I pulled up and parked in front of a small store called Nazareth News. It was the only newsstand in Nazareth, as well as the only comics store. I'd hung out there a lot. I walked into the store and looked at the periodicals. They were all from the week of August 8, 1988. My heart started doing gymnastics a Russian Olympics coach would have been proud of. This was too elaborate to be a prank.
As I stood gaping at the rows of ten-year-old magazines, a fortyish, balding man sidled up next to me. "Pretty cool, huh, Preston?"
I almost jumped out of my skin. "How did you know my name?"
"Come on outside and I'll explain."
I wasn't in the mood to trust anybody, certainly not some weirdo I'd never met. The stranger turned and walked towards the door. "Don't say you're not dying of curiosity."
I glanced again at fresh newspapers displaying ten-year-old headlines, then followed the guy out the door.
"Who are you?"
The man thrust out his hand, which I eyed, then shook.
"The name's Fate, Jack Fate. You know how people sometimes say 'the fates are conspiring against me'? I'm one of those fates."
I yanked my hand back.
Fate's smile faltered. "If we're going to work together, Richie, you're going to have be more trusting."
"What the heck are you talking about?"
Fate laughed, then spread his arms in an all-encompassing gesture. "This. You. You have noticed something different this morning, haven't you?"
I stared at Fate and tried, unsuccessfully, to respond. Back then I was quite accomplished at standing silent and looking like an idiot. It's really not that hard.
"Walk with me. Your brain works better if your feet are moving."
The two of us began to walk down the sidewalk, towards the town square. "We've been watching you for quite some time, Richie. Your whole life has been one botched opportunity after another. Your last shot at success came and went last Tuesday, by your perception. It's ten years in the future now. You blew through a yellow light on the way to work. If you had slowed and stopped at that light, you would have arrived at the next light just moments after a bad wreck and saved the life of a wealthy industrialist, and eventually married his daughter. Lovely girl. Unfortunately, you were in a hurry to flip some more burgers."
I stared at Fate, incredulous.
"We've seen that happen over and over in your life. Usually someone as unlucky as you has it coming. Bad karma from a previous existence. You, on the other hand, don't deserve your fate. You're what we at the office call a Probability Anomaly. We just don't know why things never go your way. You've never won a coin flip in your life, have you?"
Blank stare.
"Trust me, you haven't. We're going to change that, you and me. Well, mostly you. I've done my part."
"That's how I got here?"
"Give the kid a cigar! That's why it's 1988 again. We took your consciousness back ten years so you can correct some of the blunders that made you the unremarkable individual you were in 1998. Your high school senior year starts in two weeks. This time you know where you went wrong the first time and you can live it just the way you've been dreaming about for nearly a decade. No more thinking of the perfect comeback ten minutes after an argument! Now you know at the beginning."
As the implications of what Fate said sank in on me, a smile spread across my face. One of those dark, scary smiles, like in "How the Grinch Stole Christmas."
Fate stopped walking just short of the town square and faced me. "Not so fast, there, sport. There's a catch. In order to insure that you didn't just make the exact same blunders twice in a row, we left your memory intact. This could easily be abused, so we have some ground rules."
Fate sat on a bench, making himself comfortable. This was impressive, since he had an attitude that implied he was always comfortable. "Despite what chaos theorists will tell you about their butterfly effects, nothing you will ever do will appreciably change the flow of world history. You know, without a doubt, things that will definitely happen in the next ten years. The Cold War will end. The United States will kick the crap out of Iraq. The Chicago Bulls will win three straight NBA titles, twice. You are not allowed to tell anyone this information, and you are not allowed to use it for personal gain. You may know that if you were to buy stock in Microsoft today it would make you rich in ten years, but you aren't allowed to do it. We're leaving your memory intact only so you can fix the mistakes in your own life. Any other use of the information at your disposal is grounds for us to revoke this second chance. You'll be a burger-flipping loser in 1998 again before you know it. Are we clear on that?"
What was I going to say? Thanks but no thanks? I'd been waiting for an opportunity like this all my life.
"Yes, sir."
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