(For optimal immersion, play this before reading.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORbseYAkzRM

A thin man dressed in a black suit and with his hair combed back steps from behind a house and into its well-cared yard, a smoking cigarette dangling from his fingers.

“Time is something that we take for granted,” he says, walking around a frozen man opening the house’s front door. “After all, how could we conceive of a world without the order that time imposes on us? Would birds fly backward? Flowers turn into seeds and back again? Would the world stop turning?”

He keeps walking down the frozen street, stepping into the paralyzed traffic and between a yellow cab and a black limousine going in the other direction before taking a long drag of his cigarette.

“The world needs time to work. It needs a consecutive, rational order of events,” he says, purple smoke drifting up from the corners of his mouth.

“But, for one Lisa Wilbourn, and just for one day… Time may take a leap forward.”

***

I… wait, where… Taylor’s house? But renovated? A new sofa. More comfortable. And fresh paint, though with—is that scrawling on the living room’s wall?

Current amount of criminal activity in neighborhood—

Power? Are you freaking out?

Optimal route for sustenance-gathering established—

Wait, what?

Rumors about hidden razor blades on candied apples—

Those aren’t a thing! They were never a thing! Stop worrying about Linda—

Wait.

Linda.

What the fuck is going on inside my head—

Lisa Hebert’s crisis of identity secondary concern—

Oh, fuck you—

…

Wait. Wait a goddamn second, Lisa what—

“Liz?” Taylor’s voice asks from behind me, but it’s… deeper. Smoother. Something in it making me shudder before I even turn around on the couch to see her on the stairs and—

…

“Why are you dressed like Columbo?” I ask the girl—woman wearing a trench coat with some impressively simulated tobacco stains.

“To mock you,” she says with an arched eyebrow that makes it quite clear that hot MILF Taylor hasn’t lost her edge in any way at all.

And I—I’ve got boobs?

I mean, I always did! Great ones, really. Not great as in, sizeable, though definitely not small, either, but the current ones are…

Okay, they may qualify as great. In all senses of the word.

Lisa Hebert’s Narcissism—

Says Sherlock.

… Lisa Hebert’s pettiness and long-term memory regarding statistically insignificant past instances of faulty self-denomination—

Oh, fuck, you’ve grown out of your chuuni phase. This is going to be fantastic.

And not just because of Milfy Taylor.

Though also because of that. Very much because of that.

Lisa Hebert’s concerning set of priorities—

“Okay, are you done arguing with Power? Linda needs your help,” she says, the eyebrow raised yet not arched, a magnificent, nuanced display that hints at her more unrestrained showings.

“Wait, she does?” I ask while trying to access whatever the Heck there’s in this body that keeps me unbalanced yet just familiar enough with everything going on for me not to panic.

Or, well, not to panic much more than usual.

“It’s her first Halloween outing,” she says, rolling her eyes back, and—

Wait.

Wait, wait, wait! No! I’m too young to be a mother! I’m just—

Thirty—

Shut the fuck up! I’m twenty-nine and a little bit! And I’ve got enough Tinkers on call to make that more than a figure of speech!

Chronological date of birth—

Power, I swear to whatever passes as a God for disembodied voices stuck in my brain, which, come to think of it, it’s likely me, that if you so much as nudge me into a middle-age crisis, I’ll hunt you down, shove you into one of Dragon’s spare bodies, and drag you to a convention of Sherlock Holmes cosplayers!

… Lisa Hebert’s disproportionate sense of retribution—

“Liz!”

“Ah! Sorry! Power was being… extra testy,” I say, coming up with the first excuse that I can and crossing my fingers that Future Liz and Future Power’s endearing sibling dynamic is about as dysfunctional as ever.

“He’s still going on about those Halloween rumors? Tell him that they are just urban legends. There’s absolutely no way that Cauldron would slip any vials into candy bags,” she says, waving her hand in a way that makes the trench coat flare open and suddenly making me about a third as worried as Power.

Likelihood of shard-bud contamination if exposed to—

Nope. Don’t want to hear it. That sounds like a spoiler, and my religion forbids them. The religion that I’m the god of. Your religion.

Lisa Hebert’s customary Messiah Complex—

What do you mean ‘customary?!’

“Are you really going to keep her waiting?” Tay says.

And I bite the corner of my lip and look at the stairs leading up to… to what should be Tay’s old bedroom, the guest room that my mother briefly slept in, and Danny’s bedroom, but some memories come up, and I know that Danny and Mom moved out when…

Linda.

“I… I guess I shouldn’t put it off for much longer?” I say.

“I don’t even know what that means, and I’m afraid to ask,” Taylor says.

This Taylor.

Milfy Taylor.

Who looks like she works out.

… Future Me? I never thought I’d tell you this, but good job.

So I shoot a nervous smile to the Mother I Would—to Taylor, and let go of the tablet I just noticed I was holding with both hands before I stand up and walk toward the stairs, briefly squeezing her hand before I pass her by and slowly make my way up toward what used to be Taylor’s room and is now…

Well.

I take a deep breath.

Lisa Hebert’s—

Oh, now you worry about me.

Lisa Hebert’s stress likely to impact Linda’s Halloween experience—

Fuck you.

But… okay. Point taken.

So I guess it’s just me and the golden light I call to stream down from the top of my head, following a visualization I’ve done hundreds of times already when trying to calm myself in the middle of firefights or while hidden behind makeshift cover as Tay gathered whatever info we needed for a plan to come together, or…

Memories mingle, more and more of Future Me coming up to greet me, and they feel… mine. Natural. They all feel like something I would’ve done, even if they still surprise me at times, showing me things I’d thought I’d do differently right up until the moment came up.

Except I didn’t. Wouldn’t. Won’t.

And… And I remember using this trick. The relaxing, calming visualization of golden light while Taylor clutched my hand in a dead grip and the nurse pushed the stretcher I was in toward the…

The maternity ward.

My breath catches in my throat, the golden light shattering as my mind goes into overdrive, and I reach for the doorknob, twisting it as fast as I can, throwing the door open—

“Boooo!” a cheerful voice yells at me.

And, in front of and quite a bit lower than me, a blonde girl jumps up with utter glee, her arms raised into an exuberant ‘V,’ hands bent with her fingers pointing down in a ‘scary’ pose that is just heart-meltingly cute, and…

And…

I…

What the fuck.

… Lisa Wibourn’s perfectly sensible sense of proportionate retribution—

“Is that a… are you… Are you dressed as a six, sweetie?” I ask, trying not to have a mental breakdown.

The girl stuck inside of a golden, glittering, rotund number six smiles radiantly up at me and nods, her arms still held up through the holes by the side of the numerical abomination.

“Granpa said it would be the scariest costume ever! Did I scare you, Mommy? Did I?”

I look at her.

And then I pick her up from her armpits, Linda giggling as soon as I lift her into the biggest hug I can give her as I relish in the costume deforming between my arms, whatever Tinker material Colin used for it giving way to the force of Future Lisa’s maternal instincts and Past Lisa’s sheer spite.

“Yes. Every day since you were born,” I answer, more sincerely than I meant to, smiling all the way.

Then I put her down, looking into my daughter’s radiant smile, and I try not to twitch when her costume reshapes itself without a trace of crumpling or wrinkling.

And Taylor’s cackling echoing from the lower floor doesn’t help with the strain.

At all.

For plenty of reasons.

***

The man leans on the outer wall of the Hebert’s house, his hands shoved down the pockets of his black jacket.

“Time. It’s often unremarkable as it goes by.”

He stands up and approaches the fence, the cars on the street slowly speeding up from their frozen state as a seagull lands on the post framing the wooden gate.

“But, suddenly, it has. Time has moved forward, and nobody can make it turn back. Only memories remain of its passage.”

The door opens when he reaches it, and he walks out onto the sidewalk. A group of giggling children pass by, wearing colorful costumes, a single teen accompanying them and looking around with studied disinterest.

“Some see it as a tragedy. As something beyond repair.”

He turns down the street and takes his left hand out of his jacket’s pocket, gesturing at a clean city with no potholes, full of cheerful children going out to ask for candy or a good fright.

“But, as one Lisa Hebert née Wilbourn has learned today… when time passes…”

He looks up and takes a moment to light up a new cigarette, puffs of smoke coming out of his cupped hand before he shakes the matchstick and extinguishes the brief flash of flame.

“When time passes, the future remains. Even after you step into the Twilight Zone.”

 

 

=============================

Okay, this wasn’t what I’d planned for Halloween, but, well, the date fit, and I had this sudden brainwave that I couldn’t resist, so you now get to suffer like I’ve suffered.

Then I had a second brainwave because the original one had no Twilight Zone segment at all and was just older Lisa and her extended family planning out the optimal, safest route for Linda to go trick-or-treating through with her tinkertech power armor/princess costume.

It would’ve featured surly twenty-something Dinah complaining that, no, there’s nothing between her and Kid Win. Absolutely nothing at all.

… I kinda regret not writing that, but I’m also kinda happy about doing a homage to one of my favorite shows when I was a kid stuck watching reruns.

Also, I get to indulge in edging you about how Colin’s night will go, which is an unintended yet very much appreciated bonus.

Don’t look at me like that; you don’t want to know just how long my Hachiman remained a technical virgin. You’re getting off easy.

Heh. “Getting off.” I crack myself up.

Anyway! I hope you all enjoyed Halloween enough to forgive me my indulgence in this belated piece of it. If you want something slightly more season-themed, though, I just uploaded on this page the first chapter of Periodical Cicadas, my Worm/Scream TV crossover, and snarky Taylor demands more readers.

For now, and until next week…

Enjoy the future!

As always, I’d like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon: aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, and Xalgeon. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on Amazon. Thank you for reading!