“There it is.” Wes stopped and pointed out the house across the street, which had a screened patio and a second floor with a large central arched window. “Lucy’s probably inside right now, wondering in disappointment where her shoe is.”

“Should I put the shoe down at the door, knock, and run away?” Jace asked.

Wes, who was staring at the house with a hint of contempt, said nothing. The big SUV that Lucy’s mom had driven home was resting on the dual-entry driveway, the last of its cooling engine crackles permeating the otherwise silent and warm air.

Wes eventually muttered, “Dad retired, and they moved to Hawaii a few years after Lucy graduated college. She got a job and an apartment and stayed here… I haven’t seen him in person in over ten years now. He’s probably too busy golfing on a volcano.”

“I dunno if you have dad issues, but I think you have… want-to-be-a-kid-again ones. And, uh, now I’m kind of scared about being an adult… Thanks for that.”

“Ah. Don’t listen to me too much. I’m sure you’ll do fine when you’re my age.”

Wes suddenly grabbed the shoe out of Jace’s hands, and then threw it at the screen door as hard as he could from the other side of the street. It hit the metal frame of the door hard, and the crashing sound reverberated through the area.

“Come on…” Wes grumbled. “Let’s get out of here.”

Jace tagged along a few yards behind his uncle, who still seemed distant. Before they had left the block, they both heard the screen door open, and turned to see Lucy’s mom look around for a moment before noticing the shoe on the ground.

“Luce!” she called. “I found it, hon! You dropped it when you were coming in.”

She picked it up, went back inside, and the day was saved.

After noticing that Wes was staring at him, Jace exclaimed, “What?”

“You’re still here. That’s a good sign.”

“Yeeeah… We’re not going to mess with the past anymore, right?”

“We’re done here,” Wes said and began walking again.

“You have to promise that we won’t change anything else. I like to exist. I like that the universe exists. That’s why we’re going to the park tomorrow and going home.”

“I just want to have a nice weekend with you, you know. That’s all.”

Jace, now trailing Wes as he had picked up his walking pace, heard the rustling of leaves from somewhere behind him. He flipped around but saw nothing. The suburban corner was still quite empty. Then he thought he saw movement above, in the trees. He focused his eyes into the canopy, but still didn’t find anything. He figured that it had just been a bird, and yet he couldn’t help but feel that he was being watched.

• •

“You two have a nice day now,” the mechanic said, wiping his hands with his dirty cloth after Wes successfully started the car on the lot. “You get anymore problems, you come see us. Not that I’m wishin’ problems on ya, heh.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Wes said and rolled up his window before the guy could say anything else. “Looks like the car’s okay. Not that I had planned to spend the money.”

“Are we even going to have enough to go to the park tomorrow?” Jace asked.

“Of course. I still have plenty of cash left. I’m just burning through it a bit faster than I expected… So!” Wes hit the steering wheel. “Let’s rent some video games!”

“Huh? Didn’t you just say… Uh, where do we rent video games?”

“At Video Klub. With a K. It’s a locally owned, hip little store. Me and Mom usually rented there, and only went to Blockbuster when we wanted something the Klub didn’t have. Blockbuster was barely around when you were born—now it’s an example of a fall of an empire. What I remember most are their TVs hanging from the ceiling with promos for new rentals, the expensive late fees, and the places smelling like Crunch chocolate bars. Maybe that’s just association; I always got a king size when I went.”

“You know…” Jace breathed out. “My teacher taught me the value of getting to the point when you’re trying to… make a point. I think he called it brevity?”

“Aw, but when you’re with friends and family and there’s no sense of urgency, it’s great to include some trivia. Life’s not just bullet points, Jace.”

“Okay, fine, but don’t we need consoles to play video games?”

“Oh. Right…” Wes squeezed the steering wheel and turned back onto Kettle once the light turned green. “Lucky for us, we can rent those, too.”

“So… we’re not going to talk about what happened back there, are we?”

“Nope. Because I still don’t need advice from an eleven-year-old.”

“I just don’t want you spazzing out on me again while we’re here.”

“I won’t. Jace, I run on a high-octane, low-sleep train of thought. It’s how I keep my, um, troubles at bay. If a moment comes when I stop, and I have nothing to talk or think about, a lot of… crap catches up with me. Don’t pretend you’re not kind of the same way. You definitely also have issues. And it’s not something I like bringing up.”

Jace went back to looking out the window. “We’ve talked enough about me.”

“Yeah. I’m getting tired of it, too.”

Wes soon turned into the largest shopping plaza in the city, a brown brick behemoth that had round corners, was surrounded by a parking lot, and hosted about two dozen stores, a few of them large retail chains. In the present, it always seemed to draw more people than the mall, which could be nearly empty some days.

Tucked away on the smallest side of the oblong building was a video store that was dressed up like a nerd’s paradise. Posters and cardboard characters from franchises like Star Wars, Star Trek, Terminator, Aliens, Robocop and Nightmare on Elm Street filled up the windows, partially hiding the surprisingly large number of people inside.

“I didn’t start coming here until I was thirteen actually, so we’re safe from my kid self,” Wes explained and opened the glass door. “Hope you like the hemp smell.”

Once inside, Jace looked around at the place, with thin aisles and shelves and walls filled to the brim with videotapes, VCRs, and their cleaner products. Far past the security gate, in the back right corner, was a large section dedicated to video games. In the left corner was a closed off “room” with walls made of shelving and a “door” made out of hanging beads. He watched as a guy looked around suspiciously before going in.

“What’s back there?” Jace asked, pointing in the room’s general direction.

“Oh. Uh, that’s where the really boring adult movies are. Like, you know, uh… documentaries about chess players and C-SPAN recordings.”

“Geez. You’re a lot of things, but at least you’re not boring like that stuff.”

Wes rubbed his neck. “Anyway, this place is like a record or comic book store; I always got that vibe. I have to register a card, so go explore. Don’t talk to any hipsters.”

There were at least fifty people inside, many of them college-aged. But the one who stood out the most was the lone employee behind the counter, currently debating with a pair of movie nerds on how some version of some movie on some videotape compared to its theatrical release. He had long, surfer dude hair and was puffing a cigarette between sentences—Jace had never seen someone smoking on the job before.

“Really is a wonder how this place was never shut down by the health or fire department…” Wes murmured and went up to get the guy’s attention.

When he started looking around, Jace noticed that every tape had been moved into a plastic case, with the cover and back from the original box cut off and inserted into the clear sleeves. Spines only had the title, typed along with a Video Klub logo.

He went past the small section of early dubbed anime releases, currently called “Japanimation”, and entered an aisle’s large selection of family and kid movies. Aside from the swathes of Disney films and “best of” episodes of 80s cartoons like Care Bears and Transformers, there were more obscure releases like the overly cute Scamper the Penguin, samples from the single season of the animated James Bond Jr., and the For Better or For Worse and Monster in my Pocket specials. There were even duplicates of some cassettes.

But the few other kids in the store, all of them with their parents and a little younger than Jace, were only really enamored by the colorful cover art of Nintendo, Super Nintendo, and Sega games. Jace investigated the corner, hoping a little to maybe get a jump on his uncle and choose some games that he thought looked interesting. He also quickly found a very small collection of cartridges labeled with the brand “Atari”, which he had never heard of before, as Wes had never mentioned such a system.

The consoles were on the top shelf, out of the reach of the young ones, and Jace still hardly believed that they could be rented out. It was a bizarre idea. Did kids actually borrow systems instead of owning them? What did they do, take them out on weekends? At what point were they wasting money by renting them instead of begging their parents for that next big birthday present? After he unwrapped his Xbox and Nintendo Switch, they had never left his house—despite the latter having been designed as a portable hybrid. He saw them as precious gateways, like how Wes viewed his own collection of old systems, some of which were now current and rentable from this very store.

Jace gave up on life’s bigger questions and meandered over to the action section, currently empty but packed with deliciously cheesy B-flicks. Jean-Claude Van Damme’s name must’ve been printed on half the boxes. And one of his movies’ titles jumped out. Timecop, from 1994. He picked it up and read the back cover’s summary, and the idea of a time traveling muscular police officer protecting the continuum got him thinking. He looked over at his uncle, still filling out paper work at the counter, and considered if it was worth bringing up. When he looked back down, the tape had returned to its spot.

“Really…” he muttered. “Great. I’ll have to make gloves out of my underwear.”

Realizing that he was talking to himself, he looked around to make sure no one was nearby, and then moved onto the horror aisle. He wasn’t big on the genre and had seen very few, but for some reason, he had a macabre interest in their cover art.

“You done, dude?” the chilled employee asked Wes, who was eyeing his nephew for a moment as he investigated some slasher films. “With your, uh, paperwork?”

“Y-yeah. Uh, Scott,” he replied, reading off his nametag as Beastie Boys music played behind him on his stereo. “So… how long have you worked here?”

“You know. A few years. Beats my old job.”

“You got some big life plans? I just get the feeling that you… won’t be here for much longer. Like, in a good way. Because you moved onto bigger things.”

“I dunno,” Scott said with a laugh. “I don’t plan that far ahead.”

“Anyway, I was hoping to rent a couple consoles and maybe, three or four games for each of them. You got a Super Nintendo and Genesis in stock, I’m hoping.”

“Uhh… well…” Scott took a long puff of his cigarette, which Wes was pretty sure he shouldn’t be smoking. “Like, my boss kind of has this waiting period on consoles, because people kept, like… not bringing them back.”

“That’s called stealing. Scott.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I can let you rent some video games, but, like… you have to wait six months before you can take the consoles.”

Wes breathed in and out and tried to reason, “How am I supposed to play any video games without a console? Scott?”

“Like… I mean, you could, uh, go buy them. They have them at… stores?”

“Scott, look over there.” Wes pointed at Jace. “See that kid? He’s my nephew. I get to see him once a year—he’s not from around here. Kid loves video games. Plays them at home all the time, and he has so many he wants to show me. But he can’t bring his collection when he visits. All he wants is to share some two-player time with me. He doesn’t get that chance at home, because… His dad hates video games, and he has no friends. And we’re just looking to spend a nice weekend together with some vidja.”

“Oh. That’s too bad, man. Wish I could help.”

Wes glared at him, took out his wallet, pulled out a twenty, and placed it on the counter. “I can’t have you ruining my weekend plans. Scott. Take the money and don’t.”

Scott looked around to see if anyone was looking, as if this little bribe was a criminal act, and slid the bill into his pocket.

“I’ll need them back by Monday,” he whispered, and then took another puff.

• •

Wes closed the car door a little harshly, just under a slam, as Jace buckled in. His nephew waited for him to turn the key, two stacks of three video games each on his lap and a pair of consoles at his feet. He waited for Wes to start the car, or at least turn on the air conditioning, but currently he was only gripping the wheel and grumbling.

“So… are we going to go?” Jace asked after an uncomfortable silence.

“Yeah, yeah…” Wes turned on the engine to get some air flowing. “I don’t like it when people try to interfere with my put-together plans. That’s all. Just a little ticked.”

“What are you talking about?”

“That guy at the counter. Scott. I don’t remember Scott. By the time I started coming to Video Klub, I guess he was long gone, never spoken of by the employees I remember. Probably because he was a jerk, I’m guessing. Trying to ruin everything.”

“But now we can go home and you can talk about 16-bits games all night, and how it’s ‘beautiful’ that people worked together to make them so great or whatever.”

Wes gave Jace a small chuckle. “You’re becoming more like me every day. Video Klub…” he sighed and looked at the storefront. “It rented out DVDs when they came along, but streaming killed it just like they did to Blockbuster. Still had the last laugh, though—I think it closed a year after the big blue ticket did.”

“Did… people try to ‘ruin’ stuff for you during your first visit?”

“Huh? Oh, hm, not really. But I didn’t really have ‘plans’ because I don’t really make them for myself, usually. I just want to show you some neat things.”

“Yeah, but do you think that there’s, like… time cops or something?”

“What? Time cops?” Wes laughed. “W-where’d you get an idea like that?”

“A movie,” Jace said with a shrug.

“One you saw inside? Oh, that Timecop movie, yeah… Don’t worry about that.”

“Why not? If we could time travel so easily, why couldn’t there be some group of time protector… people who might come after us because we keep messing with junk?”

“Not a chance. Even if there were people like that, or robots or something, time is so vast. How would they pin us down, or the minuscule changes we must be making?”

“I guess you’re right… I hope you’re right. Hey… in order to rent all this stuff, didn’t you like, have to give them an address? We don’t actually live anywhere.”

“You actively find something to freak out about, huh? It’s all taken care of!”

“But…”

“Taken care of, Jace! Let’s just have a nice night of video games and get ready to be at King Arcade all day tomorrow, while it has that new amusement park smell.”

“Well… I guess a video game marathon isn’t that bad of an idea.”

“Open the cases, take a look at my picks.”