Times of Trouble (A Time Travel Anthology)

A PERMUTED PRESS book

published at Smashwords.

Times of Trouble copyright © 2013

by Permuted Press.

Hiroshima Sunflowers © by Stephen Gaskell

Previous © by David Gullen

The Scavenger © by Michael C. Lea

Little Girl Lost © by Jeff Drake

A Tornado in Time © by Craig DiLouie

Let Me Take You There © by Rakie Kieg

To Run Indefinitely © by Brian P. Easton

The Grandfather Clause © by Jason S. Hornsby

Tempus Fugitive © by Rob Pegler and Thom Brannon

Mandatory Waiting Period © by Aaron Polson

Screwing Christa © by Wayne Helge

Forgetting © by Frank Farrar

Decoherence © by Mark Harding

Hounded © by Joshua Reynolds

The Transcendental Man © by Timothy Martinez

Rabid Season © by Matthew Baugh

Mulligan © by Peter Clines

Faces of Nefertiti © by Ruth Nestvold

Biodegradable © by Gregory L. Norris

The Time Traveler’s Late Wife © by Stan Timmons

A Hatful of Yesterday © by Lane Adamson

Among Flowers and Bones © by Frank Summers

The Unravelling © by R.B. Payne

All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Hiroshima Sunflowers

Stephen Gaskell

Previous

David Gullen

The Scavenger

Michael C. Lea

Little Girl Lost

Jeff Drake

A Tornado in Time

Craig DiLouie

Let Me Take You There

Rakie Kieg

To Run Indefinitely

Brian P. Easton

The Grandfather Clause

Jason S. Hornsby

Tempus Fugitive

Rob Pegler and Thom Brannon

Mandatory Waiting Period

Aaron Polson

Screwing Christa

Wayne Helge

Forgetting

Frank Farrar

Decoherence

Mark Harding

Hounded

Joshua Reynolds

The Transcendental Man

Timothy Martinez

Rabid Season

Matthew Baugh

Mulligan

Peter Clines

Faces of Nefertiti

Ruth Nestvold

Biodegra1dable

Gregory L. Norris

The Time Traveler’s Late Wife

Stan Timmons

A Hatful of Yesterday

Lane Adamson

Among Flowers and Bones

Frank Summers

The Unravelling

R. B. Payne

* * *

TROUBLES IN TIME

Time travel is the ultimate second chance. It’s funny how a second chance usually winds up being just another opportunity to get it wrong, though.

The authors represented in the collection you now hold were tasked to create grim, gritty tales of time travel gone horribly wrong. They have done so, in some wild and wonderful ways.

There are stories of rare and exceptional beauty; stories of dark, otherworldly horror; stories of white-knuckle thrills, and even some that will make you laugh out loud. In fact, if you pay close attention, in one of these adventures, you’ll realize that no time travel at all ever takes place.

In the end, perhaps the best one can hope for is simply... a little hope. I hope you enjoy reading these stories as much as I’ve enjoyed collecting them for you.

Lane Adamson

November 2011

* * *

HIROSHIMA SUNFLOWERS

by Stephen Gaskell

Uncle Zack—at least, that’s who I suspected the gangly man dressed in a dirty, faded T-shirt, ragged Bermudas, and cheap yellow flip-flops making a bee-line for me was—met me at Ciudad Juárez’s noisy, teeming bus terminal on a hot May night, two days after I’d finished a grueling spring semester at Sarofim School of Fine Arts.

Mom had warned me that he might be a little rough and ready, but that had been part of the appeal when I’d organized my summer break.

Didn’t recognize me, did you? he said. Now let me get a good look at you. He breathed liquor over me. Two calloused hands clamped themselves on my shoulders while he looked me up and down. I’ll be damned. Talk about a family resemblance.

This struck me as an odd thing to say, because the one thing relatives consistently said when they really looked at me was that I didn’t look anything like Mom or Dad.

You look... different, I said, stepping back.

No need for niceties. I look like a train-wreck and I’ve been drinking all day. He held out a hand to me. I’m Zack.

I dropped my pack to the ground and grasped his hand. I’m Ed.

Ever seen your life flash before your eyes, Ed? he asked, serious-like, as we shook.

No, I replied, wondering what he was getting at.

He was quiet for a moment, then laughed. Well, you’re about to. Traffic’s an experience here.

What have I let myself in for, I thought, as he led me past the taco stands and extended families, out to the dusky street and his beat-up pickup truck.

∞

Uncle Zack lived at the end of a dusty trail, a mile off the shining asphalt highway. Thundering juggernauts carrying bananas and auto parts to the United States rumbled past at all hours.

No clear lines marked the boundary between his and no-man’s land. When the cacti got suitably abundant you were in the desert, and when the industrial crap and rubbish got suitably abundant you were in Uncle Zack’s backyard.

I don’t think Mom would have suggested my staying here if she’d seen the place. He had power lines (erected himself off the main lines following the highway), and fresh water from a small stream out back, but in every other way the place was way behind the times. The walls and ceilings were corrugated iron sheets, there was no real drainage, and the flooring was made of broken slabs of concrete with gaps where tufts of weeds sprouted through.

A motley collection of old sheds peppered the backyard.

You’re free to go anywhere except there, he said, pointing at one of the outbuildings. The roof’s in danger of coming down, he added by way of explanation.

I was kicking dirt in the backyard, hands in pockets, wondering what I was going to do with myself for three months, when I came across a metal cage with thick cabling looped around it.

What is this? I asked, squatting down and examining a soldered panel. The LEDs, switches, and diodes looked straight out a high-school physics class.

He came over. His frame blocked the sun. That sets the arrival time of anything in the cage.

What the hell are you talking about? This wasn’t like the other inventions he’d shown me in his workshop: the coffee-maker slaved to an alarm clock; the trash can that talked back when you dropped something in it. (My favourite: Finish your plate! People are starving!).

In layman terms, it’s called a time machine, he said, straight-faced.

As I waited for some sign he was fooling with me, a gentle gust of wind brought a double-page of an old newspaper into the cage. I expected it to disappear any second.

Another gust blew it back out.

I laughed and stood up. A time machine! What is it really?

Uncle Zack didn’t answer. He just smiled, then turned and walked back to his workshop.

∞

The weeks rolled by. There was a timelessness about the place which I enjoyed: no TV, no empty social necessities, no change to the pale blue skies and long, sunny days. I spent my time sketching, reading the dog-eared paperbacks Uncle Zack hoarded in his library shed (there were two genres he seemed to read: heavy engineering tracts, or pulp sci-fi like Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said) or writing love letters to my girlfriend, Kelly. Uncle Zack spent most his time puttering about in his workshop.

Sometimes I’d walk down the dust track to the highway and hitch a ride to the nearest pueblo, where I could post my letters and practice my Spanish with leathery-skinned locals in daytime drinking holes.

Uncle Zack and I didn’t talk too much. Our passions seemed too far apart, and it seemed out of place to make small talk here. At sunset, when the light was magical and washed-out and it was too dark to sketch, we’d silently get the fire going and then crack open a couple of bottles of Corona, toast with a clink, and settle into a pair of tatty armchairs to watch the sun sink below the horizon.

Why’d you come here? I asked one night.

Uncle Zack took a swig of his beer, savoring the liquid in his mouth for a good few seconds before swallowing. Good question. One I been asking myself for a long while.

Mom always wondered why you suddenly left to come down here. I was too young to remember you leaving, but when we pull out the old photo albums at Christmas or Thanksgiving, she always touches your face with her fingers and I can see how sad she is. I didn’t mean to say so much, but the words just fell out of me.

He took another swig of beer.

Ed, he said, you been here a little while now. You can appreciate how tranquil it is here. A man is one with nature here. The wind on his face, the sun on his arms. This is a good place to do some thinking, too. Can you feel that, Ed?

For the first time, sitting in that frayed armchair like it was a throne and all this was his little kingdom, he turned and looked at me. He leaned forward a little and his hands gripped the carved ends of the arms. I been thinking here for fifteen years. And I still don’t know the answers.

About why you left?

That... that and other stuff. He swigged from his bottle. Ed, I can’t explain what happened. Not to me, not to you, not to anyone. Not fully. Things changed between me and the rest of the family and I had to go away to think about it. That’s all. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. Well nobody’s ‘cept mine.

He got up out of the chair and drained the rest of his beer. You’re a good kid, Ed. I’m glad you came down here. He stepped forward a couple of paces. But I’m not coming back until I’m done thinking, he said and threw the empty bottle out into the evening sky.

It hit the supposed time-machine with a clunk.

∞

One morning I woke up feeling the urge to paint. My tutors at Sarofim always encouraged us to indulge our creative whims when they came, so I decided I’d sniff around the place for a brush and some paint.

It was just before dawn. Uncle Zack was still asleep and there was a nip in the air as I crossed the backyard to the dilapidated shed that was chock full of the odds and ends of a lifetime. Uncle Zack had told me to stay out of there and after I’d sneaked a look ages ago and seen nothing of interest I’d obeyed his word.

Until today.

Shivering in my thin denim jacket, I pulled open the shed door and groped for the light switch. The grimy, bare bulb buzzed to life.

From outside the shed looked big enough to house a monster off-roader; from the inside, with everything and the kitchen sink fighting for space, it seemed a compact would struggle to get in. I tip-toed between a Singer sewing machine, a rusty exhaust pipe, a stack of moth-eaten encyclopedias, floral tea sets, and a splintered hoe to the tiny clearing in the centre of the shack.

I found a couple of brushes with well-tended bristles and a few pots of paint in which, below glutinous skins, syrupy liquids still stirred. Now all I needed was a canvas.

Towards the back, behind a Harlequin-clothed golf bag I spotted one. Would it be bad form to just paint over the original print without telling Uncle Zack first?

It was only then that I took a good look at the painting.

It was a Van Gogh reproduction—one of the Sunflower collection we’d studied in the fall semester. That cobalt blue background and five sunflowers-–three standing tall and proud, two wilting and dejected—unmistakable. I stared, mesmerized by the cyclopean black eye in the chromium yellow of the tallest sunflower, and felt goose pimples all over my body.

Could this be the real thing?

It was almost inconceivable. One of the world’s most legendary pieces of art—believed destroyed in some expert’s opinions; stolen and kept in a private collection in other’s—here amongst some worthless rubbish in a shed in Uncle Zack’s backyard in the wilderness of northern Mexico.

My doubts didn’t stop me from gently resting the painting against a nearby wicker chair. I upturned an iron bucket to my left, spilling some worn baseballs and an old pitching glove, and sat down.

You can’t fake something like that.

I took a deep breath and pulled myself in close to the canvas. I studied it for a long while. Although faded, everything about it chimed with what I knew: the paint laid onto the material in thick brush strokes to emphasize the third dimension; the innovative, vibrant colors; the texture of the pigment; and, a trademark of Van Gogh—another work apparently painted over, because he couldn’t afford fresh canvas.

But most of all, it was an instinct. A deep intuition that resonated with the feeling I’d had when I stood in front of another of Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

This painting was Vase with Five Sunflowers by Vincent Van Gogh. It was magnificent.

But how? Holy cow, the last official sighting of the painting had been more than fifty years ago in Japan! Stiff-legged, I got up, unbuttoned my jacket’s breast pocket for the packet of Camels I kept there for special occasions, and waded my way through the junk, towards the door.

A yard from it, cigarette between dry lips and lighter in hand, something on the floor caught my eye. I pushed the door open, letting in the light of daybreak, and stooped down.

It was an old issue of Art World magazine, dusty and faded, with a cover that almost came off in my hands. On the front was a picture of the painting with the words ‘Mystery of the Five Sunflowers’ boldly written beneath. I looked from the image to the original—ludicrously just yards away—and back again. They were one and the same.

I went outside and lit my smoke before flipping through the magazine to the cover story.

Vase with Five Sunflowers had led a fascinating life. Like the other works in the collection, it was born in the fields of southern France; a gift from Van Gogh to a fellow artist, Gauguin. In 1920, a Japanese textiles tycoon bought it and shipped it to Osaka by steam boat. At the second of its two public exhibitions in Japan, its unusually heavy frame caused the painting to fall from the wall. Outraged, the business magnate refused to let it appear again, and kept it in the drawing room of his own private residence in the Uchide district of Ashiya. On the night of 5 August 1945, as the world witnessed the first atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Ashiya was bombed and the magnate’s residence burnt to the ground, taking the painting with it.

Or had it?

This is where the article got interesting. A servant of the house claimed he’d seen an unfamiliar white man in the drawing room stealing the painting. Later, a woman came forward stating she’d seen the painting aboard a trans-pacific ocean liner in 1975. And a customs official who worked at the San Francisco Port Authority swore he’d seen the painting being unloaded a few weeks after that.

I shoved the magazine in my back pocket. I looked at the decaying time-machine. Could Uncle Zack be the unidentified white man in World War II Japan? Could that hulk of wiring and metal and dime-store electronic components once have traveled through time?

No. It was insane. The painting in the shed was a good imitation. The article proving nothing more than one man’s curiosity in an overblown story designed to ship copies.

I ran over to the wrangle of metal and wiring, and started digging out the base of the machine which must’ve lain disused for years.

What, you think it’s a time-machine now? Uncle Zack laughed.

I got up off my knees, brushed off the sand, and waited while he ambled over, shaking his head as though he were trying to rid his head of bad dreams.

Does it still work? I asked.

He swept his hand over his face, from brow to chin, and cocked his head to one side as though he were trying to work out my angle.

This ain’t no time machine, Ed. I was messing with you before. You spent too long with your crazy Uncle. Maybe it’s time to get some sanity back in your life.

I pulled out the rolled-up magazine and passed it to him. It was still on the page with the Five Sunflowers story.

He stared at the grainy black and white photograph of the Ashiya residence like you look at pictures of old lovers or dead friends.

And then he looked at me with anger. Where’d you get this? he snarled.

I’d never seen him like this before. He’d always been calm; maybe a little melancholy, but never aggressive. I inched back, suddenly afraid of what he might do, unable to answer him.

I asked you a question, boy.

From... from... I tried to get the words out, but his fury was like a shackle on me. I looked over to the open shed and nodded.

Didn’t I tell you not to go in there? That it wasn’t safe for you in there. His chest blew in and out in short jolts.

I needed some paint. And a brush. I just wanted to do some painting.

I thought he was going to strike me. He clenched his fists and his whole frame trembled with rage. Next time, ask. And keep out of that goddamn shed.

He marched back to the shed and flung open the door with a crack. He froze for a moment. Not for long. But long enough for me to know it was all true.

He didn’t go in but flung the magazine inside, turned off the light, and closed the door.

As he walked back to the main building he didn’t look at me once.

∞

That day I flagged a ride into the city.

Over several warm cervezas, served from a metal cooler by a grinning fat woman who laughed at my stilted Spanish, I decided I would stay a few more days and then go back to the States.

∞

Those last few nights when I managed to sleep, the dreams danced in my head. There was one that kept recurring. It was dark, air-raid sirens would wail, and I would hurry down a suburban street. There was a man in front of me. He was white: I could tell from his build. We passed a house identical to the one in the magazine and then a bomb would hit the house and in the flash of the explosion I would see the Van Gogh painting in the window, the sunflower heads looking like shocked alien creatures. Tremendous flames would begin licking at the canvas and the creatures would howl in pain. The white man would skip away down the street.

On the last night when the dream ended I woke up soaked in sweat with the last vestiges of the burning painting stamped onto my soul. I tore the thin bed sheet from my body, and stormed into the night not even bothering to slip into my pants or get my shoes on.

I made my way to the junk shed and swung open the door.

Everything was the same.

Except that the painting was gone.

It’s not here, Uncle Zack said from behind me.

Where is it?

It’s safe.

So he hadn’t destroyed it. We watched each other, staring over a sea of junk.

You sure hoard a lot of stuff, I said.

These things are me, he said softly, People talk about it being what’s inside that counts. I disagree. The world we make outside ourselves is what counts. That’s why I keep everything now. These things are my life.

For the first time I really looked at the things in the shed and I felt the little pieces of Uncle Zack’s history that each object carried with it.

Can I see the painting? I asked.

He bent down and up righted a fallen poker stand. I’m glad you came back here, Ed. I wanted to know how much you wanted the truth. I’ll show you the painting, but you have to listen to the story behind it first. That’s how it should be with all things. Come on.

He left the shed and I followed him to the makeshift porch and the two decaying armchairs. The western sky in front of us was dark as night but the first hints of dawn whispered behind us.

It was 1975. I’d left Boeing a couple of years before to start my own technology company, but the funds were running out, and I’d had some disagreements with the two other partners over the direction the firm was going.

I couldn’t picture Uncle Zack in a suit and tie. He must’ve read my mind because he said next: "Yeah, hard to believe, ain’t it. Crazy Uncle Zack was once one hundred percent legit, trying to make a normal living like everyone else.

Anyway, my heart wasn’t really in the business plan the other guys had mapped out. I didn’t want to spend my life making revolutionary toasters, or remote-controlled cars. I wanted to build something grand, something new. I left the company, sold my stock and did research for a year. I neglected everything except my work. I didn’t see Mom and Dad–-Gramps and Grandma to you–-and I rarely called your Mom even though I knew she was having it tough. The work was all-consuming. I was onto something big, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to do this project in fits and starts. I was thirty-three years old, and my creative powers were waning. I needed to focus on this entirely. And it paid off. The breakthrough came in July. July 16, 1975, to be exact.

The first run of the time machine.

He nodded sadly.

How—

"Honestly? I don’t know anymore. I burnt all the notes. Anyway, the first thing I wanted to do was get a little capital injection. To help the business grow and give something back to the family.

"I’m a baseball fan, Ed, and I’d always wanted to bet on a game, but logic had always got the better of my impulsive side so I never did. Until I had the time machine and I knew I could cheat. I went forward to the World Series later that year–-Cincinnati Reds versus the Boston Red Sox–-and spent a couple of weeks watching all the games. In that World Series, the Red Sox won, so I went back and bet the rest of my savings on the result. Do you know who won the World Series in ‘75, Ed? It wasn’t the Red Sox. The Reds won. Something had changed in the intervening time and I realized my bet, or my being there, must have changed the result.

"It was a big blow. I’d changed history. That weighed heavy on my mind for a long while. Of course, nobody knew things could have been different. I didn’t tell a soul, but for months just mulled it over in my mind. What was the purpose of a time machine? To see the future but never return because it’d probably never happen if you came back? I didn’t want to play God, but I wanted to do something with this incredible device. By chance, I came across an article about a Van Gogh painting that was destroyed in World War II, during a wartime bombing. It struck me as a perfect opportunity. I could go back and steal the painting just before it was destroyed. The world would be oblivious to the fact, and the only difference would be that in 1975, I’d have an artistic masterpiece on my hands that everyone considered destroyed. I would be able to sell it to a private collector and make a fortune. I couldn’t see a problem.

I shipped the machine to Osaka, and then followed myself a few weeks later. I hired a truck and arrived in Ashiya soon after. The land on which the bombed house had stood hadn’t been redeveloped, and so it was easy setting up exactly where I wanted. I would go in, get the painting and leave. I waited until nightfall, and then left 1975.

Uncle Zack closed his eyes and sat unmoving. Out in the yard I saw the outline of the time-machine and would never look upon it as just metal and stuff again.

Uncle Zack went on with eyes closed. "I heard the sirens first. Long wails that lapped against your head until you weren’t sure whether the sound came from inside or out. I thought of the two pilots and the Enola Gay in the clouds high above. I remember feeling then how pathetic my little scheme was and I felt shamed and humbled. What could I do, though? I was there now. The full moon shone bright in the sky, illuminating the drawing room–-the high-backed armchairs, the stone fireplace and stacked logs, the wall of literature, and, mounted above the mantelpiece with its five sunflower heads solemnly surveying the room, the painting. It was as I stepped out of the machine I noticed the crushed table underfoot. The landing must have made a hell of a noise splintering it. I got to the painting and wrenched it from the wall, pulling off the heavy frame as I did so. It was at that moment that one of the servants of the house came in. He must have heard the landing from the cellar and come up to investigate. His surprise at seeing me, a gaijin with wild eyes stealing away the painting, must have been greater than my own at seeing him, for I struck him down with a corner of the frame before he could even utter a word.

"Now I had a problem. I knew if I left this man here, out cold on the drawing room floor, it’d be likely he would die. But was he destined to die cowering in the cellar anyway? I couldn’t be certain but I guessed not. I grabbed a bottle of brandy from a nearby drinks cabinet, lifted the servant onto my shoulders, and climbed out of the window into the garden. The best I could do was make it look like he’d drunk himself comatose and stumbled into the gazebo and cut his head. I clambered back into the drawing room with a sense of foreboding and when I connected the circuits to make the jump back to ‘75 my hands were shaking.

"At first everything seemed okay. The world was the same. Hiroshima and Nagasaki got bombed. The computer got invented. The Soviet Union and the States hadn’t nuked each other yet. I found out all these things as I made my way back to Osaka with the painting. My mind played tricks on me, though. I was always wondering whether so-and-so building was the same one as in the 1975 I’d left. I knew I’d find the answer back home in the States but I was terrified of learning the truth.

"After a couple of weeks I boarded a liner bound for San Francisco—the machine stored in the hold and the painting wrapped in simple brown packing paper. One night, I drank too much and showed it to this woman I’d spent the evening with. She was an amateur art-lover and recognized the painting, but told me I had a good fake on my hands. After that the only other person ‘cept you who saw it was the guy at customs, who luckily didn’t know Van Gogh from Van Morrison.

"It was back home by the Bay that I learnt I’d changed the world. Not in a major way. The diner on one of the corners of Union Square was gone. There was no second-hand bookstore on Broadway near Franklin. The keys to my apartment didn’t work and my neighbor didn’t recognize me. I went round to your Mom’s house. Somehow she still lived in the same big townhouse on the corner of Greenwich and Jones. I thought that was a good sign. When I knocked on the door and she answered she dropped the glass of wine she held in her hand. ‘Oh my God,’ were her first words and then she flung her arms around me and held me tighter than I’d ever been held. ‘They said you were dead. Down some god-forsaken canyon,’ she said, sobbing in little spasms. It was then it really hit me. I must have lived another life. And really died out on some dangerous trek. I’d had some hairy moments on treks in my lost history so it was certainly possible. And then she called out into the house ‘Bryan, Ed. Come quickly.’ And I said ‘Where’s Erika?’ and your mother looked at me strangely and then your Dad came first and he was just as I’d remembered him. And then you came. A beautiful boy with big blue eyes. But you weren’t the Ed I knew. You see Ed, in the 1975 I came from, your Mom had two children. A little girl called Erika and a little boy called Ed. In the new 1975 there was no Erika and the Ed I knew was gone. In my greed I’d killed them. I looked down the street and pictured a world that was the same but different. People I knew erased and others in their place. I mumbled something and left you and your Mom and Dad. A couple of days later I came to Mexico. I always wanted to make amends. Thought I could make things right somehow. Solve it in my workshop. I never did. Maybe I never could."

He slumped back in his chair.

The world made anew, I whispered, shaking my head.

And then I knew who Uncle Zack must’ve been talking about when we’d first met and he’d mentioned a family resemblance.

My lost namesake.

We sat in silence, watching the sun rise rather than fall for the first time, before Uncle Zack eased himself out of his chair and stretched in the dawn light.

You must be tired. Get some rest and then I’ll run you to the station, he said, and ambled back to the house.

∞

Sleep was the last thing I was able to do. I lay on my bed, sweat dampening the sheets as the sun baked the tin-can of a room. I watched the motion of the ceiling fan. Round and round and round it went, an endless series of whump-whump-whump sounds, blowing warm air while mosquitoes danced beneath it.

The unreality of the place I’d felt when I’d arrived here—which had slowly waned over the weeks—was back again, magnified, and I wondered if this time it wouldn’t go away no matter where I went or how long I stayed in one place. I was only born me because Uncle Zack had built a time machine, gone to the Japan of 1945, stolen a Van Gogh, and changed the course of history! I broke into a bout of hysterics as I pictured relaying the story of my summer to my college buddies. They would slap me on the back and then joke about how much peyote I must’ve taken. When the laughter eased, I rubbed my belly, and levered myself up from the bed. I needed to understand these events better, or else I feared I would go mad. I tried not to think of Uncle Zack and what his state of mind must be like, but I knew I wanted to help him in whatever way I could.

I slipped on my flip-flops and went outside into the midday sun. Squinting, with a hand over my brow, I spied Uncle Zack over by the time-machine, and I went to join him.

What you doing, Uncle Zack?

He was stripped down to the waist. Sinewy muscles rippled under his tanned skin as he pulled at a piece of the machine’s frame.

He stopped heaving and mopped his face.

You should cover up, Ed. You’ll get burnt.

I felt the sun’s heat bristling against my exposed shoulders and back, but his suggestion rankled.

I’ll be okay. So what’s going on?

He looked at me hard, scratched his chin, looked away and then spoke.

"I was stupid to tell