Luxor

“So where are we going?” I asked. It was me, the professor, lion guy, a bunch of robot college students and a corpse. All of whom were stuffed into this car. I had broached the topic of kicking the robots out of the car into the sun but the professor was not having it.

“We’re going near Luxor,” He said.

I got excited. “Oh shit! We’re going to Ancient Egypt!” I shouted excitedly.

“No, stupid.” He seemed to be in a worse mood today after all that digging. “We’re going NEAR Luxor not into Egypt”

“Wait, so where are we going?” I asked, knowing how confused I was about Earth’s current crispiness.

“We’re going to Babylonia.” He responded tersely.

I was shocked, “What the hell? That’s nowhere near Luxor!” I shouted.

“Well, if you’re a space farer like me, I’m going to say they’re close together.”

“Um, guys” Lion guy said, “Are we arriving any time soon? I feel weird having this centuries old skeleton on my lap, and I myself am across the lap of a whole bunch of college student robots. So the uncomfortableness seems to not be stopping apparently.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, “With all due respect, prof, I think we should get a move on. With the impending doom and everything.”

“You guys wanna see speed!?” He shouted back, cutting through our words. “I’ll show you some damn speed. Hold on to something.”

Without giving much warning he launched the lever forward and we were there. We had left Earth, done a giant parabola, and landed back down in what I can only assume was Babylonia. Not ancient Babylonia, that wasn’t here anymore. “Alright, time to go exploring.” He said. We got out with all our gear. “Bring the body” he announced.

“NOT IT!” I shouted. Before lion guy could even get his mouth open he was relegated to corpse dragging duty.

“I think I left it somewhere here…” He muttered to himself.

“What are we looking for?” I asked.

“Why, my time machine of course!” He responded.

I was shocked. “Time machine? If you had that why bother with all of this. Why not just go back and make sure none of this happens?” I shouted.

“If I did that then we would still have the cataclysm, just a different one.” He whistled for a second until, “I found it, bring me the corpse!” He shouted. The corpse seemed to come out of nowhere as lion guy had flung it from the car to the professor, nearly bowling him over. Seemed like he really didn’t want to drag it around. It was pretty well preserved but that just meant that it was a skeleton with a bunch of gross gore and shit on it.

“Right,” the professor began, “It’s time to get this started.” He flicked the corpse onto the machine and stood on the button. A spectacular light show the likes of which I’ve never seen flashed for a second and back popped…two guys? And the professor seemed to share my confusion.

“What the devil are you people doing?”

“Well,” Said the significantly less decadent looking one, “We WERE clearing some debris but it seems like the machine activated.”

“Of course it activated, IT’S MY BLOODY MACHINE. GET OFF OF THERE.”

They complied almost immediately. Including the other one who I had immediately ascertained the identity of in the regal regalia of King Nechbudnezzar of Babylon. He was looking rather- “Did you guys see the corpse?” He asked

“The one that was flung out of the machine just before we were transported away? Yeah.”

“Looks like they did a switcheroo, meaning we’re going to have to go get it,” The professor said. “Let’s go, no waiting around.”