This short story takes place following the events of The Traveler, the bestselling time travel novel available on Amazon.com. This i not so much a new adventure as it is a proper epilogue to the events of that story. I'm excited to return to the life of Daniel Wells. I've always felt that the most interesting part of a science fiction experience is the normal thoughts, anxieties and issues of the people in these unusal circumstances. Dan had a deep obsession with his own past. This led him to all kinds of trouble once he discovered his powers. It's nice to think that a story like that ends with the hero having learned his lesson and everything tied up in a tidy little package. Real life isn't like that. It's full of twists and turns and people who don't (or can't) learn from their mistakes.  Those are the dark pathways I love to explore. 

-F L Shernoff 

Wellington, Florida, 2014

I'm Daniel Wells. I travel through time. It's sort of a thing. 

Well, okay, to be honest I don't really do the time travel thing anymore. There was this situation... a few people died, a few people almost died, the whole world almost ended. You know, the usual. Suffice to say I was told in no uncertain terms that I should give up on my adventures. After what I went through, I wasn't inclined to disagree. 

If you've read that story, which was sorta my memoir, I guess, you'll know that on one of my trips back to 1993 I wandered aimlessly over to the day camp I attended as a child and fell ass-backwards into a summer job. 

Full disclosure: I didn't exactly wander so aimlessly. I wanted to see that place full of life and brimming with energy because I'd been there a few times in the present and, well, it wasn't pretty. Just the same, once I'd straightened out all the things I'd fouled up, I went back to see the present day place once more. Do you want to hear about it? All right. I'm happy to share, and though this story is a short one, it's important to me and important to the overall tale that is my crazy life. Sit back and enjoy.

It took me a while to come to accept that I wasn't going to travel back in time anymore. I had started those journeys thinking I could just be a distant observer of past events. Even after everything I'd experienced, I gradually started to think again that it would be possible for me to just watch and not change anything. Despite a new, positive turn in my relationship with my wife, I still had the memories of a different timeline, in which I had loved a woman named Suzy. 

I had always been prone to wandering, but I think I did it more than ever in the year following my return to the proper present day.  It helped that Helena was busy with work and our relationship had become so pleasant that she didn't think anything of my somewhat spontaneous departures. One weekend, just as the summer of 2014 was drawing to a close, I drove down to my old camp, Shady Pines. It's a creepy name, I know, but the place was really wonderful, once upon a time. I had thought so even before the time I spent there with Suzy.

I pulled into the parking lot, a sea of grey stones that led to a cluster of trees on one side (the eponymous shady pines) and the asphalt of a township parking lot on the other. The whole place is actually township property these days. The guys who owned the camp hightailed it to Florida or some other hot spot and got a promise that the township would never allow developers to cover the land with single family residences. 

I parked the car and stepped out onto the stones. I felt a rush of memory. The pressure of the small rocks on the sole of my work shoes was gentle but it reminded me of a time twenty years earlier when a much younger Danny Wells had run across those stones on a trip to the bathroom during swim periods. On bare feet, the stones were not so kind.

I followed the path to what served as a main entrance to the property. To my right was the long building we had called the "chuckwagon," where lunches were served and awards presented. Kind of a gathering place in addition to a cafeteria. Of course, that was in a long ago era that existed in my past (both distant and recent) as I approached the building. I regarded its faded and peeled red paint with some sadness. The township had made good on its promise to keep the developers at bay, but nature couldn't be as easily restricted.

I spun on my heels and looked to the left. The expanse of grass hurt my soul, and not for the first time. There had been a building there... a very old, white house that had been the camp's office. I missed that place because of what it represented about my experience at camp and about my past in general, not to mention that I'd seen the building reborn (and spent plenty of time there) on my time travelling journey.

Many things had gone wrong during that misadventure, but my time spent in the alternate reality Shady Pines had been amazing, day after day. It had been what I needed at the time but it was painful to me as I surveyed the flat surface where the building had stood. It was just one of many the township had demolished. 

I walked through the "girl's campus," a semi-circle of red bunks on concrete pads with a small pavilion in the center. In the off-season, the township locked all the buildings, but they hadn't yet closed up from the 2014 summer season. I entered the bunk at the far end of the semi-circle, next to the tennis courts. I remembered with a laugh being a camper who dreamed with his friends about being able to see into the girls' bunks. 

The screen door squeaked on its hinges and slammed shut with a crack of sound that violated the stillness, if only for a moment. 

I looked around the small room. The walls were covered in camper grafitti in every color available in a box of markers. On one wall was a recent entry, the phrase, "I love Taylor Lautner" written over, and over, and over, down an entire vertical space between two studs of the building. Three feet to the right was, "Shadie Pins Rules!!!" Nothing like camp spirit, no matter how poor the spelling. Am I right?

I kept scanning the wall, moving past: "Uncle Arthur's bald" (stating the obvious?) and, "Lily is AWESOME!" written in dark blue and accented with some kind of glitter explosion.

Across the room from those gems and so much more written over thirtysome years, I found what I had been looking for, and it instantly brought tears to my eyes, as I'd known it would. In faded red were the words, "Suzy was here '85."

I had seen that inscription once during my trip to 1993, and I knew it would still exist because it predated my meddling. 

I sat on the bench next to Suzy's graffiti and traced the words with my fingertips. God I missed her. Her bouncy, wavy hair, the curves of her body, her teasing laugh. All of it. I alone in all the world (barring a number of truly insane individuals) could truly mourn the loss of something that had never been.