The Time Traveler's Almanac

She opened the first book, and then Alan saw that they weren’t books at all; they were photo albums. He watched in silence as she flipped through the pages and then tossed it aside. She tossed three of them away before she found what she was looking for. She stared open-mouthed at the brittle yellow page and then she looked up at Alan. “I don’t understand this,” she said, turning her eyes back to the album and a faded black and white photograph stuck to the paper with thick, flaking paste. Someone had written in ink across the top: Cecily’s 3rd birthday, August 2nd, 1951. There was her father, who’d been dead for ten years, young and smiling, holding out a bottle to another young man, tall and blonde and dressed like a gas station attendant. “I don’t understand this at all.” She pushed the album across the floor towards Alan. “You haven’t changed one bit. You’re even wearing the same clothes.”

“Did you keep the rose?”

She walked over to a wooden cabinet and pulled out a slim hardback with the title, “My First Reader”. She opened it and showed him the dried, flattened flower. “You’re telling me the truth, aren’t you?” she said. “This is all true. You risked everything to find me because we were meant to be together, and nothing, not even time itself, could keep us apart.”

Alan nodded. There was a speech just like that in “The Love That Conquered Time”.

“Bastard,” she said.

Alan jumped. He didn’t remember that part. “Pardon me?”

“Bastard,” she said again. “You bastard!”

“I … I don’t understand.”

She got up and started to pace the room. “So you’re the one, huh? You’re ‘Mister Right’, Mister Happily Ever After, caring, compassionate and great in bed. And you decide to turn up now. Well, isn’t that just great.”

“Is something the matter?” Alan asked her.

“Is something the matter?” she repeated. “He asks me if something’s the matter! I’ll tell you what’s the matter. I got married four weeks ago, you son of a bitch!”

“You’re married?”

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?”

“But you can’t be married. We were supposed to find perfect happiness together at a particular point in space that has always existed and always will. This ruins everything.”

“All those years … all those years. I went through hell in high school, you know. I was the only girl in my class who didn’t have a date for the prom. So where were you then, huh? While I was sitting alone at home, crying my goddamn eyes out? How about all those Saturday nights I spent washing my hair? And even worse, those nights I worked at Hastings’ Bar serving drinks to salesmen pretending they don’t have wives. Why couldn’t you have been around then, when I needed you?”

“Well, I’ve only got the first five pages of the manual…” He walked over to her and put his hands on her shoulders. She didn’t move away. He gently pulled her closer to him. She didn’t resist. “Look,” he said, “I’m sorry. I’m a real zarkhead. I’ve made a mess of everything. You’re happily married, you never wrote the story … I’ll just go back where I came from, and none of this will have ever happened.”

“Who said I was happy?”

“But you just got married.”

She pushed him away. “I got married because I’m thirty years old and figured I’d never have another chance. People do that, you know. They reach a certain age and they figure it’s now or never … Damn you! If only you’d come when you were supposed to!”

“You’re thirty? Matrix, in half an hour you’ve gone from a toddler to someone older than me.” He saw the expression on her face, and mumbled an apology.

“Look,” she said. “You’re gonna have to go. My husband’ll be back any minute.”

“I know I have to leave. But the trouble is, that drebbing story was true! I took one look at your photo, and I knew that I loved you and I always had. Always. That’s the way time works, you see. And even if this whole thing vanishes as the result of some paradox, I swear to you I won’t forget. Somewhere there’s a point in space that belongs to us. I know it.” He turned to go. “Good-bye Cecily.”

“Alan, wait! That point in space – I want to go there. Isn’t there anything we can do? I mean, you’ve got a time machine, after all.”

What an idiot, he thought. The solution’s been staring me in the face and I’ve been too blind to see it. “The machine!” He ran down the front porch steps and turned around to see her standing in the doorway. “I’ll see you later,” he told her. He knew it was a ridiculous thing to say the minute he’d said it. What he meant was, “I’ll see you earlier.”

*   *   *

Five men sat together inside a tent made of animal hide. The land of their fathers was under threat, and they met in council to discuss the problem. The one called Swiftly Running Stream advocated war, but Foot Of The Crow was more cautious. “The paleface is too great in number, and his weapons give him an unfair advantage.” Flying Bird suggested that they smoke before speaking further.