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said.

“I’m not sure, though, how we could determine if that happened,” Gregory said. “If one or more people came from nineteen sixty to two thousand ten, then perhaps there would be a way to find out and make contact. But if someone went back in time--how would we know?”

“Good question. I don’t know,” I interjected. “It also raises huge questions about what might happen to our present if someone did something that affected the past. But let’s go back to the possibility of other people coming to the present time. Should we go public with this? Contact the media? Get the word out so that if there are any other ‘anachronisms,’ as Edwin has put it, out there, they’d know they aren’t alone?”

After a moment of silent thought, Edwin murmured, “I dislike the idea of my being splashed on the front page of the newspapers.”

Gregory laughed. “Newspapers? You don’t know the half of it. There’d be television--local and national coverage, too. Tabloids. Talk shows. It would be all over the internet. You’d be swamped with media attention, would be my guess.”

“Unless they think we’re loonies or frauds, on the level of UFO abductees or alien autopsy photographers,” I said. “Then we wouldn’t get anywhere.”

“Would it be worth the risk to try, though?” Charles posited.

“Well, our reputations may be at stake,” I suggested. “Although that would affect you, Charles, much more than it would me.”

Charles shrugged off my comment and continued. “Let’s say we take our case to the public. If they buy it, perhaps that will help us figure out what happened and set things right. If they don’t, well, we go on to plan B.”

“Whatever plan B is,” I said cynically.

“I haven’t a clue,” Gregory concluded. His expression seemed to me to convey a sense of total disinterest. Or supreme peace. It was as if he was done with it all; he had mentally washed his hands of the whole bloody mess. He’d gotten his free dinner, and that was the end of it.

I envied that emotional freedom.

We sat in silence for a few moments, then all our heads turned in sync to watch the other diner scoot out from behind the table, stand, slip his wallet out of his hip pocket, drop what appeared to be a large number of bills, and then pull his business card out of a different section of the well-worn wallet. Then he turned directly toward us and ambled the four or five steps that separated us, holding out his stark white business card and dropping it precisely in the center of our table. It read, simply:

Time, Inc.

All of us flushed nervously as he began to speak, seeing in our brains versions of Time magazine on the newsstand or on our iPads with Edwin Frances’ photo on the cover. Who knows, maybe all of our faces would be splashed around nationwide!

“Pardon me, gentlemen, but I couldn’t help but overhear. My name is, um—” He glanced quickly around the table. “…John…Beef…eater. John Beefeater, yes.” He extended his right hand toward me and smiled broadly. I stared dumbly at it, then slowly raised my own to shake. This was repeated around the table. “I think I can help you,” he said, smiling.

Frankly, he didn’t look the part of a Time magazine reporter. He seemed more like the guy selling Time magazine at a newsstand.

Without our saying a word, he scooted into our booth next to Gregory.

“You see,” and there it seemed he paused a long, long time, “we erred.” He pronounced it “urd.” As one should.

“You erred?” Gregory and I responded simultaneously, slipping unconsciously in to the “aired” pronunciation, and looked at each other goofily, forcing ourselves not to say “jinx!”

“The, um, program seems to have developed a little bug, which caused a slight ripple effect. However, it’s all been upgraded now.”

The four of us stared at the genial man blankly. Finally, Gregory spoke: “Aren’t you with Time magazine?”

“Time… magazine? Sorry, I’ve lost you,” the man muttered.

“You’ve lost us

?” Gregory blurted. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Time!” He spread his hands out broadly and smiled, as though he had answered all our questions with one word.

“Ohhhhh,” I said, the light starting to blink on in there somewhere. “You’re a…uh…timekeeper!” Charles and Edwin looked at me as though I too had lost my mind, but Gregory was already ahead of me.

“Something screwed up the universal clock!” Gregory blurted.

“So to speak,” Said Mr. Beefeater. “The timeflow was briefly corrupted in one very small aspect. I’ve been sent to clean up the resultant, um, anachronisms.”

We glanced around at each other, then Edwin asked meekly, “So can I go back then?”

“Oh, well, there’s the problem right there,” Mr. Beefeater muttered apologetically, cupping his chin with his right hand thoughtfully. “To do so at this point could lead to further ripples and even ultimate widespread corruption of the timeflow. No, I’m sorry to say that that resolution is quite impossible.”

“Well, it will take some getting used to,” Edwin chuckled, “but I’m rather glad to see my son again. It won’t be so bad for me to be here, will it, Charles?”

Charles chuckled the exact same way; it must’ve been a genetic chuckle. “I wonder how I can explain this to my wife. ‘Honey, surprise! Dad’s here! After fifty years in limbo, he’s going to live with us! Isn’t that great?’”

“It could be very interesting for you,” I said, chuckling right along, a little forcedly.

“I daresay,” Edwin added, “it could be interesting for all of us!”

Our chuckles died out and our gaze returned slowly to the odd gentleman in our midst, this timekeeper person, silly smiles still frozen on our faces. Then we realized his visage had turned rather serious.

“Unfortunately, um, that won’t work either,” he concluded firmly.

Before any of us could realize what he was doing, he’d reached into his coat and pulled out some sort of gun-like weapon, touching its muzzle right on Edwin’s starched, white chest, directly over his heart.

Edwin gasped. We all sat frozen to our booth seats. A flash of light blinded us momentarily.

Charles, Gregory, and I stood quickly, our frantic bodies pushing the booth table awkwardly to one side. Mr. Beefeater had vanished while our eyes were adjusting from the blast.

Piled up haphazardly on the red vinyl booth seat where Mr. Edwin Francis had been sitting mere seconds before was a pile of clean, white bones, topped by a grinning skull.

The last thing I remember hearing before I blacked out was Della’s irritating shriek.

THE END

Copyright 2010 Peter M. Wallace

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Publication Date: 04-02-2010

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