Erwin Druid woke as he always did, even on weekends, at exactly 6:06 AM. For the days he did work, this allotted him a full hour for the 53 minute bus ride to work, 7 minutes to walk to the bus, 17 minutes for breakfast and 11 minutes for a shower, which included waiting for the hot water to heat up, shaving and brushing his teeth. Originally, he woke at 6:01 AM, but recently knocked 5 minutes off his routine, by shaving and brushing his teeth while showering.

The downside to his change in routine was that he hardly ever shaved his entire face and now it was not uncommon to see irregular patches in his naturally thick beard. As with most things regarding Erwin, his co-workers accepted his new look without comment. If you knew Erwin, you would too.

It might surprise you to find Erwin was somewhat of a loner. He knew this, but couldn’t tell why exactly. He wasn’t aware he did a lot of things to repel people, like the shaving thing. Everything he did, made sense to him. Maybe it was because he just liked the peace and quiet of home where everything stayed exactly the same. He lived in the same house he grew up in. When his mother passed, she left it to him. He seldom left the house other than to go to work or the grocers.

What Erwin did with his free time, which was from 7:00 to 9:00 PM nightly, and the equivalent of a full work day on weekends, was similar to what he did at work. Erwin was an archivist at the main library of the San Francisco Public Library. He sorted, categorized, and ordered rare books that came to the library. What Erwin did as a hobby was sort, categorize and order something else.

It wasn’t really a hobby. It might be closer to a compulsion, but there were a lot of things going on in the World that scared Erwin and he was trying to understand it - from the safety of his home. The World was in flux. His country was at war. The authoritarianism and intolerance that had always been there, but not at the fore of his country, was now amplified. Never in Erwin’s 28 was it so visible, and there was a growing rebellion against it.

In response, a new cultural liberalism was taking shape. It was showing up everywhere. Civil rights and war protestation, youth movements, and pop music. Erwin was finding it everywhere. Something was happening and it had to be defined, which is what Erwin was good at doing. How else would he understand the threat to his way of life? Soon he was compulsively collecting newspaper clippings on anything that suggested a cultural shift in society. In the evening when Erwin was sorting the clippings he shuddered involuntarily at the disorder he found in His World.

That’s what he was doing when the man appeared in his living room right beside the plastic covered sofa and lounge chair in his living room. His mother had purchased and left these to him as well. He saw it all from the dining room table where he was working on his clippings. A man, out of nowhere, suddenly appeared.

At first Erwin didn’t know what to do. No one had ever appeared in his living room before. It took him an awful long time to process this, but eventually he concluded fear was the proper response and he jumped up to find something to defend himself with. He decided on a knife in the kitchen. Unfortunately, he misjudged the length of the corner wall between the kitchen and dining room and ran into it face first, knocking himself out in the process. This might have been a self-inflicted accident, as when it came to fight or flight, Erwin was definitely in the flee category and wouldn’t know what to do with a knife if he held one.

Ethan was as shocked by Erwin’s response as Erwin was by Ethan’s appearance. He rushed over, picked the unconscious Erwin up and gently placed him on the sofa. It didn’t take much effort. Erwin was short and only weighed about a hundred pounds. After checking Erwin’s pulse and the growing lump on his forehead, Ethan walked over and looked out the front window. There were modest houses across the street, and to either side of him. Cars were parked along the street. They were old cars. Older than Ethan recognized. He placed them in the mid 20th century.

“Hmph,” he thought, as he let the curtain fall back into place. “I wonder what brought me here”?

He sat on the lounge chair beside Erwin and waited for him to waken.

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“What’s with all this plastic?” he wondered, rubbing it. It was thick and durable. It made the chair decidedly less comfortable, and a little noisy when he moved. For the life of him, Ethan couldn’t figure out what that plastic was for. Maybe the guy was selling the set and wrapped it up to protect it?

Ethan had to put the whole plastic thing on hold, as Erwin began moaning and showing signs of coming to.

“Ohhh. What happened,” he moaned as he tried to prop himself up on the couch.

“You ran into a wall,” Ethan explained.

“Oh,” Erwin replied as he fell back on the couch, trying to collect himself. “Who are you”?

“Ethan”.

“Erwin. Erwin Druid,” Erwin replied, then he started to remember what had happened.

“I didn’t run into a wall, Ethan. I was diving for a knife and miscalculated my positioning when I leapt”.

That was a significant miscalculation.

“It was like you dived into it,” Ethan replied. “Put a hole in the wall with your head”.

Erwin didn’t say anything. He felt he explained himself well enough, so he just lay there groaning.

Ethan offered to prepare a warm compress for the growing bump on his forehead which Erwin consented to. He also consented to him fluffing up a throw pillow and placing it behind his head, and didn’t object when Ethan patted on the shoulder.

Erwin seemed prepared to sit indefinitely without conversation, which prompted Ethan to ask, “So what’s with the plastic”?

“What plastic”?

“On all your furniture”.

“It’s there to protect it,” Erwin answered.

“From what”?

“What do you mean, from what? Everything. Spills, dropped food, everyday wear and tear. This furniture looks exactly the same as it did the day Mother bought it”.

Ethan took a closer look at the chair he was sitting on. It, including the plastic, didn’t look like it had been sat on since the day it was bought.

“Do you and your mother eat your meals in here?” he asked.

“No, and Mother passed several years ago”.

Do you entertain in here a lot?” Ethan continued with his inquiry.

“No”.

“Do you ever come in here”?

“No”.

Ethan pursed his lips, now knowing pretty much everything he needed to know about Erwin.

“I suppose you’ve come to rob me,” Erwin offered, after a comfortable silence.

“Oh no! No! No!” Ethan exclaimed. “I’ve come from the future. I’m here to help you. I came to change something about this here and now and I assure you, it will be to your benefit. You’re going to help me”.

“Oh, that’s nice,” Erwin replied, relieved to hear he wouldn’t have to do any more fighting.

Erwin crossed his legs, took a deep breath and gazed at the ceiling. The fact that he could appear so calm in his current situation, was Erwin could not handle stress. Not even the least amount of stress. One thing he did to avoid stress and had worked in the past was to shut down mentally and wait until the stressful episode went away. That’s why he didn’t offer any conversation.

He was comfortably doing that now. Just staring at the ceiling, waiting for the man who magically appeared in his living room to just as magically disappear. Occasionally he’d glance over to see if Ethan showed any signs of leaving. He did not. He sat looking at Erwin the whole time. Erwin returned his gaze to the ceiling and thought of things other than Ethan sitting across from him. He could wait.

“Wait a second,” Erwin exclaimed, after a moment and his mind started to process Ethan’s words . “Time travel is impossible”.

He knew this because of the new television series Star Trek. The program was Erwin’s only guilty pleasure, and he watched it faithfully every week. In just the last episode Spock had just said something about how the laws of Relativity made time travel impossible.

“Impossible here,” Ethan replied. “Not where I come from”.

“Oh, and where is that exactly”?

“I told you. The future, and the fact that I’m sitting in your living room tells me you have a lot to do with why I’m here. Get ready Erwin. Your World’s about to change”.