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A videotape starting to unwind always sounds different from one going frontward as it smoothly fast forwards. So V.J.'s jagged edged ideas seemed ready to perfectly fit as he planned each step, only to appear highly jumbled when viewed as a whole. He began trying to go backwards to see why each added idea just exacerbated the situation.

Caves and cracks dotted the utterly deserted surface of the planet. V.J. gazed sadly at the broken trygate through which he quite badly wanted to leap back home. Almost certain death beckoned through the tear in time gaping at V.J. now that the calibration of the trygate was unset. Destiny obligated him to guess how many time periods to leap frog over to reach for a seriously safe era. Badly ignorant about trygate technology, V.J. wasn't even sure which direction the next nearest time junction gate lay towards, the future or the past. He was desperate.

At first V.J. had peered silently at good, fertile land. Daily he dared to dream of traveling in time. Jake Hefner, star jumper through time, was V.J.'s idol. Frequently V.J. was Jake's handler, which means that all communications with Jake passed through his computer console. Never trained in how to leap himself across the eras of time, V.J. watched Jake's trips on his video monitor.

Often Jake's leaping took him to days before the earth was crowded. Long-ago events effect every era from their moment of occurrence forward. Time-leapers go back in time to change the present by changing the past. V.J. hadn't the foggiest idea what Jake's jumps did to the present; he just focused in on the scenic views appearing behind Jake on the console while Jake was traveling in time. Mostly, V.J. dreamed of living in that long ago land.

V.J.'s personal life was a mess. Rarely a social success, he had gone overboard when a coworker, Madeline, seemed to be attracted to him. Whatever Madeline wanted, Madeline got, with V.J. picking up the tab. When she finally dumped him for one of the time leapers, V. J. was deeply in debt. Madeline was gone, but also gone was his hope of ever buying one of the garden areas on the roof of his apartment building.

Such garden spots were expensive and V. J. had been saving for months to get one. He loved growing plants from seeds. With all farming being done by just a few corporations and with gardening space giving way to housing for the world's huge population, only rooftop gardening was possible.

As V.J. now looked at the arid scene around him, laughter began to erupt from deep inside. He remembered how depressed he had been about Madeline and his indebtedness, how he had felt like he didn't have anything to lose by his risky bet on jumping back to the fertile fields of the past. Boy, had he been wrong! Weak with a mixture of laughter and despair, V.J. released all hope of return to his former life. Too much had gone wrong.

The first step of his careful plan of escape to the past had gone very well. As V.J. had helped Jake suit up for his next time leap, he had injected Jake with a knockout drug. Slipping into the suit himself, including the opaque helmet, V.J. entered the launch room. He walked boldly into the time chamber and waited for the trygate to open.

Generally the gate would immediately open and Jake would step through it. Not this time. The trygatekeeper on duty instead came to the chamber with a rifle. V.J.'s already wildly beating heart nearly went ballistic, until the gatekeeper handed the rifle to him and said, "Are you sure you want to follow through on this, Jake?"

Not having much of an option, V. J. nodded his head yes. By now, V.J. was beginning to have a glimmering that his plan was in jeopardy. The door opened and he stepped into the past.

The bullets were buzzing around his head and the smell of gunpowder was in the air. Soldiers were running for cover without even noticing V.J. in his opaque helmet and jump suit. Their uniforms were of World War I vintage. Barbed wire was coiled all around him. In the trench near him was a wounded soldier draped over its rim.

V.J. dived into the trench for cover. The wounded soldier cried out in pain as he was hit by another bullet. V.J. pulled him down in the trench with him, saving the soldier's life, as a hail of bullets rained on the spot where he had been draped.

"Good job," said a voice, making V.J. jump. Even as he turned to see who was there, V.J. realized the voice originated from his earphones. "Get out of there now! His buddies will find him any second."

V.J. realized that saving this soldier's life was Jake's mission. Now he was supposed to leap back, only seconds from arriving.

Two things about this didn't make V.J. happy. First, bullets continued to fly around the trygate. Second, going back to his own time wasn't in V.J.'s plan of action. Movement further along in the trench gave V.J. no choice. Returning fire with his rifle over the rim, V.J. leaped out of the trench again.

Slowly he crawled under the gunfire back to the trygate. Despite his dangerous plight, V.J. hesitated when he could have stepped again into the trygate. To do so would hurl him back to the jump chamber where major trouble awaited him.

V.J. had memorized the temporal coordinates to one of Jake's former sites in the past. It had seemed empty of civilization. Fertile soil and lush plant life was seen everywhere. He now punched in those coordinates.

The suit and helmet allowed the jumpers to be traced from leap to leap. That also wasn't in V.J.'s plan. He shed both. Finally he stepped through the gate.

The site was not the one that V.J. had expected. Never having set temporal coordinates before, he must have made a mistake somewhere. Snow and ice covered everything and the wind howled. Without his suit, V.J. felt the cold as it knifed through his flimsy clothing. Worse yet, a pack of white wolves surrounded him. In panic, V.J. leaped back through the gate.

Because no new temporal coordinates were set, V.J. expected to return to the beginning point of his jump. That didn't happen. No bullets were flying. Instead, he saw the same desert view that he now faced. Initially optimistic that he would soon be alone in a perfect world for him, V.J. had instead, in less than five minutes, taken a dead-end road to nowhere. Along the way, he had managed to visit a World War I battle and also to nearly become wolf meat.

True, it wasn't really a dead end. V.J. could keep on making random leaps, hoping for something better. But randomly leaping through time is like playing Russian roulette, only worse. Almost half of time sites are real dead-ends - the jumper dies instantly. Leaving the safe paths through time already mapped out is dangerous. V.J. had already made two such jumps and the odds were now heavily stacked against him.

Soon hunger and thirst would force him to make the next random leap. To stay here would be fatal. To leap might be fatal, but perhaps not. The choice was clear and V.J. stepped once again through the trygate.

Today was a lucky day after all. The birds were now singing and the waves washed up around V.J.'s feet from the small lake facing him. Beautiful white sand was all around him until the green thickets began behind him. Palm trees also lined the beach along with coconut trees.

A small hill reached into the blue sky above the trees. Making his way through the green lush vegetation, V.J. climbed to the top of the hill. Perfectly round on the top, it provided a clear view in all directions.

At the sight of his surroundings, V.J. collapsed, weak with shock. He was standing in a rooftop garden and he now recognized something else about his location. The garden was on the roof of the jump chamber building where he worked as Jake's handler. He had come full circle. The only question was when it was, now he knew where he was.

The carefully concealed door to the building below was just a few steps away. V.J. stepped through the door and descended quietly to the floor below. No one was in sight. The computer terminal on the wall told the time and date. It was the day and hour he had replaced Jake on his jump to the war battle.

V.J.'s instinctive reaction was to stop himself from again making the same mistake. Not thinking through the possible consequences, he raced to the nearest elevator and descended to the prep room floor. He dashed into the prep room just as his earlier self was about to inject Jake. He yelled "No!"

No one had ever determined what would happen if a time leaper should ever meet an earlier version of himself. It was unable to happen without causing possible paradoxes and much discussion had taken place debating possible consequences if it ever did happen. For one instant, V.J. and Jake knew the answer to this puzzle.

When the same person meets himself, the earlier version winks out of existence. This means the later version of the person can't exist either, because his existence depends on having an earlier self to come from. V.J. watched his former self disappear. Even as he began to suspect what was happening, he also ceased to exist.

Jake just stood there with his suit half on, in total confusion. He knew something had happened, but he wasn't sure what it was. He pulled on the rest of the suit and went into the jump chamber. "Where's V.J.?" he asked.

"Who?" came back the response.

Jake couldn't remember who either, though something vaguely tugged at his memory.

Ian Wetherbee 2/23/2000