Well, it's Christmas here. And I see...I never made it back to fill in the gaps in the ten years I've been gone.

Nothing is the same, nothing.

And if you think your world is going to be unchanged, think a little harder. A little harder with a multitude of large explosions thrown in.

We're hanging on, us Americans. But only by a thread, and only by pure luck. It won't be long until we're all dead, some say, but I know better. Because a version of myself from 2025 happened past me in the market and told me something.

Something I can't tell anyone but myself, when I'm from 2025.

The game is changed, Americans. And I'm trying my best to play it in the only way I know how.

To win.

It feels like everything's happened to me. And I haven't had time to stop, to sit down and make sense of any of it. Until now. Where I'm at, it's cold. The floors are bare; the dull gray of groundstone. It's night; I know that. The breeze through the holes in the walls is icy, and my clothes are too thin to be any help.

If I'm not crazy, then I've done it.

If I'm not crazy, then I've bent the rules of the universe just enough...to snap me to some other time. I've time traveled.

Wait, though. I need to tell you how it happened.

Just wait.

I've spent the last few days hating my own existence, wandering from one end of the flat to the other, refusing to change clothes or shower. I unplugged the Mead, and spent most of my time in a chair reading. I've never really liked reading, and I still don't. No matter how many pages you get through, how many concepts you understand, it never feels like anything gets done. It's just a thing to do, I guess, when nothing else in your life feels right and you can almost hear the ticking of time. Each minute that passes is another one you've wasted. Each breath you take is one closer to your last. I made it a point not to sleep just because I was supposed to; if I was going to feel like this I wanted to do it my own way, not follow some societal rule that says people should sleep when it's dark out. Reading like that, for twenty hours straight, did something to my eyes, made them hard and hot. I passed out with a book in my lap, and when my sore neck woke me I was still holding it open like that, only now it had a puddle of drool running down between the pages. I threw it on the ground and walked myself to the other room, where I collapsed on my bed. I blinked for a while, trying to see if the effort would make my eyes any better, but it didn't. Shrugging off my clothes and sliding beneath the sheets I let my body go and shortly thereafter my mind followed.

Sleep does wonders for depression. The next morning, or whenever it was that I woke up (I had the Mead disconnected and the windows blocked and had no other way to tell time) I felt a hell of a lot better. I avoided the chair I'd made a depressive bubble around and threw myself in the shower, thinking that a good run of water down my back should do me some good, wake me up, get the juices flowing. Something had to change; I knew that. I felt...I felt like things were different now, and I had to adapt. The depression, while useful for what it was, could not be who I became. And in the shower is where it happened.

I emerged a free man, observant of the world and its laws but no longer subject to them. Worry did not have its hold on me, nor did pressure, nor did expectation. And, most important, nor did time. I could be what I was, do what I would, and live for myself. Guilt had slid off me like the soap suds; self-loathing had dissolved with the dirt on my body.

Because in the shower I made a decision. Nothing matters, in the end. Nothing is changed. The universe is still the universe, and nothing you or anyone else can do will change that. Everything dies, in the end. Every form of life shines for just an instant in the cosmic consciousness, and is then snuffed and replaced with cold, with death. Someone else might find this depressing. Might find it sad.

All I know is that I'm free.

Dreaming is claustrophobic, a manic representation of my muddled thoughts. It's a lot at first, a desperate dance of theories and paradoxes. I wake up screaming in frustration four times before I finally find it. Honest to goodness, warm, thoughtless sleep.

I wake up and it's Tuesday. I've slept twenty-seven hours, and my body has become glued in an awkward position to the bed. My muscles, sore and weak from disuse, protest weakly as I creak out of bed and stumble, blearily, to the urinal. My bladder emptied, I look around my flat, once more noticing the blinking green light on the Mead. I take three steps toward it and my vision goes dark from the bottom up, and my knees are hitting the tile, and my arms try to keep my head from doing the same. I don't move for the longest time, waiting for my vision to clear and my nausea to recede. Mentally I'm checking myself; not hurt too bad.

"Funk," I say to myself. An old grade-school joke.

I get up slowly, using the counter to keep me upright. The Culinartiste' whirs as I tell it I need something that'll give me strength and wake me up. Gloopy green slop drops into the cup and I tip it back into my mouth, careful not to breathe until I've swallowed it all. I see on the Mead that it's Tuesday, and I groan. What happened to Monday? That's a whole day I'll never get back. Then, realizing what I'm thinking, I burst out laughing.

"Well, that's one way to time travel!"

I'm feeling better now. I duck into the Mead and hit the message button, blinking up into the projection area to see who would vid me. But no face appears. I frown, finally noticing the small line of text hovering near the bottom of the projection area.

I can't be with you anymore, Alfred. It's not your fault; I've just grown apart from you. Please don't call. - Marilyn.

I read it again. The bitch didn't even bother to vid me. I shrug, pretending to myself that I don't care. And as depression drapes itself around my shoulders I start scanning through the Mead stations.

It's something to do, to keep my fingers moving. But I'm staring; looking through images that won't even process in my mind.

I won't call. If there's one thing I am for Marilyn, it's obedient.

I haven't slept in three days. Every time I close my eyes they roll around in my head while I agonize, analyze and reject possibilities. Time travel as we know it is possible, and has been around as long as life on this planet. Since organisms could move, and observers could watch them move, time has been relative. According to Einstein, and his theory of Special Relativity, a man in a car moving somewhere near the speed of light will age, to an observer not moving at all, at a much slower rate. Time would appear to have slowed down, and yet the man in the car would notice nothing out of the ordinary. He'd tie his shoe and half a century would go by, all of the people he knew growing older and dying, being replaced by their reproductions. In essence, it's already possible to travel to the future. But there's no going back.

Yet.

I rip open another protein bar and the wrapper flutters to the floor, joining its many brothers. A light on the outside of the Mead blinks; I have a message. I chew and swallow, not moving from my spot on the bed.

I know time travel exists. Unless I'm crazy, (and based on the way I look right now you might be able to convince me I am) and I don't think I am; I saw a man from the future, one who claimed to be a relation to me. And I saw him disappear, blipping out of existance with my last beer. So it's possible. You can travel to the past. Why am I bothering, if I know it happens in the future? I have proof, certainty. Things none of these philosphers or physicists had. Someone discovers time travel.

So why can't it be me?

I feel like I've stumbled into something much deeper and more complicated than I ever thought anything could be. The box arrived this morning; I pulled the tab on the side and it popped open, the odor that accompanies old books escaping.

There's not a single recent book here. They're all from either before the turn of the century or just after, giving me the feeling I'm not learning about anything anyone cares about anymore. After reading the introduction of one book, Are We Then Yet? by Cliff Pelter, I was starting to get an idea why. This was a book published in the mid-nineteen-nineties, and it spent a lot of time putting forth arguments by several philosophers and physicists, all of which deal with the assumption that advanced cultures of the future will eventually succeed in inventing the 'time machine.' The problem I have with this is the complete failure to experiment. How will we as a society ever create the thing we're relying on those in the future to create? It's probably the only case of generational procrastination I've ever witnessed.

I called Marilyn today. She saw it was me and disconnected. I just stood there for like ten seconds, unsure of what to do, or what to feel. How am I supposed to act? Women have always been hard for me, and I think it's because they're the most complicated. The smallest things push them away, and when you finally reel them back again you wonder if all that effort was even worth it. I mean, the sex is good and there's always something about having a real live woman to share your presence with. But really, though. Sometimes I wonder if that whole side of the species has an overreaction gene. Maybe Marilyn isn't the girl for me, I thought today, but I called her anyway. I haven't got anything better.

I woke up today around two o'clock, with another headache. This one, however, was of the hangover persuasion. Half a bottle of White Russian sat capped on my bedside table. I've always been kind of embarrassed over my capacity for alcohol; it wasn't even three quarters full when I started. I got out of bed and had my Culinartiste' make me some eggs while I popped idly into the Mead and ordered up some news. Something about unrest overseas, in the Middle East, and I stopped paying attention. When the only news is about unrest in the desert, nothing important's happening in the world. I'm waiting for the next big thing to happen, something huge like the 2012 French Revolution or that city in China that got nuked by accident four years ago. I need something to hold my attention, to make me feel something. Like a person.

And I would have just walked around my flat all day in the nude like that, but I had to call Marilyn.

Well, that wasn't the only reason. Is it odd that I'm worried about being caught in the buff by bloody time travelers from the future? I'm starting to think maybe I made the whole thing up to keep myself entertained.

"Temporal dislocation."

I ordered seven books about it today. They'll be here tomorrow; I wonder if I'm obsessed?

I left the high-rise today. I had to; something about walking around the flat for that long looking at all the same things was giving me a headache.

Now I'm on the bus.

It's kind of a long story. I took the elevatube down the first floor and tipped the doorbot with a knock on his tin noggin. It's an old joke between us; I guess because he doesn't forget anyone who walks through his door and I get along easier with bots than with people. People are too much work. Anyway, I walked through the door and all at once two things hit me. The first thing was the smell; back when I was a kid and smog wasn't so bad a bunch of congressmen passed a bunch of laws to limit air pollution and for a while even told everyone that it was getting better, but it was a lie. Tell it to the street people, you know?

Which brings me to the second thing. The street people. A group of them is usually hunkered outside every big living building, especially those they know rich people live in. Which meant there were more outside my building than most others. Usually I'm really good with the street people, and today I figured they'd leave me alone once they knew I wasn't carrying any pocket money. But this one guy jogged along behind me while I walked, and he was being real forward, yelling at me to say how bad a person I was that I couldn't appreciate how those in the low places had to live. Which pissed me off real bad, because one of my best friends from college ended up living on the streets, and I helped him whenever I could. This guy kept going on, said he knew I had money, and he was going to stay with me until I proved to him I was really not carrying. Like I don't know what he'd have done with the money had I given it to him. You want to help someone on the streets, you don't give him money. Finally, as I turned to face the guy with a fist I'd balled up, he dropped off, throwing his hands in the air. All right, man, he said. And I never looked back.

Through the rest of the walk I kept my eyes on the ground and pasted some vile expression on my face. I passed a few people having animated conversations with themselves, and that cheered me up a little bit. When I was a kid, talking to yourself meant you were a crazy. Now, though, you never know. Is it her grandmother? Boyfriend? Or is she just bonafide street person crazy?

I've always wondered about getting an implant like that, but I'm not too good with human to human communication, like I've said.

Then my legs got tired and I hopped on the bus. I guess it wasn't too long of a story.

I don't know who I'm supposed to be, but the dream I just had freaked the hell out of me. Part of it must have been from being in the Mead...I never dream like this.

Anyway, in my dream. I wasn't myself, I was sort of watching myself if you know what I mean. A floating observer. I was watching myself in a snowstorm, struggling through drifts with my head down, icicles forming all over my body. I didn't feel the cold, but I knew that...well it feels weird to think of it like this, but I knew that my body, that he was going to die. My, his hair was buzzed down to the skin, and he wasn't wearing anything in the way of clothing.

My body stepped over a drift and it collapsed downward, just like one of the jungle traps you always see on the old vids from last century. And then I lost myself. There was just a dark hole where I had fallen through the ice. I knew it was me falling, but in the dream I was watching, you know? So I shouldn't have felt like I was falling, the terror that went with it. But I did.

That's when I woke up. And the strangest thing about it, too. The only thing going through my head was what that kid said. "You're Alfred Funk, right? The Alfred Funk?"

What am I in the future? What do I do?

I get up and Marilyn's gone. There's a note on the door, looks like she might have been angry.

What, you can't bear to sleep in the same bed you had me in? Don't call, Alfred.

This is going to be a good day. I can feel it.

Marilyn came over for dinner. I didn't tell her about what happened the other day. I mean, I could have, but Marilyn isn't prone to believe in extranormal occurrences. Besides, it would probably have killed any chance I had for sex. (Which, it turns out, is still alive and kicking. She got up to change positions and turned her hair a brilliant silver. I love when she does that.)

Dinner was prepared as usual, but with an emphasis on the "romantic," which I don't think my Culinartiste' quite understands yet. It's for myself and a woman, I tell it, and it's still confused. A date, I say. I swear appliances used to know more than they do now.

She fell asleep all tangled in my sheets, and her snoring woke the cleaning bot that lives under the bed. With the robot's whirring and her making so much noise...there wasn't a chance I was going to be able to sleep.

I walked to the Mead and poked my head in, ordered up some news that interested me for a moment. A shuttle carrying pieces for the space station went down, but everyone got out all right. A Florida congressman was having a fit about all the money he'd lost.

Settling myself in the chair, I turned on the classical. Would you like any particular composer, mister Funk? I tell it AutoCompose is fine. And I listen, watching the three dimensional representation of the sad dirge it has decided to create. In the waves and motions I see myself, a man afloat, unsure of his surroundings. Eventually my eyes close, and I sleep.

I spent nearly all day today in the Mead. There's something timeless about that portroom, the way it wraps you in its warm black bath. The chair that molds to your body, taps into your momentary comfort needs. I could stay in the same position forever and not get sore. It was never like this with any of the older models, and I'm glad I invested the extra hundred thousand for this year's.

Whoever invented the Mead should have been knighted. Maybe he was, before the royal family was dissolved. It may be the single most influential product this century. A viewing area that will let you see any of the Mead stations in three full dimensions, and at any virtual size you'd ever want. When it was first invented the view was enough. People bought the thing and went inside, transfixed by the clarity and resolution of the hyperdimensional images presented to them. Oh, and the sound quality was quite amazing as well. Now, though. A body can sit in a Mead portroom and just close his eyes, letting the stations rotate by as accompanying smells massage his nostrils. I do that a lot these days, station rotation by smell to find what I'd like to view, and today was no exceptioin. However, I never thought I'd be in there all day. Maybe it I'll suggest that it inform me of the time in the future.

Maybe it's good for me, and maybe it's rotting my brain. That whole debate they had about the television thirty years ago. But it helps me forget how lonely I am, and I guess that's good.

I wish my great-nephew would visit again. I definitely have questions.

Maybe Florence would like to know she has children in the future. No, if she wants that piece of information, she's going to have to vid me.

A great nephew I've never met just showed up in my high-rise. Well, he said he was my great nephew. His clothes were pretty torn. Said he'd just been running from a bunch of religious zealots in the early eighties; they'd thought he was some sort of demon.

I don't know if if this man was crazy, but I figured I'd play along since I'm mostly indifferent when it comes to...well, everything. So I asked him, calmly and politely, would he get off my carpet so I could put it into its cleaning cycle. You leave blood too long on a carpet without letting it clean itself, it stays and then the carpet goes into depression. It's never happened to me or anyone I know, but the Mead showed a story about it once.

So then this young fellow tells me he's my great nephew, and he's from twenty sixty-five. I don't know if I believe him; maybe I do, the security's pretty tight in my flat and I bio-locked the door behind me when I came in.

So you time travel, I say. He laughs. No one calls it that in twenty sixty-five apparently. It's a moot term. Then what do you call it? The kid says some word in a language I've never heard before. I nod. All right. So you're from the future. You came here why.

He shrugs. You are Alfred Funk, right? The Alfred Funk? I shrug too. I'm the only Alfred Funk I know.

I ask him if he wants a beer and he doesn't laugh. Beer is apparently still relevant in twenty sixty-five. He drinks the beer and says he's got somewhere to be.

I wonder if he'll come back. Maybe I've got something to ask him.

Fuck. That was my last beer.