Achmed's Desert Quest

The time machine looked like a giant black egg, about ten feet tall and three feet wide. I could just make out some controls on the side, and to my surprise, a few lights. They flickered on and off in a repeating pattern. I shrugged and reached out to touch it.

But before I could lay my fingers on the surface, the lights went out. I blinked in shock, and was too slow to stop myself as I tripped over my own feet and crashed through the glass window of the control room into the lab beyond. The room smelled earthy and dry, with a touch of moldy cheese that made me want to sneeze. The floor was littered with broken vials and books, their pages crumbled into dust by time or water damage. There was a small table in the corner with some bent metal tools scattered around it, along with some unrecognizable pieces of wood. And there was something else: a clock-like device about the size of a human head sitting atop the table.

It wasn't ticking, but it had this strange look about it despite its lack of features. It looked like someone had taken an old radio, broken it down into its smallest parts, then put them all back together again in some new configuration that no longer made any sense. Then they'd put it under a pile of sand for 50 years to try to disguise its age.

"Hmmm..." I said to myself quietly as I got to my feet and brushed myself off. "Wonder what this place is?"

I picked up one of the larger pieces of debris from the floor and walked over to one of the tables by an empty workbench in order to sweep up some of the smaller bits of sand that had blown in during my entrance. As I did so, my eyes fell upon something very interesting: a small book sitting on top of one of the tables with writing on its cover that looked vaguely like Arabic letters but seemed - somehow - slightly wrong.

I reached for it while still holding onto the piece of metal I had picked up. As soon as my fingers touched it, however, there was a flash and suddenly everything went dark! My heart jumped into my throat as all sounds around me stopped and I felt weightless for just an instant before suddenly being slammed down against something hard!

The floor? The ceiling? It didn't matter because I couldn't move anything except my head! And then that started moving until finally one eye peeked open to reveal... dark skin and red robes?

"Holy shit," I whispered aloud as my mind tried desperately to make sense of what was happening to me. In front of me where I lay sprawled across belly-down on what felt like marble tiles (which seemed odd because most floors weren't usually made out of smooth polished stone), stood a man wearing traditional Arabic robes with white shoes on his feet and a turban wrapped around his long black hair which he kept neatly trimmed above his jawline. He turned towards me when he heard me speak English and smiled warmly at me before speaking in what sounded like Arabic with an accent that was definitely not native to North Africa where I was born.

We stared at each other for several seconds before he broke out laughing so hard that he had to hold onto his sides before he doubled over onto his knees right next to where I was laying spread eagle on the ground looking back up at him in abject shock (not least because there were four other men behind him who were also laughing). After several minutes they finally calmed down enough so that they could talk again without gasping for air between words while trying not to laugh again.