Nurse the Hate: Tasmania Letter

March 22, 1848

My love,

If you have opened this letter, I need for you to stop reading if it is not yet March 22, 2017.  If it is, please read on…

I have made a horrible miscalculation in this Tasmanian sparkling wine venture.  In my haste to head to 1840s Tasmania in my time machine, I completely overlooked the fact that the time machine itself wouldn’t be sent to 1840s Tasmania, only the contents inside it, i.e. me.  I am now trapped in Port Arthur Tasmania in 1848.  It’s quite embarrassing.  So, I arrived in 1841 with a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, Chuck Taylors, my gym bag, and a copy of A.J. Whittaker’s “General Viticulture” book.  I was so excited to get the time machine done, I just let my enthusiasm get the best of me.  I should have planned better, but I have tried to make a go of it.

I was able to acquire my Aboriginal sidekick “Bunji” rather easily thanks to bribery and the gift of a Zippo lighter.  I think you’d like Bunji, though you would have to overlook how he and I disemboweled several prisoners at the woodcutting shed to make our reputations as cruel overlords.  Still, we have been able to move past that and I think we have built quite a nice team.  We hardly get any complaints when Bunji gives 15 lashes to slow workers as we clear vineyard area on the slopes.  At Christmas, we even give everyone a small spoonful of honey just to show our appreciation for the 364 previous days of physical labor.  

The real issue has been the inability to grow the grapes.  As you recall, I don’t have much of a green thumb.  I thought that book would tell me all I needed to know.  I really should have given it a quick read before hopping into the time machine.  The book references all these chemicals and machines I can’t get hold of anywhere in this mosquito infested backwater, so I’m at a bit of a standstill on getting traction in the vineyards.  Bunji’s idea of just whipping the workers when things went wrong was appealing at first, but has produced mixed results at best.  It has been 7 years of failure to produce a crop.  I think I am going to admit failure.

In theory when you get this letter I will have been deceased 150+ years, unless malaria gets me sooner of course.  As you can imagine, it is very difficult to send a letter to someone that doesn’t exist yet that lives in a house that hasn’t been built and is 150 years in the future.  However, Mr. Burroughs at the post has assured me he will do his best to insure this arrives to you in a timely fashion.  I hope you will be able to overlook my failure in this Tasmanian sparkling wine business.  I only did it for you in hopes of impressing you and winning your heart.  What a fiasco.    

If you could somehow find the charity, I would appreciate if you could go to my basement and build another time machine from the plans I have left on the workbench.  After you have constructed that, please build an even larger time machine so as to place the first time machine inside it and then send the smaller time machine to me at Port Arthur Tasmania sometime in late March 1848.  If you can do that, I would really appreciate it and I promise to go back to yesterday to stop myself from going back to 1840s Tasmania in the first place which will eradicate the need for you to have built the two time machines later this week.  I know this is a lot to take on, but if you can build these two time machines I will make sure that you never built them by going to the past and fixing this little mishap. 

It has been a long and humbling seven years in Tasmania.  Once again, I am sorry for this inconvenience.  I’m sure we will have a good laugh over this when I take you out to dinner, my treat.

Yours,

Sgt. Gregory Miller

Port Arthur Penal Colony/Miller's Sparkling Wine Company