“How long ago was it that you were a child?”
Ebenezer frowned. “Are you seriously asking me how old I am?”
“I am thirty-two tri-seasons.”
“You don’t look thirty-two.”
“I do not think our years coincide,” Gorg mused. “But I have told you my age. You should return the favor.”
Ebenezer rolled his eyes. “I’m thirty-five. Old for the porn business. I’ll be aging into the Silver Fox category soon. Oh, God. I’ll be a DILF.”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“It means Daddy I’d Love to Fuck.”
“Ah. I see. DILF. I’ll need to remember that.” Then Gorg grinned, and it was a smile full of secrets and desire that made Ebenezer feel a little weak in the knees. “Now that we have a baseline for age, we’ll have to test your memories against the truth.”
Ebenezer scowled at him, his recent warmth dissipating. “And exactly how do you expect to do that? My family hasn’t spoken to me in years, not since I went into the adult film industry, and not much before then, either. My friends have deserted me now that I’ve walked out and been replaced, I’m sure. How do you propose to examine my memories, aside from what little I remember?”
Gorg reached into his pocket and pulled out a small device. He pressed a button on it, and a long, thin antenna extended out.
“Oh, hell no! You arenotprobing me with that thing!” Ebenezer cried. “Ordinarily I don’t mind a good probing, but with a cock not some sort of electronic torture device!”
“Electronic torture device? Oh, this isn’tthatsort of apparatus,” Gorg said and laughed. “You thought I was going to probe you? That’s going to make a great anecdote for when I get home.” His tentacles bobbed with the force of his chuckles. “No, no. This is a handheld time-shift processor. It’s the newest technology. Out of all my egg siblings, I was always the one who wanted the most recent gizmos and gadgets on the market. I saw this one on the Abode Buying Network.” He grinned atEbenezer. “I wondered if it might come in handy on this trip, so I bought it, but I’ve never had a chance to use it until now.”
“Stay away from me with that thing.”
“Oh, don’t be such a baby. It doesn’t hurt,” Gorg said. He grabbed Ebenezer’s hand and touched the unit to it.
Ebenezer felt a twinge on the palm of his hand as if it had been scraped.
Then Gorg thumbed a series of buttons on the handheld unit, and everything went fuzzy.
***
They stood on top of a steep, snowy hill. Children were flying down the hill on a variety of conveyances, some rectangular, some square, some round. An angelic-looking brown-haired boy with big blue eyes was seated at the top of the hill. He sat on a red, round plastic object built like an overly large, somewhat flattened contact lens.
Gorg noticed Ebenezer’s eyes widened when he saw the child. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
“Y-yes. I was nine. How did you know where to go?”
“DNA. Everything is stored in your DNA, if one knows where to look. Even your memories.”
“Oh, I’ve forgotten how much I loved to go sledding! That was my saucer sled. I haven’t thought about it in years!”
“Was it handed down to you by your parental units?”
“No, my grandad told me he and his friends would use the tops of metal garbage cans to go sledding, and my dad had a Flexible Flyer. I got my sled that year for Christmas. It used to go so fast! It was just really, really hard to steer it.”
Just then Little Ebbie pushed off and went flying down the hill. He hit a bump and went airborne for a moment, then came down in a spin. Finally, he reached the bottom and slowed down to a stop.
The grin on Ebenezer’s face was so wide one would have thought he was the one sitting on the sleigh. Which hewas, technically, but not in his current physicality. Time travel was tricky that way.
“See? You had fun in the snow,” Gorg said. “That’s a good memory.”
“Yeah,” Ebenezer said. “Right up until the time I went down and hit a tree and broke my arm. I was housebound for the entire holiday.”
“Butthisday was agoodmemory.Thisis the one you should hold on to. Let’s go see something else.” He took Ebenezer’s arm before an argument could arise and thumbed another button on the time travel console.
