A witness claims to have seen the driver of the first truck at a roadside diner about an hour before the crash. My plan is to intercept him before he can leave the diner. If I can delay him for even five minutes, then the second driver will pull ahead of him on the road, and the crash will never happen.

UPDATE—12:56 HOURS

I successfully found the driver of the first vehicle and delayed him for approximately fifteen minutes past the original time he’d been determined to leave the diner. This should be a sufficient amount of time to allow the driver of the second car to pull ahead of him on the highway, preventing the crash entirely.

UPDATE—15:46 HOURS

The story just popped up on Seattle’s news site. The exact same story.

Four dead. Fiery crash on I-5. Every word on the site is exactly the same. Nothing I did prevented anything.

I can’t for the life of me figure out what I’m doing wrong.

22

Ash

NOVEMBER 7, 2077, NEW SEATTLE

Ash hadn’t realized he was making his way back to the bar near the Fairmont until the buildings bordering the dock began to look familiar and the soles of his boots hit good, clean wood instead of damp and moldy boards. There were fewer trees out here, and more voices—louder, laughing voices—and then he saw the familiar black door at the end of the dock, and he knew where he was going.

He still didn’t know the name of the place, but there was a small sign hanging above the door: a black rabbit, lying on its back. Morbid. He shoved the door open with his shoulder and went inside.

It wasn’t as crowded as it’d been when he came through the other night. A group of kids wearing black hovered around a table in the back, talking loudly, but none of them looked up as he walked past. A girl with her hair tied back in a bandanna stood behind the bar. She was building a tower out of cardboard boxes of matches.

“Nice,” Ash said, nodding at the matches. The tower was three stories high.

The girl shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of practice,” she said. The little cardboard boxes of matches were something they had in bulk around here. The Center sent boxes and boxes of them, as though a book of matches might help solve problems like lack of heat and light and power.

The girl flicked a pack of matches between her fingers. “What are you drinking?”

“I’ll take a pint,” Ash said.

She placed the beer in front of him, but when Ash went to reach for his wallet, she waved him away. “On the house.”

Ash lifted his eyebrows. “Really?”

The bartender leaned in closer, cupping a hand around her lips. “I recognize you. Jonathan Asher, right? You were the pilot who worked with that scientist guy back when he first discovered time travel.”

Ash shifted in his seat. “That doesn’t usually get me free drinks around these parts.”