Chapter 1 - Backstory

I will get the obvious out of the way first. I am very smart. “Gifted” is the term most often used. But, not to toot my own horn, perhaps the truth is that I am a gift. Everything I do, music, math, theoretical physics, there is really nothing that doesn’t come to me as naturally as breathing.

I don’t tell you this to put you off. I just want you to know this before I tell you the rest of my story. Everything hinges upon you knowing that my mind works differently than most others.

Alas, intelligence rarely equates to popularity among “normal” people, especially when those people are children you grew up with. When I entered school I was doing long division, while the other kids were learning colors.

Yes, I was perpetually “that weird kid”, and the “weird kid” is usually the first to become the victim of bullying. So was it for me as well. At least once a week I would find myself the victim of neighborhood kids sneaking onto our property at night and banging on my bedroom window to scare me while I’m watching TV.

Perhaps a quick introduction would be in order. I’ve already introduced my mind, now it’s time for the rest of me.

My name is ... was ... Brad. Bradley Alex Wheeler. I originally grew up in Clinton, Indiana, which is near Terre Haute. If you were a child of my generation, you sent lots of mail to Terre Haute, but you didn’t realize it. Terre Haute was the home of Columbia House, the famous “Send me 6 CD’s for a penny! I’ll buy 4 more at normal price.” company. It’s about an hour west of Indianapolis.

Indiana was a pretty shitty time in my life, but I tried to make the most of it.

I was your typical 15 year old geek. I liked sci-fi and fantasy, reading, online D&D games, video games in general, and girls. Not that THEY like me back at the time, though. The furthest I had been able to get was a couple kisses from a girl I met at a camp my parents forced me to go to for a couple of years. She ended up giving me mononucleosis.

I was a geek with plenty of access to porn on the internet, but no access to any way of relief, other than my right hand.

So, I busied myself with TV and video games, and it is therein where one of my greatest ideas was able to germinate.

Put simply, I was able to build a time machine. But not the traditional time machine that sci-fi loves to throw together. It wasn’t a Delorean or a sleigh with a huge dial on the back of it, or even an old English Police Box.

No. It was a backpack. It didn’t allow me to travel through time, but more specifically stop time from traveling through me. I was able to slip out between the moments that pass relentlessly on, and explore frozen moments in time.

I used it to my full advantage. I first made sure money wouldn’t be a problem for my 15 year old self, then I used it in exactly the way you would imagine a virginal 15 year old boy would. Girls who never would give me the time of day suddenly, unexpectedly, became my lovers.

After I had gotten over heady thrill of being able to have sex with any girl I chose, I began using my time weaver (because I decided I was, in fact, weaving in and out between moments in time) to change the future and genetic makeup of the next generation of Clintonians. More and more girls, who had always used protection with their boyfriends, suddenly found themselves with child.

Knowing that some obstetrics nurse would soon notice that a lot of these teen girls were giving birth to children with similar features, I put in for early graduation and moved away to college before people could start to put two and two together.

But, on the bright side, the school district had to very quickly expand the gifted programs at the local schools to account for the sudden surge of brighter than average students. It was almost as if a single, highly intelligent individual had reproduced with a large population of the single teen mothers in the area.