“You mean like A Wrinkle in Time?” Apparently, the Marvel Cinematic Universe isn’t a thing yet, or at least not the way it is in my day. It hardly seems worth explaining that there are these six stones that, when put together … Actually, now that I think of it, that part of the movies always confused me. (More Thor, please!) But I’m pretty sure the stones allow time travel.

She’s still waiting.

“No. It’s from these movies you’ll tell me not to waste my time on someday.”

“May I continue? Some argue you have to watch out for the grandfather paradox, that anything you do that hasn’t been done before—”

“Will change the future. We call that the butterfly effect … in my time.”

“It’s a little late to un-room with Ernie, and there’s no way around the fact that I am changed by your arrival, so I hope that this paradox is overstated, but try not to interfere with other people’s choices, at least.”

“What if you change a bad thing in the future into a good thing? That’s a net win, right?”

“Unless that, in turn, changes a good thing into bad and so on, onward, endlessly.” She trails fingers through the air as if showing ramifications rising like sparks from a fire. “One theory is the causal loop, that someone from the future changes something in the past, which of course then sets off the grandfather paradox by changing the future, which already exists, and round and round we go—hence, the loop, as no one can say where the actual origin lies.” Now she’s tracing a figure eight in the air.

“I like that one better. If you can’t say where it started, then no one can blame me for what I screw up, at least not for sure.”

“There’s a third one that seems worth noting: The Fermi paradox explains why, if time travel exists—and it must, as here you are—we don’t know other time travelers. The answer: they blend into the population for their own safety.”

That makes sense. Some religious fanatic who finds out I’m from the 2020s might think I’m a witch or a devil and, I don’t know, burn me at the stake. (Granted, I did go as a really hot demon for Halloween last year, though Mom drew the line at shirtless—I had red sequins on my nipples, so I was bummed—but agreed to a leather vest, which ended up looking super fetishy.) And I’ve seen enough movies to know that the government would weaponize me. Would I get a name? I vote Glitter Bomb. I’d probably just end up institutionalized, which would be like Oscar bait for some future actor playing me in the biopic, but really bad as a life experience.

I reassure her. “I’m a total chameleon. I’ll just fade into the background.”