Name is Russell Willoughby, but my boss calls me Rusty. Was shoveling peat into the stove to keep the children warm and my wife happy, next thing I know I'm prostrate at the offices of Impost Quarterly. A man in pantaloons tighter than a quartermaster's penny purse says if I tell him all I feel about this a.m.p. SP1 box he'll let me go home with the names of the teams who'll win every World Series I'm alive to see. I just punched him in the face for forcing me into time travel. Let's get on with it.
Smokes! The SP1 sounds like an alehouse full of loose women buck dancing on a Saturday night. A man tells me this is because of the dBs1™ technology, but it sounds like the work of Satan. I ask him to play some Billy Murray (truth be told I first spilled my seed into my wife whilst “Give My Regards to Broadway” was on the gramophone) and all of the soaring highs or bassy lows were there. All!, I say. And it weighs less than my child's soiled diaper. The man asks me to lean in to hear better (he calls it “nuance”) then he rudely turns it on full steam to hurt my ears. I again punch him in the face.
How does this box get the power to play so many burly notes? I see no horse attachment, no Trevithick steam circuit, no harnesses for curs, not a thing. The man explains that this is because the SP1 uses a completely wireless Bluetooth connection. But if it has the Bluetooth, why hasn't it been shot dead and buried standing up next to a willow tree, as the doctors prescribe? The man explains that in the double millennium, Bluetooth is not a disease, but invisible waves in the sky, and that the SP1 can be 30 feet away from its owner and still play prodigious music for ten hours at a time.
I notice there is no gramophone around. How are these sounds reaching my ears? Apparently in the double millennium, glass boxes—ones you can fit in your hand or on your lap—contain all the necessary sounds. If it has Bluetooth, it has aural coitus with the SP1. I am strangely comforted by this.
A voice suddenly fills the room. Oh, Lord! I am sorry for feeding little Anna laudanum! Her cry was so piercing! The man tells me not to worry—it is the voice of his lady friend: the SP1 captures telephone calls as well! (It is shocking to hear how men and women speak in the new millennium. I feel an urge to say the same things to Martha when I return.)
Would I purchase the SP1 with several days wages? I reckon I might, but the man tells me it costs less than that. Goodly gramophones are expensive, but this has the sound of one without the expense. I am sad that I will not be able to take one home, but the man tells me that I have no means of using it, and it would tear a hole in the fabric of space and time. Still, it is good to know to place my bet on the Boston Americans next year.
