On this particular day Mr. Wallace was not up to anything good.

By that, I mean simply that he wasn’t doing anything one might consider worth his while. Indeed, this guy was just wandering around the city wasting both his time and his life.

So it had been since he was born. This man was never up to anything good or sensible.

. . .

Yeah, I think that’s about how most folks would describe me.

Hiya. I’m Lynnrd Wallace. Don’t ask why it’s spelled like that—my dad has a superstition about vowels in first names. He’s a real murder-board guy, you know? Got a handful of screws rattling around up there. Anyway, all of my good friends call me Lenny, and since I’m giving you a front-row seat to observe my life, you count as a good friend. Just call me Lenny.

Oh yeah, if the ITSA comes knocking, this is your evidence. Please don’t forget it. It’s the only thing standing between me and a hot date with Death.

Anyway.

On the particular morning of April Ninth, Two Thousand Seventy-Seven, the Year of Our Lord, I was delivering mail.

With my little cap on my head and my big bag on my shoulder, I walked through rain-misted streets and doffed to everyone I passed. I made sure to give them all very vapid smiles. That’s part of the sell.

See, something kinda weird happens when you spend extended periods of time in any place. You’ve heard of the ripple effect? Well, that’s no joke. And if you spend too long in one place, you really start to see it.

It always starts out with just the landlord, then the neighbors. Maybe the folks at the local grocery or convenience. Then it’s the boss, the coworkers, the friends and relatives of all those folks, and then before you know it the NSA or its equivalent and nineteen foreign governments are all demanding to know where the fluff you came from.

Usually happens in six months, or less. This Ninth of April happened to be two days after my sixth month in this timeline. I was kind of feeling good about this one. Secluded apartment, stable job—there was even a little cutie on my route who always caught me coming by and liked to chat. My looks and name were both pretty plain here—a little quirky, maybe, but nothing that’d make you look twice.

Pro tip: Always trust the bad feelings, and never trust the good ones.

That Ninth of April, I stood at the bottom of Tiomas’s steps, leaned on the rail with my ankles crossed, listening to him talk with a smile. Tiomas is always a treat, and not just for the eyes—though with those pointy canines and dimples, he isn’t a slouch in that department either. But he has this accent I can never put my finger on, something like Italian but not quite, and the way he talks with his hands is just adorable.

On that morning, he was telling me about visiting some tropical island. I didn’t catch its name. When he described the sparkle on the sea at midday, I looked at the gleam in his eyes and could suddenly picture it perfectly.

He talked for a good ten minutes before pausing. It was then that realization bloomed on his face. “Sorry, I ramble. You have nice day, Mr. Wallace.”

I straightened up, still smiling. “I said Lenny’s fine.”

“Right. Lenny.”

I fixed my cap and lifted one hand in a lazy wave. But when Tiomas was about to shut his door, he froze.

I frowned and leaned back a bit to better get a look at him. “Something the matter?”

“Uehh. . .Yes, I just remember, the lightbulb in here broke. Not tall enough to fix. Can you help?”

“Sure, let me take a look.”

Tiomas opened the door up for me and stood to the side to let me in.

When I climbed the steps, I just happened to glance to the right, up the street.

Chills possessed me. What did I see then? A little troupe of Itsies.

Gee golly. Just what I needed this early on a Ninth of April.

I coughed into my fist. “So uh—” When Tiomas looked back at me, I swallowed the words I’d been about to speak and instead asked weakly, “where’s this busted bulb of yours?”

“Ehm, cellar. Went down for potato yesterday and couldn’t see a thing. Bothersome.”

“I bet. You have a spare bulb?”

“Yes, let me go get.”

I watched him disappear upstairs and wondered if maybe I shouldn’t just drop out. But I’d already agreed to fix his lightbulb—I could at least stay long enough to do that, right? It wasn’t like the Itsies could just bust his door down—

Tiomas hustled back down the stairs with a box in his arms. It was so big that he could barely keep a secure hold on it and still see over the top, and inside was a mess of bulbs in every shape, size, and color imaginable to mankind.

I refrained from commenting on this, and Tiomas refrained from informing me of the reason behind his bizarre collection of lightbulbs. Together we trudged like a couple of fools into the cellar.

He hadn’t lied, it was dark as pitch down there.

“One moment.” There was a gentle clinking as Tiomas shifted the box in his arms. Then a soft beam of light pierced the darkness.

He aimed the flashlight so I could see the bulb that needed to be replaced. It wasn’t that high above my head, so I didn’t bother looking for a stool. I reached up and unscrewed it, then replaced it with the one Tiomas handed me.

“Alright, it should be fine now. Hit the switch.”

Tnk.

For a second, light flared.

Crrrrr-POP.

The next, Tiomas’s entire townhouse lost power and we were once again dropped into darkness, accompanied only by the sound of several appliances winding to a stop.

“. . .I don’t think your light fixtures are fond of me.”

There was a little snort of startled laughter. My face lit up at the sound, but unfortunately, high spirits don’t actually shed any brightness. (Not in this timeline anyway.)

More clinking as Tiomas put down the bulb box. “Not your fault. This place older than my grandpa. Needs lot of fixing.”

He turned the flashlight back on.

We were not standing in his cellar anymore.

It wasn’t all that shocking to me. I’d accidentally flumped many times, though it was almost never so obvious right off the bat. But I figured it was probably a great shock to Tiomas.

However, when I looked at him, he wasn’t fazed either. What a calm guy.

Seeing that he was alright, I instead took in the surroundings.

We stood near a fountain in a square. It was maybe midafternoon. A handful of people came and went. The thing was, a moment ago we’d been standing in old-timey One Thousand, Nine Hundred Forty (for you guys anyway)-esque Boston, and now we were in the middle of Generic Fantasy Town.

So naturally, we stuck out like a couple of kangaroos in a barn.

I looked at Tiomas again. Still unfazed. Impressive.

“We should—”

“—get clothes. I know.”

I blinked. The accent had disappeared. That was normal, of course, but it was still odd. Almost a little saddening.

Well, it would’ve been if I weren’t so taken aback with Tiomas’s lack of bewilderment.

I followed him into the nearest clothing store. The proprietor looked horrified at the sight of us. Before either of us said a word, he’d already bustled over to suggest a variety of fanciful outfits.

In the end, Tiomas picked some wizardish robes and I just got some nondescript stablehand’s clothes. He paid for both with a silver pocketwatch. I mentally noted down to get him a new one as soon as possible.

First I had to figure out why a thinny had appeared in Tiomas’s cellar, of all places.

My first thought was that it must’ve been because of the Itsies, but even the best of them didn’t have that much skill. I of course was only capable of solo travel. So then, it must’ve been natural, but in my experience, thinnies didn’t occur in cellars. They were way more common in areas like malls or airports. Or old battlefields and cemeteries—anyway, places where many feet had tread, on both sides.

I looked at Tiomas a third time. He actually looked pretty calm—at home, even.

“You doing okay?” I hazarded. “Not flipping the boat or anything?”

“Doing fine.” We came upon a crossroads and he halted. “Mr. Wallace, how long have those men been chasing you?”

“Lenny.” The correction only took up two brain cells. “Uhh. . .What men?”

“The ITSA.”

I frowned. “You know about them?”

“Yes. How long?”

“Oh. Well, today’s the first time in a while.”

Tiomas cast me a glance, brows furrowed, then cut off to the left path. Good choice. “When did it start?”

“Ahaha. . .My, isn’t it a bit soon to start asking such personal questions. . .”

“Not if you don’t want to be arrested.”

“Twelve years ago.” I cleared my throat. “I was fourteen. Tiomas, how do you know what the ITSA is?”

“The same way anyone else does.” We crossed to the other side of the road. “Well, you know how to weave then, yes?”

“Uh, I do, but—”

“Good. Get ready.”

“Hey—Tiomas—”

My fingers had just curled in his sleeve when we passed through approximately eight-hundred ninety-two timelines.

Without much grace, I stumbled as far as I could and unceremoniously purged my guts.

As a man wanted by the ITSA and usually the government, of course I was familiar with the concept of crossing many timelines to shake pursuers. That said, weaving is a process best done delicately. Every timeline comes with a load of knowledge. Even crossing just one is disorienting. Crossing eight-hundred ninety-two in the span of one step is like having someone shove the solar system into your brain.

If I wasn’t so fond of Tiomas, I might’ve punched him. Alas, my soft smitten heart forgave him without a second thought.

It took a minute before the retching stopped, and longer than that before I could clumsily get back to my feet. Even after that, I was still shaking like a leaf, whereas Tiomas looked fine. Like we were just taking a summer stroll.

He handed me a handkerchief. I accepted it with a hoarse croak of gratitude.

Once my face and hands were clean, I forced my throat to work and asked, “Tiomas. You care to explain why there was a thinny in your cellar? And how the heck you’re not tossing your salt?”

He looked at me for a long moment with a face that I suspected to be forcibly smooth, then said in a very patient tone, “Mr. Wa. . .Lenny, I’m also a trav. There was a thinny in my cellar because that’s where I came through.”

“If you hadn’t told me, I would never have guessed.”

Tiomas’s eyes were full of a sympathy that told me he was now aware of how idiotic I am. “Can you walk?”

“Theoretically.”

He took hold of my elbow and started forward, slow and steady. “Listen, Mr.—Lenny. The ITSA isn’t going to give up on you. They’ll hunt you anywhere you go. My job is to make sure they never catch you.”

“Oh. How reassuring. Why?”

His brow furrowed, the way it did when he was chewing on his words. “Because they think you should not exist. That a person whose mere presence mends timelines must be locked away, picked apart, and then erased.”

Hints of the accent were back, which just tickled me blue. In fact, I was so happy about this that it took a long moment for his meaning to register with me.

“Wait, hang on. Mends timelines? You mean I’m, like, the timeline doctor?”

I stumbled, and his fingers tightened pleasantly around my elbow.

“I don’t know what you are,” Tiomas said. “None of us do. But I know that every place you’ve popped up, even for a moment, every derailed and doomed timeline, has righted itself. Worlds where disaster was thought inevitable, suddenly. . .”

He seemed lost for words, but I wasn’t concerned. All the better if it took him a while, because I was still confused. “Slow down. ‘Us’?”

“The Gazers. We keep watch over existence.”

I looked at him sideways. For a moment my lungs took a break and my eyes picked up the slack, drinking in the way sunlight lit up his hair and caught on his lashes, pooled in his brown eyes akin to some ethereal liquid.

Then his eyes slid to mine, and I remembered it’s impolite to stare. My gaze moved away and I coughed into one fist. “Okay. Okay, so. . .” Work, brain, don’t fail me now. “So I’m—some kind of ‘happy ending’ magnet?”

“So it could be said.”

I gave up trying to make sense of the day. “Well, as long as I’m still on your side of things.”

Aaaaaaand there it was. If you’ve ever had jet lag, imagine that multiplied by perhaps fifteen thousand and that’s roughly what hit me then. One does not simply jump through eight hundred ninety-three timelines in fifteen minutes and stay awake to tell the tale.

I barely had time to mutter “Whoopsy-daisy” before I flopped over limp-fish style and passed out.