'Nother Old Story

 

Charlie Sparks stepped out of a little country store, a small paper bag of groceries dangling from his hand.

“Money jest don’ go as fear as it useta” he said under his breath. It was a long walk back to Jackson Holler, and it wasn’t getting any shorter by standing on the porch of Walker’s ‘M’pour-ium. It spelled that way because it was also the local bar, and Mike Walker had a sense of humor. Or, at least he thought he did.

A half hour later, and a mile closer to home on the dusty gravel road, a 10 year old Ford rolled up; the first car Charlie had seen since leaving Walker’s Bottom. It seemed newer than it should have. Most cars of that vintage in these parts had mismatched paint on the parts- like a white fender on a blue car- and wore out tires. This one looked showroom new. Odd for an older car up here, where roads were rough, and the people occasionally rougher.

The driver was a stranger. Another oddity in this part of the country. There was nothing around here to draw an outsider. No mining, logging or manufacturing. Unless you counted the illegal production of ‘shine. No beauty either. Ugly, stunted trees and deep, muddy creek cuts, showing multiple levels of deep red and chocolate mud. Nobody came here to see the sights. He was dressed in a suit and tie; another strange thing, in a community where most people’s Sunday best was their newer bib overalls.

“Mr. Sparks? Charlie Sparks?” he asked, rolling to a stop a few feet ahead of where Charlie was walking. Grinning slightly, he opened his door and extended his hand. Charlie looked up from following his feet in the dust, counting each step of the long walk home.

“Yassuh; I’m him. Who y’all be?” Charlie said as he switched his small sack from his right to his left hand, and extended his right hand toward the stranger.

The stranger’s grin turned to a broad smile as he shook Charlie’s hand. “They call me Johnny Mroz”, his smile getting even bigger as he released Charlie’s hand. “I was hoping I could talk to you for a bit. Would you like a ride home?”

Charlie hadn’t sat in an automobile in more than a year. He walked everywhere, lacking even a mule, since Old Mose died 18 months ago. And he was getting tired of it. The rough roads had worn holes in the soles of his shoes, almost to the point that going barefoot would be an improvement. He could use a ride. But what did this stranger want?

“Yassuh, I could do wit’ a ride. But the road is rough; y’all sure y’all wanna ruin y’all’s fine car for this broke down ole hillbilly?”

Johnny’s smile didn’t falter. “No risk at all Mr. Sparks; this old girl was made to take roads like yours in stride. Hop in and get comfortable” he said as he opened the passenger door for Charlie.

Charlie settled into the mohair seat, and knocked as much dust as he could from his shoes before he swung them onto the clean rubber mats. He placed his small sack on the floor and braced it with his feet as Johnny started the car and eased it into gear.

As they started rolling, Johnny spoke. “Charlie…. May I call you Charlie?” Charlie nodded; a motion Mr. Mroz caught out of the corner of his eye. “Charlie”, he continued, “you probably have a few questions. Let me tell you my story; it should answer those questions for you.”

“You may not believe this, but I have been trying to find you for awhile. But you are a hard man to find. I have been in and out of dang near every holler for fifty miles in any direction; asking questions at every store, feed mill and watering hole I could find. Nobody seems to know you, or had even heard of you, until I talked to Mike Walker this morning. Knowing that I was only a few minutes behind you – FINALLY- has put a spring in my step this morning I can tell you!”

Charlie was hearing lots of words, but little explanation. He still had no idea what was going on, who this man was or why he had been looking for him. But it was better than walking. He listened, as Johnny continued his monologue.

“Why would a man take this time and trouble to find a somebody he didn’t know? Well Charlie, you may not believe this but your name is pretty well-known where I come from.”

Charlie raised his head from where he had been once again starring at his feet and turned to look at the driver. He decided it was time to take better stock of who this man was. Tall, but not lanky. Well muscled, but not grotesquely. Fit was probably a better term. His hair was light, but too close cropped to determine a color. It could have been anything from blond to medium brown. Hazel eyes, clean shaven and moderately dressed, although contrary to current custom, he was bareheaded. Charlie did take notice that he could have eaten for a year on the money Johnny’s shoes had cost. He did not know where this man was from, and could not think of a single reason he was famous anywhere. Shoot; he wasn’t even well known in Walker Bottoms.

Charlie ended his assessment of Johnny with thoughts of what Mr. Mroz was seeing in his passenger seat. Almost as tall as Johnny was, but maybe a bit past his prime. What once was well worked muscle, was now wasted, poorly hidden in loosely hung skin. Black hair, recently flecked with gray, and a four day gray stubble covered his chin. From his stubble to his well worn boots he was the spitting image of a dirt poor farmer. Worn and well patched bib overalls; a well worn and patched shirt underneath, open at the collar, and missing at least one button. He wore an old fedora, one that had been crushed and reformed more times than could be counted, sweat stained around the base and, like everything else he wore, covered with a fine layer of red-brown dust that stuck like glue.

Johnny continued, “Where I come from- just where isn’t important now- you have become rather well-known, and I’m not the only one who has been searching for you; I know of at least a dozen men and an equal number of women that have been trying to find you.”

Charlie shook his head. Hard to believe what this man was saying. Why would all these strangers be looking for him? “Mr. Mroz, I hain’t got no idear wha’ y’all can be talkin’ ‘bout. Famous? Hellfire; there hain’t a dozen folks knows me up in this holler, and most uh ‘em hain’t got a care if’in I lives or dies. Y’all sure you’n is got the right man?”

The more Charlie spoke the more Johnny was sure he had the right man. By this time they started up Charlie’s driveway; Johnny had been following Charlie’s motioned directions as they talked. Charlie was surprised how smoothly the car rode going up the old creek bed to his cabin; every other car he had taken this trip in had left bruises from the constant jostling. In this one, he hadn’t even spilled his small sack of necessities.

Johnny was still speaking as he turned the car around. “Charlie, I have a couple of things for you. One is a box of things I picked up for you at Walker’s. The other is a bit of walking around money; here.” He extended a small envelope, printed with the logo of the nearest bank, which was still a long way off, down in Johnson City. It wasn’t thick, and probably only contained a bill or two. It was sealed, so Charlie took it and dropped it into the center pocket of his overalls unopened. Johnny had shut the car off and had moved around to the trunk, Charlie followed him, carefully shutting the car door, and even more carefully carrying the small sack he had gotten that morning at Walker’s.

The box Johnny got out of the trunk was closed and unmarked, odd from a country grocery. It was about 24 inches square and 16 inches tall; 10 times the size of the small sack Charlie had purchased. That it was unmarked drew Charlie's attention, since Walker’s used the boxes that they received goods in for packing purchases. A box this size should have said ‘Corn Flakes’ on it. But this one was blank, except for a phone number scrawled across the top.

Johnny was still grinning as he spoke. “Charlie, I hope you enjoy what I got you. Take a couple of days, then give me a call at the number on the box. Here’s a nickel for the call. Charlie started to shake his head, and protest that he wouldn’t be making any such call, but Mr Mroz cut him off. “Don’t answer now. Take a day or two to think it over” Johnny said as he set the box down on the rickety wooden steps leading into Charlie’s cabin. “The number is my room phone at the hotel down in Johnson City. Give me a call as soon as you feel like it, which I hope will be soon.”

Johnny opened the door of his car, still shiny even after the ride up Charlie’s rough driveway, and climbed inside. He started the car, leaned out the window and waved at Charlie, still grinning ear to ear. Charlie climbed the rickety steps and opened the unlocked door to his one room cabin. He set down his sack and went back outside for the box, curious about its contents. He knew what was in the sack; a pound of flour, a pound of dry beans and an ounce of salt. After today’s purchases he had $2.46 cents in the money sack hidden behind the Currier and Ives lithograph over the fireplace.

Charlie opened the box and was slightly startled. At first he didn’t recognize any of the contents. Strangely colored and decorated boxes advertising their varied contents, they gradually became familiar, some awakening old and long buried memories. After a long diet of dried beans and biscuits, with the occasional rabbit or squirrel he could catch in his traps, seeing a canned ham was startling. A dozen eggs, a pound of sausage, a pound of bacon and two cans of ravioli, along with a few packages of candy of different kinds.

All familiar, yet all strange. He recognized none of the packages. He had wistfully been looking at such items at Walker’s for months, and, contrary to Mr. Mroz’s statement, none of these brands were sold at Walker’s. Why would Johnny have lied about such a small thing? One more question to add to the dozens he already had about today’s strange meeting.

Since he had no way of keeping things cold, he decided to have some eggs and the pound of sausage now. The bacon would keep until tomorrow, and nothing else needed cold storage. Leaving everything else in the box on a corner of his small table, he kicked up the fire in his wood stove, threw on a few more small chunks of wood and grabbed a frying pan. It wasn’t long before the long remembered smell of frying sausage permeated the cabin, accompanied by the symphony of frying eggs cackling in the same pan.

It had been a year or more since Charlie had had a breakfast like this. A tear welled up in his eye, wondering how he had come to be like this; where the kindness of a stranger was the difference between subsistence and actually eating. Savoring each bite, Charlie finally had to admit he was full, and the plate empty, and he somehow managed to avoid licking the plate clean. But only barely.

He finally remembered the other gift Johnny had left, and pulled the envelope from his overall pocket. He carefully peeled back the flap and looked inside. It was money, or was it? It felt like a five dollar bill, and was green like one, But it looked….different. Instead of a small, oval framed image of Abraham Lincoln, the picture was larger and off center, with no frame. The colors, while still greenish, were more black, and one of the corner fives was purple? Had they changed the currency since he had last held a bill this large? He looked for a date, expecting to see 1940. He saw 2050 instead.

Charlies mind started working fast. It was fake. It had to be. A trick. But why would a total stranger come all the way to Jackson Holler to play a trick on a man he had never laid eyes on before? Charlie started thinking. Maybe he did know the man? He started searching his memory, and was shocked to find he could only go back about a decade. His family was a lost memory. Had he been married? He didn’t know. Kids? Another blank. School mates, cousins, co-workers; all a blank. It had been years since he had tried to find these memories; and now they weren’t there.

Charlie’s eyes searched the cabin, like he had never seen it before, looking for anything that would give a clue as to a connection to someone. There was nothing. Two of the walls were featureless, nothing but stacked logs and mud chinking. One wall contained the simple wooden slat door and window and the last the rough stone fireplace and simple beam mantle, where sat the well-worn Currier and Ives lithograph, as old as the rough hewn log cabin itself. The lithograph was both his starting and finishing place, and it drew his eye again and again. It depicted a man on a bicycle, an antique version of one, racing past a horse and buggy. Done in 1869, the bicycle was a new form of transportation at the time. Why was this the only decoration in this drab, one room cabin?

The other furniture was minimal. A small bed with a rough and lumpy bag of feathers for a mattress, and a small shelf beside it. On the shelf were Charlie’s toiletries; a bar of lye soap for washing and a mug, brush and straight razor for shaving. Hanging on pegs below the shelf were a rough weave towel and Charlies better shirt and overalls, for when he made the long walk to church once a month. A wood stove and dry sink- all Charlie’s water came from the well and pump outside- a small table and one chair, close to the stove for eating, and likewise close to the bed, completed the inventory of all his worldly possessions. The cabin was only about 16 feet square.

Charlie again thought back, trying to remember everything he knew about himself. His name, of course. His parents? Lost in the mists of time. Siblings? Birthday? He could recall no brothers or sisters, and no birthday celebrations ever. It was almost as if he had sprung into existence a decade ago, right here in this cabin. How could that be?

But then, he had been alone for the last… ten years? Could it have been ten years? He had made no friends, had no family, and had not had a living thing to talk to after Ole Mose had died, except for his weekly or so trips to Walker’s. He had celebrated no holidays, although he was aware of when the Fourth of July and Christmas Day had come and gone.

Charlie now became concerned. Was he hiding from something? Had he committed some crime and was on the run? Had he left some ‘grass widow’ somewhere? Why would a sane man choose to live as he had? Alone, friendless, destitute and in the middle of nowhere? He must be guilty of something, to be in total isolation like he was.

But he didn’t feel guilty. Was that because he didn’t have anything to feel guilty about, or because he didn’t feel what he did was wrong? Charlie sat up in his chair, rocking it because of a short leg on the back left. He hadn’t had thoughts like this in a long, long time. Why was he having them now? Another thought he had was about breakfast. He hadn’t recognized the packaging, he thought, but he was reconsidering. The sausage wrapper was still on the table, next to the box Johnny had brought. The package was white, with bright red and green letters and a farm image in the background. The material was unusual too; soft and slick, he couldn’t put a name on it. But he believed it to be familiar. Why?

He looked though the box again. The candy caught his eye. It was packaged in the same unfamiliar material as the sausage. More bright lettering, with unfamiliar names. Charlie was shaking his head again. He couldn’t figure it out. Although, deep down, he sensed he knew what it meant. But the memories weren’t available; like a file he couldn’t find. What? Where did that comparison come from? Eventually Charlie noticed that the room was starting to darken. It was getting late. He had spent the whole day lost in thought, and snacking on candy; something he hadn’t realized until he saw the pile of empty wrappers.

He was tired anyway. Charlie stripped off his overalls and shirt and climbed into bed in his long johns, letting the last of the daylight die as he drifted off to sleep. Any dreams he may have had were lost in the darkness, just as the objects in the room were.

Charlie awoke to the daylight shining through the cabin’s one window; there were no curtains to block its arrival. He had not shifted at all during the night. Consequently every muscle and joint ached when he went to move. His first thought that morning was an unusual one; how old was he? He hadn’t thought about age in years. He just….was. He was examining the idea of beans for breakfast, when he recalled the box Mr. Mroz had brought. Bacon and eggs!

Yesterday’s thoughts came back as he was dressing, and again for some reason his eyes drifted to the lithograph over the fireplace. A thought passed briefly through his mind, coming and going like a flash from a strobe light; too fast to capture. What did that mean?

Even though Charlie knew he shouldn’t waste the bounty that had been delivered yesterday, he couldn’t stop himself from cooking up the whole pound of bacon and four more eggs. While the bacon sizzled and spat, he looked at the package again. More of that unfamiliar material, and more of that bright red and green lettering, with the same stylized farm image. The taste was familiar, yet not so. How long had it been since he had had bacon? No; that wasn’t it. This was not usual bacon flavor. Bacon normally had a salty taste. This was sweet; like… maple syrup?

Charlie looked at the package again. I did say it was maple flavored. When did they start that? He had never heard of maple flavored bacon, had he? Then why did it taste so familiar? Again his eyes were drawn to the fireplace, and the lithograph. He couldn’t remember looking at that picture as much in the last ten years as he had in the last day and a half.

Charlie had neglected his chores yesterday. So he got busy today. Wood to chop and haul, water to pump and haul, ash to clear from the stove and haul, water to heat, dishes to wash, himself to wash, floor to sweep. The normal tasks of life kept him busy in body and mind until well past lunchtime. Beans. He had to get back to normal meals. He would never see Johnny again, and would not eat this good again. But… Why not make his beans with some of that canned ham?

Another meal with a familiar yet unusual taste. For lack of something else to do while he ate, Charlie read the back of the canned ham tin. It was full of strange words and concepts. What was a ‘microwave’, and how did you use it to cook? What did that mean? He again caught himself looking at the lithograph. But this time he noticed a pattern in the wood of the frame he hadn’t noticed before. He got up, crossed the room, and took the picture down from it spot off the simple wooden mantle, and took it back to the table. The bicycle pointed to the lower left corner, and Charlie noticed that the frame was thicker at that point than anywhere else.

He fiddled around with the wood, and it popped open, revealing a small compartment, just big enough for two small pills, although only one was inside; blue in color. What the Hell? Charlie had the urge to take the pill, no matter what it was, but fought off the urge. He had no desire to die just yet. He still had half a canned ham to finish. But he took the pill and put it in a small empty mint tin he had on the sink. He then closed the door in the frame and hung it back on the wall. And for some reason, he did not think the last 10 minutes had been strange.

He then remembered the number Johnny had left, and had an urge to call it. But it was too late to make the long walk to the Bottoms. First thing tomorrow.

Charlie normally spent his evenings staring off into space between dinner and dark, unable to conjure up a single thought, just killing time until darkness fell, and sleep became inevitable. Dinner tonight was both cans of Johnny’s ravioli, a food he couldn’t recall ever having had before, but again tasting familiar. Tonight was also unfamiliar; he had so many questions running through his mind he found it hard to lay down when the sun disappeared. But, anticipating tomorrow, he at last climbed into bed and fell asleep.

Charlie awoke with the sun, and fixed breakfast; the last four eggs and the last of the canned ham, sliced and fried with eggs and a small dolop of bacon fat from yesterday’s feast. He tore the flap with the number from the box, grabbed his money bag, dropped the tin with the strange pill in it inside, although he couldn’t have told you why, and headed to Walker’s Bottom. The six miles didn’t seem to take as long as normal, and soon he was shaking the red-brown dust from his feet and entering the M-pour-ium. He had never used the phone here before, and wasn’t even sure they had one.

Charlie walked up to the counter and asked the proprietor to use the phone. Mike pointed to the corner near the back door that led to the his and hers backhouses. Charlie stared for a minute, trying to recall how to use the device. And failed.

“Mr. Walker, can y’all spare a minute? This here device has me fuzzled.”

“Never used a phone before, Sparks? Y’all got a number you’re callin’? Give ‘er ‘ere and I’ll get ya connected. And where’s yer nickel?”

Mike took the phone, whistled up the operator and gave her the number. When the ringing started Mike handed the phone to Charlie and went back to his spot behind the counter. He had no more interest in Charlie’s phone call than he did what was happening in Europe; he already had his nickel.

The ringing of a phone was completely unknown to Charlie. Unlike the food tastes, which had seemed vaguely familiar, the noise in his ear was just that; noise. Two rings and a voice said ‘Hello’.

“Mr. Mroz? This is Charlie Sparks, I’m hopin’ y’all ‘member givin’ me this number day afore last?” Charlie was still not sure why he had called, and was not sure this was not still some joke being played at his expense.

“Of course I remember Charlie! Are you at the store? Yes? Good.”

“I have a couple of questions; did you eat all of the food I gave you? Great; good! And did you find anything you didn’t expect somewhere yesterday?”

Charlie didn’t know what to say. How could this fellow have known? Should he tell him? Charlie didn’t have time to make a decision; he seemed to answer involuntarily. “Yassuh I did. I foun’ a hole in an old piksure frame wid a pill init.”

“Excellent” Johnny replied; “excellent. What did you do with the pill? Do you have it with you?”

Charlie again answered involuntarily; “Yassur, I does.”

Johnny was again bubbling with good feelings, and they spilled into his tone as he spoke. “Charlie, I need to you take that pill and go make your self comfortable on the front steps. I’ll be by in a few minutes.”

Charlie did as he was told, almost against his will. In a few minutes, much less time than it should have taken to get to Walker Bottom from Johnson City, Johnny Mroz rolled up in his spotless old Ford. But in those few minutes Charlie had felt some changes happening to himself. The major change was the disappearance of the mental fog he seemed to been living with for the last decade. Questions that he had been asking himself for the last two days now had answers. He also knew he still had to maintain this charade for a few more minutes.

Johnny stepped out of the car as Charlie greeted him. “Mornin’ MISTER Mroz. How y’all be this mo’nin’?” Johnny’s eyes narrowed a bit at the exaggerated ‘Mister’, but said nothing.

“I’m doing well MISTER Sparks” he replied, using the same exaggerated tone for mister as Charlie had. “Ready to take another ride?”

Charlie was already headed for the passenger door; a quick ‘Yassuh’ was his only reply. As soon as Charlie’s door was shut Johnny popped the clutch and headed up the road to the cabin. After a short silence, while Johnny brought the old car up to speed, Johnny spoke.

“How much do you remember Colonel?”

“Not as much as I would like to Captain. I’ll start at the beginning, and I’ll let you fill in the holes, sound good?”

“Yes sir! I will assume you have these holes, and fill them in now. You disappeared after a mission on January 15, 1929. Today is September 23, 1939. The date you left for your mission was March 16, 2050. And it is Major Mroz now sir”

“Thank you Major, and congratulations! As you are aware, my mission was to ensure the safe birth of a man later to become Dr. Martin Luther King, in Atlanta. The disguise app on my time pod malfunctioned, and instead of a Model T Ford sitting on the street, my stainless steel time pod was showing in all its glory, and was starting to draw a crowd. My mission was complete, so I hit the auto return from my remote, watched the time pod dissolve and felt the remote go with it. I then disappeared into the crowd and headed toward the safe house, as I’m sure the capsule told you. I expected to be retrieved in a few days. That was a little over a decade ago.” Charlie said without implication of accusation.

“Colonel, let me fill in another hole. Your disguise app wasn’t the only one to malfunction. The setting for which safe house you intended to use also malfunctioned, and reported your death to us instead. We checked historic reports of unclaimed bodies in Atlanta for ones matching your description for the subsequent two weeks in 1929, personally visiting each instance; that took well over six months. At that point we took another look at your capsule, and discovered it had been tampered with, to cause these failures. The culprit turned out to be a young corporal, who had been told the changes he made to the capsules sub-routines were a beta upgrade. He had been given this information by a young woman posing as a member of Headquarters Tech Support who we could not locate by the time the fault was traced to her. She has still not been traced and we suspect she was a foreign agent, but have no proof. Your pod was the only one infected with the malware, and we still don’t know why, or if it was you or the mission that was the target, or if the resets in the subroutines functioned as they were designed. Back to your story sir?”

Colonel Sparks picked up from where he had left off. “I had taken the emergency packet with me, per regulation, and made my way to Jackson Holler as I thought you were aware. I arrived here on January 18^th, and promptly verified the existence of hidden compartment in the frame and the existence of the two pills. As you know, the red pill causes the memory loss required to live in an era not our own, to prevent contaminating information from being accidentally released during times of distress, such as illness or altered mental state. Taking the pill defaults the Time Marine to a personality in touch with the era in which he is trapped. The blue pill, which I took this morning, cancels that personality, and returns us to normal.

“Per protocol, I waited four days in the cabin before I realized I would not be rescued immediately, changed into my alternate personality’s costume and took the red pill one week after the mission, as per directives. I have been living as Charlie Sparks, hillbilly farmer, until this morning. The recovery process worked as designed as well. The alerting chemicals in our original personality’s favorite foods did awaken my memory of the recovery pill. As you know, the pills are a set, to prevent memory awakening inadvertently. The initial recovery chemicals are just to restart the process, not complete it. The dated money did as expected as well.” Charlie turned to look at Major Mroz. They were rolling up the creek to the cabin as he finished speaking.

Johnny started his response as they got out of the car. Both knew they had to sanitize the cabin and reset the pills before leaving. As they completed their tasks Johnny continued the story.

“We have been searching for you ever since we determined you had survived the mission. But part of the induced malfunction also compromised the time set. Those memories could not give us your abandonment time or location accurately. While we knew your time and location destination, as you are aware protocols require time and location jumping on the return, if we feel an unusual situation may have developed on the mission. Based on what we had in your pod, we have been searching every era and location for the last decade looking for you. It has been the most extensive search in Time Marine history.”

The cabin was now reset for use as another safe house. “You now have a choice to make Colonel. You can either go back with me now to 2060, or I can leave you here and then comeback and meet you as scheduled in 1929 with a return to 2050.”

It was not a simple choice. While it should be easy to do as the Major had described, many things could happen. With his current age, being a decade older than when he left, he could not return to 2050; he would need to jump ahead to 2060, and lose a decade of his life. Waiting to be picked up in the past would resolve that, but would require delivering a message to the past, so the 2050 Major Mroz could be notified of where and when Colonel Sparks was. That message system was sometimes unreliable, and seldom used. This was why the safe house was reset prior to the time capsule leaving; in case you were marooned again.

Charlie knew that an organization that had the ability to time travel might seem to be able to make a trip to the past to deliver a message. But he also knew that time travel is strictly regulated, and only to be used for specific purposes. One of the reasons it took a decade to locate him was because no specific trip could be made to find him. Each search had to be accomplished only while a Time Marine was in that specific time line, or could reasonably make a detour as a part of turn time jump. Making a jump to relay a message was not considered a reasonable use of time travel resources.

Colonel Sparks also knew that his rescue was not considered a priority by the protocols; the red pill had neutralized his danger to the time line, so there was not a reason to retrieve him. The safe house location was not an accident. A marooned Time Marine was required to live out his or her life in almost complete anonymity, no family, no friends, no unnecessary human interaction. No casual contacts that could lead to an accidental contamination. Their final reward? To be laid to rest in a Potter’s Field years, or centuries, before they were born.

Not contaminating the time line was THE First Order.

The initial search for his body was authorized, as it was supposed he had died prior to taking the red pill; his presence could have contaminated the timeline. This is why time travel is so regulated; time line contamination can cause a cascade of changes that may endanger the future.

Charlie quickly worked through the two competing theories on the cascade effect as originally postulated. The first was the ‘I killed my grandfather’ theory. I go back in time and kill my grandfather, either purposefully or by accident, before he can father my parent. So am never born. So I could not go back in time and kill my grandfather. So then I AM born, DO go back in time and THEN kill my grandfather; a continuous loop in which I flash in and out of history.

The competing theory was that time will heal itself. I go back in time, kill my grandfather, and then another man becomes my grandfather. Or, in more of a macro example, I can go back in time and kill Hitler. This does not stop World War II, as another individual becomes the center of the Nazi movement. This would affect the outcome, as the Nazi movement would not be the same. It could be worse. But the course of history remains set.

This also explains how some printed works, contemporaneous with events, later seem to have certain facts wrong, according to current knowledge.

The cascade comes from either scenario being a basis for change. The first creates a loop that effects all future generations. When I kill my grandfather, and start the loop in which I appear and disappear, based on the cycle of whether I am born or not does not only affect me, but all generations of his descendants, flashing in and out of existence. This is why the time heals itself theory has been proven to be the case. The time line is more stable, although changed. My grandfather cannot be ‘unkilled’ but his progeny are still in existence, albeit with a different heritage.

Colonel Sparks made the decision. He would wait, and be picked up in the past. He trusted the system. Even though he knew that it would take another decade before he would be missed, and a new rescue attempted. He was risking another decade as Charlie Sparks, dirt poor farmer, in order to go back to the life he left, his family intact and unchanged from the memories that were constantly coming back online, like reviving a hard drive from a backup file.

“Hurry back Major; that red pill tastes horrible. And this time I won’t have any bourbon to wash it down.”

Major John Mroz saluted, climbed into his car and turned off the disguise app. The Model A coupe slowly disappeared and the shiny time pod appeared. Another few commands the time pod then dissolved into time.

Colonel Sparks returned the Major’s salute, and held it as the as the light from the pod dissolved and faded, then turned toward the cabin, took a single step and likewise disappeared. With his next breath he was home in 2050.

The Time Marines leave no man behind.