The Flamingo was a single-story apartment complex built in the early 1960s, and the kitschy Florida-chic living space hadn't been updated since. They were the cheapest 'safe location' apartments in the city, and they happened to be just a few blocks away from the duo's temporal insertion point that Wes had promised to monitor.
"Oh, man…" Jace groaned right after his uncle opened the door to their new living space. "What a dump. Does this place even exist anymore?"
"Nope. Torn down and replaced by condos in our time." Wes dropped the bags of stuff from the hotel onto the faded tile and looked out from the dusty, broken blinds of the living room's only window. "Every time we drove by The Flamingo, I wondered what kind of lonely, strange people must've lived here… Guess it was us all along!"
"This is ten times worse than our hotel."
"Could be, but it's our place to live the bachelor life."
"Don't you need, like, credit to rent out an apartment?"
"Do you even know what credit is? Sometimes you're too smart for your age. I got the money to keep us here. For now. And look, we even got a TV!"
"It has dials…" Jace observed, looking at the small tube on a nightstand in the middle of the room, in front of a ratty old brown couch. "And antenna things."
"Rabbit ears. If we end up staying long enough, we'll get cable."
"What happens to all my TV show research?"
"Uh… Maybe we'll get cable a little sooner than expected. Hey, why don't you hook up the consoles we still have for a few days? I got something in the trunk."
"Is it a dead body?" Jace asked as Wes handed him the two game systems.
"Oh, yeah. The first version of you that I time traveled with."
Jace actually gave that a passing thought as he stood there with the consoles and Wes went back out to the car to fetch one last item, leaving the door open.
Shortly after he managed to hook up the Super Nintendo, Wes re-emerged as a silhouette in the sun-filled doorway, holding a large cardboard box, marked 'Goodwill' on the side. He huffed, closed the door with a foot, and put the heavy load on the floor.
"What do you got in there?" Jace wondered.
Wes opened the top and pulled out an old beige computer tower, made long before aesthetics were seen as important on most hardware exteriors.
"A PC from 1992!" he exclaimed and plopped the obsolete monolith onto the coffee table. "I got a good deal on it. We don't need anything too special."
"A computer? Even I don't use the one in our house most of the time…"
"Because your generation is content with staring at your little phone screens all day. There was a time when you needed actual machinery to connect to the world." Wes pulled out the small CRT monitor, the modem, a mouse, a big mechanical keyboard that was missing the semicolon key, and a wire wad. "This is the final frontier of media for us to explore. Well, I guess we should buy some pop music CDs at some point also…"
"Right. And then my training will be complete, and I'll be a true 90s kid."
"You're not good at sarcasm, Jace. You're too obvious. Look, right now there is still a clear divide in console and PC gaming. The graphics and sound quality of something on this slightly antiquated baby is miles ahead of those consoles. Not that it renders their games inferior, but it's just, you know, a different experience. Used games are real cheap, too," he added, pulling out some beat-up game boxes.
"Don't you have to install them first? See, that's why I still like consoles more. You just put the games in or download them and then they work."
"Yeah, and these early Windows systems can be a pain to configure right. I'm well aware of the cons. But this gives us one very big pro." He held up the modem. "We can get online! I always wondered what AOL was like on its outset. I didn't get connected until '98. Might be some interesting stuff to see that no longer exists. But first… I have to install Windows 3.1." He took out a large manual. "Ugh, this might take a while."
"Aren't you more of an Apple guy?
"Sort of. I mean, I use both, and can do DOS too. I am in IT, remember? When I was growing up…" he recollected as he started hooking up the monitor and tower now taking up the entire coffee table, "Mom had the Mac, Dad had the PC. I liked the Mac system more—it looked nicer and felt friendlier, but Dad's computer had more games. And he kept up to date on them, so I had a lot to play when I visited. Man, the hours I spent… Sim games, Kid Pix, Duke Nukem, Doom… I could go on and on. I managed to grab a few classics this morning, while you were sleeping off last night's salt overload."
Jace rolled his eyes and asked, "What do we need the internet for? Aren't websites, you know, really simple and bad right now?"
"Sure. But the bulletin boards and chat rooms might be a little interesting. I also need a computer to hook up to the monitoring equipment I'm hoping to get soon."
"What the heck is a chat room?"
Wes paused and stared at him. "Oh, Jace… The things you've missed."
"Are you gonna explain, or just insult kids my age… again?"
"Before memes and trolls and subreddits and other internet message boards dumped garbage all over the web and divided and sub-divided mass communication, us early internet kids and teens were a little more… united, maybe—a little happier, or naïve, or innocent, or something like that, in the chat rooms you could hop in and out of. They were like a party on the early internet, with people, just talking whatever, maybe asking for your age-sex-location. I met some interesting characters through them."
"Mom doesn't like it when I talk to strangers."
"That's probably for the best, but still, if you spend some time lurking in them and not saying anything, it's a good way to gauge what people are thinking and talking about, pick up on lingo, get in the know on certain subjects, you get me? Oh, but don't go pulling a John Titor if you decide to start chatting away, too."
"Wait. Who's this John guy?"
"Ah… Heh, he brings me back…" Wes finished with the computer set up and turned it on, its large hard drive whirring and clicking. After cracking his knuckles, he put in a few DOS commands on the screen with nothing but white text and loaded the first of the six Windows installation floppies. "He was a supposed time traveler."
"What, really? Maybe he has something to do with all this."
Wes chuckled. "Nah. No, it was almost assuredly just an elaborate, well-crafted hoax that had a lot of people fooled. Guy started appearing on message boards in the very early 2000s, if I remember right. Claimed to be a time traveler from the 2030s, and had come here to look for an old IBM to take back and save the world or something. It wasn't a story I followed religiously as it developed, but it stuck with me over the years."
Jace fell onto their provided couch. "But none of that was real, huh…"
"Very most likely not. But the effort they put into the technology they described and their timeline made you kind of want to believe."
"We can't really be the first time travelers…" Jace murmured. "There has to be someone else. We're not important enough."
Wes looked at him as the installation started. "What do you mean not important? Maybe we don't have name recognition yet, but depending on what we do…"
"I don't think we should try to get famous, Uncle Wes. As long as we're stuck here, we should be safe and responsible. That's what Mom would want."
"If your mom was here calling the shots on our adventure, we wouldn't be having any fun at all. There would be way too many rules."
"Yeah, and for good reason. Who knows how many people won't be born now because we're messing around, not paying attention to what we're doing."
"We've hardly done anything that would mess with other people, bud! We've kind of kept to ourselves, you know? Besides, like I told you, if we do screw stuff up that much, we can just pop in and out of the time rip to reset it all."
"And then all the money you spent here kind of just disappears, huh?"
Wes thought about that and replied, "Guess that's the price of a cool vacation."
While Wes moved onto the third floppy of his Windows setup so that he could begin installing the eight games he also bought, Jace felt tired and let out a big yawn. As gross as the couch looked and smelled, he eventually fell asleep in the hot apartment.
A couple hours later, his uncle shook him lightly to wake him, and Jace did so in the most uncomfortable posture he could imagine, with a sea of sweat beneath him that his shirt had soaked up. Wes was also sweaty, and he looked exhausted from his time spent trying to get the computer to work—and filled with more "pieces of history" he wanted Jace to play and appreciate as much as he did.
"It made me really pine for the days of simply downloading something on Steam, but they're on there. I don't have time to configure them, so you'll have to mess with the graphics. But they're all in the game folder, and I managed to at least open them all."
"Are you going somewhere again?"
"Gotta get the equipment for spying on our time hole, remember? You just sit here and play games while I'm gone. I'll tell you about them later."
"It's freaking hot in here."
"Yeah, it sucks. I might have to, uh, pick up an air conditioner when I can."
Jace sat on the floor where Wes had, and became surrounded by boxes, manuals, and torn up shrink-wrap. His eyes went from the basic, early, and very gray GUI of the Windows operating system, to the alluring TURBO button on the tower. Expecting it to do something cool, he wanted to press it. But Wes pushed his hand away.
"Don't, um, don't press that."
"Why? Does it make the computer so fast it can't handle it and it catches fire?"
"No. It actually makes the computer slower. Long story. You can use a real keyboard, can't you? It's probably a lot louder than the ones you're used to."
"They teach us how to type in school, duh."
"Okay. Have fun figuring out how to use Old Windows. My dad never showed me how to use it when I came over. Had to figure it out all by myself. All he ever said was, 'kid, if you put anything in the recycling bin, I'll find out.' Well. See ya."
Wes headed out, leaving Jace alone in the hotbox to explore a computer that a kid his age might have explored in the original timeline, but now instead had a different owner. He double clicked on the games folder, but he didn't find anything that Wes had installed. Instead, a bunch of free stuff like solitaire, Minesweeper, and Ski Free were inside.
After trying and failing several times to get his skier down the mountain without getting munched by a giant snowman, he closed the folder and looked at the desktop, where shortcuts to the real games took up half of the low-resolution screen. The icon that stood out the most was the orange and gray one simply title Doom.
Once he stumbled his way into the first level with his space marine, armed only with a pistol and his knuckles, Jace soon fell into gaming bliss. The gameplay was fast, the demon killing was awesome, and the metal soundtrack rocked. He kind of liked it.
• •
After Wes got out of the car and stepped onto the asphalt of Desert Tree Elementary's parking lot, he took in a big gulp of air and held it in, as if the very atmosphere around the school was laden with something especially nostalgic.
The school was still mostly empty as it was the middle of summer, but today was one of the days where parents could register their kids early and beat the rush, so the lot held a few of the teachers' cars who were stuck at the education palace for the day.
As he stepped into the central open-air hall that connected classrooms together, he ran his hand against the bricks and soaked in the memories. Did he particularly enjoy his days at school, spent slaving away at a desk solving math problems? Not really. But when he thought about his five years spent there, he only recalled the happier times that had been filtered through and stuck. Recesses, epic lunchroom moments, mischief in the computer lab, classroom reactions when a peer got busted—those things were forever.
The school hadn't changed much by the time Jace's class came into being, and he always took the chance to peek at the place whenever he might pick up his nephew, so he had no trouble finding room 114, which was ground zero for his fifth-grade months.
The door was open, and he walked right in. An incredible rush of melancholy hit him when he looked around the posters on the wall, and the arrangement of the desks. For a split second, he could've sworn that he himself was ten again.
Ms. Porter was at her desk, filing paperwork and looking quite bored. After the young professor gave her small glasses another nudge with her pencil, she looked up and spotted Wes, who was now focused only on the room's ceiling tiles of all things.
"Can I help you?" she asked in her warm, friendly voice.
Wes snapped out of it and stared back at his old educator. She had always been his favorite from the school, though he never admitted to his friends that he briefly had an embarrassing but innocent student-teacher crush on her.
"Um, yeah. M-my kid, uh… I want to enroll my kid in this class."
"Oh. Well, that's kind of surprising. It's looking like I was only going to have one vacancy this year, but I didn't really expect it to be filled."
"I don't want it to be a problem… or something."
"No, no problem! Is your child already enrolled at this school?"
"Yeee… No. No, we moved. A little. He used to go to Sherman Miller."
"Oh, yes, SM Elementary! Our friendly rival," she said with a precious little laugh. "Do you have your son's school records on you?"
Wes tapped on his briefcase, its shotgun-dent still apparent. "Right here."
"Well. Pull up a seat and let's have a look."
He walked up and moved one of the kid desks up to hers, which he barely fit in. He opened the case a crack and took out the school records that he had pilfered in a daring nighttime raid and altered a little shortly before he last returned to the present.
He handed them to a teacher he never expected to beat in the height department and smiled as she looked them over, really hoping that he had all bases covered and one of the key parts of his convoluted plan wouldn't get screwed up by some inane mistake. But he had been careful on the details, and even copied over Jace's actual 2019 grades.
"I've heard good things about you," Wes said. "And Jace is a good kid, so…"
"Jace? This says your son's name is Jason Connor."
"Y-yeah, of course it does. I call him Jace sometimes. As a nickname."
"That's cute. So… three A's, two B's, and a C… Never got in any trouble…"
"No, he's a good kid. But he does have a few anger management issues at the moment… Are troublemakers a problem at this school?" Wes inquired.
Ms. Porter did a fake little cough, thought about what to say for a few seconds, and then answered, "There was one student that's the cause of the vacancy."
Wes smiled, somehow a little proud that Charlie Pippin's greatest moment was apparently still fresh in the minds of the school's teachers.
"It was crazy," she continued, and then spoke in a softer voice, as if someone else was listening in. "This was a nine-year-old who robbed a candy store by pretending he had one of his dad's guns in his jacket pocket. Have you ever heard anything like that?"
Wes stopped smiling and he shook his head. He had never heard of that part of the story. All of this time, and everyone just thought that Charlie had grabbed a handful of sweets and ran out of the store. If her account was true, he definitely went too far.
"Kids these days, right?" Wes muttered.
Ms. Porter looked at him curiously. "You remind me of… someone."
That wasn't surprising; Wessy's antics were known across different grade levels.
"Weird." Wes scratched his neck. "It's not like I… went here or something."
• •
Time flew by, and Jace had only moved onto the third PC game when his uncle came home, practically knocking down the door upon his entrance. Jace watched as he pushed in a handcart, loaded with cardboard boxes marked "PROPERTY OF ROYAL VALLEY UNIVERSITY TECH DEPT". His mind instantly went to grand larceny.
"Hey, I got some homework for you!" Wes said and closed the door.
"Did you steal all that stuff?"
"What? No, man, I borrowed it. I might have… made a few things up on the forms about where and when I'm from, and what I need them for, but… Hey, I'm trying to be a good unk and do as you asked me to. Can you help me?"
"Okay. How?"
"You experience your little glitch at all today while gaming?"
"Um… just a couple times. The mouse kind of got away from me."
"Good. It'll probably wear off soon, but at least we can use it to get a reading on all things related to screwed up time jumping. You can keep playing while I set this up."
Jace shrugged and went back to wiping out a nation in Civilization. He kept his concentration mostly on the game while Wes covered the living room in audio-visual equipment, tripods, wiring, and transmitters and receivers. He also let out a few adult words as he set the stuff up, and eventually kicked Jace off the computer so that he could install the software needed to access any actual recording functions.
"I'm monitoring infrared, radio and microwave signals, and magnetic fields," Wes explained. "If anything temporal is going on with you, it should make something I can detect with all this junk, and be similar to the time portal we came in through."
"This is kinda like hunting ghosts or something, huh? Anyway, I guess… Um, thanks. It looks like you really came through on your promise."
"Hey, if something's worth doing, do it right. Right? Okay… Looks like we're ready to go. Kiddo, hate to make a science experiment out of you, but I'm gonna need you to try your hardest to reproduce your… really lame super power."
"But it just happens on its own."
"Then we'll stay here all night until I get a reading. Hm…" Wes looked around. "Really, all we need is a bunch of things you can move around until they pop back on their own. I'm thinking the bigger the object, the more 'noise' it'll make, so…"
Wes handed him his locked metal case. Jace looked confused.
"This is going to sound really dumb, but I need you to walk around the room, put the case down, anywhere, wait five seconds, and repeat until the glitch happens."
"Are you kidding…" Jace breathed out slowly. "That is the most… boring, waste-of-time idea I've ever heard… I could be doing that for hours."
"I know. It sucks. But I can't think of any other way to do it. Now, let me just start all these programs that'll record data. Hopefully they won't crash the computer." Wes started up all the analytical software, tested the connections, and began their record keeping. He took out a stopwatch, started the timer, and instructed, "Okay. Go."
With negative levels of motivation, Jace did as he was told, his thoughts constantly shifting back to the games he still had yet to play. It didn't matter that they were old; at least they were the most entertaining thing he could access at the moment.
"Keep trying. Maybe you have to want it?" Wes suggested at one point.
Eventually, following twenty minutes of putting his uncle's case down in random spots in the apartment, the "exciting" moment arrived, and the object popped back into place on top of the television, after about the fifth time Jace had put it there.
After Wes stopped all the recording going on along with his watch, his lab rat came over, looked at the screen, and asked, "So did it pick anything up?"
"Bad news. I didn't get any of it. Guess I forgot to…" Wes saw that Jace looked scarily unentertained. "Okay, no jokes. Let's see…" He clicked around in the archaic, ugly program boxes and tried to decipher the waveforms. "I… have no idea what this stuff is. So, I'll just match the timelines in all the separate software with the stopwatch."
Wes stumbled around in the dark, but after a few minutes, managed to determine that no magnetic fields or microwaves were generated, and the IR camera—recording at a glorious five frames a second—didn't show anything. But the radio scanner series of up and down lines did show a promising spike at the twenty minute and ten second mark. He played that portion three times, with the little speakers' volume way up.
"Interesting…" Wes said of the high frequency, second-long twerp that sounded like a thunderclap in reverse. "That's promising. I'll go set up the radio receiver. And return the rest of this stuff, I guess. You stay here and play some more games."
Jace ripped open a bag of Cheetos and did so as Wes packed up and headed out.
• •
He got lost in the games he wanted to beat, and time disappeared. Wes eventually came home and gave a remark about trading the microwave detector out for an oven. As Jace kept himself distracted, Wes heated up a TV dinner in their new appliance and plopped it on the coffee table. Jace forgot what it was he ate within minutes. The call of more police dog and rabbit adventures in Sam & Max Hit the Road was too strong.
Once he was too tired to open up the last two games, he looked at the computer clock. It was already midnight. The apartment was dark and quiet, just like outside. He brushed his teeth, changed into his boxers, ditched his shirt—the desert night was still too warm to cool the place—and headed towards his room across from Wes'.
He saw a light under the door, and without thinking, opened it to say goodnight. He hadn't expected to see Wes with ear buds in, watching something on his new iPad.
"Wes! What the heck?" Jace exclaimed, surprising him.
He tore out his ear buds and tapped the screen to pause the video. "What? Can't a guy catch up on some Better Call Saul? Not like you were giving me any attention…"
"You had your iPad on you the whole time? And you're watching modern stuff? What happened to all the 90s shows that are so much better?"
"Hey, there are a lot of good shows on in our time. I have no problem admitting that. Look, I love being here, but if I didn't have this puppy loaded with good stuff to watch from a new golden era of movies, cartoons, TV… I'd be bored out of my skull."
"Is it even safe to have that sci-fi tech around?"
Wes showed him the tablet's port. "There's nothing that can pull the data off of here yet, and I got the six-digit passcode going and everything."
Jace crossed his arms. "Did you at least get all the equipment set up?"
"Yeah, I really Doc Browned it over there, like I put up a science experiment to send a DeLorean to the future. I'll tell you more in the morning when I get AOL going."
"So… what else you got on there?" Jace wondered, tempted to look for himself.
"Oh, no. I was eventually going to show you this, and it has some goodies for you, but you have to earn them. You're on a strict contemporary media diet for now."
Jace rolled his eyes and yawned. "Whatever. I'm going to bed, anyway… You don't have anything else in your case I should know about, right?"
"What? No. Just more boring adult stuff. Now let me get back to my binging."
• •
The next morning, with a mug of coffee for Wes and a plate of waffles for Jace, the adult in the room initiated first contact with the internet through one of the earliest versions of America Online. He intentionally didn't warn the kid in the room of the screeching to expect from the nearby modem that was necessary to listen to in order to connect through a phone line, and as soon as it began, he freaked out a little.
"Did you just break the computer?" he exclaimed, staring at the blinking lights.
"No," Wes said with a laugh. "You gotta tolerate the racket to get online; the phone has to hear that crap. Oh, and don't pick up the phone, or we'll lose connection."
"What phone? One of those old home phones? We don't even have one."
"Oh, yeah. I guess hearing the modem really brings me back."
"Welcome!" AOL greeted—but couldn't yet follow up with, "You got mail!"
"So, clicking all these buttons, like 'Sports' and 'Kids' will lead you to different websites… And there are also these things called keywords. Google isn't around yet, so searching is a little primitive. Just like websites. I mean, you can look around at stuff, but I still think the most fun you'd have right now would be in the chat rooms. Anyway…"
He opened the browser and typed in the IP address for his hooked-up receiver. A user name and password later, he was able to—slowly—download what it recorded overnight. When able, he opened the file and skimmed over the flat waveform timeline.
"It's working," Wes said. "Now we just have to wait until it picks us up a time portal home. Okay, buddy, have fun with Mr. Internet." Wes got up and headed to the door. "I'll pick up lunch, and then we'll have ourselves an awesome summer Monday."
Once he left, Jace looked at the AOL home screen for a moment, before signing out and returning to the games. He still had two to try, and that took precedence.
As he returned to the game zone, Wes meanwhile pulled into the alley where he had set up his radio receiver and the recording unit he could remotely connect to. The little dipole antenna was aimed at his apartment across the block, the unit was hidden well, and he was proud that he got it to leach electricity from a thrift store.
It really was one of the cooler things he had done recently. But, as much as he had considered leaving it in place and wondered if it would pick up a portal, he couldn't abandon his plans. All he could let Jace hear on the daily checks was white noise.
With a selfish flick of the receiver's on-off switch, the rest of summer began.
• •
Cue the montage music.
The days were long and lazy, starting late and ending much later. Uncle and Nephew were lucky to get out of the house for outdoor activities by noon.
Wes had a constant stream of places to see and things to do, always keeping the nearly endless vacation going as another memory of another cool moment or piece of media drifted into his peripheral. More movies were seen and more video games rented, and he had a story, a piece of trivia, or at the very least some respect for all of them.
On the first Monday of their stay, Wes met with an increasingly happy Eddie Meeks, and began to recuperate his investment in the time travel trip. He hadn't told Jace just how close they had come to insolvency: by the time he had sold his first small batch of stock, Wes had nothing left but five bucks in his pocket. The computer had set him back more than he expected, but his nephew did seem to be enjoying it.
He was buying time, trying to keep Jace happy as he pretended to monitor their exit door. But, eventually, even summer ended, no matter how monolithic it always felt at its beginning—especially to a kid—and he would have to tell his nephew the next step of the plan, and hoped he would do it more smoothly than the previous reveal.
In July, the two returned to The Queen to see more of the year's blockbusters, Wes choosing to avoid the megaplex for the time being. In the back of his mind, he thought that just maybe, his patronage would help keep the theater from closing, and his favorite movie-watching venue might still be there when he went home.
There was Judge Dredd, which was just as violent as many PG-13 movies in Jace's time, and much cheesier than most of the films he knew as well, which often took themselves too seriously. And he barely knew the real story of Apollo 13, so the last few minutes kept the kid in suspense—he also mentioned on the way out how he really liked "that Tom Hanks guy." Then there was Pocahontas, and having seen it when he was younger and with his recent school lessons on the era, he knew of its inaccuracies, not least of which was the titular character speaking English and having a raccoon friend.
They shared a box of Milk Duds as they watched Sandra Bullock bring about the future by ordering a pizza online in The Net, sucked on Lemonheads as Kevin Costner fought Mad Max style boat gangs in Waterworld, and gobbled down peanut M&M's as rich Californian teenage girls managed their difficult social lives in Clueless.
Jace came out of that one still no closer to being able to relate to teenage girls, but he would later ask if high school was "like that." To which Wes just shrugged.
Of the two, only the adult had any semblance of a schedule. With Jace placated by a factory line of rented games and used PC titles bought for cheap, Wes kept up on a couple of activities. There were his meetings with Eddie to buy or sell stocks, as dictated by his valuable iPad file full of 1995's market history. And then there was Wessy, and occasionally Lucy, that he checked in on via binoculars and made notes about, to ensure they were both back on their original paths and his presence hadn't set them off course.
But, so far, the theory that he had come up with about events and other people "squeezing" them back into their own timelines seemed to be proving applicable, at least to any minor screw-ups the two had made. Still, Wes kept diligent on better planning and fail-safes, and on avoiding getting caught for looking like a creeper spying on kids.
His new modest income let him increase his portfolio's diversity and had other benefits; Wes took his housemate on two more trips to King Arcade over the next couple of months, and bought him more Game Boy games, which were still plentiful given that the small system was on its way to selling over a hundred million units. The cash also became useful in covering AOL's cost—which for now, still charged hourly.
By the time August came around, Wes was starting to feel the boredom crawling into his psyche. While things were going more smoothly than his first visit and it was cool having a nephew around to educate and just to have someone to talk to, it all began to feel like a repeat episode of a sitcom. There wasn't all that much surprise or excitement anymore. And the month only gave them a couple of movies to see: Babe, about a talking farm pig that becomes a hero, and the Mortal Kombat movie, which was nowhere near as violent as the games the two had spent some time on by that point.
"Nick, kid, I'm liking your formula," Eddie told him as August came to a close, during their second in-person meeting. "You and I stand to make a lot of money."
"Cash is nice, Eddie… But it's little more than freedom to do what you want."
While Eddie laughed and started raving about free markets and capitalism, Wes clasped the beige leather armrests and stared at the carpet, dreadfully apathetic. For the first time ever, he couldn't wait for the season to end so school could begin. Of course, that would involve convincing Jace to go along, and prying him off his retro games.
Gaming wasn't Jace's only form of entertainment, as he had started giving AOL chat rooms a try as well. Although it took him time to adjust and tolerate the early net lingo and all the anagrams, which had fallen so far out of favor in 2020 that they resided in the abyss—like "me2", "rofl", and "idk wut bout u"—he did find simple fun in mindlessly chatting with like-minded users commenting on the newest hip thing. There was some trolling, sure, but not on the level of its usually mean-spirited modern variety.
The computer was fun and all, but outside of the apartment, weird things were going on that only Jace seemed to notice. While he didn't appear when they were inside anywhere, like at Target buying stuff or at Video Klub grabbing games, the ninja made another appearance—and then another, and another. He was always watching from a distance, and no matter how much he tried to show Wes, the shadowy figure always managed to disappear before his uncle, or seemingly anyone else, saw him.
Paranoia was beginning to take its hold, and every sound outside of his bedroom window at night was perceived as the ninja peering in through the blinds. Eventually he gave up trying to show him to Wes and put his focus on simply keeping an eye out for him, and if he was sighted, to get into hiding himself. He didn't like being spied on.
At one point, he even worked up the will power to ask a question in the chat room he had found that was devoted to discussions about California.
"Anyone see a guy dressed like a ninja following people in Royal Valley?"
His question only got a few 'LOL's and a 'WTF are you smoking' as a response.
It could've been worse; across the summer, he only saw the ninja six more times, and he never made any move towards him. But if he were watching him, Jace thought, then he must have known he was a time traveler—and was possibly one himself.
When he wasn't stressing out about the odd character, Jace was getting new additions to his wardrobe, or on his uncle's insistence, having his hair made into a bit of a spiky wave 'do that helped him blend in even more with other kids his age.
Then came a strange night on the last Friday of summer before school began—that date of little importance to him, Jace assumed. With an air conditioner cooling the apartment, Wes grabbed a Tears for Fears CD from the stack of discs he had acquired from multiple runs to Goodwill, plopped it into the modest stereo system, cranked it up, and started dancing. He invited Jace to the living room floor stage, but he declined.
"C'mon, cool breeze! I like games as much as the next kid, but sometimes you gotta move, loosen up, you know? Shame free—no embarrassment here."
"I feel embarrassed just watching," Jace replied from the safety of the couch.
"I had to do something spontaneous. I was getting bored of summer. Sacrilege! Used to be, I wasn't so uptight about making myself look like an idiot."
"This isn't even really dancing music."
"What are you talking about? Aren't I dancing to Big Chair right now?"
Jace shook his head and looked at his iPhone again, scrolling through his screens of games, many of which required a data connection he would never have in this time. His thumb hovered over Galaxy Kingdom longingly, its owner wishing he could access his Cyber-Mage profile and say hi to his online buddies, if even just for a few minutes.
"I miss Mom…" Jace sighed and slumped further into the couch.
"You know where she is if you want to say hi."
"No, my mom. Not… Lucy. Why can't that stupid time portal just come back already? She's probably freaking out, wondering where I am."
"Bud, we've been over this—we come back the same time we left."
"I know! But it feels like she should be worried about me. And that Time Ninja guy that keeps following me is probably going to stop us from going back, or kill us, or erase us from history, or something even worse."
"Time Ninja? This guy related to your stalker friend I keep hearing about?"
"They're the same guy. But I gave him a better name. I think he has something to do with time traveling, because why else would he be so interested in me?"
Wes turned down the music volume a little and stopped dancing. "I still haven't seen him—not that I don't believe you. What can you tell me about him? Do you even know if it is a him? What if they eventually reveal themselves to us and surprise! She's a chick. And then she's all like, 'we gotta save the time-space continuum, come with me.'"
"I guess I can't be sure, because I've only seen him at a distance. I don't think he or she is that tall… But I think they have some kind of sword on their back. And they definitely dress kind of like a ninja, in all black—and there's some kind of hood on their head, too." Jace got up and struck a pose and gestured like a ninja unsheathing their katana from their back. "I mean… maybe they're a friend, watching out for us?"
"Well, we don't know if they're our enemy yet, so, yeah—try to keep an open mind and stop worrying, at least until they get aggressive or whatever."
"There's an actual time ninja in Galaxy Kingdom, by the way."
"That's the online RPG you're always playing, right? Where you're a mage?"
"Cyber-Mage. There are dozens of character classes, and one of them is actually called Time Ninja. It's a hard to use characters that only high-level players can unlock."
"If you're gonna tell me all about this character, give me some context. What exactly is this Galaxy Kingdom game really about, anyway?"
"It's a MOBA with RPG elements. A battle arena, you know? Like, you see all the characters from above and plot moves and stuff? And it also has a cooperative horde mode on bigger maps where you fight lots of enemies and there's kind of a story. But the battle arena is the main game, where you fight other players. And there are also towns and whole worlds to explore and you can make groups of four people…"
"This game sounds like it's trying to be everything. And you play it from your phone? For hours on end? I'd… rather just play the Game Boy."
"I usually play the iPad version. The iPhone one doesn't have adventure mode."
"You're boring me a little. Just tell me about this Time Ninja dude."
"Okay. Well… He's a ninja from the future, and he's dressed in all black and has a plasma sword. Characters all have a super ability that needs to charge, and they're really powerful and can pretty much make your team win or lose the game."
"I'm familiar with the concept, kiddo."
"So, his Time Warp super is hard to use, but it's also really strong if you know what you're doing. It can wipe out the entire enemy team! Once you use it, everyone goes back in time, and all the other players can do is watch their characters do whatever they originally did for five seconds. But the ninja… he can do whatever he wants. If you remember every enemy attack, you can avoid them and cut guys to pieces with your sword and they can't do anything about it! Pro Time Warp play videos are really cool."
"I get it. The other heroes, or champions, or whatever they're called are locked into their fates. The human players just have to sit there and observe helplessly as this blade-wielding weeb slaughters their beloved characters they've made fan art of."
"Yeah! Uh…" Jace crossed his arms. "That was kind of mean, though…"
"Don't take it personally. Just thinking here about anything's most rabid portion of its fan base that tries to ruin the internet… I dunno, it can become too much, too fast. No one Wessy knows is going to be shipping or cross-overing any Nickelodeon characters, or making art of them as couples with a kid that's some disturbing amalgamation of the two. At least, I hope not."
"Can't I tell you stuff without you complaining about what people my age do?"
"Not really," Wes said with a chuckle and shrugged. "What can I say? I'm a guy that likes to complain. But, hey, thanks for telling me about this character. I mean, you did a pretty good job at it. You've got some decent orator chops. Like, you could grow up to be a good public speaking. You describe things pretty well at your age."
"Um… thanks?"
"You miss your game, huh?" Wes sat on the couch. "And a lot of other stuff… This is always the thing about vacations. There's a point when you feel it, being away from home, and you want to go back. We're in our town, but out of time. Things look familiar, but on the other hand, we can't call our friends to ask them how it's going."
"I… am starting to feel kind of lonely. It was nice having an extra-long summer, but I really do want to go back as soon as we can…"
"Are you still mad at me for bringing ya here?"
Jace looked at him, thought for a few seconds, and shrugged. "I dunno. I did think about what you said before, about never forgetting any of this stuff. I guess that's something. Even when I get as old and weird as you, at least I got to time travel."
"Heh. Yeah. Too bad we couldn't be in some time period where something really exciting was happening. Although… if I had enough money, we do have the whole world to explore, too…" He looked out the window at the darkness outside. "There's probably a whole bunch of crazy things to see out there."
"Oh well. I don't need any more crazy in my life."
"Hey. Do you want to get some ice cream and eat it at the best place in town to, uh, see the town? You, me, at Castle Hill Overlook? To celebrate summer?"
"What else are we going to do there, kiss like gross teenagers?"
"You joke, but all towns need a Make-Out Point. You'll appreciate it one day."
Jace scrunched his face in disgust. He could never picture himself smooching.
• •
With a waffle bowl full of rocky road, Jace looked out at Royal Valley, the last of the twilight disappearing to bring about another cool desert night. He sat on the closed trunk of the Camry, as Wes finished off his cone closer to the edge of the overlook. Sometimes called The Mesa by locals, Castle Hill was the only locale in the area that let visitors see the entirety of the city below, and its thousands of lights.
"Mom took me up here when I was three," Wes said with one of his nostalgic sighs. "I think that was one of my first memories."
"And you kind of see the town… as your playground, right?"
"Oh, you remember that chat?" Wes turned to him. "Yeah. Always kind of strange seeing buildings and neighborhoods shrunk down into a space you can see in one panorama shot." He moved his fingers into the shape of a camera viewfinder. "It's like, when you're in your house, that always seems big enough. And here's a town full of houses, all with their own rooms, little families, and stories."
"How big is Royal Valley, anyway? Is it a big city?"
"Uh, sort of. Back when I was big on SimCity 2000 and 3000, I tried my hand at remaking the place in the game, so I did some research, looked at maps… It's got around 70,000 people in it right now, I think? Maybe 80-k in our time."
"But is that a lot?"
"Enough to get us a few taller buildings and a regional airport." Wes looked back at the three brightly lit office towers, and the tallest hotel in the city that was by the long airport in the east. "But, evidently Royal Valley was made for greater things. We should totally monetize on the time portal, you hear me? It's in my apartment, after all. Time travel tourism, bud! With me as the guide! We'll become the city's claim to fame."
"Good idea. Let a bunch of dumb tourists blast kids like me out of existence."
"I'm kidding! You know I am." Wes laughed a few times, and his chuckles quickly became awkward, nervous ones. "Ah. Summer… The longest holiday. A magical time. I hope you appreciated getting one for free. It doesn't mean nearly as much to us adults, stuck inside an office working all day… Does that sound like celebrating it to you?"
"You're being weird again, Unk." Jace licked his ice cream. "Are you scheming?"
"Me? Scheming?" He rubbed his neck—always a telltale signal that he was about to say something upsetting. "Actually… Sorry, I schemed. You're, uh, going to school."
Jace stared back at him. Five seconds passed, and he still couldn't tell if his uncle was joking. The look on his face was pretty darn flat. He was usually pretty good at keeping a straight face when sharing his brand of humor, but by this point, there was typically some twinge in his eyes or smile. Once the deepest recesses of Jace's brain realized that Wes might have been serious, it was his own eyes that finally twitched.
"Wha…" escaped his lungs before he fell into defensive neural shock.
"I'm for real. You gotta go to school. I won't be able to keep the likes of social workers and truancy officers off of your back forever. And besides, what are you going to do at home all day for possibly another nine months?"
"You… can't… I… already…"
"I know you already graduated! So, you shouldn't have a problem… just doing it all again! Look on the bright side. You might be one of the average-sized kids now, and by the time you go to sixth grade back in our time, you won't be such a runt anymore!"
"Y-you jerk! You mega jerk!" Jace shouted and hate-ate the last of his ice cream. "You had this planned all along! I know you did, just like always!"
"H-hey, it's not gonna be that bad. I got it all planned out…"
"Y-you're… You're just a big asshole!"
"Yeah, I've been accused of that before."
Angrier than he had ever been, at least in the last few months, he reacted in the only way he knew how at fury levels this high: he walked right up to his uncle, and with both hands, shoved him hard in the stomach. But he wasn't aware of his own strength, and as he looked down at his stomping feet, he didn't realize what he had done.
"I never wanted to do fifth grade again! I told you how much I hated it! What makes you think this is okay… at all…" Jace trailed off as he noticed Wes was missing.
He looked around and took notice of his location, right at the side of the cliff and away from the spot's metal barricade. Oh God, he thought. He didn't just… Did he? Did he hear a scream, any cries for help as Wes held onto the side desperately? Jace had let his anger get the best of him, and he hadn't even paid attention to what happened.
He had murdered his uncle. He was at the bottom of the cliff, killed by a nephew he always loved playing tricks on. But that was no excuse for committing a heinous act of avunculicide. Worse, he now had no idea how he would get back to the present.
"Ugh, Jace…" a moan came from nearby. "That was uncalled for…"
Panic-stricken, he leapt over to the edge of the cliff—and was reminded that it wasn't a cliff at all. Castle Hill never had a cliff. It might have looked or felt that way from the top, but it wasn't actually much more than a rocky hill with a shallow grade. One could ride a trashcan lid all the way down safely if they wanted to.
Wes had actually only been shoved down into the dirt, just out of view. But he wasn't too happy about it. For the first time on their trip, he looked a little ticked off at Jace as he stood up and brushed himself off. Then he saw his sorrowful face.
"Sheesh, kid… It's not worth crying about."
"I thought… I, um…"
"It's not going to be all that bad. For one, I'm going to do all the homework for you, so you don't have to waste time on that when you come home. And you just got done with a curriculum that's probably barely changed over the years, so I'm thinking you'll breeze through work and get decent enough grades… Hey, are you all right?"
"I guess. I dunno…"
"It's a lot to take in, but look at it this way: you already 'beat' fifth grade and you've got nothing to worry about. Heck, you can even try being bad and stuff—there aren't really many consequences. You can focus on making friends, getting social, having fun. It's all the best parts of school and little of the bad. I get what you're thinking: there isn't anything good about school. But there is, actually. You just might not realize it until years later, when you're… missing and thinking about all your old classmates."
Jace managed to recompose himself, and after a deep breath, replied, "What's the point of any of this? How is this going to work?"
"Remember that kid I told you about, Charlie? He left a vacancy that never got filled in my class. So… I got you a spot in it."
"Wait—your class? Like, with Wessy?"
"Uh-huh. And Jared, Colin, Arthur, Ash, Sadie, and a whole bunch of others. Never had a class with Zach Pentino, but you'll probably see him around plenty."
"That's a stupid idea. How am I supposed to avoid all of them?"
"I don't want you to avoid them. I want you to get into Wessy's inner circle."
"Are you for real? I thought we had stopped messing with him and my mom."
"That was before, when I was still working on the plan. Come here, kiddo."
Jace followed him back into the car, where Wes turned on the light and reached into the glove box to pull out a composition book filled with messy notes and scribbles. He opened it and flipped through the pages as if to impress his nephew.
"I can be a planner. I know how to make a flow chart. But… it's not a good idea to tell everything right away. For now, I just need you to become friends with Wessy—obviously don't tell him when you're from or any of that. Take it slow, we have time."
"What kind of crazy reason is there for becoming friends with kid you?"
"Okay, I'll say this much for now: I need your help to keep an eye on him, now that summer's over. Relationships change much more quickly once school starts."
"I'm sure you can find out some way to keep spying on him if you really want…"
"Jace, ever heard of stranger danger? Do they still teach kids that? I can't keep stalking kids. One day the po-po will come down on me, and then you're stuck here."
Jace raised an eyebrow and stared back at him.
Wes tried to shake his shoulder reassuringly and told him, "Come on, it'll be great. On your first day, an ex-convict bully twice your size will try to beat you up for no reason, and then you'll be saved by a tomboy named Sam."
"Um… Is… is that what happened to you?"
"What? No. That's what happens in straight to TV and Netflix kid movies. Even though you're new to the timeline, I think you'll have a pretty normal time at school. Just, eh, don't do anything too crazy or memorable. Other than getting into Wessy's group, try to sink into the background among your peers, you know?"
"None of this makes any sense."
"Maybe not. But there's a chance that at the end of all this, we'll both come back to a slightly… improved present. But while making sure everyone who needs to be born gets themselves born and all that good stuff." He started the car and began the trek back down the hill. "By the way, your new name is Jason Connor, so I can keep calling you Jace, for short. But don't let the others call you that. Insist they use your full name."
"What kind of stupid name is that? It sounds like some action movie hero."
"I thought it sounded okay. We just can't have the guys knowing you as a 'Jace'."
Wes began explaining why, but Jace's thoughts drifted and he blocked him out.
• •
Jace spent the weekend in something of a catatonic state. He looked for comfort in his games, but couldn't shake the ominous cloud that always hovered over him during summer's last days. School was coming, no matter how often he looked at clocks to try and slow time. As one of its travelers, he felt entitled to freedom in its confines. If 2020 wasn't possible, he'd at least rather go back to Arrival Tuesday and replay the summer.
But here he was, up at seven in the morning after a bad night of poor sleep, looking himself in the bathroom mirror. He wasn't even sure how to go about combing his hair, its strange new hills and mountainous pinnacles still a mystery to him. Hairstyle wasn't a big deal to 2020 kids, but the ones he'd be meeting might be a bit judgmental.
"You ready, buddy?" Wes said, appearing in the bathroom's open doorway with a freshly toasted Poptart in a napkin. "The bus will be here in a few minutes. Lucky for you, it comes to the apartment. Well, at the roadside. You know what I mean."
"Am I really doing this…?" Jace murmured. "Is this happening?"
"Afraid so. If it's a resounding failure, I'll pull you out. But do try. For me?"
The repeat fifth-grader shook his head, sighed, grabbed breakfast, and retrieved his Jansport backpack filled with freshly bought school gear. He then opened the door, breathed in the morning air, and turned to his uncle before leaving. He just waved. Jace wanted to snarkily ask what he planned to do all day while he attended prison, but so far sarcasm and retorts had yet to accomplish anything positive on this trip.
Alone, he walked across the parking lot, looking up at the clear sky as he did so. Before he knew it, he arrived at the curb, where several other children were waiting, all younger than him. Dressed in their colorful clothes and jeans and hip cartoon character backpacks, they chatted away with their friends, while another played his Game Boy.
As the big yellow bus showed up down the street and its diesel engine sent some light tremors through the air, one more kid with glasses and black hair joined the crew. She was taller, and more mature than the others—maybe even Jace's age. She came right up to him and stood by his side, where she eyeballed him for a second.
Once the bus arrived and its door opened with a groan, she was the first to join the screaming passengers inside. Jace went in next, finding an empty brown seat in the back. The girl, a few seats up, glimpsed at him again as the bus took off. And for some reason, he remembered what Wes had said might be a possibility with the Time Ninja.