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.All this time I’ve been focused on how our connection affects me, not what it’s doing to her.When her body begins to relax, I lower us to the mattress again.She sniffles a few times, and then looks at me through watery eyes, waiting.“You’re not going to believe me,” I tell her.“I will.”“You won’t.”“I’ll believe anything you say.”She’s probably telling the truth but I need to ease her into it.I need to ease myself into talking about it.“Tell me about your name first.”“My name?”“Are there a lot of others named Iffy?”That gets a laugh out of her.“I got it in high school, from someone who used to be a friend.”“Not your parents?”“My given name is Pamela.”“That’s pretty.”“For a soccer mom, maybe.”I’m not sure what a soccer mom is but I get the larger point.“So, why Iffy?”She thinks for a moment.“My friend and I had been in school together since third or fourth grade.One day she blew up at me, said she’d had enough of my waffling.”“Waffling?”“Yeah, said she was sick of me not being able to make a decision, that I was iffy on everything.She started calling me that, and it wasn’t long before others did the same.It used to make me so mad.I couldn’t wait to go to college where no one knew me and I could be Pamela or Pam or anything else.”She pauses.“The thing is, the bitch was right.I was horrible at making decisions.By the time I left home after high school, I was so used to hearing the name that I kept it.Decided to use it to help me be better.”“And has it?”“Still a work in progress, but getting there.” She tilts her head and looks at me.“The old me would have never come looking for you.She would’ve hidden in her room, hoping the feeling would go away.Your turn.Why is this happening? Why you?”__________HOW DO YOU tell someone you’re a time traveler? Not from the future, but from the now? Only the now you’re from is real and the one the other person knows is an imposter.I start at the beginning, with my selection to join the Upjohn Institute, and lay it all out from there.Iffy is so quiet that I think, contrary to what she said earlier, she doesn’t believe a word.Why should she? If someone had come up to me before I joined the institute and said the same, I would’ve thought the person was insane.After a while, she begins asking questions, having me fill in gaps in my story.When I come to my encounter with Cahill, I carefully explain what should have happened and then what did.She falls silent again, and I take this to mean she’s having a hard time following, so I start explaining it again.“I got it,” she says, stopping me.“You created a delay that resulted in him being killed and Washington being allowed to live.That’s when everything changed.”“Yes.”I tell her of my mostly unconscious time in New York, and my escape to what I thought would be New Cardiff.“I didn’t want to believe at first that I’d caused the change, so that’s why I went to the library, hoping to find it was something else.”“You must have figured it out fairly quickly, though,” she says.I nod.“Then why didn’t you go back and fix it at that point? I mean, all you have to do is keep yourself from entering the tavern, right?”I nod.She’s understood it all perfectly.“Then why haven’t you gone yet?”“I…I guess I want to know more about this world first.It’s so different than where I’m from.I want to know it better.” I take a moment, and then say, “Do you believe me?”“You still haven’t told me why we’re connected,” she says.I hesitate, then pull my satchel over.From inside, I remove my Chaser.“This is what you’re really connected to.”“What is it?”“A Chaser.It’s what allows us to travel through time.”As if fearing it’d shock her, she carefully touches it before taking it from me.She turns it every which way until she’s inspected the whole thing.“Why would I be connected to this?”I tell her about how the Chasers work, about companions, the sharing of the pain of travel, and the subtle mental connection between the machine and both of the users.“When my original companion disappeared, it chose you for some reason.”“But why?”“I’ve been thinking about that.I’m not a scientist or an engineer, so I don’t really know the details on how all of this works, but I do know the link between machine and companion is made, from the human side, on a cellular level.You call it DNA here, I think.You know what that is?”“Sure.Everyone does.”“My theory is that you and Palmer Benson share, um, I guess common relatives.”“You mean like we’re cousins?”“In an odd way, I guess.If I’m right, then the device linked with you because you were the closest match to what it knew.How it figured it out…” I shrug.We’re already way beyond my areas of expertise and into pure speculation.I let her live with this for a minute before I say, “You haven’t answered my question.”She looks at me, eyebrow raised.“Do you believe me?”“It doesn’t matter if I believe you.You can just prove it to me.” She hands me back the Chaser.“If I give you a date and time and place, you can go there?”I smile at the thought of performing the same demonstration Marie used on me.“I can.”“All right.February 13, 2012, 7:00 p.m.” She gives me an address in a city called San Diego.“That’s my mom’s house.I was still in high school.Oh, probably not a good idea to just appear in the living room.”Despite the fact that the trip will use up precious power, I owe her this.“All right,” I tell her.“But you should know that as companion, even though the trip isn’t far, it’ll be painful for you.”“Yeah, I’ve experienced a bit of that already.”My short trips around the city.“I’m sorry.I didn’t know.”“It’s all right.Now get going.”“What am I looking for?”“Take a slow walk along the other side of the street from my house, right at seven.You’ll know.”“Fine.But I need a map to figure out the location.The Chaser doesn’t understand your addresses.”“No problem.I’ll bring it up on Google.”__________IF THERE IS a difference between 2012 and 2015, I’m not tuned into the culture enough to perceive it.To me, it looks like I could have hopped a couple minutes into the past to another part of Los Angeles.I arrive early in the morning of February 14.Since the computer map Iffy showed me uses satellite images of the neighborhood, I’m able to coordinate this with my Chaser and pinpoint my arrival to a narrow space behind several retail shops a few blocks away from Iffy’s mom’s house.Since the space hasn’t been paved over, I can check for footprints in the sand.There are shallow depressions that look at least several days old, but nothing indicating anyone has walked between the buildings since then.Confident my arrival will go unnoticed, I set the Chaser for 6:30 p.m.the previous day and jump back.The evening is cool but not unpleasant [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]