With Jace at his uncle’s side and looking around at as many things as he was—like the many gone and forgotten stores—the two traversed the mall from one side to the other. Wes reminisced but tried not to become too preachy about the past.

“Heh, there’s the EB Games.” He pointed out the store. “Got my first Nintendo system there… You’ve only ever known it as a GameStop, of course. Anyway…”

“Is that a toy store? In a mall?” Jace asked, noticing a KB Toys in between two clothing stores—one a Gadzooks, the other a shuttered Merry-Go-Round.

“Heck, yeah. You don’t see those much anymore, right? Great little place, used to go in there all the time. I remember coming here first thing in the morning with Charlie Pippin once when we were eight, so we could get our hands on this brand-new NERF machine gun thing that could fire, like, five darts a second. And then we ran around the mall shooting each other until security kicked us out.”

“Okay, Charlie sounds cool and all, but what did you do as a kid?”

“What’d I do?” Wes stopped outside the JCPenney. “I did it all, baby!” Having reached the end of the road, they turned around and he went into detail. “Movies, TV—kids shows and the more adult ones—music, both indoor and outdoor activities, arcades, birthday parties, pranks, causing trouble on field trips. I was the king of fifth grade, and at being ten. It was my prime. As… sad a thing that might be to admit now. And I was still cool in middle and high school, sure, but I tell ya, bud… This was the year for me. It just all came together, you know? Oh, but sports—I played a little baseball, but I didn’t follow sports. So don’t ask me about teams and good games. I got nothing for you.”

Jace shrugged. “I don’t really watch sports, either. Maybe just the World Series.”

“And, look, like I said, I know I can’t be a kid again. I can’t just re-feel the magic of being young and discovering everything for the first time. But I don’t mind a chance to watch a rerun from afar, getting to see all the DVD extras, and the cut footage, and what all the other cameras were filming, you know? You follow me?”

“I guess so. Kind of. Is this how all adults think about the past?”

“Uh, anyway, so 1995 was kind of the last gasp of the eighties—And I love that decade, too. Can’t have one without the other. Next year, the Nintendo 64 comes out and the PlayStation starts taking off, so games in three dimensions will have hit the mainstream. And it’ll also be when AOL really starts creeping into people’s homes, which begins the big ol’ World Wide Webolution. I won’t be connected until next July, and let me tell you… Whew, that’s a big one. Changed everything about my life.”

“Wait, there’s no internet yet?” Jace was nearly panicking again.

“No—no, there is, and has been, but it’s… uh, it’s pretty basic right now. Then we got DVDs coming down the pipe, Steve Jobs returns to Apple… Yep, this year was really the crossroad for a lot of things, my early childhood included.”

“Apple…” Jace murmured, just before patting his pockets in desperation. “My phone! Crap, it must’ve fallen out of my stupid pocket! Everything falls out of them!”

“Great. I told you to be careful with it!” Wes put his hands on his nephew’s shoulders, as if trying to be a serious, responsible adult. “Where do you think it is?”

“It must’a fallen out at the food court! Um, I’m really sorry Uncle Wesley! Uh, so, d-does this mean the galaxy will implode or something?”

“It hasn’t yet, so that must mean we still have a chance. Come on!”

He grabbed Jace’s small little hand and took off, nearly dragging him through the other half of the mall, back to the food court. Luckily for them and the stability of the universe, security was lax that morning and there was no one around to stop them from running across a quarter-mile length of brown and tan mall tile.

“Damn,” Wes grumbled once they stopped at the edge of the food court. “Looks like there’s a kid at our table. And he’s playing with something.”

“He has my phone!” Jace exclaimed once he noticed that the young blond boy sitting alone had his matte black iPhone 8 in his hands, and was banging it on the table.

“So go get it back,” Wes commanded.

“How am I supposed to do that? Oh, man, I really messed up. I bet you didn’t screw up this bad. You were probably really careful like you keep telling me to be.”

“Uh, yeah, actually… No, you’re right, I was perfect. But, Jace, you’re gonna have to learn how to solve problems and deal with all of people of the past. Now go confront that six-year-old and make him give your scary piece of future tech back.”

Jace took a deep breath, swallowed, and walked up to the first-grader. For a few moments, he only stood there, hoping to be noticed as he tapped his fingers together.

“Um, excuse me…” he spoke up. “I think you have, my, uh… my shiny glass brick. C-could I, um, you know, could you give it back to me?”

The boy looked up at him, then back down again and started hitting the screen with his fist. Jace peered back at his uncle, who gave him a “push it” hand gesture.

Jace huffed and tried again. “Okay, you gotta give me back my stuff… Okay?”

The kid wiped some snot from his nose, which was then transferred to the screen when he started running his fingers across it. As someone who wanted to keep his phone in pristine condition, Jace watched this crime in horror.

“Enough already! G-give it back! Right now! It’s mine!”

The thief finally responded, “Your clothes are stupid-lookin’.”

“Y-yeah? Well, your Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt is really lame and ugly.”

“What is dis thing?” The child asked as he started poking at it again. “Is it a little pocket TV or something? How do’you turn it on?”

“Y-you like taking stuff that doesn’t belong to you? I’m gonna tell mall security, and then they’ll arrest you. So if you ever want to see your parents again—”

The boy had suddenly discovered the home button, and his greasy little finger had used it to turn on the screen. Like a radiant treasure from the heavens, his young eyes were blasted by the bright, high-resolution colorful pixels that formed the smiling kitty cat on Jace’s lock screen. It was pure anachronistic splendor.

Right as Jace braced himself for the subsequent annihilation of the timeline, Wes, having appeared behind the kid, plucked the hardware from his two slimy hands. His pupils still wide, the annoying boy tried grabbing at it like Wes was his older brother, cruelly dangling his favorite toy above him just out of arm’s reach.

“You really need to try harder on the whole not-screwing-up thing,” Wes advised after wiping off the screen and tossing the phone to Jace, who fumbled with it a bit.

Of course, with no other options, the kid began to scream and cry about it.

Wes took Jace’s hand again and began their escape. “We’ve done enough damage here for one day. We got other places to go, anyway.”

A man then rushed by them, carrying a tray of mall food. “André? What are you crying about? Hey, you all right?”

The two stopped and turned near the exit, to watch the dad put the food on the table and try to settle down his son. Once the little brat began to accusingly point at them from across the food court, Wes and Jace finalized their hasty retreat.

Unbeknownst to the two time travelers, they just barely evaded a second possibly hostile entity. In an event that only lasted for several moments, a small rip in space-time appeared up near the corner under the skylights. A metal sphere floated out from the place on the other side, took a few pictures, and ran a quick scan of the space. Before any of the mall-goers could see it, it returned to from where it came.

Back in his uncle’s car, Jace made sure his phone still worked before shoving it as far back into his pocket as he could. As they left the parking lot, he felt bad for screwing up, but then again, he didn’t ask to be brought into the past in the first place.

“We’re going to go do some shopping at Target, find you some replacements for those ‘future clothes’ you got on. You’ll really need to start working on fitting in.”

“But everyone’s clothes I’ve seen so far are pretty ugly.”

“Eh, it’s not all bad. So far, this is just summertime fashion in California.”

“Uncle Wes, why did you really bring me here? What are we even doing?”

“Seriously, I just wanted to have a nice weekend with ya, buddy.”

“Okay, but did it have to be one where we could destroy everything by making a dumb mistake? The more I think I about it and all the ways we could screw stuff up…”

“Hey, I agree that we should be as careful as we can, but after what happened back in there, on top of all the mistakes and changes I had to have made last time… I’m starting to think that time has a way of correcting itself. At least the small things.”

“Hm. Does the present even exist right now? Like, do any of these changes mean anything until we go back? And if we make a paradox thing, does it happen right away?”

“Uh…”

“If I went back alone and returned, does my time reset, so I’m stuck in the past of the past, always out of sync with you like I’m lagging really bad in an online game? And if everything resets because I came through again, does that mean the later-you and me live in two different worlds all of a sudden? And what if—”

“Okay, slow down. I don’t really know the answer to any of that, and I stopped thinking about it all myself a loooong time ago. Stop thinking so much and live in the moment, little dude. Just try your hardest not to mess things up while you’re at it.”

“Well…” Jace sighed. “It’s not like I had big plans for the summer. But… I do kinda want to get back to my new game. So can we go home by next Monday?”

“So you’re cool with our little visit to the past now, huh?”

“Wouldn’t mind seeing King Arcade open on Saturday. I guess. I mean, you know… it’s something to do. It’s not like I want to stay that long or anything…”

Wes let out a tiny laugh, and at a stoplight, checked the glove box for goodies. A cheap pair of sunglasses was left inside, waiting to be taken and slid on. Once the light changed, he shifted into first, put one hand on the wheel, and took off like a hot-rodder.

Jace was unsure if his enthusiasm for his uncle’s crazy getaway would last, but for now, he couldn’t help but smile as they passed by a Blockbuster video rental store. He had no idea what the place sold, but maybe it wouldn’t be so terrible to find out.