Shimmer Pro™

Shimmer Pro™ By Michael Juge

2020, “the Year of the Dumpster Fire” as it’s known in the Chinese zodiac upended a lot of peoples’ lives. For myself, I had been scraping by as a software developer for a data mining company. It’s not what I envisioned for myself when I was a girl. My original plan was to become a ballerina/veterinarian. But as I grew up, I recalibrated my ambition to something more attainable like maintaining steady employment in system software and getting through a Pilates class without groaning too loudly. Apparently, that was a bridge too far because on my 40th birthday, the day after the national emergency was declared, my team and I at Trollster were provided with some hand sanitizer and two weeks’ severance.

Fresh out of a job and bracing for a viral apocalypse, I did what most of us did; I hoarded toilet paper, sprayed the groceries with Lysol, and proceeded to eat a sheet cake because it was the end of times and I certainly considered that a cheat day . Of course, none of us were going to get off that easy. COVID was deadly enough to be a pandemic, but not deadly enough that I could get away with not paying the rent. The world might be spiraling into chaos, but the management company still wanted its money. I needed a job.

As luck would have it, doom scrolling was a booming industry during the lockdown, so Buzzfeed hired me to come up with a list of 21 photos that proved time travel exists. A basic Google search provided an abundance of “proof” of time travel; however, those photos had already been used in a previous Buzzfeed article three years ago with the same premise. They wanted fresh evidence, so it was time to unleash my Tapeworm, a program I originally developed at Trollster that could seek and analyze video and photos posted to the web.

After several hours Tapeworm retrieved several potential results. If you used your imagination, some of the photos retrieved might be plausibly anachronistic looking enough to satisfy Buzzfeed. But then there was this one photo…it was definitely odd; a feature photo taken from an interview of someone named Julian Vaughn published in the November 1984 issue of OMNI magazine. Julian was wearing a T-shirt with www.McFlyveon.com printed across the chest. FYI, there were no such things as website addresses back in 1984.

Either I had just found photographic evidence that time travel really did exist, something that would fundamentally alter our understanding of causality—I might get a Ted talk out of it, or Tapeworm was total crap and it mismatched the indexing. I assumed the latter, but just to be sure, I decided to purchase a copy of the issue in question before spending a week debugging the program. OMNI was a defunct publication that folded decades ago, so I had to purchase a copy from an archival service. Since the lockdown, everyone started ordering everything they needed by mail. The US Postal service was swamped, so it was going to take a minute.

While I waited, I streamed a dramatization of the OJ Simpson trial, and got into arguments with strangers on Lyttr who believed that COVID was a hoax. It sounds asinine, I know, but you have to understand, we were all losing our collective shit being severed from our routine personal connections. We were a couple of months in the Rona. I had gotten accustomed to attending AA meetings on Zoom, but that’s because––one, being in tech, I had lived with VTC meetings for years, and two, I already knew the people in my home group, so even though the faces of my friends were grainy, Hollywood Squares versions of themselves, I still felt some semblance of being in a real AA meeting.

I had just completed watching the OJ Simpson docudrama when, to my relief, the OMNI magazine arrived. As I lost my sponsee as well as my old job, I needed to get back to doing something productive––if you could call working for Buzzfeed productive. After sufficiently spraying the magazine with Lysol, I thumbed through the pages, getting a chuckle at some of the old ads. I turned the page and found the article I had been seeking, entitled The Future Isn’t What It Used To Be: Interview With Julian Vaughn.

The article’s intro described Julian Vaughn as an enormously successful venture capitalist who, along with his business partner Jasmine Bartels, were angel investors in Apple Computers, Microsoft, and Oracle in the late 1970s. By 1984, their firm V&B Capital became the premier VC in Silicon Valley. But rather than focus on Julian’s business insights, the interview centered on his debut science fiction novel entitled Troll. Set in the year 2019, Julian envisioned a world interconnected by network with a common protocol called “the Interweb” and everyone had access to it through mobile devices called “pads.” That was eerily accurate, but it got even…eerier. Far from informing people, this marvelous suite of technology had the opposite effect. Well-sourced journalism became subsumed by concocted news stories, peer-reviewed scientific research was replaced by celebrity opinions, and instead of connecting people from around the world, it further balkanized people as the platforms turned self-righteous outrage into a commodity.

“Talk about spot on,” I muttered to myself. Apparently, critics disagreed. At the end of the article, the journalist quoted The New York Times’ review of Julian’s novel as “a stunningly unrealistic vision of the future.” Heavy Metal called it “the most boring dystopian tale ever.”

I turned the page to the photo Tapeworm discovered of Julian Vaughn wearing the McFlyveon.com T-shirt. Seeing this middle-aged guy with his self-satisfied grin wearing a highly anachronistic T-shirt and reading his flawless depiction of 2019, my ears became flush with excitement. I scoured the web but it had very little on Julian Vaughn. He seemed to disappear by the late 1980s and his partner Jasmine Bartels died of lymphoma in 1998. There were no commercial records for McFlyveon. The one clue left was the website address itself, so I typed up www.mcflyveon.com and found a blog site with a single message:

Type “Shimmer Pro” in the App Store to download the Shimmer Pro™ onto your device. Be sure to read the instruction manual below before shimmering.

At the bottom of the page was a link entitled The Shimmer Pro™ Instruction Manual, which opened a pdf file.

Congratulations on your purchase of the Shimmer Pro™ app by McFlyveon. Have you ever heard a song that takes you back? Well, thanks to McFlyveon’s Nostalgic Resonance Processing technology, when you play a song in Shimmer Pro™, any song that evokes nostalgia will take you back! Literally.

How Does The Shimmer Pro™ App Work?

Consciousness is an emergent quality capable of collapsing the wave function and is not bound by the entropic process of thermodynamics, meaning our consciousness can travel back upon itself. When we feel nostalgic, our consciousness is partially re-experiencing a moment in the past––in essence, a part of our consciousness is traveling back in time. Music is one of the most powerful prompts of nostalgia. McFlyveon’s Nostalgic Resonance Processor attenuates your body’s matter energy aggregate to the nostalgic resonance evoked by song in the experiential moment to physically send you back.

It went on like this, reading like the rules to an overly complicated board game regifted from a White Elephant, so I skipped to the FAQ. Here’s what I gathered:

● Shimmer Pro™ is a time travel music app powered by nostalgia

● I can go back in time as far as my nostalgia can take me with any song that evokes nostalgia based on when I formed the nostalgia, not when the song was released

● The songs I “shimmer” to need to be downloaded in order to work in the app

I couldn’t wrap my mind around the enormity of this. The photo of Julian, the interview, the website, it was all leading me to type up “Shimmer Pro” in the App Store where an icon of an ouroboros with wavy lines appeared with the slogan Make new memories of your past. McFlyveon charged $3.99, which was a reasonable price for a time travel app if you think about it. I had to agree to the legalistic Terms of Use about product ownership, not being responsible for connectivity issues, the creation of dystopian alternate timelines, or universe-ending paradoxes. Once I clicked Accept I was in.

The app required that I first had to add a “home” song, a song that would shimmer me back to my relative present. Since the lockdown, I had been playing a fair amount of Lizzo. I downloaded Good As Hell, which seemed to keep the panic at bay in the early days of the pandemic and then I downloaded a bunch of songs that I believed had sufficient nostalgic mojo to send me back.

I half-heartedly argued with myself that I should run some tests first. Then I countered by pointing out that I had no clue how to run quality control on a purported time travel music app. Perhaps I should have taken a beat to process this, at least watch the Youtube commentary on the OJ Simpson docudrama first. But I had to know: was this for real or did months alone surrounded by the four walls of my apartment propel me to an elaborate psychological abyss?

With my AirPods snug in my ears I pulled up Warning Sign. I swore off Coldplay after

the divorce, so it had been ages since I heard the song. But as soon as the guitar strum started, I immediately felt where I had been 17 years ago, the excitement and fretful wonder of falling in love. As Chris Martin crooned, the walls in my apartment began to ripple, to shimmer, actually. The shimmering intensified, reminding me of an old TV sitcom where a scene transitioned to the past when a character reminisced. I clutched my purse as I began to feel slightly lightheaded. Just as the shimmering peaked, it began to ease. The walls of my apartment suddenly disappeared, and I was met with a gust of wind, which forced me to close my eyes.

When I opened them, I found that I was outside. I momentarily lost my balance as I was at an angle. When I regained my bearings, I took in the surroundings. It was evening and I was standing on a sidewalk across a street I vaguely recognized. I turned around to see my old Toyota Corolla parked in a driveway. Wait, my old Corolla…I sold that a long time ago. I knew this place. It was Floyd’s apartment complex in Potrero Hill. He lived there when we started dating. I was just six months sober; he was a little over a year. We met at my AA home group, and we fell for each other like two trains colliding ––that’s how my old sponsor Edith described it. Edith advised me to not get into any relationships in my first year of sobriety. What did she know? Floyd was my soulmate, and Warning Sign was our song. The title should have served as a red flag.

I walked up the stairs to the low-rise apartment and could faintly hear Warning Sign playing on a stereo. Early sobriety, the Corolla…this had to be 2003. I wanted the exact date, so I pulled out my iPhone. No signal. What? How could there be no signal? Potrero Hill was in the middle of San Francisco and the apartment building was next to a cell tower. I walked down the hill to try to get a signal when I came across a man walking past me talking on an old school flip phone. I hadn’t had a flip phone since…and then I realized why I had no signal. My carrier had no account for an iPhone in 2003. That was not a problem because the Shimmer Pro didn’t need Internet connectivity. Nostalgia powered time travel.

You came back to haunt me and I realized

You were an island and I passed you by

The sweet memories began to take a dark turn. I recalled listening to it years later during the divorce. Floyd and I both knew it was for the best, but I was still curled up into a ball wanting to die. My mom was no help.

“Of course, he left you, Sarah. You refused to have any children. What good are you to him, to anyone?”

Edith was the only one standing between me and the abyss. She didn’t gloat or say, “I told you so.” I remember burying my face in her lap and her stroking my hair.

“I know it feels like this will never end, Sarah,” she whispered gently. “You will outlive this feeling, and you will be the one still standing.”

Oh, Edith…

Every fiber of my being felt this temporal moment. Memories both sweet and gut wrenching that had faded with time suddenly resurrected with a vibrant new life of the present, something I hadn’t prepared myself for. This Shimmer app was seismic. I needed to return home to process its implications, come up with an actual game plan, to prepare myself emotionally, or at the very least grab my jacket.

I pulled up the home song, pressed play to Good As Hell and waited as the shimmering took effect. I felt knots in my stomach as my thoughts turned to all the chaos I was returning to in 2020, my tiny apartment, the pandemic, the civil unrest, weaponized ignorance…Lizzo sang and the Shimmer app was shimmering, but nothing was coming into focus. I wasn’t landing back to 2020. Shit! I began to feel nauseous and I had trouble breathing. I was suffocating. And then suddenly, Good As Hell was replaced by another song, Doll Parts by Hole.

I am. Doll eyes. Doll mouth. Doll legs.

The shimmering ceased with a gust of wind, and I dropped to my knees and heaved. After catching my breath, I stood up to find I was standing in front of a driveway...wait, not just any driveway. I knew this place like the beds of my nails. It was the driveway of my childhood home, my mom’s house.

“What the…?”

I couldn’t say why Good As Hell didn’t work. And why did the Shimmer Pro suddenly skip to Doll Parts? A Calico cat on the driveway next door gave me a “what’s your problem” look and scampered off.

“Let’s try this again.” I replayed the home song and the same exact thing happened, except I was even more nauseous than before, and the suffocating seemed worse. I emerged to Doll Parts again, on my knees and gasping for air. I got up and caught my breath.

“Damn it!” I screamed. I emerged exactly where I had before in Mom’s driveway. The cat did the same exact thing it had last time. It was like deja vu but more vivid.

I pulled up Lizzo and played Juice this time. And just like twice before, the shimmering nearly killed me until Doll Parts pulled me back onto my mom’s driveway. The cat was where she was before, giving me the same judgmental glare. I gave her the middle finger.

What was I going to do now? The last thing I wanted to do was deal with Mom. I didn’t know when I was exactly, but this was not where I wanted to be. I pulled up the Uber app to take me back to my apartment, but there was no cell service. Whenever I was, it was still before I bought this iPhone. And then the BMW in the driveway clued me in. I remembered mom purchasing it back in the day, and the car had a temporary paper tag. Whenever I was, it was back, like far back, like before 2003 back, before the 21st century even.

My mind was still wobbly from the near death experiences, but one thing I knew: whenever I was, I didn’t want to run into my mom or especially myself. If I was drinking by this point I wouldn’t likely remember seeing me as I was now, but I didn’t know what kind of temporal shitshow I would cause if I did run into my younger self––I’m pretty sure it was in that guide I skimmed through that I shouldn’t cause a paradox or whatever. So, I hoofed it from Mom’s house to the Walnut Creek BART station a mile away. When I got there I discovered that the line was temporarily down. A schedule display listed the date: June 10, 1994. That explained why the cars all seemed a little dated on the walk over. And Doll Parts…I listened to that song incessantly when it came out. That was when I was 14. That meant there was a 14-year-old me right now back at Mom’s house trying to avoid her as she chastised me to lose weight if I wanted to be popular when I started high school next fall.

Walnut Creek was too small for me to stick around. Where was I going to go if I couldn’t get back to 2020? I needed to think. I did my best thinking on the toilet in my apartment, but that wasn’t available to me––my apartment in Oakland didn’t even exist yet. That being said, at least Oakland was not the outer burbs. I could get a hotel and sort myself out there. I hailed a taxi and put my mask on as I got inside. The driver gave me a quizzical look as I did him. It had only been a few months into the pandemic, but it was odd seeing a person not wearing a mask. When we pulled up to the Oakland downtown station, I pulled out my credit card.

“Sorry, I only take cash.”

“Really?” Fortunately, I did carry an emergency fifty in my purse. When I handed it to him, he snorted.

“What kind of Monopoly money is this?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Listen, lady, I’ve seen plenty of fifties. I’ve never seen Grant’s face that big!”

I was about to argue with him when something occurred to me. He was right. Currency was different in 1994. I don’t know when it changed, but it did. My fifty looked like a bad fake. This was a pickle. Here I was in a cab owing him $25 and I had no appropriate currency. I really didn’t like this, because this was totally against a program of honesty, but I bolted.

The cab driver got out of his car to give chase, but even though I hadn’t been to a Pilates class since lockdown started, I also wasn’t a chain smoker like he was. I rounded the corner and felt the familiarity of the place. I used to come here a lot back when I first got sober. In fact, across the street was the Salvation Army, my first home group in AA. According to a bank clock it was a little after 8PM. I wouldn’t start coming to meetings until 2002, but I was willing to bet they were holding meetings here in 1994.

Scared, exhausted, out of money––it just occurred to me that my credit card would be no good here in 1994, and with nowhere else to go, I stepped inside just like I did––will do 8 years from now. Someone just finished the preamble, which I knew by heart. The smell of the percolator coffee in Styrofoam cups, the sight of fellow sober alcoholics, the room virtually unchanged. Despite being decades from my time and despite being as fundamentally fucked as I was, the moment I walked into this room, I felt safe. I took a chair in the back and cradled my head as the leader shared his story, and suddenly I completely broke down. I ugly cried in the middle of meetings plenty of times before, but it never involved being temporally displaced. When the next person spoke, I immediately perked up. I knew that voice.

“Hi, I’m Edith and I’m an alcoholic.”

My God, it was Edith, my old sponsor! I touched my hand to my heart. She was so young! Her beautiful ebony skin and brilliant eyes were enhanced by her youth. She had her afro pulled back in a bun just like the last time I saw her. As she shared, Edith spoke about nearing her second sobriety birthday and how sometimes it scared her. Like me, Edith got sober young. When I walk into the Salvation Army 8 years from now, I will be strung out and desperate, and Edith will take this mess of a girl as a sponsee. She’ll teach her how to deal with life on life’s terms, and she’ll even teach her how to code.

I must have made an impression on Edith, because after the meeting she introduced herself. I wanted to hug her, hold her, tell her how wonderful she was and that the bastards who screwed her over shouldn’t get to win. Instead, I just tried to hold it together and not to freak her out.

“Would you like to get a coffee?” Edith asked. I must have looked terrible because she always took the most desperate cases.

“I’d love that,” I said, “but I don’t have any money.”

“That’s okay. I owe the universe some cash. That’ll be me paying it back,” she replied. That was so Edith.

We got into her Geo Metro and she took me to Blackbird, a coffeehouse we used to frequent back before it was torn down to make room for a Lululemon. Admittedly, I was wearing a pair of yoga pants that I bought from there. Inside Pharaoh’s Dance was playing. The owner played a lot of Miles Davis. We sat at the table that would one day become our regular spot. Even the abstract painting in gray hues with streaks of red was still there––or, actually, it was here and would still be there when Edith and I will meet for coffee one day. It was all so disorienting.

“How much time you got?” Edith asked.

That was a question with a whole new meaning, but what she was referring to was how long have I been sober. I shrugged. “A few days. It’s hard to say.”

The truth was I had been sober nearly 18 years. I know it was wrong to lie to my future sponsor like that, but I believe under the circumstances…

“I understand,” she said. “I was in a fog the entire first year. I never experienced that pink cloud others talk about. I’m just starting to see clearly.”

I wanted to tell Edith so much, to tell her who I really was, when I was from, how she will save me, and become my Yoda who teaches me everything I know. We’ll become instrumental in ushering in the social media age. And I wanted to tell her never to trust those assholes at Lyttr who take all the credit. But according to the Shimmer instruction manual, for liability reasons I wasn’t supposed to alter the future.

“You don’t have a place to stay, do you?” Edith said.

I shook my head. God, I really must look bad.

“My parents have a garage apartment. You can stay there a few days while we sort things out,” she offered.

Edith brought me to her parents’ house in the Piedmont neighborhood and they let me crash in the garage apartment without any argument. When I was alone, I pulled out my iPhone and considered what I should do next. I scrolled through the guide I downloaded and went to the troubleshoot section. There were warnings about not getting arrested in the past and how your real identity might not be acceptable depending how far back you shimmered, which made sense. In 1994 I was 14, not 40. But it didn’t mention anything about being suffocated mid-shimmer and the song changing out. What if I was stuck here? What would I do? How could I even get a job if my birth certificate said I should be a freshman in high school?

My iPhone alerted me that it was at low power, and for a moment I panicked. There were no lightning cables in 1994. I scrambled in my purse and dumped everything out. For a miracle there was a lighting cable and charger and I immediately plugged it in. While it charged, I scrolled through Music and considered other songs that would shimmer me back to 2020. Perhaps Soccer Mommy or Alvvays might do the trick. When my phone was charged enough I pulled over Plimsoll Punks into the Shimmer app. Maybe this song would work. Or maybe I’d end up heaving to Doll Parts in front of Mom’s driveway again or maybe worse next time. I reconsidered calling her. But even if Mom believed that I was her Sarah, I would never hear the end of it. I placed the iPhone back to charge and lied down on the bed, my mind reeling until exhaustion took over.

The following morning Edith greeted me with a set of her mom’s business attire and she took me to her place of work teaching kids computers at a place called the Bartels Foundation.

“When I got sober, my sponsor took me here and I learned the basics,” Edith said. “Eventually, I got into coding. I’m taking classes at night and learning about how to create websites.”

“Html,” I said.

“You know html,” she asked with a hint of excitement.

“Not personally, but I’m familiar with basic web design.”

“It’s hella cool, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“The World Wide Web,” she sighed dreamily. “I can just imagine what it’ll be like in the next few years, you know?” Edith added. “Information freely flowing, no longer bound by race or nationality or even language. It’s gonna change everything!”

It was apparent that Edith was in love with the possibilities for this brand new thing called “the Internet,” which made me smirk. By 2020, the Internet had become a necessary evil, a lot like Crocs. We were online most of our waking days streaming TV shows, doing research, shopping, masturbating, and getting our news from unreliable sources that further ruptured any remaining sense of common cause as a nation or as a people. Far from what a young Edith envisioned, the Internet had become a cesspool of spyware, Russian bots, and conspiracy theories. And the industry would devour anyone, including her, for profit. I had to remind myself that I wasn’t supposed to change history, hers, mine, anybody’s no matter how shitty history ended up being. Yes, the Internet did change everything. She was right about that.

“Yeah, it’s something else,” I replied plaintively.

“Hey, maybe you could help teach web design,” she said as she parked outside the Bartels Foundation. “I have some pull with the director.”

It seemed a bit ironic that I would be teaching the woman who would one day teach me, but I agreed to meet with the director of the Bartels Foundation. I filled out an application and lied by listing my date of birth as 1960. It was a double lie, not only because I was born in 1980, but also because being born in 1960 would make me only 34.

I spent the next several days with Edith watching her teach teenagers the basics, which was how she taught me, and I got a gig designing the Bartels Foundation’s website. In her office I saw Edith work on programs for a class she was taking at Merritt College. I watched her at work and was blown away. Even now while she was still new to coding, her style was like music. She was brilliant, a virtuoso, and she deserved so much more. It’s not your place to change things, Sarah.

A week had passed. Edith and I were driving down Oakland Avenue in the rain to get some coffee before the meeting, and something struck me. She drove so carefully. That was how Edith always drove, even when she was this young, even while Prince was playing. He was still alive here, both of them were. I pushed the thought aside as she parked and we ran into Blackbird.

“Hey, I got this,” I said as we got to the counter. Ms. Bartels officially hired me this morning and gave me an advance in cash as though she knew how desperate I was. The barista making our lattes seemed distracted watching something on the TV.

“What’s going on,” Edith asked.

“You wouldn’t believe it,” he said. “OJ Simpson? They issued an arrest warrant for him, and he fled. He’s in that Ford Bronco right now being chased by the cops!”

I couldn’t help but let out a yip of laughter, which didn’t go over well. I had been following the OJ Simpson docudrama the week before shimmering here. It was crazy seeing it happen in real time…again.

“Are they doing a slo-mo replay?” Edith asked.

“Nah, OJ Simpson’s just driving slow,” the barista said.

“OJ’s not driving,” I added.

They gave me a quizzical look. We took our coffees and sat at our usual spot with the abstract painting of rain…Hmm. I never realized that’s what it represented until that moment. The gray streaks with the smears of red, it was rain washing away something, maybe? It looked like how the storefront windows were dappled in rain. The rain…Edith always drove so cautiously. She was here with me now, with so much hope, so much potential. She was brilliant, but others would take advantage of her gifts. I couldn’t just let that happen, screw McFlyveon’s liability warning about altering the timeline.

“Edith.” I searched for the best way to tell her something impossible. “I have to tell you something, and you’re going to think I’m crazy.”

“I’ve already heard some of the craziest stories in the meetings, Sarah. Whatever you got to say, I’m sure…”

“I’m from the future.”

Total silence. The TV of the live newscast of the OJ Simpson slow speed chase filled the space.

“I’m serious, Edith. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m from the future.”

Edith shook her head in dismay. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, but I don’t appreciate you…”

“I swear! I’m not playing and I’m not crazy! Ah!” I snapped my fingers and dug into my purse fumbling for my iPhone. As I pulled it out, Edith stood up. “Look! It’s called an iPhone! I have my entire music collection. You want to hear Prince? I got him!”

Edith moved back cautiously. “Look, Sarah, whatever you got going on, I think you need help.”

She started walking away. I was about to lose her, and history would repeat itself. History…just then, overhearing the CNN correspondent narrating the slow speed chase, I remembered what was going to happen next.

“Al Cowlings!”

Edith stopped. “What?”

“He’s the one driving the Bronco. There’s about to be another call to 911 and it’s going to be Al Cowlings.”

Edith, the barista, and I waited and for a moment I thought I was either too early or too late, but then came the 911 call on live TV. “This is AC. I’m in the Bronco with OJ…”

Edith stood in shock. “H…how?”

“I know because I’m telling you the truth.”

We sat back down and I told Edith about the Shimmer app and handed her my iPhone. I looked up at the abstract painting of rain washing away the blood, as she scrolled through my iPhone, her eyes wide with wonder.

“Everyone has these in 2020? Incredible!” she said with hushed excitement. The barista was too concerned with OJ to look over. “So, not only will everyone be connected to the Internet, they’ll be able to communicate wherever they are. The end of the Cold War, and now this? The world of 2020 must be wonderful!”

I winced. “No, Edith, it’s not.”

“I don’t understand. This democratizes information.”

“It’s a tool like anything else, and it gets used to bludgeon the truth.”

I took her hand. “Edith, you are the genius I always wanted to be. And one day you’ll be one of the principal developers of Lyttr––a social media app. You’ll create something that will bring millions together like you always wanted, but your partners will cut you out before it goes IPO. And you’ll spend years in court seeking remuneration and they’ll delay and delay until one day when you agree to settle, it’ll barely cover your legal costs. And then you’ll be driving, and the police report said you took the curve too fast because you were driving recklessly and it was raining, but you never drive like that…” I didn’t want to tell her the ending, her ending. She didn’t need me to spell it out.

Edith mulled it over for a moment and then quirked her head. “Wait, by telling me this, aren’t you altering the timeline?”

“I sure as hell hope so.”

“You do? Why?”

Yeah, Sarah, why would you want to alter such a utopian world? I thought sardonically.

“That future you dream of, the one you and I tried to create, we became pawns for something twisted. Guys like your partners profit off the outrage, the misinformation, the chaos. People want to believe they’re right and the industries in charge take advantage of it.”

I thought of how toxic 2020 was even without the pandemic. If it wasn’t COVID, it was the belligerent nativism and racism masking itself as patriotism.

“But you and I can change that,” I added with a kind of optimism I haven’t felt in years. “I know what’s coming. Netscape in the next few months, Amazon, too, then Google, and then the social media sites like Myspace, Facebook and Lyttr. I know who the winners will be and we can use that.”

“So, you want to game the past just to make money?” she asked skeptically.

“No, Edith, I want to game the past to change it. You and I can invest in some startups, get entrenched into the emerging industry. And when the time is right, with your genius and my knowledge of how things went wrong the first time, we can build a better social media landscape, one on our terms!”

Edith scoffed. “But you just said it yourself; people want to be deceived, and there will be a market willing to cater to them.”

She did have a point. “True. But at least with us at the helm we can set the standards early on. I can’t make any guarantee we’ll succeed, but we at least got to try!”

Edith considered it. “You really think we can make the world a better place?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. But at least I don’t think that we can screw it up worse than what I left behind.”

“Knowing who the winners will be definitely has its advantages.”

“It worked for Julian,” I said under my breath, thinking back to the man who shimmered back to invest in Apple and Microsoft.

“‘Julian,’ Julian Vaughn?”

That took me by complete surprise. “You know him?”

“I never met him. But he was Jasmine Bartels’ business partner at V&B Capital. It’s why the Bartels Foundation exists.”

I chuckled. “I don’t suppose this is all just coincidence, huh?”

She shook her head and we laughed.

The rain had subsided and we headed back to her car. With my AirPods in her ears, Edith checked out some of the music I had been playing lately back up in 2020.

“‘If he don’t love you anymore, just walk your fine-ass out the door!’” she sang.

There would be a lot of work to do. I would need to establish another identity because I was clearly not 14. I heard on a spy thriller podcast how Russian illegals used to assume death identities. I can’t say it doesn’t contradict a program of honesty, but I’ll deal with that later. Acquiring seed money to invest in startups like Netscape and Amazon was going to be another challenge. Then it occurred to me that I did happen to know the final scores to every World Series, Final Four, and Superbowl from 1980 through 2005. I still had no idea who McFlyveon was or where my $3.99 went, but that wasn’t my lane. As for my inability to return to 2020, maybe it was because that 2020 no longer existed. It certainly wasn’t my home. This was with my best friend, and we had a new future to build.