Years Scattered Like Fallen Leaves

By Stephen Saperstein Frug

In 1951, a pair of scientists at Cornell discovered time-travel. With the specter of the atomic bomb in the immediate background, they decide not to replicate Einstein's mistake of suggesting what might be a weapon to the political authorities. Instead, they decide to set up a clandestine research program, swearing all those who work on it to keep the secret.

Then, in 1991, a time traveler returns from 2031 with a disturbing message: no traveler and no message has ever come farther back from the moment in time when he left. No one knows why. All people know is that something happens on April 4, 2031, to prevent any news of the future.

This is the story of what happens next... if "next" is the right word for a narrative which, in the way of things, is necessarily non-linear.

Retcon is a mosaic narrative, a story composed out of other stories, with recurring characters and overlapping plots all forming a larger picture. It will be arranged in three movements, each made up of nine stories of approximately 15,000 words, which will be published as ebooks on a monthly schedule (with a brief break between movements).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Saperstein Frug
• Release date: Apr 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960745019

Stephen Saperstein Frug

Stephen Saperstein Frug is the author and illustrator of Happenstance: A Photographic Novel, and the author of the essay series Attempts, and of Retcon: A Mosaic Story in Three Movements. He lives with his family in Ithaca, New York, where he commits occasional acts of illeism.

Book preview

Years Scattered Like Fallen Leaves

movement 1, installment 2 of

Retcon

A Mosaic Story in Three Movements

by

Stephen Saperstein Frug

Copyright © 2023 by Stephen Saperstein Frug

All rights reserved.

Published by Snark & Boojum Press

Ithaca, New York

https://stephenfrug.com/snark-and-boojum-press/

First edition

April, 2023

ISBN: 978-1-960745-01-9

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, incidents, footnotes, minerals, and mysterious physics are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Well, except for the line about Primer being the best time travel movie. That's just objective fact.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. But he's an easygoing fellow, so feel free to email him and ask.

Table of Contents

Start Reading

Cover

Title Page

Table of Contents

Years Scattered Like Fallen Leaves

Epigraph

Made-Up Philosophy

A Dead Woman Walks Into a Lab

Necessary Optimism

Knew It

The Accident

Things To Do While You Die

The End

Strawberries

The Opposite of Murder

Bedroom Talk

Scientists Gotta Grant...

Things to Do While Somebody Else Vanishes

The Mistake

...And Teachers Gotta Grade

A Dear Jill Letter

After the Strawberries

Just in Case

The Next Morning

Snipping the Physical Threads of the Self

When She First Showed Him the Coroner's Report and Her Older Self's Letter

Reasons Not to Go On

Causality, Like God, is Dead

You'll Know When

The Best Jokes are True

Second Wake

After the Fall

A Time to Die

About Retcon

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also From Snark & Boojum Press

Years Scattered Like Fallen Leaves

O let not Time deceive you,

You cannot conquer Time.

— Auden

Made-Up Philosophy

To philosophize, Montaigne wrote, is to learn how to die. For Jill Harraway, this included some very precise information about her make-up, her blouse, and her shoes.

Not that she thought she had to look good, mind. She knew as well as anyone that the Grim Reaper was obligingly nonjudgmental when it came to fashion choices, smiling at everything equally. But at least in her particular case she had to be concerned about what the coroner would write in their report.

So she made sure to check her outfit against her copy of the coroner's description quite carefully.

Blue skirt. That couldn't mean blue jean skirt, could it? Surely they would have described that as such, if not just as a jean skirt tout court, the blue understood, the default color, like red for apples and blood? No, she decided: the other blue skirt, and took it out of the drawer where, a week and a decade ago, she had placed it.

In nearly every important way it didn't matter—the coroner had written what they'd write, what you see is what you get, no returns, no exchanges: just like death, when it comes to that. But Jill had always been a careful and over-prepared student, and if life was going to hand her a cheat sheet, then by God she'd be sure she got an A+.

Now white blouse had to be this plain white button-down one, right? Oh dear. She never wore that without a sweater, it was practically see-through, why had she even bought the bloody useless thing? She looked at the coroner's report to see if there was any sign of their ogling her dead body. Not most people's inclination in such circumstances, but then again if that was the way one leaned, what better profession? Oh well, truth be told she quite literally wouldn't care. She wouldn't anything:—that was the point.

So why try so hard to get it right?

Now the shoes.—Sneakers? Really?—The whole outfit was simply strange, as if she were choosing from her wardrobe by blind dart-throw. She sighed. This is what happens when you over-study, she told herself. Like the time she did an all-nighter before her learner's permit test and flunked the easiest test in the world because she was too tired to keep her eyes open for the thirty seconds it would have taken her unstudied-self to pass it. Would she ever learn?

Well, not now, no. Time's up.

One more glance at the cheat sheet: all done except for her make-up. She pulled the table over to the mirror, unpacked the bag, and sat down to try to perform the unfamiliar task. Why make-up? she wondered, as she lightly tapped on foundation, careful not to overdo it. She never wore make-up; she simply didn't think about her appearance that much. She hadn't even owned any. Fortunately, yet also inevitably, she had looked at the coroner's report a few days in advance and had seen the record of make-up, and so had dutifully rushed to the store