The Time Traveler's Almanac

How ironic it would be if my many recent uses of the Time Station had caused my sudden aging, if Yuri’s gift to me had condemned me instead. Yet I knew this was not so. We all imagine that we’ll have our full three centuries; most of us do, after all. But not everyone, and not I. The irony is part of life itself. It was the work not of any Time Station, but of the final timekeeper, Death, who had decided to come for me a few decades early.

What was I to do with the time left to me? I had trained as a Counselor many years ago and had worked as one before choosing a new profession. I decided to use my old experience in helping those who, like me, had to face death.

The dying began to come to me, unable to accept their fate. They were used to their youthfulness and their full lives, feeling invulnerable to anything except an accident. The suddenness with which old age had descended on them drove some to hysteria, and they would concoct wild schemes to bring about the return of their youth. One man, a biologist, spoke to me and then decided to spend his last months involved in the elusive search for immortality. Another man, who had recently fallen in love with a young girl, cried on my shoulder and I didn’t know whether to weep for him or for the young woman he was leaving behind. A woman came to me, only seventy and already aging, deprived of what should have been her normal life span.

I began to forget about myself in talking with these people. Occasionally I would walk through the city and visit old friends. My mind was aging too, and on these walks I found myself lost in memories of the past, clearer to me than more recent events. As I passed the Time Station, I would contemplate a visit to my past and then shake my head, knowing that was impossible.

I might have gone on that way if I had not passed the Time Station one warm evening while sorting through my thoughts. As I walked by, I saw Onel Lialla, dressed as a technician, looking almost exactly the same as when I had known him.

An idea occurred to me. Within seconds it had formed itself in my mind and become an obsession. I can do it, I thought. Onel will help me.

Onel had been a mathematician. He had left the city some time before and I had heard nothing about him. I hurried over to his side.

“Onel,” I said, and waited. His large black eyes watched me uncertainly and anxiety crossed his classically handsome face. Then he recognized me.

He clasped my arms. He said nothing at first, perhaps embarrassed by the overt signs of my approaching death. “Your eyes haven’t changed,” he said finally.

We walked toward the park, talking of old times. I was surprised at how little he had changed. He was still courtly, still fancied himself the young knight in shining armor. His dark eyes still paid me homage, in spite of my being an old gray-haired woman. Blinded perhaps by his innate romanticism, Onel saw only what he wished to see.

Years before, while barely more than a boy, Onel had fallen in love with me. It had not taken me long to realize that Onel, being a romantic, did not really wish to obtain the object of his affections and had unconsciously settled on me because I was so deeply involved with Yuri. He would follow me almost everywhere, pouring out his heart. I tried to be kind, not wanting to make him bitter, and spent as much time as I could in conversation with him about his feelings. Onel had finally left the city, and I let him go, knowing he would forget and realizing that this, too, was part of his romantic game.

Onel remembered all this. We sat in the park under one of the crystalline willows and he paid court again. “I never forgot your kindness,” he said to me. “I swore I would repay it someday. If there’s anything I can do for you now, I will.” He sighed dramatically at this point.

“There is,” I replied.

“What is it?”

The opportunity had fallen into my lap with no effort. “I want you,” I went on, “to come to the Time Station with me and send me back to this park two hundred and forty years in the past. I want to see the scenes of my youth one last time.”

Onel seemed stunned. “You know I can’t,” he said. “The Portal can’t send you to any time you’ve already lived through. We’d have people bumping into themselves, or going back to give their earlier selves advice. It’s impossible.”

“The Portal can be overridden for emergencies,” I said. “You can override it, you know how. Send me through.”

“I can’t.”

“Onel, I don’t want to change anything. I don’t even want to talk to anybody.”

“If you changed the past—”

“I won’t. It would already have happened then, wouldn’t it? Besides, why should I? I had a happy life, Onel. I’ll go back to a day when I wasn’t in the park. It would just give me a little pleasure before I die to see things as they were. Is that asking too much?”

“I can’t,” he said. “Don’t ask this of me.”

In the end he gave in, as I knew he would. We went to the Station. Onel, his hands shaking, adjusted a Portal for me and sent me through.

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