"Yes." She nodded. "I won't tell anyone anything. You did see the future, didn't you? You do know things that are going to happen, don't you?"
"Tracy," I said, "I didn't just SEE the future. I lived through it."
She looked at me confused. "You mean when you had your dream or whatever it was like you'd lived through the future? Like you lived through the years while you were asleep?"
"No." I shook my head. "Like I said, it's even stranger than that. I literally lived through the future in somewhat of an alternate timeline. I'm sitting here before you looking like a sixteen going on seventeen-year-old kid. But that's not what I am Tracy. I've actually lived almost thirty-four years now."
She took a moment to digest that, staring at me the whole while. "I'm not sure I'm following you Bill." She finally said.
"Okay," I started. "You've acknowledged the fact that I know aspects of the future, right?"
"Yes, but…"
"The day I woke up with these startling changes. Think back to that day Tracy. Do you remember how confused I seemed, how glad I was to see you, how I didn't know what day it was? And then later in the day, at school, I had to ask you what my class schedule was? Do you remember all of that?"
"Yes." She nodded, her eyes widening.
I took another sip. "The reason I was so confused and so glad to see you was that, from my perspective, I'd gone to bed the night before as a thirty-two year old man in the year 1999."
"1999?" She said, with disbelief.
"In the year 1999 I was a paramedic working for a private company. My sister Tracy had been killed on her graduation night and was sixteen years in her grave. My parents, after Tracy's death, had become victim's rights advocates. My friend Mike was a total loser, still living with his parents.
That was my life when I went to bed that night. When I woke up the next morning, I was fifteen years old again, back in my parent's house, my sister still with the accident in her future, and I had all of my memories from my previous life still intact."
"That's unbelievable Bill." She told me. "You're saying that you lived until 1999 and then were suddenly put back in 1982?"
"That's exactly what I'm saying." I affirmed. "That's what happened to me. The reason I told you about the accident that night was because, at the time, I wasn't sure if I was suddenly going to wake up back in 1999 the first time I went to sleep. I needed to try and prevent your death if that was the case. And though I did not go back to 1999 the next day, my little speech to you that night was apparently effective. Without any further interference from me you strayed off of the path that would have ended with you dumping into the Spokane River."
She shook her head in denial. "I'm not sure I can believe this." She told me. "You are saying that you lived until 1999. That you went day by day through this life and then suddenly you were put back in 1982? That's not possible."
"I wouldn't have thought so either." I answered. "What we're talking about here is time travel. And though the possibility exists that I simply dreamed this entire life that night, I don't believe that is the case. Too many things have come true. My memories of that previous life are too detailed, too complete. That is what happened Tracy. I am nearly thirty-four years old and I lived seventeen of those years in an alternate life."
She took a huge drink of her beer, finishing half the bottle at a swallow. She then picked up another one. "This is way trippy." She told me. "If you lived until 1999, tell me who the President's will be."
I saw this as an interrogation technique to see if I was lying. She would be looking for any hesitation in my answer.
"Reagan won again this year." I said. "You already know that."
"It didn't take a psychic to figure THAT out." She said cynically.
"True." I said. "He'll serve out his term but the last year of it will be taken up by a scandal in which he gets caught selling arms to Iran in order to get hostages released and to fund rebels in Nicaragua after congress cut off aid to them. George Bush will be elected after Reagan. He'll gain immense popularity because of the way he handles an invasion of Panama early in his term and a war in the Persian Gulf at mid-term."
"A war in the Persian Gulf?" She asked.
"Iraq will invade Kuwait, a small country nobody has even heard of at this point in history but that supplies a good chunk of oil. Eventually American forces will bomb the living shit out of Iraq and then ground forces will go in and occupy the country. We'll lose less than two hundred people in the entire war and the country will love old George for it. For a while. Unfortunately for him he'll fuck up the economy so bad that even the success of the Gulf War won't get him re-elected. In 1992 Bill Clinton will win the presidency."
"Who the hell is Bill Clinton?" She asked, staring at me.
"Right now I believe he is the governor of Arkansas. He'll do a fairly good job of getting the economy back in shape, in fact he'll succeed in balancing the budget, but he'll also be mired down in sexual scandals his entire run. Apparently Bill has a little trouble keeping his dick in his pants and the Republicans will jump all over that. Despite this he'll be elected to a second term. When I was recycled back to 1982 he was still serving it although the Republicans had mangaged to impeach him because he got caught lying about getting a blow-job from an intern in his office."
"They impeached him because he got a blow-job?" She asked in disbelief.
"Well, what the charges actually amounted to was lying under oath. But yeah, it was because he got a blow-job. The house impeached him because there was a Republican majority but the Senate cleared him because, although they had a Republican majority also, it wasn't enough to add up to a two-thirds vote." I shook my head sadly. "I can sympathize with old Bill, let me tell you. You think you're having a casual little encounter with someone but it can sure come back to bite your ass."
"Wow." Tracy whispered. "You're telling the truth. You could not have made up all of those details off the top of your head."
"No." I said. "I couldn't."
She took another drink of beer. "But why did such a thing happen to you Bill?" She asked. "Why were you picked to do this? Are there others?"
"This is how it happened Tracy," I said. "Like I told you, I was a paramedic. On the day before I came back I went to a call at a convalescent facility in North Spokane. My patient was an old Chinese man with cancer. He was dying fast. So I…" I told her the complete story. It took about twenty minutes. She listened with rapt attention throughout it.
"So you think he granted you a wish?" She asked when I was done.
"It would seem so." I told her. "The next morning I found myself back in 1982. Fifteen again, just like I'd asked, all memories intact, just like I'd asked. I don't know how he did it, but he did."
"Wow." She said.
"Do you believe me?" I asked her.
She looked up at me. "I don't want to." She said. "It's scary as hell to think that what you're saying is true. It changes my entire perspective on what's real and what's not, on what's possible and what's not."
"Uh huh." I agreed whole-heartedly.
"But all the same," She continued. "I am forced to believe what you say is true. When you explain it everything adds up. It's the only answer that makes sense."
"Yep." I agreed.
Tracy suddenly glared at me. "So here you are, a thirty-something year old man trapped in a child's body. And what have you been doing? You've been screwing sixteen and seventeen year olds! You're a fuckin' pervert Bill."
"I agree." I told her.
"You do?" She asked.
"I'll be the first to admit that I made some poor decisions when I was given this gift. Yes, I had sex with high school girls, something I probably shouldn't have done. I abused a power that was given to me for my own pleasure, not just once but multiple times. I would like to say, in my own defense, that although my mind is that of a thirty-two year old, my body is a teenager's, through and through. I have testosterone surging through me like mad. I thought I was horny as a thirty-two year old but I hadn't seen anything. We forget what it's like to be in the middle of adolescence, let me tell you. That's not a very good excuse I know, but it's all I have to offer. I never once tried to screw an underage girl when I was an adult. Not a single time. But suddenly I found myself able to do it legally and with my body crying out for it. I didn't put up much of a fight but I couldn't help it."