When my future hung in the balance.
Future me scowled. He pointed to his suitcase. “Ow!” Perhaps he should have pointed with his free hand. “You have a purpose.” He scowled again. “And change out of those pajamas. They have baby dinosaurs on them. And at noon as well.”
I stiffened. I tried to pull myself up to a full six feet, four inches. I failed though, being only six feet tall. “I’m retired. I can wear what I like, whenever I like. So bugger off.”
“Listen Paul,” said the stranger. “I haven’t come to set you on the path to sartorial splendor. Heck, I remember wearing those dino pajamas to dinner, sometimes later than that.”
A bulb lit up above my mead, a low-wattage one sure, but it still went off.
“So you’re me.” I had originally thought, ‘Your me,’ but I corrected that mental typo before either of us noticed. What brings you back. Did you want to be beside yourself?”
I thought sure he’d guffaw at that jest. He didn’t.
He looked like a man who’d been forced to feed lutefisk to his children.
I tried to lift the mood.
“Why did the man cross the Mobius strip?”
“To get to the same side.”
Nothing, That knee slapper left future man shrouded in gloom.
My synapses fired. “Why are you so sad? What can I do?”
He pointed to the suitcase. “It’s full of Amos Keeto novels.”
“Amos Keeto, the master of culinary noir.”
He nodded.
“Well future me, what do you want me to do?”
“Take them back to the library. Now! Don’t run up five years of library fines. You’ll lose all your savings, your home, everything. Those librarians are a byword for terror. You’ll wander the streets muttering, ‘but they were such page turners.’ You’ll earn just enough for your daily meatball, by selling snot to biochem warfare labs. Please return then now.”
And so I did. I even changed into street clothes to do it.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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