The Jest of Hahalaba
- by Lord Dunsany
- unknown first performance, circa 1926
Sir Arthur Strangways: Only a trifle. I wish to see a file of the Times.
Hahalaba:For what year?![]()
Sir Arthur Strangways: Only a trifle. I wish to see a file of the Times.
Hahalaba:For what year?![]()
If I could go back into the past, there is one event which I should most certainly change: my rescue of Paul Arkwright!
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How many times have you said, âI wish I could live this year over again?â This is the story of a woman who did relive one year of her life.
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Got himself killed is right. Eleven-fifteen at night in Times Squareâthe theaters letting out, busiest time and place in the worldâand this guy shows up in the middle of the street, gawking and looking around at the cars and up at the signs like he'd never seen them before.
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But sheâd never push me around if we lived back in the time of the cavemen! No, siree! Iâd be boss.
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This is a funny lookinâ bottleâyeah, neat. But I bet if I took it home, Pop would say, âItâs just another piece of junk.â Nobody letâs me do anything I want to. I wish I was far away from here; I wish I was on a pirate ship.
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Maybeâmaybe I could travel into the future by thinking myself there.
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I znĂłw mi siÄ przypaliĆoâjedno spiralne ramie, od spodu, na trzysta parsekĂłwâi znowu wybiegĆa mi sĆonecznica, i ĆciÄĆo siÄ, i bÄdzie zgÄstek, i powstanie biaĆko, przeklÄte biaĆko! I znowu bÄdzie ewolucja, i ludzkoĆÄ, i cywilizacja, i bÄdÄ siÄ musiaĆ tĆumaczyÄ, usprawiedliwiaÄ, skĆadaÄ we dwoje, przepraszaÄ, ĆŒe to niechcÄ cy, ĆŒe przez przypadek . . . Ale to wy, nie ja!
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And I got burned againâone spiral arm, underneath, three hundred parsecsâand again a sunflower came out of me and it was choked and there will be a bundle of white, cursed protein! And there will be evolution again, and humanity and civilization, and I will have to justify, justify, put together, apologize that itâs accidentally, that by accident . . .
Me, thought the young man. Why, that old man is . . . me.
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We are one, the same person: Jonathan Hughes.
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âWow,â whispered Jack. âI wish we could go to the time of Pteranodons.â
Jack studied the picture of the odd-looking creature soaring through the sky.
âAhhh!â screamed Annie.
âWhat?â said Jack.
âA monster!â Annie cried. She pointed out the tree house window.![]()
âMy magic wand!â Annie said, waving the flashlight. âGet down. Or Iâll wipe you out!â
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âFor a thousand years,â said the ghost-queen. âI have waited for help.â
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âNo one escapes Capân Bones!â he roared. His breath was terrible.
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âThe moonstone will help you find your missing friend,â the master said.
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Jack nodded. Now he remembered. The ninja master said they wouldnât be able to find the Pennsylvania book until they had found what they were looking for.
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She stroked the mammothâs giant ear. âBye, Lulu. Thank you,â she said.
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Jack nodded. âThe book says the moon base was built in 2031,â he said. âSo this book was written after that! Which means this book os from the future!.â
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âYou must show that you know how to do research,â said Morgan. âAnd show that you can find answers to hard questions.â
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âSlim, you should write your book,â said Annie.
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Jack watched as she hopped off the ladder. Then she started to walk through the tall grass, between the zebras and giraffes.
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The tree house was on the ground. There were no trees and no houses, only an endless field of ice and snow.
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âThis story was in a library in a Roman town. I need you to get it before thelibrary becomes lost.â
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I wish every day was Christmas.
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âGive a message to the silk weaver. You will see her at the farmhouse,â said the young man. âTell her to meet me here at twilight.â
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The serpentâs neck was as tall as a two-story building. Its green scales were covered with sea slime.
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At that moment, Plato returned. With him was a young woman dressed in a long tunic with a colored border. She was holding a scroll.
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âWell, at least thatâs good,â said Jack. âThe ship wonât sink, even if it is lost.â
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â. . . I got in the way of the buffalo. I couldnât escape. So I held up my hands and shouted, âStop!â Then, out of nowhere, a beautiful lady in a white leather dress came to help me.â
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âWhen you saved the tiger, you saved all of him,â said the blind man. âYou saved his graceful beautyâand his fierce, savage nature. You cannot have one without the other.â
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But at least I got to have exciting adventures as a dog!
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Weâd like to volunteer as nurses.
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âYes! And you have to keep going for our sake,â said Annie. âFor the sake of the future children of America, sir.â
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Suddenly, the schoolhouse door blew off its hinges! It went flying through the air!
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Jack slowly stood up. His legs felt wobbly. As he brushed off his pants, the deep rumbling came againâlouder than before.
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ââTis,â said Wil âThe queen pretends to be young and beautiful. Just as you pretended to be a boy, and the bear pretended to be an actor. You see, all the worldâs a stage.â
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But he couldnât find the magic. He couldnât find the words that finished the rhyme. Worst of all, he couldnât find Annie.
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Be kind to those who feel different and afraid.
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Jack took a deep breath. âIâd like to read a little about surfing first,â he said. He put his board down and pulled out the research book.
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I wanna be thirty and flirty and thriving.
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This is the part where Iâm transported through time and everything goes back to the way it was, like Iâd never become Santa at all.
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âOkay,â I said as I squeezed my eyes shut. âI wish I could meet the one and only Ella Fitzgerald.
Just then, a strange tingling sensation shot through my body. When I opened my eyes, there was a flash of light. It was as if someone snapped a picture. Then the hat started to shake on my head. Before long, the whole room shook.![]()
Neil [wavinghand]: Let the explosion never to have happened.
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âLook, I donât know how to put this exactly,â I said, âbut would you happen to be trapped in a temporal anomaly? Like right now? Like thereâs something wrong with time?â
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One minute heâs tall! The next heâs short! One minute he can throw the ball! The next he canât!
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Annie turned back to the couple. âExcuse me again, do you know todayâs date?â she asked.
âSeptember eighth,â the woman said with a friendly smile.
âNineteen-hundred?â Jack asked.![]()
Had she somehow crucially alterted her own present by changing Aliceâs future? The thought that she might have started some terrible chain of events that she could not possibly have foreseen, nor known about, worried her more and more. It was only in the small hours of Wednesday night that an answer came to her that seemed to make sense. The present that she knew, the way things were in her time, could only have come about if she had traveled back to the past. Her finding the chatelaine, her answering Aliceâs call for help, those things were necessary to shape the past and bring about the future as it was. She had to believe this. It did work. She was a part of how things had turned out, not an alternative version, but the one she was meant to live in. If she hadnât gone back, hadnât taken the decision to help Alice, well, that wouldhave resulted in a different future from the one she knew.
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âSo I hear,â said the emperor. âWhen I first met you, I thought you must live nearby in Carnuntum. But now I do not think that is so. Where is your home?â
âFrog Creek, Pennsylvania,â said Annie.
âBeyond the Danube,â said Jack.![]()
Morganâs telling us to take Ben to Frog Creek. To our time.
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If the universe is giving me a chance to relive the same day over and over, then maybe itâs just giving me a chance to get it right.
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âOh, I get itâyour dad is Erik, so you are called Erik-son!â said Annie.
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The yellow bill pierces the shell. A long head, beak and fine fur slick, finds its way free for the first gasp of air.
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The yellow bill pierces the shell. A long head, beak and fine fur slick, finds its way free for the first gasp of air.
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âShow us,â the emperor ordered. âShow us all how this little llama speaks.â
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Hi, uh, Iâm Mark. I just had a quick question. . . . I was wonderingâthis is gonna sound really strange, God, really bizaare, butâare you experiencing any kind of temporal anomaly . . . in your life?
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If youâre a friend of bears, then take my advice: Walk softly and carry a big stick.
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Wow. I wish we could go there.
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Carrie: Honestly, I always thought you and Rick would get married.
Maggie: Mmm . . . the road not taken.![]()
Annie: [turning on her flashlight] Thatâs right! We have a magic wand and weâre not afraid to use it!
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Que vontade de pedir desculpes pra vocĂȘ.
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If I could press undo in real life, I would do everything differently.