Lucas’s complaint in the Big Fight proved prophetic: to AJ’s surprise, he arrived home from work a week later and announced that they were moving to Texas. But how could I forget, AJ reminded himself, as he listened to Norma asking precisely where in Texas they were going. Lucas worked for an electronics company that built inertial guidance systems for the Defense Department, and AJ remembered that his BeforeTime childhood had consisted of moving from one Air Force base to another, usually in March.

Moving was a two-stage process. First came the packing and organizing, which AJ watched with bemused detachment. He wandered through the apartment as Norma and Lucas stuffed things into boxes — Lucas cursing and shouting about something that wouldn’t fit, while Norma just sighed and shook her head. It took less than an hour for AJ to pack his belongings into three boxes: one for clothes, one for toys, and one for such miscellaneous odds and ends as the notebook full of star drawings. If I tried really hard, I could probably get my entire life into one suitcase, he thought. Just like a business trip in BeforeTime.

The moving truck arrived early the next morning, while AJ was still eating breakfast, and loaded up their furniture and boxes with swift, quiet efficiency. The moving men were gone by mid-morning, leaving them in an empty apartment, dustballs lying on the floor where the furniture had been. Norma shrugged, wondering whether to make a last pass with broom and dustmop, and eventually decided that it was the proper thing to do; AJ smiled as he realized it would set a standard for all future moves. The final cleaning of the house was a way of saying good-bye to each of the cities they inhabited, before moving on to greener pastures.

We could use some greener pastures, AJ thought. It’s been pretty gloomy around here lately. The news during their tenure in New York had continued to be dominated by the Korean War. In mid-October, barely a month after AJ arrived in NowTime, Lucas had reported at dinner that American troops had crossed the 38th parallel and captured the North Korean capital of Pyongyang; MacArthur’s strategy was to conquer North Korea and unify the two Koreas under a pro-western government. According to MacArthur’s assessment in October, his UN forces would subdue North Korea by Thanksgiving, and most American forces would be withdrawn to Japan by Christmas. When asked by Harry Truman about the likelihood of direct Chinese or Soviet intervention, MacArthur simply replied "Very little." AJ sighed as he listened to the pronouncement, and grimly attacked the lima beans on his plate.

Lucas’s political observations also included some strange inconsistencies in the official reports on the war. There was the AP report from Moscow on September 29th, for example, that "the Soviet Union, which, like Communist China, borders on North Korea, would unquestionably take a grave view of any effort by United States or Allied forces to push up beyond the 38th parallel." And as MacArthur’s troops rolled past that invisible line across the country at the beginning of October, Lucas reminded them at dinner that the New York Times of October 2nd reported that Chou En-lai had warned that China would not "supinely tolerate" an invasion of North Korea. But the Washington politicians accepted MacArthur’s assessment that China would not risk being chopped up by UN forces under his command. Lucas wasn’t convinced.

Sometimes Norma disagreed with his assessments, but it usually led to such a torrent of withering scorn that she generally kept quiet. So did AJ; he didn’t remember any of these details from BeforeTime, and he wasn’t about to take Lucas on. But Norma’s reaction was not one of intellectual debate; she merely shook her head from time to time, with the same sad smile. As for Lucas’s assessment of China’s intentions, she shrugged and said, "But what if you were right? What would you do about it?"

AJ silently agreed as he listened to their conversation. What’s the point of telling him anything? he thought. Whatever is going to happen will happen anyway.

As it turned out, Lucas was right: Thanksgiving marked China’s deployment of 500,000 soldiers across the Yalu River into North Korea. Tokyo Headquarters reported that American and South Korean troops were suffering heavy losses and were forced to effect a fighting retreat from the Chosin Reservoir. MacArthur acknowledged that "we face an entirely new war."

By mid-December, Truman had threatened to use the atomic bomb on China. He declared a state of national emergency, and argued the need for extraordinary executive powers to overcome the crisis now facing the country. Pretty gloomy stuff, AJ thought, listening to the news on the car radio, as the Halifaxes left Glen Oaks behind, crossed over the George Washington Bridge and headed south. The New Jersey Turnpike had just been inaugurated, and Lucas decided that it was a good way to make some rapid progress at the beginning of the trip.

Near Philadelphia, Lucas switched to U.S. 1 heading for Washington; he and Norma had decided to spend the first night at Grandma’s house, and it was well after dinner-time when they arrived. The next morning, their farewells to Grandma were polite and restrained as they climbed back into the car. AJ noticed Grandma grimace behind Lucas’s back as she hugged Norma, and he watched her grim-faced figure as they pulled away. She’s not even waving good-bye, he thought.

Maybe she disapproves of Dad's rough-and-tumble Utah pedigree, AJ thought, and feels it wasn't proper for her blue-blood daughter to have married a miner's son. Norma's family traced its heritage back through the Civil War, when some great-great-whatever was Daniel Webster's personal secretary— and from there, all the way back to the Revolution, when another ancestor signed the Declaration of Independence and fought in Washington's army. AJ could feel the sense of history in Grandma's house, but he could see that Norma had shrugged it off. Her face was flushed with excitement as she told Grandma that the future of America is out West — out where she and Lucas were heading. To celebrate, she had changed from her dress into a pair of formless denim jeans; AJ had a feeling that the dresses would reappear in another day or two, and that this was more an act of rebellion than anything else.

Texas and the American west may be the future, AJ mused, as they headed into Virginia, driving toward Lynchburg and Roanoke at the southeastern end of the state, but it's hard to forget the past. Crossing the Potomac at the Memorial Bridge, they passed the Pentagon and began navigating toward Manassas. It was a gray, gloomy day in Washington; thick, dark, ugly clouds hung over the city, and a drizzle began as they headed into the countryside.

Manassas, mentioned casually by Norma as she checked the map for Lucas, brought back some powerful memories to AJ: he knew from BeforeTime that Norma would dredge up several old family letters a few years from now, and that a great deal of Civil War history would find its way into his hands. One of the letters was from his great-great- grandfather, written when he was an 18 year old medical intern in Washington, DC., to a fiancee named Emily in the wilderness territory of Wisconsin. It had affected AJ so strongly in his BeforeTime world that he had memorized it, and he could recall every word now, as they approached Manassas Junction; though it had been written ninety years earlier, AJ could hear Grandpa's words speaking softly in his ear from the fields where the Battle of Bull Run was fought:

 

 

In the middle of town, Norma noticed a sign pointing to the Manassas Museum and asked Lucas if he would be consider stopping. Lucas snorted and continued on; he had no interest in Civil War memorabilia, especially at the beginning of the trip. It soon beame clear that he had no interest in stopping for anything along the way — not for the historical sights, the tourist attractions, the scenic overlooks, or any of the distractions offered by the hundreds of towns and hamlets between Washington and Fort Worth. He had a timetable, and it allowed no interruptions. He sometimes hummed or whistled a tune, but he rarely spoke; most of the time, he was either lost in his own thoughts or focused intently on the road in front of him. Norma made a few attempts to start a conversation, but eventually gave up and alternated between reading the map and a detective novel she had picked up in Grandma's house.

Past Manassas, they were back on the smaller roads again, following Route 28 through towns like Nokesville, Calverton, and Brandy Station in the Shenandoah Mountains. The trip proceeded at speeds of forty miles per hour, slow enough to actually see the surrounding countryside. And there was much to see, AJ realized: unlike the future interstates, built far from inhabited areas so they could blast through mountains and valleys in a perfect straight line, these roads wound and curved, meandered and wiggled, up and down, in and out, through tiny hamlets, past farmstands, gas stations, general stores, factories, auto junkyards, and motels.

Lucas drove in the black 1947 Chevy he had acquired during his college days in Denver; though four years old, it was still one of the newer cars on the road. AJ was amused to see that it had no seat belts, no turn signals, no air conditioning unit, no stereo speakers, no cruise control, no illuminated digital clock to mark the passage of time. Norma turned on the radio from time to time, though Lucas preferred driving in silence; south of Washington, the stations played country music mixed with gospel and religious sermons.

A soft, steady rain had begun, tempting a few precocious sprigs of green to peek out from the soggy brown meadows. AJ could feel a gentle, rolling undulation to the land; the meadows were interspersed with plowed farmland, then pine forests, an occasional stubbled corn field, then horse farms with rail fences, then herds of cattle grazing mournfully in the rain, huddled in the corners of pastures. Though they were barely 40 miles from Washington, there was no commerce — not even any gas stations. The road was only two lanes wide; there was little traffic, with only a few cars heading toward them. Nor were there many cars behind them, and Lucas never bothered looking in the rear-view mirror to see if anyone was waiting to pass. But looking out the back window to catch some sights that went by too quickly, AJ noticed an old green De Soto, a little darker than the color of the lima-beans he detested, following in their tracks, keeping pace with them about a mile back. It disappeared from view on the curves and in the peaks and valleys of the rolling hills; but then a few minutes later, it reappeared and took its place. Maybe I should tell Dad we’re being followed, AJ thought, but then dismissed the idea as silly.

Somewhere near Amherst, as Highway 29 crossed the Buffalo River and meandered towards Lynchburg, Norma and Lucas began an argument that AJ had come to call a Traveling Fight. He could tell that it was constrained by their knowledge that AJ could hear every word from the back seat. He smothered a chuckle — it was the same trick he used in his BeforeTime arguments with Ann. Here, too, Norma and Lucas relied on Big Words to keep the silent observer in the back seat ignorant of the proceedings.

Sweet Briar College had passed behind them, and they had crossed the James River into Lynchburg when the atmosphere changed. AJ could tell that Lucas was in a foul mood, for they had been stuck in crawling traffic in a thundering downpour in the middle of town, and he had missed the turnoff to Route 221 for Roanoke. After three miles in the wrong direction, past rows of seedy two-story wooden homes, he finally managed to turn around, but the sheets of rain beating against the windshield made it hard to follow the signs as their route wound through the town.

Lucas blared his horn at the world and continued, "None of this ... this geographical disorientation would be so goddamned imperative if you hadn’t given the homo sapiens in question some kind of signal that things weren’t entirely terminated between you." He made a quick turn on Wythe Street, but four blocks went by before he saw another highway sign confirming that he was still on the right track; this made him even more furious. He didn’t look at Norma while he yelled; he was staring straight ahead, his back and neck muscles tense and rigid.

AJ kept his face impassive, and shrank into the corner so Lucas couldn’t even see him in the rear view mirror. Norma was crying. "That’s not true, it’s just not true. I burned every bridge behind me. I abandoned everything, everything. I can’t help what’s happening." The car in front of them hit a deep rut in the road, spraying a wall of water on both sides, and Lucas swerved to miss it. They had already passed several stalled cars in the road, and AJ could tell that he was worried the water would render the brakes inoperable and possibly even stall the car.

AJ was frustrated. I hear the words, he thought, but I can’t figure out what they mean. But then it hit him: Lucas was consumed with jealousy. He remembered that much from BeforeTime, though the truly awful scenes, when guns appeared and death threats were hurled through the air, didn’t come until much later. But it must have started now, he thought, or even before now.

It explains yesterday’s Traveling Fight, he mused. In an earlier argument, near Baltimore, Lucas had shouted at Norma, "None of this would have started if you hadn’t gone to Florida!"

Without thinking, AJ had inserted himself in the discussion from the back seat. "Yeah, but if she hadn’t gone to Florida and run into you, I would never have been born."

Lucas had turned his head sharply at that remark, so quickly that AJ thought he was reaching back to smack him. He flinched instinctively, but Lucas’s hands stayed on the wheel, and he had only a moment before he had to turn his attention back to the road. "Washington, sport. Don’t ever forget that: life started in Washington."
AJ had opened his mouth to respond, but Norma turned and shushed him. "AJ, don’t argue about this. Washington is where we lived. Remember? We lived at Grandma’s house on Porter Street."

That’s not what I remember from BeforeTime, he thought. He had a sense that Lucas was angry over something that had happened in Florida, something that involved Norma, and that he now wanted to pretend that the entire state simply didn’t exist.

In today’s Traveling Fight in the Virginia rainstorm, as they passed by Lynchburg College at the edge of town, Norma’s next comment startled AJ, though the noise from the rain was so deafening that he could barely hear her. "I don’t even care about me. I’m just terrified that they’re going to spirit away the subject of our arguments. I would just die if they did that."

Before Lucas could answer, and before AJ could figure out what she was talking about, a jagged streak of lightning appeared from the sky, bam!, hitting dead center on the hood of the car. Norma let out a blood-curdling scream, AJ jumped so high his head banged on the roof, and Lucas simply bellowed "Jee-sus!!" at the top of his lungs. The car stalled, and they coasted to the side of the road in silence, sitting like columns of stone while the rain continued pummeling them.

Lucas muttered a curse under his breath, jumped out into the downpour, and opened the hood to see how much damage had been done. Norma sighed and announced that this was as good a place as any for lunch; she had made sandwiches at Grandma’s house, intending that they would eat them on the road. AJ could tell that she was still recovering from the emotion of the argument, dabbing her eyes and blowing her nose on a wadded up tissue. This must be why I gave Ann such a hard time about the wadded up tissues she left all over the house, back in BeforeTime, he thought sadly. It reminded me of Mom’s crying.

Lucas stomped back into the car, sopping wet, muttering that he didn’t understand why they weren’t all killed. Norma wordlessly handed him a cheese sandwich, and reached back to give AJ the standard peanut-butter-and-grape-jelly that he had accepted eagerly in BeforeTime and grudgingly in NowTime. They munched their sandwiches in silence, looking out over soggy fields and a string of Barbisol highway signs that stretched off into the blur of rain up the road. A small, forlorn sign next to the car was leaning over, almost touching the ground; it said "Shoe Repair Machines for Sale." Somewhere nearby, AJ thought, there must be a farmhouse filled with such machines, its owner desperately hoping that a shoeless nation will beat a path to his door.

After lunch, they headed further south, crossing the Little Otter River into Bedford. Stately old houses, surrounded by huge oak trees, appeared in the gloom every mile or two; set back half a mile from the road, some were wood, others were solid red brick. Sometimes the downpour let up for a while, slackening off to the level of an ordinary rainstorm — and then, suddenly, wham! a wall of water slammed against the windshield and the full fury of the storm was back again.

Every time Lucas tried to pass someone, the spray kicked up by the other car completely obliterated the view. It’s no wonder that he’s so tense and irritable, AJ thought. Watching his angry driving habits was a shock, for it made him realize that he had inherited the same behavior in BeforeTime. He remembered Ann once telling him that her father was the same way, shrieking curses at a cowering family as he drove madly from one city to the next. Is this some kind of American macho thing? AJ wondered. Will my children inherit it too?

Norma suggested quietly that perhaps they should call it a day, and find a motel to get out of the rain. But Lucas refused: by God, he was going to make it to Knoxville, despite the weather. So Norma shrugged, and on they went, through Pulaski, into Rural Retreat and Atkins, past trailer parks, ticky-tacky wooden barns going to seed. At Marion, they stopped for gas at the Blue Flash gas station, which promised "gas for less."

AJ noticed that the gas stations along the way were one-room cinder-block buildings, with only one or two pumps outside; they were only a small part of the vast infrastructure supporting America’s intense love affair with the automobile. He had lost count of the categories of auto service establishments: There had been general-purpose auto repair businesses; transmission shops; engine overhaul, tuning, and analysis companies; wrecking, towing, and hauling enterprises; radiator repair shops; muffler, shock absorber, and brake outfits; wheel alignment and balancing outlets; upholstery showrooms; generator, and starter service stores; glass, windshield, and window outlets; spare parts houses; battery shops; paint and body firms; welding concerns; and massive auto junkyards for those vehicles beyond all hope of redemption. The cumulative impact was staggering. Either the 1950s is a generation that drives madly about smashing its cars into smithereens at every opportunity, he thought, or Detroit is building cars that fall apart as quickly as people can buy them.

By 8:15, even Lucas had had enough. They had reached Morristown, still some 40 miles from Knoxville, and he agreed that they should stop for the night at Johnson’s Motel; the sign said that it was AAA-rated; that was good enough for Lucas. Fastidious about his car, he insisted that they clean out all of Norma’s wadded up tissues and every other can, bottle, and scrap of paper before they turned in for the night. AJ realized it was another habit he would carry into his own adult life. At the tender age of six, he thought, I’m already being programmed to hate people whose cars look like the town dump after a hurricane.

They got an early start the next morning at 6:30, with faint light in a dark blue eastern sky, but no sun visible. A half-moon hovered above them; it was cool outside, but not uncomfortable as they climbed into the car for the onward journey. Norma wore a sweater over her jeans and blouse, and she dressed AJ in the same pants and shirt that he had worn the day before, on the theory that he had had no chance to get anything dirty.

A few miles before they reached Knoxville, Lucas decided to stop at Hellman’s Restaurant for breakfast. The sound of the radio by the cash register drowned the quiet conversations among the few people scattered among the booths and tables. AJ saw Lucas frowning as the radio announcer reported that General Matthew Ridgway’s force of nine divisions had just retaken Seoul; its capture marked the fourth time the city had changed hands in the past nine months. The assault had begun with three days of bitter fighting against enemy positions on the Han River, 20 miles east of Seoul. When the UN troops finally arrived in Seoul, they found that virtually all the Chinese and North Korean troops had been pulled out. Army officials apparently believed that the evacuation was a ploy designed to draw the UN troops further north, toward the 38th parallel, where the Communist troops could then launch a counterattack. But AJ was startled by Lucas’s opinion: "They’re lying through their teeth," he said grimly to Norma, as they ordered their breakfast. "Don’t you believe a word of it: the government lies about everything, and especially about this damn war."

"This story," he continued, "is a good example of bullshit reporting. The Eighth Army Headquarters claims they killed or wounded 69,500 of the Commies from January 25th to February 9th. Well, that works out to 4,600 men, or almost a full army division, per day. Now, by comparison, the Germans lost a little over 43 divisions between February and July of 1916 in the Battle of Verdun; that works out to ten divisions a month, in one of the bloodiest battles in history. But General Ridgway’s figures are the equivalent of thirty divisions a month. Like they would say in New York, something’s not kosher here."

Where does he come up with all this stuff? AJ wondered. Why don’t I remember this from BeforeTime? Are kids really so oblivious? But a higher priority interrupted his musings: he had to go to the bathroom. He excused himself from the table as Lucas continued his monologue, and wandered toward the back of the restaurant, looking for the men’s room. This part of being a kid is a pain in the ass, he thought. Or a pain in the bladder ...

The men’s room was small: a urinal that AJ could barely reach, and a battered toilet stall. It was quiet, and he could hear the sound of the radio in the main part of the diner. He stood on his tip-toes and did his best to aim at the urinal. I shoulda used the toilet, he thought.

Just as he was zipping up his pants, the stall door opened and an elderly man emerged. AJ noticed that he was wearing a plaid shirt and tan slacks with a sharp crease. This guy’s no local farmer, he thought.

"Hello, AJ," the man said, bending down to bring his face near AJ’s level. He had a white beard, neatly trimmed, and a handlebar mustache. He peered at AJ from behind gold-rimmed glasses and a bushy head of white hair.

Who the hell are you? AJ thought. Good grief — don’t tell me I’m gonna have to worry about dirty old men this time around! He avoided eye contact with the man, and moved quickly to the door of the men’s room.

"Don’t you remember me?" the man asked, plaintively.

AJ scuttled through the door thinking, Did this happen to me in BeforeTime? Did I get molested and then repress it? He shuddered as he began walking briskly down the aisle to reach the booth where his parents sat. What now? he wondered. Do I tell the grownups and let them raise a stink about it?

He was just sitting down when it hit him: He knew my name! He paused, looking up at Norma with his mouth open, while trying to remember all of the conversation that had taken place since they entered the restaurant. Did that old geezer hear them calling me AJ? he wondered. I used to pull that trick on kids when I was a grownup. Maybe the guy was just trying to be friendly.

"Are you okay, AJ?" Norma asked, peering at him with a smile on her face. "Do you want anything more to eat?"

The old man had not emerged from the men’s room, and it occurred to AJ that he had no proof — of anything. He looked at Lucas, who had finished his monologue, but was still scowling as the radio news report continued. Not worth the fuss, he decided.

"No, Mom," he sighed. "I’m full. Let’s go."

Back in the car again, they passed over the Holsten River behind a pickup truck with two huge, starry cracks in the windshield before finally reaching Knoxville; AJ idly wondered if someone had fired a rifle at the driver and his passenger, but they turned off on a side road before AJ could get a good look at them. Spread out over a large area, the city skyline was low: few of the buildings were more than three stories high. The road took them past an attractive campus at the University of Tennessee in the middle of town, but overall, AJ found it was a gray, ugly city. Perhaps the gloom came from the weather: clouds had come back into the sky, and Norma worried aloud that they might have another day like the one before.

It wasn’t until they reached White Bluffs that Lucas found a restaurant, the Perfect Pig, where he was willing to stop. After lunch, they continued heading south-west on Highway 70 toward Memphis. Through Dixon and Tennessee City they went, across Hurricane Creek to McEwen and Gorman, Trace Creek and Waverly. They crossed an enormous bridge over the swollen Tennessee River at New Johnsonville, and Norma remarked that they were just south of a local town named Denver. Lucas pointed out that the Tennessee folks were even more creative when they named some of their other cities Paris, Milan, Brazil, and Athens. But AJ liked the small towns they had driven past, with the names nobody remembered: the Brucetons and Brownsvilles, the Hollow Rocks and Huntingdons, the Gibsons and Gadsdens, the Bradens and Bartletts.

Lucas was determined to get to Memphis before the height of the evening rush hour. The city finally appeared at 5:30, and unlike Knoxville, Highway 70 led straight through town. They reached the top of a hill at Front Street and there, suddenly in front of them, was the vast, awesome expanse of the Mississippi River. AJ tried to whistle in appreciation of the spectacle, but found that his mouth and tongue didn’t know how to make the sound. He blew a few tuneless gasps as they navigated down the hill to Riverside Drive, onto the bridge, across the muddy brown waters, and into the "Natural State" of Arkansas.

By 6:00, they were racing across the flat delta country of eastern Arkansas. The land was tilled along both sides of the road; the earth was rich and black, with long, swirling ridges that looked to AJ like monster earthworms or giant-sized prairie dogs burrowing beneath the surface. The road was in much worse condition than anything they had seen in Tennessee: the two narrow lanes were patched so heavily with tar that they could feel the bumps. A road sign indicated they were 120 miles from Little Rock, and AJ calculated that it would take two more hours to get there. Norma asked if there might be someplace before Little Rock they could stop, for they had already been on the road for twelve hours. But Lucas shook his head. "The boy can sleep in the back seat if he’s tired; you can sleep, too, if you want."

Shortly after eight o’clock, as they approached North Little Rock, Lucas suddenly cursed and AJ heard a thump on the right side of the car. They had hit a rabbit that froze in its tracks while crossing the road, mesmerized by the headlights. If it were a cow or a deer, they would have been in big trouble — but Lucas assumed that a rabbit would leave no trace, aside from a possible splash of blood on the tire. But the thump! slowed him down and broke his obsession with barreling through the Arkansas night; a few miles further along, he found an Economy Motel next to a gas station and auto repair shop. He checked them into the motel, where they collapsed into bed.

On the third day out of Washington, Lucas drove like a man possessed, determined to reach Fort Worth by dinnertime. Neither grownup in the front seat seemed interested in talking; AJ wished he had a brother or a sister to communicate with. A brother probably wouldn’t be much good, he thought, because boys this age only want to talk about guns, cowboys, and Indians. A sister, though, would be a great companion; the concept gave him a warm feeling, and he dozed off for an hour while they rolled through southern Arkansas.

Once or twice during the morning, AJ caught a glimpse of a green car a mile behind them, reminding him of the De Soto that he had seen in the northern Virginia countryside. But then it disappeared; he assumed it was coincidence. South of Prescott, the land was uninhabited once again. Marsh and woodland still predominated, and there were also uncultivated meadows — but an absence of houses, people, and signs of life. Crossing the Red River, they saw a prison work crew, composed entirely of black men wearing immaculate white uniforms and white hats, chopping away at underbrush; they looked up, and AJ stared at them as the car went past. Fifteen minutes later, they rolled through Texarkana on the border of Texas and Arkansas.

After lunch, they crossed State Highway 8, which pointed to both New Boston and Old Boston. The land was flat, with herds of grazing cattle on meadows interspersed with pine forests. Occasionally AJ spotted a lonely car or a rusted truck abandoned out in the middle of huge fields that stretched off into the distance — as if the owner had gotten disgusted with the vehicle in the middle of an afternoon drive, and left it to rot under the vast, empty sky. The highway was completely empty once again, as they crossed the Salter River and zoomed into Omaha. The population of this tiny town was a mere 618, according to a highway sign; AJ smiled and decided there was little chance that it would ever compete with its sister city in Nebraska.

Winfield, Mt. Vernon, and Saltillo were the next towns to greet them; they were now only a hundred miles from Dallas. They barreled through Sulphur Springs, Cumby, Campbell, and Greenville, before crossing the Sabine River at two o’clock. They were in the midst of farmland now, with plowed fields and a feeling of approaching civilization. Royce City, Fate, and Rockwall slowed them down briefly as they passed through; and then, a little after three o’clock, they came up over a ridge and saw the skyline of Dallas twenty miles in the distance. Norma let out a long sigh; the end was in sight.

A week later, they settled into a small two-bedroom house with an attached garage on Malvey Avenue, on a tree-lined street in Fort Worth that looked to AJ like a million other suburban streets across America. The house was barely larger than their New York apartment, and the plot on which it sat was a mere quarter-acre. The yard was tiny, but it had a small, artificial fish pond in the back; the former inhabitants had left behind a few nondescript carp, and AJ was instructed to feed them each morning. He smiled at the shadows beneath the water’s surface. You guys are in for a rough time, he thought.

Norma and Lucas introduced themselves to the neighbors, and AJ was introduced to their children. One of them, a squat little redhead named Sammy Lewis, was terribly involved in rigging up fancy contraptions using electrical wire and cereal boxes; AJ had visions of him as a future mad scientist. Another, Deke Burlton, proudly showed him a well that he had begun digging in his back yard; by the end of the year, he said, he would dig all the way to China. Most of them, though, were involved in outdoor activities: kite-flying, baseball, riding their bicycle, shooting a bow and arrow at targets of all kinds.

Soon after they settled in, AJ’s seventh birthday arrived. Lucas decided that he was ready for his first bicycle, and AJ found the process of learning to ride it incredibly frustrating the second time around. Everyone says that once you learn how to ride a bike, you never forget, he thought. Maybe that’s true for the average Joe, but not for someone in my position: my brain remembers, but my body doesn’t. Balancing on two wheels was all instinct, he found, with virtually no participation from the left brain or the right brain. Consequently, it took several attempts, with Lucas running along behind in that excruciating bent-over position that fathers everywhere suffer in support of their sons and daughters. He was patient, not even raising his voice as AJ fell to one side and then the other.

All in all, it took only a day before he was reasonably steady. Pretty damn good, he thought. I’ll ride it to school every day. But Norma nixed the idea: since the school bus stopped a mere fifty feet from the front door, right at the corner, she decreed that he would take the bus to school each morning.

School was a sprawling, two-story structure, surrounded by acres of playgrounds. The first day of school was much like the first day in Glen Oaks — but this time, instead of skipping AJ forward a grade, the school authorities tried everything in their power to move him back a grade, back to where he belonged for his age. Norma, to his surprise, was adamant; she had apparently become accustomed to his second-grade status. The school principal was called in, but he was preoccupied with other problems; after and enduring more arguments from Norma, he shrugged and announced that AJ could stay in second grade until the teachers decided whether he could keep up with the work.

AJ smiled smugly as he listened to the challenge. The teachers in Fort Worth, he figured, would be much like the ones he had already experienced in New York, and essentially the same as the teachers he would see all through the country in the coming years. He had already seen the routine: the teachers read to the children, the children read to the teachers; the teachers asked the children dumb questions, and the children regurgitated the answers that had been drilled into them.

One of the teachers — an awful man named Henderson assigned to teach the rudiments of arithmetic — so infuriated AJ that he caused a problem he had managed to avoid in New York. This was second grade, and most of the children were seven or eight; AJ knew that, they were supposed to know how to add two simple numbers by now. But most of them couldn’t, and AJ gradually realized that Awful Henderson wasn’t about to give them a clue as to how they might learn this relatively useful concept.

"Practice!" he bellowed, "that’s what it takes! Practice, practice, and more practice!" Practicing something you don’t understand struck AJ as pointless, but doggedly the children tried escape the wrath of Mr. Henderson, by making random and futile attempts to add 179 and 971. Carrying digits from one column to the next, AJ thought, is like asking these Texan lads and lassies to drag a dead cow across the school-yard.

One day, in an apparent fit of exasperation, Awful Henderson unleashed a terrible punishment upon the miserable gaggle of silent sheep before him. "I want you to add all the numbers from one to a hundred," he thundered from his height of five and a half feet. "And if you can’t get it done by the end of class, then you’ll have to finish it for homework."

"Whaddya mean?" asked one boy, Daryl Trent, who thus far had been unable to add anything larger than single-digit numbers. AJ could see that he was stunned by the assignment.

"I mean that you should add one plus two plus three, plus four and five and six, and keep on going until you add one hundred. And then tell me what the total sum is."

The children seemed utterly demoralized. Henderson had discouraged them more than usual: the task was not only horribly difficult, but endless; AJ sensed that they had visions of spending the rest of the year calculating a number that could be in the millions or billions. But the curious thing, he thought, is that most of them, if forced, actually would spend a year engaged in this mindless effort. He had noticed that there was a strong tendency towards perseverance among the seven year olds: beginnings of any project were difficult, but once started, they would go on and on and on, until they had finished the task or somebody stopped them.

AJ thought desperately for a moment, trying to remember the formula for series additions; it was buried in BeforeTime memory, having lain dormant for decades. It was annoying, for he didn’t like to be reminded of how much he had once learned, then forgotten, and would now have to re-learn again. Aha! he thought. The formula came back to him, and he quickly raised his hand.

"Yes, Halifax, what was it?" Henderson growled. "Are you as thick-headed as Trent? How many times do I have to explain this?"

"Well, I was going to ask if we could make it a contest," AJ suggested humbly.

"What do you mean?"

"Well, if we take three guesses at the answer to your question, and get it right, could we all be excused from having to do this stupid exercise?"

Henderson looked annoyed. "Three guesses? You couldn’t get it if I gave you a thousand guesses! Don’t waste my time!"

"Well, how about one guess?" AJ asked, not wanting to lose the chance.

"Okay, okay. Tell me your guess and then start adding."

"5,050," AJ told him without a moment’s hesitation.

"5,050? That can’t possibly be right. Now will you please shut up? Or do I have to send you to the Principal’s office?"

"It is right," AJ insisted. "Can I show you on the board?"

He was sure that Henderson wanted to refuse, but that he had never seen any of his students volunteer to write anything, ever, on the blackboard. Sure enough, Awful Henderson scowled at AJ, paused, and then relented.
AJ walked up to the blackboard and grabbed the chalk. He was still so short he could barely reach more than two feet of drawing space, so he talked his way through most of the procedure.

"Look, it’s real simple," he said. "I’ll write the first few numbers: 1, 2, 3, and 4 ... and then the last few numbers: 97, 98, 99, and 100." He wrote them quickly on the board, with a series of dots to represent all of the numbers in the middle.

"So?" Henderson asked. Meanwhile, the children were quiet, their pencils poised above their scraps of paper. AJ could imagine what was going through their minds. Why would anyone would challenge Awful Henderson?

"So we start forming pairs: the first number and the last number in the sequence can be added together, 1+100, to give 101. The second number and the second-to-last number can be added, 2+99, which also gives 101. And so can all the other pairs. There are fifty pairs, the last of which is 50+51. Altogether 50 pairs of 101’s, which means that the answer to your question is 50 times 101, or 5050." Having written the answer in large numerals, AJ dropped the chalk in the tray and marched back to his desk.

The children squealed with delight; Daryl Trent tore his paper into tiny pieces and threw it into the air, forming a momentary blizzard above his head.

"What made you think up that trick?" Henderson roared.

"I didn’t. The first person to think it up was Carl Friedrich Gauss — when he was five years old."

"Carl who?"

"Gauss. He was a mathematician, one of the greatest of the 18th century, maybe the greatest ever. I was born on his birthday."

"I don’t give a fig who this Fred Gauss fellow is," Henderson roared, as he smacked his ruler on his desk, whap! smack! bam! to restore order. The children were told to carry out the task the hard way, and AJ was sent to the Principal’s office for insubordination. The Principal called Norma, and AJ ended up backpedaling, claiming that he had stumbled upon a description of the formula in a library textbook. At dinner, Lucas spent an hour yelling at him instead of the government politicians who normally occupied his attention, telling him that he was damned if any kid in his house was going to talk back to the teacher. Asshole! thought AJ grumpily, but he kept his mouth shut.

The next day, Daryl came up to him in the playground and after checking carefully to see that no teachers were watching, whispered to AJ, "That was really neat, what you did yesterday in Awful Henderson’s class. The whole school heard about it."

"He’s an asshole," AJ muttered. He still hadn’t gotten over the tongue-lashing from a series of adults, though he was pleased that he had made some impression on the class.

"Well, you better not let him hear you say that, or you’ll really be in trouble," Trent confided. His eyes darted back and forth to see if anyone might be listening.

"No kidding."

"Some of the kids say you’re just a smart-aleck from New York," Trent continued belligerently. "Timmy says he’s going to fight you and beat you up. Then you’ll have blood all over you, and you’ll bleed to death!"

AJ found the prospect — as well as the second-grade preoccupation with gore and blood — amusing, and his laughter brought a new retort from Trent. "Timmy says you’re a Communist, because your family doesn’t even have a television."

But AJ had already learned that his schoolmates had a short attention span; Timmy had probably already forgotten his threat, and could be easily distracted if he came wandering by. But they were all prone to tantrums; some took enormous pleasure in bullying anyone smaller, and AJ’s second-grade cohorts had learned to steer clear of the enormous fifth-graders. AJ occasionally noticed a small girl at the edge of the playground, watching carefully as older children prowled like wolves circling the herd; she never interfered, but seemed to be standing alert to any harm that might befall them.

A week after arriving in the new school, a star drawing appeared on AJ’s desk one morning when he arrived in his classroom. Colored like all the rest, it had a slightly different pattern than the others he had collected:

 

 

A few days later, another drawing appeared; this one, too, was compact, with only a handful of distinct star shapes:

 

 

And then a week later, yet another piece of paper was lying on his desk in the morning:

 

 

By now, AJ had accepted the drawings as gifts from a mysterious tooth fairy. His classmates were ignorant of the origin of the drawings, just as the children were in New York. But he assumed they were the work of a child, for no adult would spend the time and effort to color so meticulously the whorls and patterns of the myriad forms of stars. Whatever they were, they had become his own little secret, his own private treasure; he carried the drawings home, and added them to his collection.

Sometimes he continued staring at the drawings during his first-period science class, but one morning the teacher surprised him with some news from his past — or at least, from the area where he had spent his adult career. The science teacher, a mousy, bespectacled little man by the name of Upshaw, told them about a new computer that had just been introduced by Remington Rand. Known as the UNIVAC, it had been designed by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, who had developed the first electronic computer, ENIAC, in 1945. The UNIVAC had what Mr. Upshaw described as revolutionary new features such as mercury delay lines for memory, and magnetic tape for input instead of the old punched cards. The machine, whose computing power AJ estimated was slightly greater than a hand-held calculator of his BeforeTime era, filled a room the size of the school gymnasium. He was fascinated by the report, but he could see that the other kids were sitting glassy-eyed through Upshaw’s discussion; it had no impact on their life, since the only customer for the new behemoth was the Census Bureau.

At dinner, when quizzed by Norma about the day’s school events, AJ summarized the UNIVAC announcement — and was astounded by Lucas’s response. "Your Mauchly guy," he said vehemently, as if the man was somehow AJ’s responsibility, "may be a great computer genius — but he just resigned as president of his company a month or so ago. March 8th, if I remember correctly."

"What are you talking about?" AJ asked, while thinking: What the hell does he know about all of this? "I didn’t even know that he was president of Remington Rand. And why would he resign?"

"He was the president of the computer company that Remington bought, the one that he and Eckert started back in ‘46. And he resigned because the Army turned down his security clearance."

"What on earth for?" asked Norma. AJ was sure she had no idea who Eckert and Mauchly were, but she too seemed startled by the emotions of Lucas’s comment.

"For being a Communist sympathizer," Lucas responded grimly.

"A Communist? Mauchly?" AJ asked. "You’re kidding! No way!"

"Well, I don’t know if the man was a Commie," Lucas snorted, "but the government thinks so. They actually canceled his clearance over a year ago, and he’s just now appealing it."

"How do you know so much about all of this?" AJ asked.

"I see a lot of security stuff at work," Lucas responded with a shrug, "and I know that the FBI is investigating him again. I even saw the letter they wrote to him last November, when they explained why his security clearance had been canceled."

And Lucas proceeded to recite the text from a November 27th letter from the Industrial Employment Review Board to Mauchly:

 

This is exceedingly weird, AJ thought. He’s got some kind of photographic memory. I wonder if I inherited it.

"It sounds serious to me," offered Norma. AJ could see she was worried. Being accused of Communism, he thought, is like being accused of devil worship during the Spanish Inquisition.

"Well, the whole thing is ridiculous," said Lucas, pouring himself another martini. "It turns out that Mauchly once attended a scientific meeting in Philadelphia, back in 1946, for God’s sake, and he wanted to get some of the scientific pamphlets published by the sponsors of the meeting. He filled out a card, and paid a dollar to get the pamphlets; that’s all he remembers. But apparently that made him a bona fide member of the Association of Philadelphia Scientists, as far as the Army is concerned."

"So?" AJ asked. He had never heard of the organization.

"So it’s a branch of the American Association of Scientific Workers, which the Commies formed to influence legislation about free exchange of information about atomic energy."

"And that makes Mauchly a Communist?" AJ asked, dubious that such a tenuous link could have such profound consequences.

"As far as the goddamned government is concerned, it does," answered Lucas. "All I know was that Mauchly has been forced to resign as president of his own company, and that they’ve got him working in some shit-hole Remington office in a corner of Philadelphia, as director of programming research."

"So is that the end of the computer?" Norma asked. From the inflection of her voice, AJ could tell that she was not just asking about the demise of Mauchly’s work or the Remington-Rand corporation, but the entire computer industry.

"Well, as far as I’m concerned, it is," Lucas responded. He leaned back, taking a sip of his martini. "Mauchly is the brains behind the operation, and if they put the Communist hex on him, they’re never gonna get anywhere with their UNIVAC machine. And they were the only ones who had a chance: IBM has been trying to build computers for a couple of years — they had something called the SSEC back in ‘48 — but they don’t know what the hell they’re doing. A year from now, all this computer talk is gonna disappear, and nobody will remember what it was about."

"Don’t you believe it!" AJ yelled. He was staggered that Lucas knew any of this. I was writing a whole damned book on computer history in BeforeTime and I never heard any of these Mauchly stories, he thought. But more than that, he knew that he had a BeforeTime advantage that Lucas could never match with his mysterious access to security information: he knew what would happen to Univac and the computer industry, even if he didn’t know the details of John Mauchly’s battle with the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Lucas laughed. "What are you so excited about, kiddo?"

"I don’t know what’s going to happen to Mauchly — but you listen to me," AJ said, pointing his spoon at him for emphasis, "Univac is going to succeed. And IBM is going to be the most successful computer company in the world by the time I grow up."

"Is that a fact?" Lucas asked quietly, cocking his head.

"That is a fact," AJ told him, with utter conviction.

"Sometimes kids say the damnedest things," Lucas said softly.

"I can tell you, without any doubt at all," AJ continued, "these computers will eventually defeat Communism. Not because they help the Army build bigger A-bombs, but because computers mean data, and data means information — and we’ll have millions of computers that will let everyone have instant access to all information, which the Russians will never do. The Russians will never do diddly-squat with computers."

Lucas’s eyes bored into his. "Maybe you’re right," he whispered. "Maybe I shouldn’t write off this computer thing just yet. But let me give you a piece of advice: don’t write off the Russians. They aren’t as stupid as you might think." Their eyes remain locked, and something clicked. This is some kind of primal communication, AJ thought. But I don’t understand what it means.

But that wasn’t the only thing he didn’t understand. A larger mystery was the growing sense of tension between Norma and Lucas; hardly a month had passed since they had arrived in Texas, and already they were acting strangely. The Big Fights erupted frequently at night, though AJ heard them only as a background mumble, because his bedroom was separated from theirs by a bathroom. But if the wars were less audible, the results were still visible. Norma’s eyes were red nearly every morning, and she often sat weeping at the breakfast table after Lucas had gone off to work. AJ waited quietly for her to make his lunch before heading out to catch the school bus. Slap, slap, slap went the peanut butter on one slice of Wonder Bread; slurp, slurp, slurp went the grape jelly on the other slice. Wax paper surrounded the sandwich, and it joined an orange, an apple, or some carrot sticks, plus a cookie or a Twinkie, in a brown paper bag.

One morning, after a particularly noisy Big Fight, as AJ watched all of this, it occurred to him that Norma had cried a lot even when they lived in Denver in BeforeTime. And he remembered that when he asked her about it then, she had told him that it was simply because she was tired from staying up late, typing Lucas’s term papers. He had accepted the little white lie in BeforeTime, but it was obvious now that there were other reasons.

So he decided to ask. "Why do you and Dad fight so much? Can’t you ease up and give each other a break?"
Norma smiled wanly as she handed him the paper bag. "Some people have to fight to show how much they care. Anyway, AJ, don’t worry: it’s not about you."

She’s lying, he thought. It troubled him, but he was late for school, and decided not press the issue.

Because of his late departure, he had to run to the corner, catching up with the bus just as it arrived. He was out of breath and slightly rattled as he climbed the bus steps, but he noticed, as he turned at the top of the steps to walk down the aisle, that a man was watching him from across the street. He shaded his eyes with his hand, so AJ couldn’t see his face, but something about him seemed terribly familiar. Then the view through the window was blocked by a small girl who bounced up in her seat with a blood-curdling shriek as she felt the tiny tree frog deposited by his innumerate buddy, Daryl Trent, down the back of her dress.

But the thought crossed AJ’s mind that he had seen the same man the day before; the man had waved at him then, too, which seemed odd. And it suddenly occurred to him that the man had a white beard and a handlebar mustache. I’ve seen a man like that before, he thought, as he surrendered to the chaos around him in the bus, but where? BeforeTime? NowTime?

In social studies that day, AJ and his classmates heard the latest on the Cold War: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair for revealing atomic weapons secrets to the Russians. Since Julius was only 32 and his wife 35, it occurred to AJ that the alleged crimes must have occurred when they were in their mid-20s. Basically the same age as my parents, AJ thought.

Lucas, who seemed to be following the case carefully, pointed out at dinner that evening that the Rosenbergs were themselves the parents of two young sons. The judge had described the Rosenbergs as agents of a hostile totalitarian nation, he said. But the Rosenbergs’ attorney described them instead as "victims of political hysteria," and filed an appeal in order to stay the execution scheduled for May 21st in Sing Sing.

Lucas had mixed a pitcher of martinis before dinner and was working on his third drink. AJ didn’t remember him drinking anything other than an occasional beer in Glen Oaks, but the martini pitcher had become a common fixture in Fort Worth. Maybe this is what people do to while away their evenings in Texas, AJ thought. God knows I would if I were stuck in Texas as an adult. Lucas fell quiet after his Rosenberg recitation, and AJ couldn’t read his mood; but he remembered enough about the nasty effects of gin on his BeforeTime friends to know that he could explode without warning. He had already learned that it was best to eat quietly and get out of the kitchen as quickly as possible; tonight, AJ saw, it would be a good idea to be extra cautious.

Chili and corn bread were tonight’s fare; it was Lucas’s favorite dish, and one that AJ ate happily. He was halfway through the spicy chili and working on his second piece of corn bread when Norma surprised him with a question: "AJ, have you seen any strangers hanging around school? Or the neighborhood?"

He looked up slowly, a spoon full of chili still in his mouth. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lucas staring silently at the table, his eyes closed, and his fists clenched. He hadn’t touched his food.

"Strangers?" AJ asked carefully, extricating the spoon. In the brief period that he had been in NowTime, his body had matured to the point where he could control his voice, control his temper, and control the random energetic motions of his arms and legs. It comes in handy at moments like this, he thought.

"Strangers, sport," said Lucas, surprising AJ with the intensity of his voice. "Man. Woman. Old-timer. Someone hanging around, someone who doesn’t belong here. That’s a stranger."

So far, he hadn’t lied to them, partly because he was a captive of his adult ethics, but mostly because it hadn’t been necessary. But he could see that something ugly was in the air. I’m about to get sucked into dangerous territory, he thought. If I could get them to talk to me as an adult, I’d be happy to lay my cards on the table. But it was clear to him that they were withholding something — so he looked Lucas in the eye and shook his head.

"Nope. Unless you count the school janitor. He’s pretty weird, and he sometimes hangs around the school door in the morning. But everyone knows who he is."

Lucas and Norma looked at him carefully. There was a long moment’s silence while AJ thought, They don’t know who they’re dealing with. I can bluff them.

Norma sighed. "Well, let us know if you do, OK? We’ve just heard some reports and we want you to be extra careful."

You bet I will, he thought. AJ was prepared to watch for the stranger again at the bus the next morning, but Norma surprised him by walking him to the corner. When he asked her why she felt it necessary to come along with him, she smiled, and said, "It’s such a nice morning. I figured I could use some fresh air."

But it wasn’t sunny, and the air was anything but fresh. Unlike yesterday, the sky was black with clouds and a drizzle had already started. She must have known this, AJ thought, because she made me wear that stupid yellow slicker that she keeps for rainy days. This was definitely one of those days: the weather report on the radio at breakfast had described a hurricane working its way up the Gulf Coast, and widespread thunderstorms were predicted for the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

So she must have had some other reason for walking me to the bus, he thought, and that reason is obvious. But before he could ask her, the bus appeared; she gave him a kiss and shoved him up the steps. The episode made him grumpy, and the rest of the kids were grumpy, too; none of them liked the galoshes and idiotic hats they had been made to wear. By the time the bus arrived at school, the shoving and shouting had put AJ in a foul mood as he sloshed through the puddles to the front door. The sky was black, and the rumble and crack of thunder drowned the voices of the kids as they bickered their way into the dryness inside.

In the classroom, there was another star drawing waiting for him. But unlike the others, this one lacked the rainbow colors and the sparkling cheerfulness. All of the stars were drawn in black, using a sharp pencil; AJ found it depressing, and it added to the ominous tone of the day. It looked like this:

 

 

AJ’s bad temper continued through the morning, and it led to another altercation with Awful Henderson. This in turn put Timmy, a stout little brute who sat in the back row, into a snit of his own. At lunch, in the cafeteria, he marched up to AJ and said belligerently, "Hey you! Halifax! You’re a smart-aleck and I’m going to kick your butt."

Jesus! This is all I need! AJ thought. The weather is bad, the teachers are obnoxious, the cafeteria slop is nauseating, and now this little redneck wants to kick my butt. But he stood up and said diplomatically, "Listen, Timmy, I know you don’t like me — so why don’t we just stay on opposite sides of the cafeteria?"

Timmy responded by punching him squarely in the nose with a roundhouse right that AJ didn’t even see coming. It knocked him back in his chair, left his nose stinging and his head throbbing. He could feel the blood beginning to trickle down one nostril, and he was suddenly infuriated beyond reason. He stood up, took one look at Timmy in his boxing stance, and kicked him in the crotch so hard that it lifted him several inches into the air before he filled the air with a howl of pure agony and collapsed on the floor in a heap.

The cafeteria, normally a bedlam of ear-splitting noise, fell instantly silent. AJ knew that the children who saw what happened would agree that Timmy got what he deserved; however, he also knew instinctively that someone was about get into trouble as a result of fighting. Sure enough, two teachers, sitting guard duty in a corner, approached the table at a run. Operating by instinct, they picked AJ up by the scruff of the neck and dragged him into the Principal’s office, where he was informed that his punishment would consist of two hours after school in the purgatory of the library.

The librarian — an authoritarian hussy who doubled as the school nurse — instructed AJ to focus on his homework, and told him that he should not rise from his seat for the period of his detention. The library faced the back of the school, with windows looking out over the swings and slides and playing fields. There were huge puddles everywhere, and the downpour had turned the hard-packed dirt into a sea of thick, red mud.

And that’s how it happened that he was entirely alone, late in the afternoon, when he finally slouched out the side door of the school. The rain had been falling steadily all day, the thunder booming so loudly it rattled the windows; to make matters worse, the buses had all gone and AJ knew he would have to walk home. Home to meet more punishment, no doubt, for the Principal had already called Norma about his detention. He sloshed around the side of the school, past the swings, out across the soccer field behind the building that led to the street. He could see the silhouette of someone watching him from the library window; he assumed it was the librarian, but refrained from making an obscene gesture at her with his finger. He was wet. He was miserable. He had a headache. But I’m still glad I kicked that little bastard in the balls, he thought. Maybe it will sober him up before he punches anyone again.

It was not until he was halfway across the soccer field that he truly realized what kind of weather he was in, and where he had seen it before. He looked up, letting the rain fall on his face, searching the skies to see what was happening. "Here I am, God!" he suddenly yelled at the top of his voice. "Come and get me!"

He had no idea what prompted him to do this. But he knew that he had a terrific urge to rip off his rain slicker, pull the tiny Darth Vader doll from his pocket, stretch both hands up to the heavens, and scream at the top of his lungs, in his soprano seven-year old voice: "Come and get me! Come and get me!"

And the heavens complied. From the boiling, black mass of turgid clouds, a white bolt descended, heading straight for him. Goodbye, NowTime, he thought exuberantly. I’m going home.

 

Continue to Chapter 5 . . .