Looping With Quinn: A Time Travel Comedy

By Karen Kolodenko

"Elementary, my dear Rand. It works because it's impossible!" - Quinn Schmul, eccentric inventor.

A whirlwind tale of time travel, magic, science, coffee, geeks, logic, fallacy, and spaghetti.

Rand likes his coffee, his sleep, and the study of philosophy. Especially philosophy. He craves the beauty and rigor of it. That's why he's studying formal logic at an age when he should be doing something far more sensible with his life.

It's a mystery how he ended up getting roped into his girlfriend-inventor's latest experiment. Sure, yeah, Quinn has terrific hair, and as a barista in her day job, she serves a mean espresso. But this time looping scheme she's so obsessed with is illogical. He has his doubts about this brainwave of hers concerning the role of paradox in time travel, too.

Worse, while Quinn is occupied trying to twist time, not to mention the laws of thermodynamics, into shape using a little cooking sorcery and a chopstick, she's left him holding the baby...literally.

A swift, dizzying, laugh-out-loud time-looping romp.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karen Kolodenko
• Release date: Dec 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223152668

Book preview

Looping With Quinn: A Time Travel Comedy

Karen Kolodenko

Published by Karen Kolodenko, 2023.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

LOOPING WITH QUINN: A TIME TRAVEL COMEDY

First edition. December 9, 2023.

Copyright © 2023 Karen Kolodenko.

ISBN: 979-8223152668

Written by Karen Kolodenko.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Looping With Quinn

Quinn A. Schmul is the sole reason I never finished my doctorate, and not just because she made me fail my logic exam.

I'm not angry about it anymore, but...well, it's a bit hard to forget. You see, it all started—ah, now I can't remember it right. Let me go get the notes I wrote to sort it all out in my mind....

Quinn's early morning call jarred me out of study mode.

Rand! Hi-lo!

I blinked my eyes open, mumbled an irritable greeting, turned over, knocked a heavy book off of some limb or other, and groaned.

Whatsay? I totally can't understand you. You're all talking-through-wool.

She couldn't understand me? Quinish threein murnin. I slurred. Wya callin, fgodsee.

Are you sleeping? At this hour? Rand, you're not sick or something, are you?

"Nime studyen. Studying," I said again, forming all my consonants.

You don't sound like yourself. Are you, like, okay? Have you been, like, drinking?

I have trouble understanding Quinn at the best of times. She may be my age–which is uncomfortably beyond my twenties—but she speaks like a mashup of 1980s Valley Girl and Milla Jovovich's Leeloo, which I find bemusing, as she hails from central North Dakota. No drink. Umfahn, juss fahn, juss takin' a ress.

Whatsay? You're fine? What are you studying?

I rubbed my eyes. Ayava logic test tamarrah—uh, today, iss today, innit?

A test! She sounded unaccountably pleased. Hey, why not blow it off and come timeloop with me?

Now, Quinn says this sort of thing to me a lot. Let's warp-drive out of this burg next Saturday....Grab your tectosuit so we can take a radia-free shower, 'kay?

It scares me, no lie. My girlfriend thinks she lives in a Hollywood film. She believes in all of it: androids, spaceships, guardian angels, faster-than-light travel, fountains of youth.

It's all nonsense, of course. Quinn adores nonsense. When she's not blending lattes and chattering customers' ears off—which was how we met, by the way; I buy my wholegrain muffin and black drip every morning at the café where she works—she's trying to turn plastic into gold or commune with the spirit of her long-lost parakeet, and roping me into the effort.

Certainly I can't fault her work ethic. My problem is that far too often, using a rationale only she can fathom, Quinn succeeds in her schemes, bringing down chaos...on herself...on me...on unwary innocents.

I forced my eyes open. There is a limit to how much formal logic a man can take, and I had reached it about three hours