Free Unhappenings by Edward Aubry Page B

leaving it peaceful, pleasant and private. That was where he found me.
    “What are you doing here?” I heard myself say. In the light of day, and out of the rain, I could better see his face. It had the same gray stubble I had seen in drunken closeup, and I could now see his hair, long, completely gray, and not particularly kempt. It was impossible for me to know if he was wearing the same clothing as the last time we met, but his hair looked like it was just drying out. The weather outside was sunny and very cold. Five years ago we had an awful encounter that was probably an hour ago for him. He seemed less crazed now, but I wouldn’t say that reassured me.
    “Hiding from your parents,” I countered.
    He froze, a confused frown on his face. Whatever conversation he thought we were going to have, it wasn’t that one.
    “No,” he said, “I mean why aren’t you at Cornell? I was just there. They said you never enrolled.” He took a moment to look around the room, perhaps to confirm we were alone, perhaps just to get his bearings, then pulled up a chair. “You know who I am,” he said. It was difficult to tell if he meant it as a question.
    “I’ve had five years to work it out,” I told him. My exploits with Penelope sat poised on my tongue as clarification of my understanding of time travel, but something held me back. By all rights, I should have been able to trust him, but I couldn’t let go of the fact that Penelope had always been kind to me, and that my only encounter with this version of me ended with him pushing me into a puddle. He nodded thoughtfully, and did not further pursue that topic. For a brief instant, my stomach lurched as I realized I had just successfully, and literally, lied to myself.
    “Cornell?” he repeated. “What happened there?”
    I shrugged. “Didn’t get in,” I said. “Didn’t get in anywhere.”
    His frown deepened. “That’s… that’s not possible.” He stood, visibly rattled, and walked to a window, carefully scrutinizing every object he passed on the way. After staring out onto the library courtyard for a few moments, he said, “I have no memory of this.”
    “The library?”
    He turned and met my eyes. “This event. This conversation. I don’t think it ever happened to me. How can that be?”
    Of all the excellent reasons I had right then to feel uncomfortable, the one that trumped all else was the notion that this man—this version of me—had traveled through time what was probably dozens of years, at least twice, and somehow expected me to have answers for him. There were so many things I wanted to ask him—any reasonable person would beg for an opportunity like this—and yet somehow, horribly, I was the one with upper hand.
    “Lots of things happen that I don’t remember. And lots of things I do remember unhappen,” I said, “but you know that.”
    He stared. Not good. “I don’t understand what you mean. I don’t understand any of this. Is this even the same timeline?” He clutched his head. “This is never going to work.” My earlier assessment that he was less crazed started to unravel.
    “Why are you here?” I asked, in a desperate attempt to push this in a coherent direction.
    He buried his face in his hands. After a very long, very audible sigh, he looked up and began to speak in a tone so even it barely seemed natural. “I came back here to tell you about the Time Travel Project. I did not anticipate that you had already deduced its existence from my earlier visit. That was incautious of me, but what’s done is done.”
    He paused there, and it was all I could do to keep myself from screaming at him. The only constant fact in my life had ever been that what is done is never, with any certainty, done.
    He soldiered on. “In fact, it may be fortuitous that you are already aware of it. That will save me a lot of work persuading you. Because here it is, Nigel: I need you.” He let that hang between us.
    “In what way could you