The Argon Testers - Part 1 Bill Franks slouched into the room, his bulk filling the doorway before, as if by habit, he spun on his heel and allowed his momentum to topple his weight onto the sofa. He liked the sofa. Fondly, he called the living room his "laboratory", for this was the place where he would watch endless science programs on television, and conduct experiments on the coffee table. His wife, a stern looking woman called Maud, simply left him to it. She had learned long ago that her husband was best left alone with his hobby. Perhaps Maud would have been wise to check up on her husband every so often, for little did she know that those idle years spent perusing his "hobby" had resulted in him constructing a fully functional time machine in the living room. And this very night, after the nine-o-clock news, he planned to take his maiden voyage, back to his youth, to tell his younger self not to marry Maud, but to marry his teenage sweetheart, Samantha Cranberry, instead. And so, he set the controls for 1980. He had been planning for this occasion for a number of years, and was dressed accordingly. Yes, he wore a leather jacket with a picture of tennis legend Storno Bagorgington embroidered on the back. His heart pounded as he contemplated what he was about to do. He would go back, find his younger self, and tell him not to dump Samantha. It would be easy. Then he would use the time machine to return to the present day, and settle into eternal domestic bliss with Samantha. Maud would simply disappear into her own alternative future. For he would not have ever met her. Simple. And so, Bill Franks sat in his sofa, donned his space helmet - which he had constructed from a goldfish bowl - and typed in the target date and coordinates into an old computer. He pressed enter, and a blinding flash of light lit up the room. And then he was gone. Unfortunately, Bill Franks had misunderstood the nature of spacetime. He thought you could just nip back and change the past. How far from the truth! Little did he know that he was about to spawn an entire parallel universe. A universe filled with a great many strange things. To be continued.