“I read she passed away. Your plump little neighbor with all the cats.”
“So sad. She tripped on the stairs and broke her neck, poor woman. She lay there, dead, for two weeks before they found her.”
“Poor lady. Poor cats. Alone. Trapped. Starving.”
“Oh, no. Her cats didn’t starve.”
Allen Lang, a recently resurrected member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, was born the year the first Yo Yo factory opened.
“Your poor, dying husband told you he just wanted some tomato juice.”
“Yes. Elmer loves tomato juice.”
“You went to buy him some. Where is it?”
“All they had were quarts. He won’t live to drink that much.”
“You didn’t get it?”
“You know that I don’t like tomato juice…”
Allen Lang, a member of Science Fiction Writers of America, is an accomplished time-traveler, having reached today from Year 1928. His stories appeared in all of the pulps of the past.
“You told Caligula you could teach his horse to sing?”
“He gave me a year.”
“If you fail?”
“Then off with my head! But I’m not worried.”
“Why not?”
“In a year, the Emperor could die. Or the horse. Or best of all…”
“Yes?”
“The horse could learn to sing.”
Allen Lang wrote this story.