My friend Lucinda returns from a Time Travel Fair in Santa Cruz, wearing a wide floppy straw hat, and a wicked grin... and nothing else. She looks so hot! I want to jump on her. But I have a girlfriend... well, sort of. At least we do have sex, on and off, but we're always awkward together, not quite right. I feel I ought to give her one last chance, but I'm getting more and more tempted to follow the hunger in my skin for Lucinda. And it seems like she wants me too. Prancing around me naked...

Lucinda shows me what she got at the fair. A time-ship! "Let's see if it works." My so-called girlfriend and Lucinda and I all pile in. Lucinda's polite to my sort-of girlfriend--she puts pants on, at least temporarily, and doesn't rub up against me or drool... too much.

Lucinda pushes the starter button. The saucer hums a bass note and leaps into space! We try flying around the moon. Not just as a flight test--there's a scientific question we can answer, too. The experts say if the moon is mostly not cratered on the hidden side, it's probably a captured planet; if the back's like the front, it was our moon from the start.

But just before we can slip behind the moon, we have mechanical trouble. Have to come back to Earth and land at a time-machine repair shop in San Mateo, the California suburb where I grew up.

We might as well stock up at the corner grocery, while the mechanic looks at our ship. We had only three cans of food for the journey. Not too appetizing either--one can was catfood. One is oysters. My difficult girlfriend opens the can and gobbles all the oysters, cold. Like the salt-sucking creature on the very first Star Trek show, her weird craving proves She's The Murderer...

DAMN! Or was that HURRAY? If my girlfriend's a monster, I'm free to go after Lucinda, isn't that fair?

Not yet, though. There in the kitchen, snacking, is a scientist I know. He tells me genially "I've rigged up some bombs that'll blow the house apart. You might survive though, if you hid in that far corner. Or you might not." Oh, gee, thanks.

Time's so much on my mind, I never even consider just running out of the house. Instead, I run through time! I don't need a machine--desperation's my rocket power.

I travel six generations forward, one with each giant step I take. In each generation, I meet another Chris Wayan and ask for help defusing that bomb. Only the sixth one thinks he can--and I have my doubts. I've come a long way into a strange future. This Chris, who's supposedly my descendant, looks like an alien I just read about called Witweet: a small effeminate furry egg on stilts. Like a dancing toy poodle.

Poodle or not, he's all the help I've got. Witweet Wayan comes back through time with me, to help.

As we pop into the present, Lucinda (whose pants are off again) AND my oyster-monster-girlfriend AND the Mad Scientist all gape at us and burst out laughing. "THIS is your bomb expert?" They find little Witweet ridiculous! And through their eyes, I almost do.

But I give him the chance. Hover and hand him tools. Clever little paws. Their laughter fades. Click. The detonator's disconnected! He's defused it.

Solved a problem none of them could!

I think I've found a valuable ally. Poodle or not.

NOTES

• Lucinda vs my not-right girlfriend = a pseudo-choice! In the end they're both on the same side, mocking the only aspect of me who can solve the problem.
• the bomb = chronic illness? [2012 note: for years doctors said it was all in my head. But it responds to antibiotics! Probably Lyme &/or babesiosis.]
• Witweet is from Poul Anderson's story "A Little Knowledge": a fragile little alien who outsmarts some human thugs on a high-gravity world. I assume he's my mental, nerdy side. But why a...
• Wimpy poodle genius? I was a child prodigy. Skipped ahead in school till I was younger and smaller than my classmates, I got shunned, mocked, hit, and called wimp, pussy and (worst insult in their minds) girl. Is the dream just saying to hell with Americans and their admiration for butch? I can solve problems these loud, laughing butches can't... if I let myself.

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