(Wanda and Harold met me just outside the soup kitchen, on the cracked
sidewalk, negative two years from my natural time --
"What now? I groused. "I was just about to eat lunch at
the Mission."
"Don't be a bitch," Harold said loftily, as Wanda looked
down her nose at me as if I'd crawled out from under a rock. "We've got an
experiment we need you to do."
"Why me? I'm a Junior Birdman. You're the King." I knew,
deep down, that I would do whatever Harold dared me to.
"You're faster than I am. I need someone fast to do this. I
bet you can't do it, though." Harold examined his hands, probably for
invisible dirt specks, as I'd never seen him with his hands dirty.
"You bet I can't do what?" I demanded.
"Change the outcome of that game over there." Wanda
interjected in her haughty voice.
"But that won't work!" I groused. "The rock
principle will keep it from changing. You can't change time."
"I'm going with you," Harold reassured me. "We're
jumping a minute into the past to that shell game over there and you're going
to tip over the right cup so the mooch sees he's getting conned."
I protested. "By 'we', you mean me. How would I know where
the ball landed?"
"You know," Harold gritted his teeth. "You always
know. I've seen you run that game."
"You can't change time. I try to change time and the cup
won't tip over. It always works that way." I'd tried it -- I could
win the game with data I'd gleaned from the future, but I couldn't change the
outcome of the game itself.
"But what if I change one or two other things at the same
time?" Harold smiled, and I felt his charm dissolve my reluctance. "How
would the timeline know which event to change? With one or two other changes at
once, I hope to confuse things so that you can tip the right cup and ruin the
game."
"But what about crossing ourselves?" I demanded. "I
only get what -- four minutes before crossing myself kills me?"
"You'll have to do it quickly, I guess," Harold
shrugged. "Unless you don't think you can -- "
"Alright. I'll do it." I always knew I would.
We jumped to three minutes before the start of the round, and
Wanda came with us as witness. She and Harold stepped back while I walked up to
the game, which involved a mooch and a grifter as we called victims and
fraudsters on the street.
I needed to reach in and tip the cup with the ball under it at the
exact moment that the mooch would guess the whereabouts of the ball -- and jump
before the grifter caught my wrist and took me behind the nearest building to
beat me to a pulp. I wondered why Harold would subject me to that risk, or the
risk of crossing myself and being crushed. But he had faith in me ...
One exhilarating moment later, I tipped the cup, revealing the
ball to be in a different cup than it appeared to the mooch, and I jumped back
to my present time without dying. I bent over, gasping and laughing.
"You're the best," Harold clapped me on the shoulder.
"I knew you could do it. I think we should make a game of this. Call it --
Voyageur. Like Traveller, but provocative."
Then we blinked out of sight before the irate con artist reached
us.)
