Dennys

"It's good to see you eating," said Dad.

They were at the Dennys restaurant across the street from the Seaside Inn on the California coast. It was sometime around midnight, and Theo was digging into a Grand Slam Breakfast with extra bacon. Bacon was her comfort food. There was no stress or heartbreak that copious amounts of crisp bacon couldn't cure.

Her father had a club sandwich with fries -- a standard meal. He was no adventurer with food.

"So what did we learn yesterday?" he said.

"Yesterday?" said Theo. "Isn't yesterday today? Or is yesterday tomorrow? I forget."

"India," he said. "How did you like India?"

"It was actually kind of cool," said Theo, devouring the bacon first while saving the rest of her plate as a post-bacon snack. "I have never seen so much poverty in one place. It is interesting to see how people survive."

"Do you think you helped them with your money?"

"That was really hard. When I gave money to that woman, she didn't even acknowledge me."

"She was too far gone. All you did was buy her another few days of survival."

"What's going to happen to her?"

"The baby is going to die. The women will stop nursing and regain her strength. By giving the woman money, you just delayed the death of the baby, making them both suffer longer."

"Do you know that for a fact?"

"No, I'm just guessing."

"So what do you know? I know you can see into the future, but how much can you see? You've never really explained that. Can you tell me who I will marry? Will I live a long life?"

"You will marry Prince Charming, who will awaken you with a kiss. Or maybe you will kiss a frog and he will turn into Prince Charming. My crystal ball is a little fuzzy."

"Give me something I can use."

"No, I can't tell you anything like that, because I don't know. All I can do is foresee very traumatic human events just before they happen. Usually it's just a few seconds or minutes of lead time. Fifteen minutes at most. I can see people in pain before they experience it themselves. Sometimes I can change things. Sometimes I can't. It's not a pleasant skill to have."

"So that's why you're bulletproof. You can foresee your own death, so you can avoid it."

"I'm always tuned in to that thread. If a bullet or any other immediate threat is heading my way, I can dodge it as long as I have the ability to move. But here's the catch: Any threat that builds up over more than a few minutes I can do nothing about. If I was on the Titanic when it hit the iceberg, I wouldn't be able to foresee it sinking until it was too late.... Sort of like when I married your mother!"

"Ha! She has her own point of view. She says you're in league with Satan."

He laughed. "Personally, I've never met the man, although I understand he plays a mean fiddle. Do you think I'm in league with Satan?"

She shrugged. "I'm just reporting what I heard."

"If I knew the Devil, I might make a deal. I have no defense against slow threats like cancer or heart disease -- or old age for that matter. If I have metastasized cancer, it's not going to do me a whole lot of good to foresee my own death fifteen minutes in advance."

"But if you were on the Titanic, couldn't you have foreseen the iceberg collision a few minutes before it happened and alerted the crew to change course?"

"No, because the iceberg was traumatic only to the ship itself, not to the people on board, who didn't think much of it at the time. I can only foresee human trauma -- intense neurological stimuli in the most primitive parts of the brain -- and that didn't happen until an hour or two later."

"I see now. That makes sense. That's how you saved me from that bullet."

"It's not a perfect skill by any means, especially when it comes to the suffering of others. The thing is, there's far more trauma in the world than you ever would have imagined. It's everywhere, all around us. The background noise is horrendous! To pull out one particular thread and block the others takes tremendous energy and concentration.

"That's why you couldn't save Derek."

"True," he said. "I couldn't save Derek."

"Then there's that other thing you can do."

"What other thing?"

"Stopping time."

"That's ridiculous. No one can stop time!"

"Then how did you grab the bullet out of the air?"

"I slowed time down. More precisely, I changed my time reference."

"Silly me," said Theo. "That's entirely different."

"As a matter of fact, I still have that bullet!"

He reached into his pocket and pulled it out: a pointed projectile about an inch long.

"It's the bullet with your name on it," he said. "I want you to have it."

He placed it in her hand.

"Awesome!" said Theo, turning it around in her fingers.

"I think you should actually inscribe your name on it, then wear it around your neck as a good luck charm."

"I'm going to do that!" said Theo, clearly elated with her gift. "I have a friend who makes jewelry. Maybe we can even have it gold plated."

"I want it to remind you of your own mortality, although I suspect it won't change your behavior one bit."

"Probably not," she said, "but it's still cool!"

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