Free Numbers Don't Lie by Terry Bisson

whispered, taking my hand. Then she held it up so that it was illuminated by the headlights of a car chase. “What’s this?” She was looking at the number on the back of my hand.
    â€œThat’s there to—remind me of how much I love you,” I lied. I didn’t want to tell her what it really was; I didn’t want her to think I was crazy.
    â€œOnly six?”
    â€œYou’re holding it upside down.”
    â€œThat’s better!”
    â€œOw!”
    â€œSsssshhhhhh!” said the couple behind us.
    We skipped all the titles and credits but caught all the previews. Candy dropped me off at midnight at the Good Gulf men’s room. Walking “home” to Whipper Will’s office across the corner lot, I looked up at the almost-full Moon and thought of Wu on his Hawaiian mountaintop. There were only a few stars; maybe the Universe was shrinking. Wu’s figures, though I could never understand them, were usually right. What did I care, though? A few billion years can seem like eternity when you’re young, and forty-one isn’t old. A second marriage can be like a second youth. I stepped carefully over my old friend, the beaded seat cushion, who looked better than ever in the moonlight; but then, don’t we all?
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    It was almost ten o’clock before I awoke the next morning. I made my way to Hoppy’s Good Gulf, staggering a little in the sunshine. “Whipper Will’s Yank,” Hoppy said from the repair bay where he was replacing the front brake pads on another Taurus.
    â€œRight,” I muttered.
    He replied “ ’Nuff said” behind me, as I made my way back outside and started across the corner lot.
    I stopped at the beaded seat cushion. It definitely looked better. There seemed to be fewer loose beads scattered in the weeds and on the path. There seemed to be fewer naked, broken neoprene strings and bare spots on the seat cushion.
    But I didn’t have to guess. I had evidence.
    I checked the number on the back of my hand: 9 .
    I counted the beads four rows down from the top: eleven.
    I checked both again, and again it came out the same.
    It was creepy. I looked around in the bushes, half expecting to see giggling boys playing a joke on me. Or even Hoppy. But the bushes were empty. This was downtown on a school day. No kids played in this corner lot anyway.
    I spit on my thumb and rubbed out the 9 , and walked on back to the office. I was hoping to find another message from Wu, but there was nothing on the machine.
    It was only ten-thirty, and I wasn’t going to see Candy until lunch at the Bonny Bag, so I opened a can of Caffeine-Free Diet Cherry Coke and spread out my Corcoran’s . I was just starting to doze off when Whipper Will’s ancient upright fax machine clicked twice and wheezed into life; it sputtered and shuddered, it creaked and it clanked, it hissed and whistled, and then spat a smeared-purple mimeo sheet on the floor, covered with figures:
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    As soon as it cooled, I picked it up and smoothed it out. I was just about to put it with the other one when the phone rang.
    â€œWell?” It was Wu.
    â€œMore Big Crunch?” I was guessing, of course.
    â€œYou must be holding it upside down,” Wu said. “The figures I just sent are for the Anti-Entropic Reversal.”
    â€œSo I see,” I lied. “Does this reversal mean there won’t be a Big Crunch after all?” I wasn’t surprised; it had always sounded more like a breakfast cereal than a disaster.
    â€œIrving!” Wu said. “Look at the figures more closely. The AER leads up to the Big Crunch; it makes it happen. The Universe doesn’t just shrink, it rewinds. It goes backwards. According to my calculations, everything will be running in reverse for the next eleven to fifteen billion years, from now until the Big Crunch. Trees will grow from ashes to firewood to oak to seed. Broken