. If the creature on the other side has eyes, ears, or a brain. Regardless, the professor tries his best to express what he needs to say. This, only only with a single foot. Sometimes he hits the ground with force, making something like a morse code. Other times the professor makes a violent sensual dance with his foot, and other times he keeps the foot completely still and only moves the little finger on his foot, very slowly and very calmly. The professor tries different choreographs on different times and space dimensions. He tries to tell his story and the history of humanity, all of our virtues and why is it worth saving us, all of this only with his left foot.
All this sweat and work. Alone. And the professor can not even tell if there is even someone listening at the other side. This is the real horror for the professor, not death but knowing that every attempt could be for nothing.
The left foot of the professor dances at different languages and using different logics, sometimes it does not move at all, it just communicates through sweaty smells and foot stink.
The day goes by with different codes, different dances, and different stories, but always with the same left foot. And so the left foot becomes shakier and shakier. And even though the professor has been dead for more than 3 years; his foot continues to appear all throughout the universe, like a ghost that can't sleep. Saying the same speech with different words. The foot is everywhere and nowhere. At one point the foot will become so shaky that it inadvertently kicks an important member of an alien race of lizards. What happens next is not important, I know the foot will continue its mission. The foot continues to go across the universe. Appearing. like it appeared to me. The only person who understood its message. And the person that made some drawings instead of passing the foot's message down. Because who fucking cares what some aliens do with a ray gun? the lizards can drink my balls sweat. in the end, it is we humans who will kill each other. Alone, without the help of aliens or any ray gun.
