Time

July 2022, celebrations on the 8th, 75th anniversary of the arrival of The Friends, benign, extraterrestrial technocrats. With their nuclear fusion energy, cancer cure, and robotics, mankind doesn't have to do much. We've mostly dropped reading and writing because literature was disruptive. No meat. Reproduction is strictly controlled. The Friends and their cameras are everywhere to keep us safe.

You know all that history. I'm a Traveller. I know a bit differently. If I fail, give this to another Traveller. Recognize one by a slight discoloration of the skin on the fourth finger of the right hand, where we wear the initiate's ring in private.

Fellow Traveller, I salute you. I was taught by Tanz, who, as you know, was found by the Friends and executed brutally just for wakefulness and awareness. The Friends have written a history of lies around Tanz, that she was perverted, cruel, vicious. Not true. I knew her well. She taught me to think and to Travel.

She knew the 1947 incident was not the first. The Friends came near the end of World War II. They made the nuclear bomb that ended that war. They used grandfathered time. The accident in 1947 was a repeat visit, one of a series.

In grandfathered time causation clusters around a point. Tanz travelled back too far, so she intervened too early--game over for her. The key was to go after the point, not before. I quit Travel. But then I met Sheila. We fell in love. We want to have a child.

In private, at night, I went through the few remaining documents carefully, and suddenly there it was, hidden in plain sight. There were so many copies of the newspaper photo of the debris, the Friends could not destroy them all. Do you see it? On Major Marcell's left hand is his wedding ring. The other tells me he was a Traveller. I'm going. If I'm right, a few words to Major Marcel will suffice.

Sheila presses my hand. I close my eyes on the cloth sofa and imagine an airline security gate, step through that, I'm away. Next I imagine the photo in all the detail I can muster. Something stirs in the photo. Something I didn't put in. "BE HERE NOW!"

It worked but there were two aliens guarding the moment. I drew my sword and dispatched them both. "Marcel, listen..." I finished my instructions and the moment blew up. I awoke on my leather couch. Wasn't it cloth?

"Happy Fourth, sleepy-head," she smiled. A small child tugged at me. I looked out the window. "Where are the aliens and their cameras?"

"Oooh, quite the dream you've had. I'm turning on the TV. The president is speaking."

"What president?"

"You know, the one in the White House--are you okay?

Laptop. I checked Wikipedia on Roswell. Coverup, conspiracy, a museum, nothing about an alien government. A ring on my right hand. And there was the smell of bacon.

I kissed Sheila. "Yes, we're all okay."