The Great Power, Wealth, and Responsibility of Time

Jessica walked into Katelyn’s Kuriosities, one of the shops selling strange and mostly useless trinkets at Pike’s Place Market in Seattle. Chimes tinkled as the door shut behind her.

Oddities stuffed the shelves: lollipops with scorpions inside them, whoopee cushions, magic trick kits. It had been years since Jessica had been to this part of Seattle, and not much had changed. The air still smelled like fish and spices; the sidewalks still had a slightly grimy feel to them.

An older lady with short, red, curly hair (it was probably dyed) stood behind the counter. Her dress, if that’s what you could call it, would have been popular in the 1960s. She wore an incongruous name tag that said “Ginger.” Maybe not her real name.

“Welcome in!” Ginger said.

“Thanks,” Jessica said as she started browsing the shelves. Tarot cards, playing cards. She wasn’t going to buy any of this stuff; if she wanted any of these items, she could find them on Amazon for probably half the price with overnight shipping.

“Do I know you?” the shopkeeper was looking at her curiously.

“I don’t think so.”

Ginger walked up to her. She was beginning to creep her out a little. “No, I think I do know you. You saved my grandson’s life.”

Jessica shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Belfair State Park. About twenty, twenty-five years ago? I’d never forget your face.”

“I’ve been there.” It was a popular park where large groups used to meet before she graduated college and moved across the state to Spokane. “But I’ve never saved any kid’s life.”

“You did, though. My grandson almost drowned. You found him in the pool.”

She felt like a heavy weight lodged itself in her chest. She did remember that day.

It was at one of her family’s reunions. Aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, great-aunts and uncles, and other people she had difficulty figuring out her relationship to used to meet yearly. She had been playing horseshoes with her cousins when someone ran through the park, asking if they had seen a three year old boy that had gone missing.

They all put down the horseshoes and searched. Jessica’s first instinct was to look down the beach. Maybe he slipped; the seaweed was a little slimy along the beach.

But then she looked at the pool.

The pool had always been disgusting. It was built into Hood Canal, with a cement floor and cement barrier around it. When the tide went out; the water level in the pool went down. It also tended to keep some of the debris in.

The water was murky, but Jessica stripped off her shorts and t-shirt, revealing the one-piece swimsuit she wore underneath. She carefully waded into the water, swallowing down the disgust of the water. She hadn’t liked swimming in this pool since she was about ten, preferring swimming in the canal directly.

Then she saw him. A toddler, face down.

“Call 911!” she shouted. “We found him!”

That was back in the age before the iPhone, when almost nobody had cell phones. But there were pay phones at the park, and some of the people visiting the park that day were first responders, including her dad, who was a volunteer firefighter.

She had never known what happened to the boy. Until today.

“I didn’t know he survived,” Jessica told the cashier.

The lady smiled. “Seth is doing fine today. He’s in graduate school, hoping to become a doctor someday.”

“Oh, wow.” She didn’t know what else to say; she hadn’t thought much about that day in nearly 25 years.

The lady went behind the counter and brought out a couple pieces of jewelry. They looked like pins of some sort. One had a blue jewel, most certainly fake, in the center; the other one was red.”

“I have these, but I didn’t want to offer them to just anybody. Since you’re my hero, I’d be willing to let you have these. Five dollars.”

“What are they?” Jessica wasn’t really interested in costume jewelry. She was just browsing.

She lowered her voice and leaned in conspiratorially. “They’re magic.”

Jessica laughed. Sure. “What do they do?”

“This one,” the lady said, holding up the pin with the red gem in the center, “is a time-traveling device. This one—” she held up the other pin, “will teleport you.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“They don’t have unlimited uses. The time-traveling device will only get you there and back. The teleportation device will only work twice. Then they’re just jewelry. Not worth much, as you’ve probably guessed. They’re a garnet and a sapphire. It’s the magic infused in them that makes them valuable.”

“So why don’t you use them? You could retire. Or keep your grandson out of the pool to begin with?”

“I could. But anything you change in the timeline can make a tidal wave of changes in the future. With great power—”

“Yeah, I’ve seen Spider-Man. Great responsibility and all that.”

“I wouldn’t want to lose what I have. I like my kids. My husband.”

“And I don’t?”

She shrugged. “I see your aura. I trust you to do the right thing. If you don’t want it, that’s fine. But if you’re interested, I’m willing to sell them to you.”

Jessica didn’t believe in time-traveling jewelry any more than she believed in a time-traveling Delorean. But if it worked… she could be a billionaire. Or at least a millionaire. She could tell her previous self what stock to buy. Tell herself to buy Bitcoin when it was only a couple dollars.

“How does it work?”

The lady held up the red pin. “There’s a little latch here. Pull it out and think of when and where you want to go. You’ll get there. When you want to go back, just push it back in. This—” she held up the blue pin, “works similarly. It can be useful since you probably don’t have old cash or the ability to travel like you do now. Depending on when you go, you won't have a credit card that works or cash; if you go far enough in time, you might need a quick escape to avoid charges of witchcraft. Think of where you want to teleport to, and push one of these tabs in. It’ll send you to where you want to go.”

She placed the jewelry into Jessica’s hand. “It’s yours if you want it. Just five dollars.”

Although Jessica didn’t believe in magic beyond slight of hand tricks, it was only five dollars. And what could it hurt? If it worked…

“Sure. I’ll take it.”

~~~~

The high school was exactly as she remembered it. Glass doors in the entryway, tables set up in the cafeteria that often doubled as a dance floor on Fridays after football games…

She hadn’t believed the time-travel jewelry would work, but it did.

Jessica smiled. She hadn’t been here in nearly thirty years. She had chosen this day, in 1992, not because it held any special meaning to her, but because it was early in her senior year. She had already made her college choice, and therefore was unlikely to make any changes to that based on their meeting today. But it was early enough in her life that she could convince her former self to buy stock that would one day be valuable. Like Walmart—at this point in her life, she had never even been to one of the future retail giant’s stores. There weren’t any in her state yet. Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon would all be good buys when they first became available.

The room smelled like it always had at lunchtime. It must be pizza day. The little rectangular pizzas with tiny cubes of pepperoni were always one of her favorite school lunches, although she wasn’t sure she’d care for the taste today.

There she was, her 1992 self, permed hair with bangs reaching to the sky courtesy of Aqua Net, sitting at one of the folding round tables with her best friend, Kristy. They were always together, ever since they met in preschool. They drifted apart during college, as Jessica went out of state and Kristy attended the University of Washington, but they had reconnected on Facebook and were still friends there.

Now to find a way to talk to her former self. She reached into her pocket and fingered the carefully crafted note she had written, detailing the companies she should invest in. And when.

Anything you change in the timeline could make a tidal wave of changes in the future. The strange lady’s admonition came unbidden to her mind.

If she gave her former self this note, she would be a billionaire in the present. She had no doubt about that. But at what cost? She probably would meet her future husband—they would meet in college, and there wasn’t anything in the note that would change that part of her life—but what about afterwards? Would they end up with the same kids? If they were billionaires, would they end up in the same house? Would their kids have the same childhood friends?

Probably not. The essential things that made them the people they were today, or at least in the future, would completely change if they had money. They wouldn’t choose to live in the small house they lived in if they were billionaires. Maybe too much money would cause financial strain and lead to divorce.

Jessica took her hand out of her pocket. The note was too toxic. It was why the strange lady from Katelyn’s Kuriosities never used it herself. Time was power, and getting to go back was a great gift, but she didn’t want to ruin what she already had. What she had already spent a lifetime working for.

Former Jessica got up from the table and gave her best friend a hug. She picked up her trash from the table and carried it to the garbage can.

“Jessica!” time-traveling Jessica told her former self.

1992 Jessica pointed to herself. Time-traveling Jessica nodded.

Jessica remembered how difficult her life had been in high school and college. How depressed she had been. She approached her 1992 self.

“I know this is really strange. You probably won’t believe me. But I’m you from the future.”

1992 Jessica scoffed. “Yeah, right.”

“I can prove it. I still have a mark on my left hand. You first noticed you had it in kindergarten.” She held her hand out.

1992 Jessica held her hand out next to her future self. They matched, of course.

“So, why are you here? How did you get here? Did you come in a Delorean?”

Jessica shook her head. “No. I came here through magic. I was going to tell you all about the future, but you’ve seen Back to the Future. All three of them.”

“I’ve only seen the first one.”

Jessica shrugged. “Well, you’ll see them someday. Multiple times. Anyway, after I got here, I realized that if I tell you too much about the future, what stocks to invest in, your life will change. The good things you will have will change. The people whose lives you’ll change will be affected.”

1992 Jessica stood there, giving her a dead stare that most teenagers possessed.

Jessica sighed. “I wanted you to know, though. It’ll be okay. You’ll meet someone really great someday. Not in high school though. But you’re going to be happy. You’re going to have great kids. I just wanted to let you know.”

1992 Jessica nodded. “Okay.” She looked skeptical.

“I better let you get to class.” Jessica couldn’t remember her schedule senior year, but she remembered that her former self had been a good student.

After leaving the high school, Jessica thought of one more place she wanted to visit before returning to her own time. Someone she could visit in the past without changing her present. She activated the blue pin.

She knocked on the door in front of the familiar red house. The occupant answered.

Tears sprung to Jessica’s eyes when she saw her. Although in 1992 she still had ten more years to live, Jessica hadn’t seen her in decades.

True wealth is time with those we love the most.

“Grandma. It’s me, Jessica. From the future.”