Al Steiner - Doing It All Over

"I understand your feelings at my death Bill," he told me. "I was in war and I probably understand them better than you do. I saw human suffering and loss during the war on a scale that you probably can't even imagine. So don't feel sorry for forgetting about me after you left. But as for the passing of the gift, you didn't feel it pass to you and I didn't feel it leave me because it involved time travel. Your wish was granted but it set up a paradox. Two people cannot possess the gift at the same time. It was not passed to you because by granting your wish I was left alive. That was why I thought it didn't work.

"I remember dying. It's not an unpleasant experience I might add. In fact, it feels almost blissful when your body finally accepts its demise. I'd never felt more at peace, more free of pain. I remember grieving absently that the gift had died with me. Everything finally went black. I was at rest.

"And then, seemingly seconds later I woke up in my small house in San Francisco and it was 1982 again. My body was functioning properly, my brain was functioning properly, and I had every memory of what had just happened. I was horrified by what I had done, by what I had put at risk. I could have destroyed the world Bill if you had wished for the wrong thing or if you had treated your gift differently once you were sent back."

"I knew that I was going to have to find you immediately and keep a close eye upon you." He cast a smile, "It's a good thing that you wore a nametag with your first and last on it or I might never have found you. You never told me your name.

"I moved to Spokane, leaving my small house in the hands of a real estate company. I located you as a teenager and I've been keeping an eye on you ever since, making sure you didn't put anything at risk." He gazed at me meaningfully, a little apologetically, "I'm sorry to say that I was prepared to arrange your death if you started to go too far off the path of morality."

I was shocked. "My death?"

"Yes," he nodded. "I would have done it without hesitation if you were putting the fabric of existence at risk. You came close a few times. I must say you were not very moral when you first returned. You put at risk more than twenty relationships by your philandering. You tried to stop an historical event from happening in Beirut."

"You knew about Beirut?" I asked, astonished, "how?"

"You had copies of your letters in your house, did you not?" he asked mildly. "I simply entered it when no one was home and took a look."

"You were in my house?!"

"Bill," he said, "I don't think you realize even today what was at stake with your wish. What you wished for was something I had no right granting. It put the entire world at risk. Of course I was in your house. I was in it more than a hundred times over the years, snooping through your things, trying to see what you were up to. I've been in the house that you share with Nina now at least fifty times. I've been watching you obsessively through my telescope. I needed to make sure that you've stayed on the straight and narrow. I don't think you realize the responsibility that I feel for empowering you in this way. You could have destroyed the world by utilizing your gift in the wrong way. Literally destroyed it. I was obligated to keep an eye on you."

"Jesus," I muttered, wondering at the fact that this man had been watching my every move for the last seventeen years. It was a spooky feeling.

"It was touch and go with you for a while," Mr. Li went on. "You teetered on the very brink of temptation those first few years. Thankfully I discovered the same thing that you and Tracy did, that fate tends to keep things in line despite your interference."

I looked sharply at him, "You know what Tracy and I talked about?"

"Your house was bugged," Mr. Li said. "I had transmitters in your telephones and in every room of the house. I listened to everything that you said to anybody." He gave me a stern, disapproving father look, "I heard every one of your "study sessions". I listened when you told Tracy about your gift. I listened when you told your father about your gift. I listened to your father and Tracy when you weren't there to see if they would tell anyone else about it. I couldn't monitor Tracy at Berkeley from Spokane unfortunately but I was able to bug your father's office. He kept the knowledge to himself and so, apparently, did Tracy.

"You gradually realized the proper use of the gift, for personal betterment.

You found love, which is perhaps the greatest thing on this earth. You did use the gift for money and you are very rich now, but you've never used it for power or influence. You've chosen well Bill. Only one time was I obligated to interfere in any way."

"What do you mean?" I asked, still trying to grapple with the knowledge that Mr. Li probably had logs of every time I'd taken a shit over the last seventeen years.

"Stevens Consulting," he said. "A very good idea. A wise use of the gift I might add. I used your service myself by working through an agent of mine. A man named Dean Stockwell."

"Dean Stockwell?" I gasped, remembering that he'd been one of my clients.

"Oh yes," Mr. Li grinned. "He accessed your services at my instruction. By then I was reasonably wealthy from my own insight but I wanted to make sure I was using an expert. Someone with the base knowledge to take full advantage of the knowledge we shared. But towards the end I sensed some greed in you. You had more than enough money to comfortably live out the rest of your life but you wanted more, you didn't seem to know when to stop.

I figured that you would need a little nudge to push you back on the path.

So I made an anonymous phone call, several of them as a matter of fact, to the FTC. They landed on you within days. Shortly after that, you retired."

"YOU did that?" I asked in disbelief.

He nodded. "I did. Sorry if that offends you. Anyway, while I've been monitoring you all of these years, I've also grown moderately wealthy. I've broken all contact with my son and his family. I went to see a doctor in late 1996 and they discovered the bare beginnings of prostate cancer in me. A single course of radiation and chemo and it was gone forever. I'm something of a health nut these days. I run forty miles a week. I've participated in five marathons. I have a resting heart rate of fifty and a blood pressure that is consistently in the nineties. I could probably live another twenty years at this pace." He shook his head sadly. "But I can't Bill."

"What do you mean?"

"I mentioned a paradox a few minutes ago. One has been created. The gift cannot belong to two people at once. When I woke up in San Francisco after dying in Spokane I could still feel the gift with me, could still feel it inside of me. I'd given it to you and your wish had been granted, but the gift itself had not been passed on because I remained alive as a result of the gift. That is the paradox. It is a paradox that will correct itself in a few minutes."

"Correct itself?"

He nodded. "If nothing is done, when the time of my death in the previous life occurs, everything will go back to the way it was. I will be dead, taking the gift with me. You will return to your previous existence with no memory of what has happened. You will simply wake up in bed in your apartment in Spokane as if nothing had ever happened. Your wife will once more be an unpleasant doctor married to a neurosurgeon. Your sister will be dead. The kids you've had with Nina will have never existed. The correction will have occurred."

That was the most horrifying thought that my mind had ever entertained. I would lose everything in a few minutes? Even the memories of the life I'd built? That couldn't be! It couldn't! I couldn't even speak, my horror was so complete.

"Before you ask," Mr. Li told me, "yes, I'm sure about this. We have less than twenty minutes now by my calculations. I have twenty minutes to live no matter how healthy I am, no matter what steps I've taken. Reality will simply go back to the way it was."