“Hey get your hands off of that!  I had it first!” bellowed the whiny voice of a kid about half Tristan’s age.

Tristan let go and stepped back.  He immediately frisked his belly and arms, much the way security at the airport might.  He was all there and accounted for.

“What the hell’s wrong with you guys?  This is the last copy and it’s mine. Try a different store,” the kid continued.

“Look kid, it was an honest mistake.  It’s yours. Sorry,” Tristan explained, looking down to find Tim on the ground holding his head and mumbling something incoherent.

“Is there a problem here?” said the store clerk as he stepped around the corner, wearing a tie-dyed t-shirt with a black light image of a Grateful Dead bear on it.  “When the hell did you guys get here? I didn’t hear the bell ring.”

Not ready to answer the question at hand, Tristan asked, “Can you help me move my friend, he tripped on a cassette tape on the floor of your store.  I’ve seen bigger record shops go down due to lesser negligence.”

A record store.  They were in a record store?  Maybe manipulating time was a little more complicated than they had remembered.

Grandpa Roland made it all seem so seamless and casual.  Tristan’s memory was fuzzy, it was a long time ago. But he recalled the way his grandfather would walk through the house with them, pick up an item and they would hold on as the space around them began to… well it was hard to explain what the space around them did.  It was almost akin to the time lapse videos you might watch of a building being built, but it’s not that simple when it happens all around you. And the winds. Grandpa referred to them as the winds of change. He had clever names for all of the things that were happening. At the time it all felt so normal and as the years went by those moments just became like any other.  What would he say if he knew his two favorite adventurers were on a mission without him? Tristan smiled, as he was shaken from his thoughts.

“Get your friend and get out of here.  I’m not scared of your lawsuit and I don’t need whatever insurance scam you guys are cooking up.  Come back in a couple days when I’m not on shift, I couldn’t care less. Just don’t make me have to deal with that garbage.” the clerk offered an exit.

Tristan started to lift Tim by his arm, but Tim brushed him away. “I’m good.  I’m good. Let’s get out of here.” 

The two cousins headed down the aisle, passed the rock section and rounded the corner with the soundtracks.  As they reached the front door, Tristan pivoted and yelled to the clerk, “Hey, don’t miss the Knickerbocker show this summer or you’ll regret it!”

The blank stares across the store were almost audible, they said so much.  Tristan smiled gave a thumbs-up and flung open the door.

As the door swung closed behind them the brisk winter air and a rush of freezing wind hit them, reminding Tim that he was experiencing a winter from his youth.  New York winters were unforgiving back then.

As they reached the bottom of the steps, Tim slugged his cousin.

“The hell was that for?” Tristan exclaimed, grabbing his arm.

“What the hell was that about?  Haven’t we seen enough movies about this sort of thing?  We can’t give any information out about future events or we risk altering the future!”  Tim shouted angrily.

Tristan is as stunned, “Seriously, Tim?  This isn’t a movie. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re really here.  In real life. And what harm could it do to offer the guy his last chance to see Garcia play his last New York show?   You know we both wish we’d had that warning. Besides all that, we literally came here with the express purpose of altering the future.”

Tim slumped against the brick wall of the building.

“Are you okay?” Tristan asked, a little concerned.

“Yeah.  I’ll be fine.  I seem to recall this not being unusual for me.  It appears time travel gives me a bit of a headache.” He stood back up, straight. His memories had slowly come back since discovering Essence House, though they were still jumbled, which made sense, since apparently so was the timeline.

“I get it a little too.  Speaking of time, we need to figure out what day and time it is.” He looked up at the street signs and sighed. “I’m pretty sure we’re in Brooklyn. Do you remember how to take the trains upstate from here, or do we have to steal a car and hit the 87?”

Tim shook his head and they began walking down the street.  Up ahead was a newspaper stand. That’d give them a good amount of information.  He hadn’t considered the telephone booths nearby. If he’d brought change he could just call Essence House and anonymously recommend they cancel the flight.  Of course, that would be too easy.

“You got your cell phone with you?” Tristan broke the few minutes of silence.

“Nah.  I left it on the dash.  I can’t imagine cell service would work here anyways.  Hell, half the time it didn’t work from the damn Loop back home and that was one of the busiest business districts in the country,” explained Tim.

“I have a vague recollection of my dad using a cellphone on a trip to see Gramps and it working in some capacity, but it doesn’t really make much sense I suppose.”

As they approached the corner the sky darkened notably.  It was what you might expect of a cloud interrupting the sunlight, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.  Both noticed the change, but neither said a word.

As Tim stepped into the road he felt an impact, as if he was struck by a metal bar and he collapsed to the ground.

Tim laid on the ground, but his cousin rushed in the opposite direction.  Across the street he saw a child lying face down, with a twisted bike on the road, halfway between the two of them.

Tim got up and brushed himself off.  He noted that his headache was unshakeable at this point.  He limped a few steps, but the foot pain subsided before he made it to the bike that had assaulted him.

Carrying the bike over he kneeled down and asked, “Is she going to be alright?”