Cruise Control
The Time Machine
was on cruise control,
circling the Gunks
through the now-infamous
Heat of July 2026.
The dashboard blinked.
The engine sighed.
Tiki was looking
for a soft place to land.
Not easy anymore.
Climate change had rearranged
the rules.
Even the lakes
had climbed uphill.
Lake Awosting
still held out—
three and a half,
maybe four miles in,
rain-fed,
crystal-clear,
balanced on the Shawangunk Ridge
like a bowl of sky
nobody had spilled.
"Show-off,"
Tiki muttered.
This time
they had Gina.
Which meant
this time
they had a chance.
Katya had a plan.
Cats don't believe in fate.
They believe in timing.
If everything worked,
Katya could go back
to being
an ordinary housecat—
sleeping on warm windowsills,
knocking pens off tables,
judging everyone equally.
Tiki could reclaim
his hard-earned title
of Fishing Master,
a profession requiring
silence,
patience,
and spectacularly good excuses
for catching nothing.
But Gina...
Gina was the hinge.
The whole ridiculous universe
swung on one ordinary afternoon.
One meeting.
One conversation.
One smile
that lasted too long.
Katya's calculations
were simple.
If Gina
never met Anthony,
the future unraveled
like cheap yarn.
No time machine.
No impossible cat.
No July
hot enough
to boil the mountaintops.
Maybe.
Time was funny that way.
It always laughed first.
Tiki had one job.
Get them back
to the spring of 1974.
Land without crashing.
Avoid paradoxes.
And whatever happened—
keep Gina
from meeting Anthony.
Which sounded easy.
Until they saw
Anthony
walking up the trail.
….
