Time-Traveling Adventurer And Robot Butler

Mohamed Caesar Napoleon Ramses Qin The Sixteenth (and also the sixth, eleventh, seventy-third, and πth, though he wasn't using any of those iterations right now, due to the damnable politics of the Linnear Convention) took a deep breath of the wind whipping past his face and wondered what sort of wine went best with giant mutated ant meat. There were so few timelines where it was available, and fewer still with any proper gourmands left alive to give him advice. It was intolerable, really - once that conservative idiot neandrathal lost the next election and the Linear Society loosened rules on branching histories, he would need to smuggle a few back to prerevolutionary France and see what Versailles (not Cleopatra Moctezuma Nuwa Washington Versailles The Third - the residents of the flat-time city itself) came up with. He was still wondering whether it was worth taking them back further and letting an entire culinary tradition develop around them somewhere in southeast Asia when Mark announced quietly, "Master, we are now approaching the ground at terminal velocity. I would recommend a plan."

Mohammed Qin swore, but since he used the dialect of 24th century Beaucrana where profanities were classified as munitions, it didn't sound all that bad. "Authorization gamma zero one seven," he muttered. "This is what happens when I don't have a good breakfast." Then, he saw the solution, as clear as the massive shape of earth rushing up at him. "Hey, that's it! Mark, go back to this morning and cook me a big breakfast!"

"As you wish, Master," said Mark, and disappeared.

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Bionetic Domestic Model K4T, Mark-1 was having a harried morning. Its master was refusing to eat breakfast, due to some incomprehensible raving about an army of savages riding mutant ants trying to destroy us all, and the need to escape before said savages killed, ate, and rendered down for twinkies everything in their path. That probably meant yet another journey through time, to yet another place where they hadn't even invented the tuxedo yet, or where they were outlawed by the cybergods for making physical bodies look too good, or where the Penguin Men from Alpha Centauri mistook you for their long-lost brother, or some other such nonsense which complicated the acts of a properly-functioning butler. To top it off, one of his past-time duplicates was trying to explain to him that, though they had tried their best to make Master eat a healthy breakfast as he ran away from a small and ill-mannered army the first time, it was now his direct order that they try harder.

Some days, Mark processed, a butler just couldn't win.

"Master," said Mark, calm despite flying along at over 30 miles per hour to match the (now malfunctioning) rocket boots of his difficult charge, "how do you deal with all the troubles?"

"Mostly," gasped his master, "I try to escape the consequences by abusing cosmic power." He paused for a moment, ducking a sloppily-thrown parking meter. "Hey, that's it! Mark, take us somewhere a long way from anyone I've pissed off!"

The future time shadow made a desperate gesture, but no real Butler could ignore its charge. "As you wish, master," said Mark, and they both disappeared.