Chapter 1: In the Beginning

All of this wouldn't have happened if I hadn't discovered that I really liked to play golf so late in life. Nobody would have called it competitive, or interesting or even good golf, but it was a fine way for me to be outside on nice days and not be doing yard work. Because of this new love found late in life I got rich, divorced, laid many times and generally turned my life upside down.

I should probably tell you right away that my name is Tom Watson. No, not that one, another one. Truthfully, my name is one of the many reasons that I didn't even try golf until later in life because I took enough shit over it without playing HIS game. Luckily, he got older and I got less sensitive about it so I decided, at the ripe old age of fifty-two, to give it a try. I discovered real quickly that one; I had a great time and two; I was way too old to ever be any good at it. Just standing on a driving range and watching seventeen year olds boom the ball out past three hundred yards while my mighty blasts would trickle dead at two hundred and thirty five told me everything I needed to know about how age, lack of flexibility, and carrying too many pounds doomed me to somewhere less than mediocrity. I took pleasure in reading that more than half of all golfers never break one hundred, because I could at least do that, but I was never, I thought, going to play the game "for real".

That is, until the reason for this story hit me. And I mean literally HIT me. I was enjoying an early Saturday round at my local muni, having tacked myself on to an anonymous threesome of fellow hackers, when from out of the blue (the guy who hit the thing told me later that it was a truly magnificent ball flight, slice and deflection off a nearby tree and all) I felt a tremendous blow to my right temple and went down like a sack of dirty clothes.

When I woke up, disoriented and fuzzy from drugs and the blow, I was lying in a hospital bed, beeping and purring machines all around, my irritated wife of many years staring at me. I would have to say that up to now she had been barely tolerant of my new found enthusiasm for golf, caustically and frequently remarking on her "golf widow" status and my lack of progress on the projects she wanted me to get done. The look on her face didn't appear to be one of anxious concern.

"Well, it's about time you woke up and rejoined the world." She snarled.

This conversation isn't going anywhere productive. "What hit me? Was I shot?"

"No, idiot, you were hit in the head by a golf ball. At least you weren't hit any place important." She replied.

At least her crappy attitude was helping to clear my head, even if the heart monitor WAS registering a rapid increase in my heart rate and blood pressure. As I was about to open my mouth and insert my foot again (our friends called us the Bickersons behind our backs) I felt this scary stab of tearing pain in my right temple and passed out again.

THIS time when I woke up I was surrounded by enough medical professionals to cause my insurance company some real concern, and hooked up to even more machines, and being called to by an older looking doctor.

"Can you hear me? What is you name, sir?" He obviously hadn't stopped to look at my chart on the way to the Code Red.

"Watson, Tom Watson." I said foggily.

"Was he delusional the last time he woke up too?" the vision of hope asked to one of the others, who was obviously was at least paying attention because they replied

"That is his name, Dr. Frost."

"Oh. Mr. Watson, can you tell me what happened?" the alert Dr. Frost inquired.

I haltingly recapped my brief conversation with the old ball and chain and then the passing out. After that exchange, the response team stood around poking and prodding, coming to no firm conclusions, while my eyes wandered around the group, checking out name tags, bosoms where appropriate and hoping the excitement would decline so that I could take a nap.

Just as my eyes fell on one of the monitors showing the time, 2:37:26 pm, something REALLY weird occurred. I felt my vision contract into a tunnel as the sights and sounds around me seemed to flow together. A swirling sensation seemed to pass before my eyes and suddenly I was looking up at Dr. Frost again.

"Can you hear me? What is you name, sir?" I heard him say.

"My name is still Tom Watson, Dr. Frost." I replied. Do they always ask the same questions I wondered?

"Was he delusional the last time he woke up too?" the repetition continued.

"That is his name, Dr. Frost," came the reply.

"How do you know my name?" he asked me.

"It's on you name tag?" I replied. Not being a big fan of his manner so far, I wasn't feeling all that forthcoming.

As the poking and prodding commenced again, I glanced over at the monitor showing the time and saw 2:32:45 pm. My, I thought; now that is strange. People milled around, costs continued to rise, and nothing meaningful was decided for the next few minutes until I looked over and 2:37:26 pm rolled around again and BANG, I'm back to

"Can you hear me? What is you name, sir?" the repetitious Dr. Frost said again.

"FUCK!" I replied as I looked at the monitor showing 2:32:31 pm.

This was getting scary. Then it proceeded to get boring, as I got to relive the same five minutes twenty or more times in succession. Finally, in a fit of pure frustration, I waited until three seconds before the "reset" time, took a deep breath and held it like a petulant child. As I watched, the time changed to 2:37:27 and I was out of the loop, YIPPEE! Reliving the same day like in the movie might have been fun, but reliving the same five minutes while stuck in a hospital room sucked rocks.

One thing I knew right away was I was NOT talking about this, if for no other reason than to avoid the padded room that waited at the end of the conversation. Things settled down, Dr. Frost wandered away out of boredom, and life mercifully went on as normal. The War Department reappeared and continued berating me for getting in the way of a small, white flying object. I ignored her, as any good long-married man can do, and contemplated what was happening. After she had wound down and left me to go home I finally had the chance to test my hypothesis about what had happened.

It appeared that I could trigger whatever was happening with a powerful burst of self induced anger and then shut it off by an equally powerful burst of stubbornness. So, I could gain the ability to "see" repeatedly five minutes into the future by acting like a petulant five year old. I thought "cool, I can do that easily". I even got to the point during my two day long stay in the hospital that I could start and stop the process without engaging the crash cart gang and losing consciousness (and yes that is losing not loosing). The observant Dr. Frost continued to be the primary physician on the case. His bed side manner wasn't the greatest but he at least tried to figure out what was wrong with me, admittedly without any success. Apparently modern medicine cannot adequately diagnose and treat the ability to shift in time. Go figure.