Eleven-year-old Jace Baker had made a terrible decision by getting up fifteen minutes earlier than he had planned to on that lazy and hot summer Friday. Had he just waited around in bed a little longer, until noon perhaps, his mom might have told the visitor that he was still asleep, and to come back later. Which, given said visitor's typical noncommittal reputation, could have equated to not returning anytime soon. And just maybe, that would have kept the whole adventure from starting in the first place.
Instead, he was ensnared at the breakfast table in the kitchen, after minding his own business and gulping down the all-natural, organic, no artificial coloring cereal his mom had gotten at the downtown Whole Foods market. Last week, it was blueberry. Today it was strawberry. While he thought about the spice of life and his mom debated on one or two sugar cubes for her coffee, Uncle Wesley broke in via the back door, a wide smile on his face, his anything-but brawny arm holding the door open dramatically.
"Luce!" Wes exclaimed, being suddenly full of life, yet looking as if he had just aged a little since his last known appearance. "Lucy! I need to take the boy camping this weekend! We gotta… We gotta do some uncle-nephew bonding, you know?"
"The hell…" she grumbled and stress-squeezed a sugar cube, breaking it apart into her morning joe. She turned and greeted him with, "Are you on drugs?"
"No. Of course not. Never. Just… All right, listen to me." He closed the door and began a puppet show with his hands to emphasize his demands. "I just got back, from, uh, somewhere. T-the woods, yeah, that's it. I've seen all the nature, Sis! Really perked me up after, well, all these years of working a crappy job, coming home to a crappy apartment, and then sitting alone in the dark all night."
"So you went outside. Good for you." She then looked at her son, who was lazily pulling at his pajamas. "You hear that, Jace? Your uncle's just started his midlife crisis."
"Come on, what's he got to lose? Did he even go to any camps this summer? You know…" Wes put on his cheeky face. "If he stays cooped up in the house all of July, and then August, he'll probably turn out just like me. I mean, the way I am now."
Lucy compared the two, pinched and rubbed her upper nose, and sighed. "I have no idea why I still haven't taken that emergency key away from you."
"This is an emergency. Jace is wasting what remains of his youth! Look at the kid!" He put his elbow on his nephew's head and dug it into his hair, eliciting a subdued, unnerved growl from the boy. "He's about to enter the hell that is middle school. He needs a camping trip and some peace and quiet first. Just the weekend—he hangs out at my place today, I teach him some stuff, and we leave in the morning. That's all I ask."
"If you have to do something with me, take me to a movie, or King Arcade this weekend. I'm definitely not sharing a tent with you in some mud hole."
"A tent? Nah. We'll just be sharing a sleeping bag. Singular."
"Mom!" Jace whined. "Don't make me go!"
"He's joking about the sleeping bag," she assumed. "Okay, Wes. I'll entertain the idea. Where are you planning on having this little excursion?"
"Not far from here. Not like I want to walk or do that much work. So, probably the state park just outside town."
The adults watched as Jace, distracted from his cereal, took out his iPhone. Based on his gestures, he was likely looking at a map of Royal Valley and its surroundings.
"Tch. That's all the way out in the boonies. Let's just go to King Arcade."
"You only want to go to the amusement park because it's where all the Pokémon are. Holy crap, Jace, no one even plays Go anymore. It's 2020. Get with the times."
"They do to! And they just added over a hundred Pokémon in the latest update."
"Big deal. We had a hundred and fifty-one of them back before smart phones were even around. And I had all of them. I told you about that, right? How I won a Mew in the contest Nintendo Power put out? Didn't even have to push a truck."
"I really don't care about all the stupid shit you did in the 90s, dude."
"Jace!" Lucy crossed her arms and glared. "How many times do I have to—"
"Sorry," he apologized. "He just makes me so angry sometimes…"
"And Wes, if this is happening, no swearing, got it? His dad's enough of a bad influence on him. At least you don't drink. Or smoke. Or talk to women all night."
"Hey, no problem. Wait, crap, I forgot—isn't he with that loser this weekend?"
"He's in Vegas, for some business expo. And he just bought Jace another new video game, too, so he really probably would have stayed inside his room for days."
"Oh, awesome. What Mature-rated slaughterfest did he get for him this time?"
"It's something I was actually looking forward to playing…" Jace groaned.
"Well, sorry, but it's starting to look like all those achievements will have to wait. Complain all you want now, but by Monday, you'll be thanking me for the friggin' wicked weekend I'm about to dump on you."
"Are you actually making me do this, Mom?" Jace pleaded.
"I'm afraid that I've kind of warmed to the idea pretty quickly, kiddo."
"Ugh. I can't believe this… Whatever. Fine. But I'm bringing my headphones and loading up my phone with songs so I can ignore my dumb uncle the whole time."
Wes shrugged. "Fine with me. You put all of the gangster rap junk you want to on there. But if you drain the battery, I'm not giving you a recharge. Now go pack."
"You guys just ruined my day, and my whole summer!" Jace proclaimed and stormed off to his room, leaving behind a bowl of cereal-stained beige lukewarm milk.
"Despite my best efforts, he's reminding me more and more of you when you were his age," Lucy remarked as she brought the leftover cereal to the sink.
"Doesn't sound so bad when you say it like that. Hey, I was cool."
"All right, maybe I'll give you that, but he hasn't really made many friends. And he had a rough final year in elementary school. He needs… something."
"Eh, he'll find it, whatever it is he's good at and draws him in. He's a Colton."
"He's a Baker."
"Doesn't matter that he's kept his dad's last name. Doesn't change his genes."
"He's only a quarter of a Colton. Anyway, you need to take good care of him this weekend, maybe teach him a thing or two. I'll send you his list of emergency numbers."
"Luce, you have to back off a little before it's too late. I'm no parent, but I get that between your helicoptering and his dad being an idiot, he's angry and confused."
"He does have a worsening temperament…" she admitted. "Hey, don't you have to be at work today? It's Friday."
"I took it off. My boss complained about it, but I'm not afraid of that sociopath anymore. Besides, I just realized the importance of family bonding."
"Are you sure you don't have some ulterior motive here?" She looked at him questioningly. "You seem out of character all of a sudden. Almost… like a kid again."
"Nope. Trust me. It's all clean, and we won't even leave the city limits."
"Um, hold on, I just realized that Jace has never even been camping. I better go check that he's actually packing anything, uh… useful."
"Yeah. Yeah, good point."
Wes followed his year-younger half-sister down the hall and into Jace's messy room, where she knocked on the door but then opened it only a second later. As he did on every visit to the tween's domain, Wes took in the sight of the posters on the wall, mostly of pop and hip-hop artists competing for the most tattoos and craziest hair.
Jace complained right away, "Get out! I don't need help with packing!"
He was now in his standard wardrobe: some variety of khaki shorts, and a dark colored undershirt under his favorite long-sleeved blue light jacket. Unlike his loud tastes, he kept his 'style' simple and logo-free, to avoid unwanted social attention.
"Honey, are you getting the important things into that big backpack of yours?"
"I dunno, probably," he said and crammed in another wad of socks.
"Underwear," Wes advised. "Lots of underwear. You'll need it."
"Gross. I don't even want to know why."
"I'm just saying that we might be gone a little longer than you think. As in, like, it could be a long weekend."
"It's two days in some forest. Even if I'm bored out of my mind, it'll still be over before I know it. And maybe you'll get so bored that we'll go to King Arcade anyway."
"Geez, enough about the amusement park already. It hasn't even been updated in years. It's got rides falling apart. I know there's only one reason you want to go there."
"Jace, I really want you to enjoy this time with your uncle," Lucy said with a forcefully optimistic smile. "This is your chance to really get to know each other."
He looked at his mom, his uncle, and then longingly at his Xbox.
• •
While he navigated the empty late morning streets of downtown Royal Valley and passed between the city's only four office towers that could be considered tall, Wes complained about various things involving the current state of Main Street. Jace, barely listening from the back of the old and beat-up 2009 Nissan Cube, kept his lazy gaze on the outside surroundings—though doing so only confirmed his uncle's remarks.
"You see that corner?" Wes pointed out the gun and safe store near an alley where a homeless person was sleeping. "Charlie Pippin took on a dare to grab a handful of Dutch chocolate from that place, when it was a candy shop. Happened to be a cop outside that almost—came very close to grabbing him. Then he tripped while running away and dropped all of it into a storm drain, except for one piece. Saw the whole thing from the other side of the road with my friends. Kid brought it to school the next day and ate it in front of everyone. Then his dad burst into the cafeteria and dragged him out. He got sent to reform school, and we never saw him again past fourth grade."
Jace rolled his eyes and tried to satisfy Wes with a, "Neat."
"Getting old sucks. My classmates talked about that all year, and now, nothing. The story's just gone, like the store, and it's like that moment in time never happened. You gotta learn to appreciate the small stories, kid. Hell, even the Valley feels old now. It used to have streetcars going up and down Main Street. It used to command respect."
"Uh, it still does have street cars. Not like people don't drive on it."
"That's not what—ugh, Jace, little man, you gotta work on filling up the databanks up there. Streetcars, like San Francisco. Trolleys. Little trains that ran on those rails still dug into the middle of the road. There was a time when downtown was more than just pawn shops and hobos and maybe a single nice restaurant per block."
"I don't care about downtown, Unk. There's nothing to do here."
"There used to be. We even had the coolest little movie theater. Before the big chain multiplex opened up by the highway and ran it out of business. You'll see what I mean," he said and looked over to see if he had piqued Jace's curiosity yet. He had not.
Wes turned on the street that led to the inner-city apartments, up on a hill that provided a panoramic view of Royal Valley. It could have been an upscale place, but its residents had long refused to submit to gentrification, and local politics were so mired in corruption scandals that the city barely ever made sweeping changes anymore.
Wes pulled into one of the shaded carports that he paid extra for, and under the summer heat, led Jace to his second-floor apartment. The building was in disrepair and its faded pink paint was closing in on a bleached coral color—not that the junkies and Californian muscle heads lingering around outside cared about their home's appearance. Some of them eyed Jace's overstuffed and expensive backpack. He hated visiting Wes.
Once they were inside his messy-but-not-dirty apartment, Wes locked the door in the four ways it was possible to do so, checked the Velcro strap on his closed curtains, and then did a quick scan to make sure the place hadn't been broken into.
"Don't worry, I'll sleep on the couch tonight," he said as he hurried from spot to spot, giving everything a brief examination. "Feels like forever since I was last here…"
"What's going on with you?" Jace asked and dropped his backpack to the floor. "Is your home, like, bugged or something? Are you under surveillance?"
"No, no—of course not. Well, at least I shouldn't be. It's only been a few hours. Uh," he turned to his nephew, "hey, I gotta admit something. We're not really going camping. I don't even have any gear. But I figured it'd be the best excuse to use on your mom for a shut-in like you, to get you out of the house."
"Um, okay, whatever. If we're just going to hang out here, in town, how about we do it back at my house? I could show you some of the sick new games I got."
"No way, Jace. I still got plans for us. Big plans. I just… need a day to chill out and grab some things. Got a cool night in the works, too. Yeah. We're gonna run some errands first so I can take care of a bunch of crap, but when we get back, guess what?"
Wes picked something from his collection of movies on the shelf under his big flat screen, and tossed it over to Jace, who barely caught it. The discs still spinning in the case, he looked at the front and back, and didn't let his excitement levels budge.
"That's the Back to the Future trilogy. We're gonna watch it! The whole thing!"
"Aren't these, like, old 1980s movies or something?"
"I'm guessing you've never watched them," Wes said. Once Jace had shrugged his shoulders, he continued, "Classics, kid. And when we watch them, I want you to pay really close attention. Think of them as, mmm, homework—fun homework."
"Whatever. I'll do your dumb movie night—if you take me home tomorrow."
"Okay. Have it your way. Now let's get some lunch and do some boring stuff."
• •
Though Jace appreciated getting to go to a few of the stops along the way, like the Best Buy where his uncle spontaneously bought a new iPad to replace his really old one, most of the twelve places visited over the day bored him out of his mind. There was the bank, where Wes made took a few smaller containers out of his safety deposit box, and then the drug store, where he picked up a bag full of over the counter products along with a bottle of pills for his lone prescription, for his high blood pressure.
They had lunch at the oldest McDonald's in town as it began to rain, out near the derelict railroad tracks. Wes then made Jace wait in the car as he paid a visit to what must have been an old friend's house. The last stop was the former candy store near his apartment, where he emerged with a pricey combination lock attaché case.
"Got a good deal on this beauty," he said and patted its metal exterior before backing out of the roadside parking space. "And with that, we're all done!"
"So, what was all that?" Jace asked. "Are you robbing a place or something?"
"Ha ha. No. Just making some preparations. For the weekend."
Jace grumbled. "I don't want to be a part of whatever illegal junk you're about to do with, like, your card buddies or whoever."
Wes laughed. "You got quite an imagination. Or you watch too much TV."
After returning to the apartment with a locked case full of "supplies" in hand at around five o'clock, Wes took out his cell phone and prepared to dial a number.
"What do you want on your pizza?"
"Like, from Pizza Hut? Mom's gonna be mad enough already that you fed me McDonald's today. Even if I did only get a salad."
"No, no. Don't get me wrong, I grew up on that stuff and still order from them every blue moon, but I'm talking about the good product. From the fancy pizzeria down the street. And we are not having a movie night without pizza."
"Fine. Grilled chicken and spinach on my side."
"Do kids rag on you for being even just a little health conscious?" Wes asked and punched in the digits. "Not that I am. I don't judge. Unless it's something really stupid."
"They make fun of me for a lot of things," Jace groaned.
Jace then saw the scattered, plastered-over holes in the wall next to the front door frame and ran his hand over them, having never noticed them before.
An hour later, uncle and nephew were scarfing down slices from a box of the Valley's finest pie as Marty and Doc Brown were reunited in the past. Wes saw it as a miracle that a movie from the previous century had kept Jace's attention—at least for the most part. Every so often, he'd check his phone or text someone, but for a modern eleven-year-old, he was being fairly diligent on his movie-watching responsibilities.
Wes, however, having watched the franchise dozens of times, kept busy with his new tablet and only looked at the screen intermittently, when he wasn't tapping away.
"Your wi-fi really sucks," Jace said following a post-pizza crust belch, his eyes solidly on his phone during a slower moment in the film. "I can't even connect to this."
"Sorry, little dude. I happen to be downloading a lot of… things right now. What are you trying to accomplish over there, anyway?"
Jace gave up and leaned back into his side of the couch. "I just wanted to check my profile for one of the social games I'm on."
"Don't you have any offline games on that thing? Not that you should be playing it right now. Doc's about to give Marty another important lesson."
"No one makes completely 'offline' games for phones anymore."
"Doesn't surprise me. And I suppose they're all free, too, until you start putting hundreds on your mom's credit card for a bunch of virtual chairs or something."
"Do you complain about everything younger than you? You sound like a fogey."
Wes laughed off the comment, and the night went on until the trilogy was concluded and it was nearing midnight. Of course, Jace complained that it was "too early." And while Wes agreed, he added that they also had to get up early. Relatively.
"So, you got any questions about the series? Anything you didn't get?" he asked Jace, settling into the just-cleaned bed, with his arms all stretched out.
"I 'got' all of it, but I have two questions. Why are Marty and the Doc friends?"
"Heh, yeah, no one really knows. Not like it matters to the story."
"Also, why did 2015 look nothing like that, from the second movie?"
"Wishful thinking. Would'a been a pretty badass future if they had gotten it right though, huh? They didn't predict smart phones turning us into zombies, either."
Jace let out his final sigh for the night and rolled over in bed. Taking that as his cue, Wes turned off the light and went back to the living room—to finish preparing.
• •
Jace later woke up to the sound of his uncle moving around the apartment at eight in the morning. After unplugging his charged phone, he got up and looked into the kitchen as he rubbed his eyes, to find Wes finishing off the last two slices of pizza straight from the toaster oven tray and reading something off of his tablet.
"Wow…" Jace yawned. "Mom would never let me have pizza… for breakfast."
"Food is food," Wes reasoned. "Besides, I want the taste to linger for as long as possible. I'm gonna miss Mediterro. No one makes pizza quite the same way."
"Miss it? Is it closing or something? Hey, when are you taking me home?"
"Pretty soon. Just might not seem that way. Jace, get dressed and make sure everything you brought is in your backpack. We got one more thing to do."
Jace gave Wes a curious look before heading into the bathroom to change.
After reading one last news article and getting caught up with the present, Wes went to the kitchen window and gulped down the rest of his coffee. This was the oddest it had felt to him so far as greeting a new day went, and it had been a long time coming.
After Jace emerged in the same clothes he had on yesterday, Wes went in and cleaned up as best he could. He then found his nephew waiting by the door, ready to go.
"Our next destination isn't out there, buddy. Come on, follow me."
Jace did so reluctantly, worried that Wes was about to be weird. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary, and he had already changed into tacky and outdated clothes.
In the kitchen, Wes held open the pantry's heavy, dark red wooden door with the hand not carrying his metal case. He had emptied the tiny closet of its food and shelves.
"Whatever you're trying to make me do, I'm not going in there."
"You're just going to have to trust me on this one. This will be really cool."
"No way." Jace crossed his arms. "Not gonna happen."
"Okay, look, I'll give you fifty bucks if you just stand in this pantry for a second."
Jace thought about it for another second and then walked right in without a word. Wes closed the door, took a deep breath, and tested something by moving his hand forward. Of course, in complete darkness, his nephew couldn't see anything.
"All right, it's still there," Wes said. "I want you to do exactly what I say. Stick by me, but get ready to run. And also… Say goodbye to 2020."
"W-wait, what? What the heck are you—"
Wes placed both of his hands on the overstuffed backpack and shoved, pushing the boy straight out of the pantry and back into the light. Unable to keep balance, he launched his arms out to keep himself from hitting the floor.
"Grr…" he growled angrily and looked back, expecting to see his uncle standing above him, laughing like a frat boy. "You jerk, what did… you…"
He had trailed off upon seeing the strangely colored door still shut. Wondering what Wes was playing at, he twisted back around to push himself up, but then noticed the kitchen tile—the checkerboard pattern was a completely different color. He looked up again, to see an unfamiliar living room past the arched entryway. The smell of smoke entered his lungs, along with the blaring sound of the old tube TV a few dozen feet away, blasting out the morning news brought in through the rabbit ears on top.
"Hon, did you hear something?" a woman's voice suddenly shouted from another room. "Sounded like someone's in the kitchen."
A moment later, she emerged, in a bathrobe and with curlers in her hair. She paused, stared at Jace for a second, and let out a shrill scream before running off.
"This is when we run," Wes said, suddenly behind Jace. "These two are crazy."
He helped him off the floor, and before Jace could begin to comprehend any of what was happening, the bearded, smelly, tank top-wearing husband emerged, an old and greased up double-barreled shotgun already in his hands.
"Just how in the hail did you two get in her'?"
"C'mon, kid!" Wes grabbed his hand. "I'm sure he isn't afraid to shoot you, too."
"W-what's going on?!" Jace stammered as he was pulled through the secondary kitchen entrance, which led to the hallway for the bedroom and bathroom.
"Don't talk. We just have to focus on getting out of here."
"Son of a bitch!" the man yelled. "Babe, we got two robbers in the house, must'a climbed in through the kitchen winda! I think one of 'em's a dwarf!"
"A-a dwarf?" Jace said, exasperated as he caught a glimpse of his uncle's bedroom, now with a bare, stained mattress and a freaked-out screaming woman inside.
"Almost there…" Wes said, having gotten himself and Jace up to the front door.
He worked on the chain lock and deadbolt, as Jace felt a panic attack coming.
"Damn lock's stuck again…" Wes grumbled. "Crap, hold on, I can fix this."
He began elbowing the doorknob to knock it back into place, his nephew having no idea how to define this chaos, but at least knowing that they had to escape this place.
"He—he's going to shoot us!" Jace exclaimed.
Wes stopped going at the door, saw that the tenant was taking aim at them with his shotgun, and then noticed where Jace was standing—as did the boy himself. It was right where the plastered holes had been in his uncle's version of the apartment.
Right as one of the triggers of the shotgun clicked, Wes jolted up and covered Jace's face with his sturdy metal case. The blast went off, hitting the aluminum shell and knocking it backward, smacking Jace in the forehead. It hurt some, but probably not as much as it could have had the case not been there at all. The gun owner, unprepared for the recoil and already having trouble with his balance, was knocked down to the floor.
Jace could feel his body becoming a statue and stammered, "W-w-wha…"
"Screw it, I'll never figure this knob out," Wes said and smashed it with his case.
It nearly broke off completely, and the door swung open. Before Shotgun Guy got himself back up amid his swearing, Wes took Jace under his arm and ran outside, into the hot morning air. After rushing down the concrete stairs and bounding across the shoe-melting parking lot, he stopped to catch his breath on the sidewalk.
"Dang, look at that…" Wes commented, rubbing the fresh impact crater on the case. "He just missed me last time. Forgot you might'a been standing there. Sorry, kid."
"W-what is going on?!" Jace screamed and pulled at his hair. "Where—"
"When," Wes immediately corrected. "Take a good look around!"
"T-that guy almost shot my face off, and you're calm about all this?"
"Oh, no, no. My heart's beating like a racehorse. I forgot how intense that is!"
"What… I don't… What is even… Uh…" Jace breathed and slowed down as his senses began to return and his eyes tried to process what they were seeing. "What the?"
The apartment building was bright pink. The people wandering around outside or shouting at others from the second floor were dressed in loud colors and had all manner of hairstyles that Jace had never seen on anyone in real life. He turned around when a convertible with chrome rims passed by, blasting out music about growing up in the 'hood', wherever that was. Then he looked down from the hill, at the city below.
His mouth dropped open. This was still Royal Valley, but definitely not 2020.
On a billboard: an ad for a show called Seinfeld. On the skyline under a cloudless sea of blue: three boring office towers instead of four. On the feet and wrists of passing teenagers: giant shoes, and watches with a built-in calculator number pad. On a run-over tabloid in the road next to a bright red streetcar passing by: a sensationalist headline about a man on trial. Someone named Simpson. The city was a big bizarre time capsule.
"Man, I thought I'd be able to get out of there without being shot at if I took the hallway instead," Wes said, dusting himself off. "Guess not. Oh, and don't worry about him coming out and chasing us around. We won't see him again."
"U-Uncle Wesley… What did you do? W-where did you bring me?"
Wes smiled and whistled the first three notes of the Back to the Future theme.
"Jace…" he put his hand on his shoulder and swept over the cityscape in an aggrandizing way with his other, attaché case-laden hand, "you're in 1995, bud!"
"This has to be some kind of joke… W-we didn't… We didn't just go…"
"Back in time? Yeah, man! We totally did! And it's all the same, too! This is the exact moment that I arrived the first time. Ah, it's great to be back. Again."
"H-how…" Jace rubbed his throbbing forehead. "This is… This is crazy."
"I know. Yeah, it is. Come on—I'll explain everything, but we gotta take care of something important first. There's a used car lot just down the road. And this time, I brought moooo-lah!" He held up the damaged case and patted it. "C'mon, let's go."
His legs shaking and his mind muddled, Jace followed behind, sticking by his guardian like a frightened, confused child—which, to be fair, he was at the moment.
This was Royal Valley, all right. No doubt. Most of the buildings were still there, but everything was painted in a color of difference. It wasn't just the giant stereos people carried on their shoulders, or the sassy poses they struck as they chatted with friends on the corners, or that no one was texting. It was also the air; it definitely smelled worse.
"I'd tell you everything right now, but you're probably so mystified by all this that you wouldn't take anything in. Let's start slow like. Your head okay?"
He felt it again, nodded, and breathed out, "That guy fired a shotgun at me…"
"Yeah, I dunno why the portal chose my apartment. Then again, maybe it just picked me, and one of its previous inhabitants happened to be a murderous psycho."
"Is this really happening…? We went… twenty-five years into the past?"
"You can still do math, after getting a little rattled. That's a good sign."
They turned a corner, and a used car lot came into view. It was little more than a dirt plot with cars on top in between two actual buildings. At first, Jace thought he was reading another language as he deciphered the lettering on the fluttering banner.
"Ol' 'Onest Odie… Yep," Wes said. "Dunno about the word in the middle, but he closes fast and takes cash. See that one?" He pointed to a once-green, rusted old 1978 AMC Gremlin. "That's the car I had last time. Not making that mistake again."
They walked between some yellow balloons and onto the lot. The small brick shack ahead had large, wall-sized windows that gave them a look inside, where two middle-aged balding men in checkered suits were meeting with other customers.
"Aw, there she is." Wes stopped in front of a much newer 1987 Honda Accord, its light blue paint job intact. "Came really close to getting it before, but someone else got to it just as I had the money. Good thing Dad taught me how to use a stick."
Jace took notice of how rectangular all of the cars were, but at the moment, still couldn't take in too much at once. He followed his uncle up to the entrance under the shady overhang, where he turned to him and then dug into his pockets.
"Here." He handed him a quarter and a dime. "Get yourself a soda and wait for me. This is just boring adult stuff. Soak in what you see, relax—but don't go anywhere. Should only take a half-hour or so. Then we'll head to the mall and I'll explain all this."
"Y-yeah…" Jace mouthed. "Okay."
He took the change and was left alone. He soon waddled up to the Coke machine—one of the ancient ones, from the 1960s. At thirty-five cents, it was the cheapest he had ever seen a can of sugary beverage. He dropped the coins in and got a Sprite, which rattled around loudly before it hit the slot, and was only a little cold.
He slid down the side of the building and sat on the pavement, where he opened up his drink and began to take sips. He recognized this street corner. The space would later become a Rite Aid, and even that was around since long before he was born.
Unable to think about the bigger questions like the how and the why, Jace only focused further on his surroundings and those walking by. So much denim. If people weren't wearing jeans, they at least had it in their vests, many of which had colorful buttons or sewn patterns. Backwards baseball caps were also a common sight.
He became conscious of his own clothes, and how "solid" they looked. His shirt, shorts, and coat were sleek and simple, free of imagery or unneeded puffiness. And his shoes—a pair of white Converses—looked small and tame in comparison to most of the local footwear. He now realized that here, his uncle's retro outfit made him fit in.
After finishing up his drink and snapping out of his defensive meditative state, he took out his phone and checked for a signal. No service at all. He went into his photo album and looked at the most recent one of him and his mom, at a baseball game.
"Let's go," Wes said once he emerged after some more time passed, with a key in one hand. "And be careful with that. Thing's probably worth… like, ten billion dollars here. Some company could probably reverse engineer it, advance tech by years, become a monopoly, and all of a sudden the singularity's happening back in our time. Or worse."
Jace pocketed it and went with Wes to their new car, which started on the first try. He smiled, felt the dashboard, buckled up, and tossed his case in the back.
"Mom says I'm too young for the front seat…" Jace said as pulled at his seatbelt.
"No worries. Your side doesn't have an airbag yet, and I don't plan on crashing." The tires squealing, Wes took off down the road and asked, "So, you uh, you starting to acclimatize some? You know, at least kind of accept what's going on?"
Jace shook his head. "N-not really, no…"
"Ah, don't worry. Took me a while, too. At first."
"You keep saying you did this before…"
"Yeah, 'cause I did! It was great. Did all sorts of crazy things. I'll tell you how it went in a bit. Now here's the thing. I had you watch all three of those movies, to give you something of a primer about time travel. I still dunno how differently it works in real life, but the short of it is, we don't want to mess around too much with the past—you know, change things. Especially when it concerns the young version of me and your mom. We're altering things just by being here, but a full-blown paradox would probably not be good for either of us. Follow my lead and take it one step at a time for a while."
"Why… did you bring me with you?"
"Well, gee, maybe I just wanted to spend some time with ya? Most weekend getaway ideas bore the crap out of me, but this is something special, right here. You and the old me—we're just about the same age right now! It was perfect timing!"
"The same age…"
"Yeah! You get to see the world I saw at ten, while being just past ten yourself! That kind of, um, works out pretty well, doesn't it? And maybe when we're all done with this journey, you'll, uh, you'll take something away from it. Learn some stuff."
Jace watched the landscape outside as it transitioned from the taller downtown buildings to the miles of suburbs, and eventually to the strip malls beyond them.
And then the large neon palm tree marquee of the Westfield Royal Valley Mall appeared, although at this point in time, it was simply known as the "Valley Mall". The exterior and the parking lot and its lights hadn't changed, though it was all much cleaner.
Once they were inside, Jace felt like he had left a time capsule and entered a place where time didn't exist. There were different stores, sure, but other than some extinct chains and a skylight of an older design, the mall was identical to the one he knew.
"Didn't come here a lot on my previous visit," Wes said as they headed to the food court. "It's cool seeing old stores that aren't around anymore, but it isn't all that much 'past-y' otherwise. If you wanna see 90s teens, though, this is where you go."
"It's pretty empty right now…" Jace observed.
"Oh, yeah. Forgot to tell you—this is a Tuesday. Even during summer, you're not gonna find too many people here on a late Tuesday morning. So… let's get some early lunch and hang out. You… want more pizza? The Sbarro's still around right now."
Feeling like he had little appetite, Jace shook his head.
The Grande Court, where the food lived, was even more spacious, as it had yet to get its space-consuming carousel. Like the rest of the mall, it even smelled the same, and so far felt like the most familiar place. Out of the ten restaurant options, only three still existed twenty-five years later. Wes wasn't hungry either, so he ended up with just a soda and a mall pretzel, while Jace settled for a scoop of ice cream.
"So… Do you want to start asking questions, or should I just start talking?" Wes asked after dipping a pretzel piece into his cup of gooey cheese.
Jace opened his mouth to speak, but couldn't find the words, so he instead stuck in a tiny amount of ice cream. Wes took a sip of his drink and took a deep breath.
"Man, this mall Pepsi… Some things just never change in taste. Okay. Here's the rundown. I literally found that portal in my pantry door yesterday morning."
"You mean, like… On the day you came over?"
"Yep. And technically, I was at your place before I even originally found it."
"Okay, back up. What did you do? Did you make a way to travel back in time?"
"What? Do I look like Christopher Lloyd, strike you as an eccentric inventor? I have no idea where that thing came from, or why it's on one side of the door and the exit is on the other. I just happened to drop something while making breakfast and saw it go straight through. So I stuck my hand into the wood and watched it disappear. Then I stuck my phone in, took a picture, and brought it back to the present. I saw the old version of my apartment—the one with the shotgun maniac. So, naturally, the next step of the scientific study was to, you know, stick my head in and look for myself.
"That guy's TV? It had a morning news story on, about the NASDAQ hitting a thousand for the first time the previous day—boring stock market stuff you don't need to worry about. The point is, back in the present, I Googled when that happened and I got to place the date. This is July 18th, 1995. We come in at 8:08 in the morning."
"So… You mean it's always the same time when we come through?"
"Seems that way. The news repeated itself every time I looked in, so there's that. When I finally stepped through all the way for the first time and just tried to, you know, look around—like in the fridge, on the newspaper on the table, or through the window, the Dick Cheney living there always eventually came running in to shoot at me. I would duck back into my time, right in front of him, and just to make sure he couldn't follow me, I'd jump back through for just a second to 'reset' his, uh, his hourglass."
"But why does time reset?"
"Why would I know that? I can only tell you what I've experienced, bud. All I get is that this thing works like it did in that Stephen King JFK show Hulu put out a few years ago, where a guy goes into the past to save Kennedy, but his 'save file' gets erased if he goes back to the past a second time. Wait, do you even know who Kennedy is?"
Jace took a bigger bite of ice cream and answered, "He was the president who got shot in Texas, I think."
"Yeah…" Wes sighed. "That was his only accomplishment. It's not like he started our space program or anything."
Jace shrugged and just looked at his uncle, waiting for more answers.
"And when you come back after going all the way in, you also reset the present. I actually reappear before I even discover the portal for the first time, about two hours earlier. I have to reach in first and knock down my pantry shelves, or I'd probably warp into and fuse with them, or something really nasty like that."
"But what do these times have to do with anything?"
"The one in the present? No idea. But… the one we came in through? When I was here last, I started writing in a journal. You know, to keep track of things, daily events, make notes, that kind of stuff. It took some digging, but after a year, I—"
Jace choked on one of his sprinkles. "A year?! You spent an entire year here?"
"Yeah, it was great! I did and saw so much, man! After I went to Independence Day the following July—basically the ultimate 90s movie in my opinion—I decided to end things on a high note and head home. And then I wanted to show you all this.
"Things did start pretty crappily, though. When I first realized what year the portal led to and saw my chance to escape the mundane and pointless existence I was living, I was a little too anxious to get started, and didn't prepare too much. Basically just raided the coin jar and took out all the quarters from 1995 or earlier—so I could actually use them without breaking the universe. Came in with about ten bucks in change. Not nearly enough to survive on. But I got by… somehow, with my charm and charisma."
"Uh-huh… So, you probably conned people."
Wes pleaded the fifth and continued, "I wanted my second trip to be a lot more comfortable, so I made my notes and brought a few things. Like some… knowledge of where the stock market will go. Now don't freak out, okay? I'm not aiming to pull a Biff and get rich. I just want enough to get by, without having to work for it. And I used the 'technology of the future' to get us some fake IDs and backgrounds. I also stuck all the cash I earned last time into a box in the bank so I could use properly dated bills."
Jace thought for a second and raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure that money's still in your case? I mean, if you reset time to before you earned them, then…"
"You're a smart kid, but yeah, I checked and they're still there. Don't ask me how all this time-space-causality junk works. Maybe they were duplicated. Anyway, I learned that the moment that King Arcade turned its main power on for the first time, was also when the time gate appeared. The park doesn't officially open until Saturday, though."
"That's… weird," Jace said and finished his ice cream.
"It could just be a coincidence, but I dunno. Whenever the portal on this side came into existence, it also sent one into the future, at exactly 6:14 A.M., right on my pantry door. And I found it soon after. So that's all I know about the hole itself."
"But what if, like, you're the reason we're here, on this exact day? Like, you found this thing, and it sensed your burning desire for this year, so it sent you back to it?"
"I don't think rips in the fabric of time and space are sentient beings out to fulfill wishes, Jace. I didn't make the hole in my door or choose its destination. Not that I'm complaining. If I got to go back to just one year in the decade, yes, I'd choose this one."
"I dunno." Jace slumped into his chair. It felt like his shorts suddenly became lighter, but he ignored it and asked, "What's so great about this decade, anyway? I'm kinda tired of seeing Tumblr posts from 90s kids, talking about how awesome it was and how anyone younger than them 'just doesn't get it.' Whatever 'it' is."
"W-well, what's so great about 2020? And we're not all like that. I'm not some hipster dou—er, d-bag who goes on espousing how this decade was better than any of the other ones, but it was still my childhood. You can't blame me for wanting to go back. Oh, and be careful with your words. No one knows what 'social media' is yet."
"Who says it's great? I dunno if it is yet. Not like I chose when to be born."
"Okay, so look, I'm not crapping all over your generation just 'cause you first logged in on a specific year. But we were the last one to have a number attached. Like, what are you, a 'ten's kid'? Doesn't work. And you, what, you and your contemporaries will be known for your dedication to spending all day upvoting memes, misspelling the word 'lose' online, and making anime character art in Minecraft 2?"
Jace glared at him. Minecraft didn't even have a sequel, yet.
"I'm kidding. I won't insult you and everyone your age on this adventure. Much. Come on, let's check out the mall, and I'll try to tell you why it's pretty cool being here."
With Jace at his uncle's side and looking around at as many things as he was—like the many gone and forgotten stores—the two traversed the mall from one side to the other. Wes reminisced but tried not to become too preachy about the past.
"Heh, there's the EB Games." He pointed out the store. "Got my first Nintendo system there… You've only ever known it as a GameStop, of course. Anyway…"
"Is that a toy store? In a mall?" Jace asked, noticing a KB Toys in between two clothing stores—one a Gadzooks, the other a shuttered Merry-Go-Round.
"Heck, yeah. You don't see those much anymore, right? Great little place, used to go in there all the time. I remember coming here first thing in the morning with Charlie Pippin once when we were eight, so we could get our hands on this brand-new NERF machine gun thing that could fire, like, five darts a second. And then we ran around the mall shooting each other until security kicked us out."
"Okay, Charlie sounds cool and all, but what did you do as a kid?"
"What'd I do?" Wes stopped outside the JCPenney. "I did it all, baby!" Having reached the end of the road, they turned around and he went into detail. "Movies, TV—kids shows and the more adult ones—music, both indoor and outdoor activities, arcades, birthday parties, pranks, causing trouble on field trips. I was the king of fifth grade, and at being ten. It was my prime. As… sad a thing that might be to admit now. And I was still cool in middle and high school, sure, but I tell ya, bud… This was the year for me. It just all came together, you know? Oh, but sports—I played a little baseball, but I didn't follow sports. So don't ask me about teams and good games. I got nothing for you."
Jace shrugged. "I don't really watch sports, either. Maybe just the World Series."
"And, look, like I said, I know I can't be a kid again. I can't just re-feel the magic of being young and discovering everything for the first time. But I don't mind a chance to watch a rerun from afar, getting to see all the DVD extras, and the cut footage, and what all the other cameras were filming, you know? You follow me?"
"I guess so. Kind of. Is this how all adults think about the past?"
"Uh, anyway, so 1995 was kind of the last gasp of the eighties—And I love that decade, too. Can't have one without the other. Next year, the Nintendo 64 comes out and the PlayStation starts taking off, so games in three dimensions will have hit the mainstream. And it'll also be when AOL really starts creeping into people's homes, which begins the big ol' World Wide Webolution. I won't be connected until next July, and let me tell you… Whew, that's a big one. Changed everything about my life."
"Wait, there's no internet yet?" Jace was nearly panicking again.
"No—no, there is, and has been, but it's… uh, it's pretty basic right now. Then we got DVDs coming down the pipe, Steve Jobs returns to Apple… Yep, this year was really the crossroad for a lot of things, my early childhood included."
"Apple…" Jace murmured, just before patting his pockets in desperation. "My phone! Crap, it must've fallen out of my stupid pocket! Everything falls out of them!"
"Great. I told you to be careful with it!" Wes put his hands on his nephew's shoulders, as if trying to be a serious, responsible adult. "Where do you think it is?"
"It must'a fallen out at the food court! Um, I'm really sorry Uncle Wesley! Uh, so, d-does this mean the galaxy will implode or something?"
"It hasn't yet, so that must mean we still have a chance. Come on!"
He grabbed Jace's small little hand and took off, nearly dragging him through the other half of the mall, back to the food court. Luckily for them and the stability of the universe, security was lax that morning and there was no one around to stop them from running across a quarter-mile length of brown and tan mall tile.
"Damn," Wes grumbled once they stopped at the edge of the food court. "Looks like there's a kid at our table. And he's playing with something."
"He has my phone!" Jace exclaimed once he noticed that the young blond boy sitting alone had his matte black iPhone 8 in his hands, and was banging it on the table.
"So go get it back," Wes commanded.
"How am I supposed to do that? Oh, man, I really messed up. I bet you didn't screw up this bad. You were probably really careful like you keep telling me to be."
"Uh, yeah, actually… No, you're right, I was perfect. But, Jace, you're gonna have to learn how to solve problems and deal with all of people of the past. Now go confront that six-year-old and make him give your scary piece of future tech back."
Jace took a deep breath, swallowed, and walked up to the first-grader. For a few moments, he only stood there, hoping to be noticed as he tapped his fingers together.
"Um, excuse me…" he spoke up. "I think you have, my, uh… my shiny glass brick. C-could I, um, you know, could you give it back to me?"
The boy looked up at him, then back down again and started hitting the screen with his fist. Jace peered back at his uncle, who gave him a "push it" hand gesture.
Jace huffed and tried again. "Okay, you gotta give me back my stuff… Okay?"
The kid wiped some snot from his nose, which was then transferred to the screen when he started running his fingers across it. As someone who wanted to keep his phone in pristine condition, Jace watched this crime in horror.
"Enough already! G-give it back! Right now! It's mine!"
The thief finally responded, "Your clothes are stupid-lookin'."
"Y-yeah? Well, your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt is really lame and ugly."
"What is dis thing?" The child asked as he started poking at it again. "Is it a little pocket TV or something? How do'you turn it on?"
"Y-you like taking stuff that doesn't belong to you? I'm gonna tell mall security, and then they'll arrest you. So if you ever want to see your parents again—"
The boy had suddenly discovered the home button, and his greasy little finger had used it to turn on the screen. Like a radiant treasure from the heavens, his young eyes were blasted by the bright, high-resolution colorful pixels that formed the smiling kitty cat on Jace's lock screen. It was pure anachronistic splendor.
Right as Jace braced himself for the subsequent annihilation of the timeline, Wes, having appeared behind the kid, plucked the hardware from his two slimy hands. His pupils still wide, the annoying boy tried grabbing at it like Wes was his older brother, cruelly dangling his favorite toy above him just out of arm's reach.
"You really need to try harder on the whole not-screwing-up thing," Wes advised after wiping off the screen and tossing the phone to Jace, who fumbled with it a bit.
Of course, with no other options, the kid began to scream and cry about it.
Wes took Jace's hand again and began their escape. "We've done enough damage here for one day. We got other places to go, anyway."
A man then rushed by them, carrying a tray of mall food. "André? What are you crying about? Hey, you all right?"
The two stopped and turned near the exit, to watch the dad put the food on the table and try to settle down his son. Once the little brat began to accusingly point at them from across the food court, Wes and Jace finalized their hasty retreat.
Unbeknownst to the two time travelers, they just barely evaded a second possibly hostile entity. In an event that only lasted for several moments, a small rip in space-time appeared up near the corner under the skylights. A metal sphere floated out from the place on the other side, took a few pictures, and ran a quick scan of the space. Before any of the mall-goers could see it, it returned to from where it came.
Back in his uncle's car, Jace made sure his phone still worked before shoving it as far back into his pocket as he could. As they left the parking lot, he felt bad for screwing up, but then again, he didn't ask to be brought into the past in the first place.
"We're going to go do some shopping at Target, find you some replacements for those 'future clothes' you got on. You'll really need to start working on fitting in."
"But everyone's clothes I've seen so far are pretty ugly."
"Eh, it's not all bad. So far, this is just summertime fashion in California."
"Uncle Wes, why did you really bring me here? What are we even doing?"
"Seriously, I just wanted to have a nice weekend with ya, buddy."
"Okay, but did it have to be one where we could destroy everything by making a dumb mistake? The more I think I about it and all the ways we could screw stuff up…"
"Hey, I agree that we should be as careful as we can, but after what happened back in there, on top of all the mistakes and changes I had to have made last time… I'm starting to think that time has a way of correcting itself. At least the small things."
"Hm. Does the present even exist right now? Like, do any of these changes mean anything until we go back? And if we make a paradox thing, does it happen right away?"
"Uh…"
"If I went back alone and returned, does my time reset, so I'm stuck in the past of the past, always out of sync with you like I'm lagging really bad in an online game? And if everything resets because I came through again, does that mean the later-you and me live in two different worlds all of a sudden? And what if—"
"Okay, slow down. I don't really know the answer to any of that, and I stopped thinking about it all myself a loooong time ago. Stop thinking so much and live in the moment, little dude. Just try your hardest not to mess things up while you're at it."
"Well…" Jace sighed. "It's not like I had big plans for the summer. But… I do kinda want to get back to my new game. So can we go home by next Monday?"
"So you're cool with our little visit to the past now, huh?"
"Wouldn't mind seeing King Arcade open on Saturday. I guess. I mean, you know… it's something to do. It's not like I want to stay that long or anything…"
Wes let out a tiny laugh, and at a stoplight, checked the glove box for goodies. A cheap pair of sunglasses was left inside, waiting to be taken and slid on. Once the light changed, he shifted into first, put one hand on the wheel, and took off like a hot-rodder.
Jace was unsure if his enthusiasm for his uncle's crazy getaway would last, but for now, he couldn't help but smile as they passed by a Blockbuster video rental store. He had no idea what the place sold, but maybe it wouldn't be so terrible to find out.