August 14, 2048 "Hey, Jayme, you old fart, did I wake you?" "Of course you did. Christ, Lou, what's with a call in the middle of the night? You know what time it is here!" "Sure I do. Sorry I can't turn on the video. You'd love the sight. I have two MIB types with a hand on each shoulder." "Ahh, Lou, what have you done?" "Well, in a nutshell, I gave Tomasso DiGrande $10 million to fund his little project." "What! Are you nuts! No wait, I know the answer. Umm... did it work?" "Yes, it did. But we were tracked and when I got back, they had Tomas in tow and now they've grabbed me. They're hauling everything off now." "Jesus!" "Yep. Remember 'Pen Pal'? The story you published 44 years ago? Well, as it turned out, it was all true." "Wow, talk about 'Bootstraps'!" "Hmm, I didn't think of that. I guess I made Heinlein proud. Whoops, my one phone call is up! Easy, boys!" "Lou, are you gonna be OK?" "Don't worry about me. I still got tons of money. I can take care of myself." "What about DiGrande?" "He's on his own. I paid him well. Shit, gotta go!" July 31, 2047 "I hope you understand how grateful I am to you." "Don't mention it, Tomasso. I'm getting old and have more money than I'll need for the rest of my life. I think this is a good investment." "But what kind of return can you expect for your investment?" "Oh, just a little sight-seeing, I guess. Nothing spectacular. Don't want to create any temporal anomalies." "There's always the possibility the activation of a temporal warp will be detected." "There's no one to police this kind of activity." "Well, perhaps not here, not now, but what about..." "I see what you mean. Well, if anyone from the future or another timeline drops in, I guess we'd be happy to see them." The young inventor poked at his plate of pasta. "What kind of sight-seeing would you be interested in doing?" "Personal stuff. Like when I was an innocent little kid. We never realize until later what a great time of life that is. Also maybe when the big turning point came in my life, you know, when I broke into writing science fiction." Tomasso sipped some red wine. "You were a newspaper editor before that, weren't you?" "Yes, I worked on newspapers for years. Then one day I had a little spurt of inspiration and I wrote a science fiction story for Asimov's magazine. That's where my writing career really began." "Sounds harmless enough. Where can I set up?" "I have a spread on the outskirts on Dunedin in New Zealand. There's a large warehouse there you can use." Jan. 18, 2006 "What are you watching?" "There's a Twilight Zone marathon on the SciFi channel. They've been showing all these old black and white ones with Rod Serling. Way cool!" The young girl squirmed on the cushion. "Look how narrow his tie is." She giggled and pointed to an image of Gig Young on the screen. The old woman stopped. "I remember this episode. It's about a middle-aged man who goes back to when he was a kid and meets himself when he was a boy." "That's right, nana. You remember it." The middle-aged man in a dark suit was chasing the boy through a carousel. "Did you catch the name of this episode, by any chance?" The girl glanced back at her grandmother. "Yes, it's called Walking Distance." The retired school teacher suddenly recalled a conversation she had with a stranger, a man she never met again, almost 40 years earlier. April 3, 2004 From: loua@bubbasinternet.com April 2, 2004 From: fiction@revolutionsf.com April 1, 2004 From: lou@bubbasinternet.com April 1, 2004 From: fiction@revolutionsf.com |
|