I Have No Idea What This Is

"Realistically," she says with a shrug, "My biggest problem with time travel is that I can never remember when I'm telling someone a joke that I've already told them in the future."

I smile again. This is the third time we have started (or will be starting or will be have started) the interview and I have already heard her say that twice before. It was funny the first time. Well, more or less. At any rate, I had laughed the first time I heard it.

"I suppose it's not that different than everyone else's life, really," she continues. "I mean, how many times have you thought that you've told your husband about that dinner party only to find out that you never actually got around to mentioning it." She grins brightly. "At least I have an excuse when it happens."

I nod, despite having neither husband, nor wife nor significant other of any kind. I have a significant cat, who is significant in that he is the only creature in the house who notices when I am gone. The dog does not, but the dog also lacks a concept of time longer than five seconds and so always greets me as though I have been away for a millennium even when I have just been standing behind him for a minute. But neither dog nor cat nor guinea pigs (who do not so much notice me as worship me as God, great bestower of lettuce and refiller of the water-bottle) care whether I inform them about my dinner party plans.

"I find that I don't really notice it," she adds, needing no prompting from my side of the table. She is a good interviewee, lobbing all the right questions to herself and answering them with a smile and a practiced shake of the head. "It bothers other people more than it does me, you know. I always know where I am and how I got there. Lots of people don't anymore."

"But doesn't it bother you?" I press. "Missing out on ordinary life, I mean?"

She laughs, a bright sound that reminds me of ice cubes clinking together after all the scotch was gone from the glass. "Doesn't it bother you?" she turns my question neatly around. "Living the way you do, always running off towards something exciting somewhere else. The way I live, I have time to just sit back and watch the sky."

The alarm on my watch starts to ring on cue and I sigh.

"Look, I'm sorr-" I begin, but she waves a hand and cuts me off.

"It happens," she says. "Have fun whenever you're off to."

"One last question," I say. "Do you think we would all be better off like you?" I ask.

She shrugs. "I'm not one to proselytize, but I've find that this works for me. It's a more steady way of living my life and makes me feel like I have more control over my world. Living like you all do, I'd just feel a bit lost and confused. Living like this keeps me anchored."

"So you DO consider yourself an A.T.T.er, then?"

She shakes her head. "I'm not that kind of person. I don't believe in enforced choices. If you want to live like me...well, you can try. It's not as hard as it seems."

I laugh at that statement. Plenty of people have tried and none of them seem to be able to do it.

She laughs as well, acknowledging the apparent impossibility of her words.

"You should go," she says. "I know you can't be late or anything, but-"

Late. There was a word I had not heard in a while. Fitting it should come from her mouth.

"I have a meeting with the head of the A.T.T. actually," I say. "I'd invite you along but-"

She waves her hand. "Don't mention it. Will I see you again soon?"

"In about ten minutes," I tell her. "We're going to have discussed how you managed to raise your family."

"Are we?" she murmurs. "Good to know."

I stand up and shake her hand. "Nice to see you again."

"And you," she replies, taking a sip of water and settling back down on the red vinyl benches of the diner.

I walk out the door and close my eyes, walking steadily along the road with an empty mind as I wait for the time stream to overtake me and jump me six years ago to the meeting with Sandy MacPherson I have scheduled. He had died in the year before the one I was currently inhabiting, but he was so charismatic that we just kept going back to get interviews with him anyway. He still jokes that he's the only person to have ever used time travel for its intended purpose--achieving temporal immortality.

Clearing my mind is harder than I expected it to be, as my thoughts keep drifting back towards the short snippets of interviews I have been having, and will continue to have, with Melissa Rose, the woman who cannot travel through time.