207 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
207 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
PHido PHreaks PResent...
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Back In Time
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By the Silver Ghost
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Vince Donsoon stirred, twitched, and slapped his alarm clock to "off" four
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microseconds before it was going to ring. He moaned and rolled over in bed.
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Listen:
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Vince Donsoon has come unstuck in time. By about four-fifths of a second.
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He climbed out of bed, opened the door, and blinked his eyes at the painful
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blaze of light entering his pupils. About seven-tenths of a second later, he
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turned the light on.
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He stepped into the shower, and he jumped when he felt the cold water sting
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his chest. About six-tenths of a second later, the water stung his chest.
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He never was a good driver, but his reflexes were excellent driving to work
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that day. A station wagon pulled out in front of him, but it didn't matter;
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before the wagon began to move. An officer of the law waggled a finger at him
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as he began to accelerate through an intersection shortly before the light
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turned green, but he didn't see the officer.
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Vince Donsoon was a child psychologist. Normally he was quiet and under-
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standing, but today he began to get on everyone's nerves. He would interrupt
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people before they were through talking, which irritated children no end,
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because he didn it constantly. Soon the children felt rejected, worthless,
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and Vince kept answering their questions and commenting on their statements
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before they were through asking them and making them. Vince didn't notice.
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He wondered why the children grew tired and irritated so quickly. He thought
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that he was responding as he always was.
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Vince's co-worker came up to him.
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"Fine," said Vince.
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"How do you feel?" asked Linda before she realized what he had said.
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Listen:
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It was getting worse. Vince was one and twelve-hundredths of a second ahead
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of everything else.
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"Two," said Vince.
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"How many fingers am I holding up?" smiled Linda, and the smile faded as she
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realized what he had said.
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She tried again, and then she remembered hearing Vince say "Three." She
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tried again, many times. "One," said Vince. "Five," said Vince. He was never
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wrong, and somehow Linda only remembered what he had said about one and
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thirteen-hundredths of a second later. It was still getting worse.
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Vince was starting to realize that something was wrong.
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Listen:
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Here is the problem with Vince:
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Most people's nerves transmit information at about 30 MPH. If you were a
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giant thirty miles tall, and you impaled your foot on a mountain, it would be
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an hour before you felt the pain. Since you're only about one-nine hundredth
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of a mile tall, it takes about 0.000037 hours, or 0.15 seconds, for pain to go
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from your foot to your brain, and you can safely ignore this. If you happen
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to put your foot into a raging hot fire, and the round-trip time of
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three-tenths of a second would be too long to prevent serious injury, you have
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shorter nerves that route the "pain" signal directly into your muscles,
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without touching your brain first.
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Vince Donsoon was a freak of nature, an evolutionary mutant. By some
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bizarre and highly improbable coincidence, his nerves that transmitted infor-
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mation to his brain were beginning to work, not at 30 MPH, but at the
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illogical speed of four times the speed of light. The signals actually went
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back in time as they travelled to Vince's brain, and Vince received sensory
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input about 1.2 seconds before it was given to him.
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Vince drove back home. On the way, he slammed on the brakes to avoid a
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squirrel that was easily a hundred feet ahead of him. He then was slammed
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into his seat about 1.28 seconds before the car behind him slammed into his
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rear fender, causing about $150 of damage. Vince drove on, shaken.
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Vince called his place of work the next day and, through faltering
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conversation, quit. Linda asked if anything was wrong before she realized
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that he had already said no.
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It was getting much worse. Vince practiced burning his fingers with a match
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while looking at his watch. He was about 3 1/2 seconds ahead. His nerves
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were conducting electricity at over seven times the speed of light.
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Vince walked cautiously to the grocery store. He was aware of every foot-
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step before he put it down. He put his foot down about twice every second.
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Seven paces before he stopped walking, his feet went numb.
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"Here you go," he said to the lady at the checkout counter. "That'll be
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$65.60," she said, and waited for him to finish filling out the check. He
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didn't have to. He handed it to her with "Sixty-five and sixty-------------"
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written neatly in the blank. She frowned, puzzled, and rang it up.
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Vince walked home with four bags of groceries in his arms. He laboriously
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moved his small refrigerator into his TV room, unpacked the groceries, and sat
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down in his easy chair. He turned on the TV and began to watch.
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-:-
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Two weeks later, his nerves worked at seventy times the speed of light. He
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was exactly twelve minutes and fourteen point six two seconds ahead. He had
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recently set up his answering machine, because almost half an hour ago the
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phone had rang.
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Twenty-four minutes and twenty-eight seconds before the phone rang, Vince
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heard an annoying dial tone and his own voice talking into his left ear. He
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couldn't make out exactly what he was saying. A short time later, his voice
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said "goodbye" to a dead-phone silence. Twelve minutes and fourteen seconds
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before the phone rang, Vince heard the phone ring. He picked it up. "Hello,"
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he said, to the dial tone that he had heard twelve minutes before. He
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couldn't hear the dial tone, beacuse to him it was in his past. He heard
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Linda's voice say, "Hello, Vince. Are you feeling OK?" "Yes," said Vince.
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"Hello?" said Linda, as Vince realized that she was in his future. He didn't
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entirely understand. "I'm here!" he shouted, as if what blocked their
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communication was merely a bad connection instead of a warp in the space-time
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continuum. "Hello! Linda!" he said. "Oh damn," said Linda. "Vince--if
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you're there--I can't hear you. I think your problems getting worse. I'm
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going to call back in an hour. Try setting up your answering machine." Vince
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nodded. "If I don't get an answer from you, I'll come over right away. Let
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me know how far--Oh, you know. And take care of yourself!" "I'm right here!"
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said Vince as she hung up. "Damn," he muttered. He couldn't hear himself
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swear, or see himself hang up the phone.
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Vince's temporal (time-distorted, as opposed to "temporary", or time-
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dependent) insanity was a strange one. After he set down the phone, he began
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to see strange, dim sights--visions of himself, arms stretched out in front of
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him, running headlong into walls, and feeling around for something. Vince
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grabbed the arms of his chair and sat bolt upright in fear. Here is what was
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happening:
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The image was dim because Vince wasn't necessarily seeing twelve minutes and
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fourteen--fifteen, by now--seconds into the future. He was seeing twelve
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minutes and fifteen seconds into what MIGHT HAVE WILL BE. Because his senses
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were so mis-timed with his actions, he had the power to change what he might
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have will be doing, that is, to change his future actions and create what is
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commonly called the "grandfather paradox". In Vince's case this would be the
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act of doing something based on something he saw or heard, and then having
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this something that he did make it entirely impossible for the something he
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saw or heard to occur, which makes it impossible for the something that he did
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to occur. Vince was, at the moment (whichever moment you choose to call it),
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indulging in an orgy of similarly self-denying somethings. The dim and blurry
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lights that Vince sees are himself, 12:15 in the future, stumbling around
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trying to find his answering machine. The reason that he's stumbling around,
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instead of walking like anyone else would do, is that the Vince 12:15 in the
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future isn't able to see anything except a hazy image of what he is doing
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ANOTHER 12:15 in the future. And so on, and so on. But as this goes on, and
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as Vince's nerves trave themselves further into the future, the images grow
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distorted, because Vince, the Vince now, the present-time Vince, the Vince
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that sees life not from a 4:56 in the afternoon, but from 5:08 that same
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afternoon, that Vince is actually able to change what he does in those twelve
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minutes.
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To ease your fears about what happens to poor afflicted Vince:
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Vince found the answering machine, after bruising his knuckles twice,
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barking his shin three times, and painfully sitting down on a nonexistant
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chair once. He installed it successfully--don't ask how--and recorded his
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voice onto the tape. He found his way back downstairs, settled into his confy
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chair, and set quite a large number of beers out on the table. He then
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proceeded to watch channel 2, the news, weather and sports update. He smiled
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at what was written under the moving stock ticker--"NYSE QUOTES DELAYED 15
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MIN." "Not for me," Vince thought, and smiled for the first time in a while.
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He then sucked down another beer.
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Here is how deaf, dumb and blind Vince plugged the answering-machine in, and
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found his way down the stairs without breaking his neck: He put the phone plug
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from the upstairs extension into the machine very slowly, and he moved about
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two feet every twelve minutes. He found that when he did that, the clarity of
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his sight brightened up remarkably, and by moving slowly enough, the effects
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of his nerves were reduced proportionally. Vince was in a bad condition, but
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he was intelligent.
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At one point, Vince (when very near the stairs) actually saw himself, and
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heard himself, and felt himself, go tumbling headlong down the stairs. He
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heard his screams. He felt it as his arm broke, and he felt it when his head
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got twisted under his body and his neck snapped. He felt the breath gurgle
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out of him as his limp body flopped down the stairs, coming to rest head-down,
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and he felt himself, paralyzed, strangle to death. He felt himself dead, and
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he felt death as a lot of darkness, and a low buzz in his ears.
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When he felt this, he stopped where he was and sat down and didn't move for
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about twenty minutes. After the first five minutes, the darkness and buzz
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began to fade into what was the more probable reality, that of him sitting at
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the head of his stairs, which in fact he would be doing twelve minutes later.
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But Vince didn't move for a long time, beacuse feeling himself die had scared
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him.
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He was very very glad that his reality was not immutable.
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He worked his way downstairs backwards, on hands and knees. While he did
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that, the phone rang. He had heard it ring, twelve minutes and sixteen
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seconds earlier.
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-:-
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Linda arrived soon after she heard his answering machine. He had recorded
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this: "Hello, Linda. As far as I can tell, I'm about twelve minutes in the
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past. I hope you get this. Come over soon."
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Linda entered, and found the house to be deserted. She found him
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downstairs, watching TV. She sat down next to him, and was surprised to see
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him turn and look at her.
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"Here's how I figure it," he said. "I saw you walk in and sit there, about
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twelve minutes ago. So I figure you're there now. I see you sitting on top
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of the TV set, now, which means you're going to be there in twelve minutes. I
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want you to decide to move somewhere else. Decide that in twelve minutes
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you'll get up and walk over...there." He pointed. "I want to see what
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happens."
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She closed her eyes and thought. He sat bolt upright. "You're...fading
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out. And fading in over there. I thought so. Try it again. Think of
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somewhere else you'd like to be." She did so. "Hey--Jesus!" he shouted.
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"You could put some clothes on!" Linda figured that in twelve minutes, she'd
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strip. Apparently, Vince really could see into the future, she decided. It
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hadn't really hit her.
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"Okay," said Vince out of the blue. "All right. Good."
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She sat still for twelve minutes, watching him watch TV. Then she said, "I
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think I'd like to stay here, with you, for a while. Okay?" She knew what the
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answer would be.
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-:-
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She and Vince had sex that night that could only be described as utterly
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fascinating.
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-:-
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Linda left for work worried. She had timed him. He was approximately
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thirteen minutes and forty-three seconds ahead, with minor errors due to the
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flexibility of time. She wondered if she really could change her future as
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she left.
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Vince, after she left, decided life wasn't worth living. He felt a crushing
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pain, and then blackness and a hum.
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Fourteen minutes later, he walked down his driveway and into the path of a
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truck.
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-:-
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