The Sewing Needle

From the Author of The Life and Death and Reanimation of Denny Boggler, Barista comes another adventure to take you beyond the stars.

Percival James Ford is a stapler repairman who has no ambition, no money and rusted van held together with duct tape. When, after a few drinks one night, the topic of time travel comes up, he sets himself to the task of building just such a machine - something that will take him from his dead-end job to places he could never have dreamt of. He gets more than he bargains for, stitching entire universes together and tearing them apart. 

A humourous and light-hearted adventure in the vein of Back to the Future and The Time Machine.

Percival James Ford was a stapler repairman. He had invented the occupation himself one night while sitting at a desk contemplating life and the mysteries surrounding what to do with it. Somehow, Percy, as he preferred to be called, had come to the conclusion that what the world needed most was someone who, in the event of a jammed or broken stapler, would be able to drive to wherever you were, and repair it. He had decided while fixing a stapler and getting a puncture wound, that there should be someone who could help others do this, so that people don't get puncture wounds. He also decided that he would be that person. Business wasn't booming – it wasn't going anywhere. Business was stagnant, dead, and there was a pile of bills on Percy's desk that showed that business was dead. However, he would try and ignore that pile for as long as he could.
He drove an old white van, the kind that are always broken-down somewhere, and make parents uneasy when playing with their kids at parks. It was held together with duct tape and the seats were worn down, with rusty springs sticking out. It did, however, have a cassette-player, and Percy alternated between the tapes that he found in the glove-box when he bought it. There was gunk on the dashboard, as well as a bunch of small, random ornaments he'd found, and the floor was sticky. He didn't know if it had a smell, as one grows accustomed to their own smells – but it did. 
In the back, rolling round as he swerved corners was his toolbox, a big chest full of everything he needed to fix staplers. Most of the tools were standard ones any shed would have, but some he had made himself for specific jobs. The box had spare staples, staplers, stapler parts, and a few rolls of duct tape. Rolling around with the toolbox was a lunchbox that was usually empty and a few magazines. They ranged from Scientific American to National Geographic, although he never read much out of them, only the articles that focused on dinosaurs. 
The van rattled and swayed as he drove, and the toolbox banged against the walls, creating bulges in the body, but he hardly noticed. The banging and swaying was all part of the drive and was mixed with the experimental jazz/ stoner rock mix-tape that was usually playing, and was also covered in gunk. The van was an extension of Percy, and he hardly noticed its faults because they were his faults too.