But I was getting to where I didn't care; the warm glow from the gin had me feeling as sociable as a horny leper at a Helen Keller Memorial Society meeting. I had enough money left to fight the blues till the place closed at two a.m. and had the rear end of the bar pretty much to myself. I never minded drinking alone; in fact, I was up to eight yes answers on that "Ten warning signs to see if you're an alcoholic test." I took pride in the fact that I expected a perfect score soon.

She came in about eleven-thirty. A looker. Maybe mid-twenties, dressed like bad news. She had straight black hair falling halfway down her back and eyes like obsidian marbles; it looked like maybe a little Puerto Rican had snuck over the fence and splashed around in her gene pool. Her dress was tacky, tight by human standards, and was designed with the same dedication to good taste that Elvis' interior decorator had used. Her patent leather hi-heels were as red as Satan's balls and she had a body as basic as ham and eggs: The eggs were grade A and I would dearly have loved a slice of the ham.

She sat three seats down from me on one very lucky bar stool, gave me an imperious glance, and then contemplated the bar top, which was studded with coins sealed under plastic, as she waited for the bartender to make his rounds; I figured either she had a numismatic fetish or she simply wasn't interested in making eye contact with a thirtyish-something drunk whose vision was beginning to blur. Whatever.

But I wasn't that easily put off. Point was, in spite of the volume of gin I'd consumed, one look at her and my love commando was as rigid as a Baptist preacher's opinion about the Resurrection. The bartender still hadn't noticed her--that's when I decided he was a eunuch, or worse, and resolved to avoid him in the future--so I held up my rattling ice cubes and shouted for his attention. At the other end of the bar he was as busy as a douche salesman in a whorehouse. Still, he managed to pause long enough to scowl in my direction and shout "Be right there," before re-adjusting his smile and turning back to the lucrative job of ass-kissing the real tippers, bozos from some sort of medical convention in town.

He made no effort to hurry, but finally, polishing the ubiquitous glass, ambled toward the shallow end of the bar, his rotund face red from heredity, not exertion.

"In a rush?" He assessed me as if I wasn't a semi-regular customer he should show some professional deference to, but a tatterdemalion who'd wandered in off the street. He was one bartender I'd never successfully bonded with; hence, I'd never bothered learning his name. "You in a hurry to get to a stockholders meeting?" he asked drily.

I thought it best not to dignify such sarcasm with a comment. "The young lady has been waiting. And I'll have another too, while you're at it."

Scowl in place, he took her request and then withdrew with a sloth that most bipeds would find insulting.

She glanced at me. "Thanks." Turned away. So she wasn't exactly enthusiastic.

"You've just got to get their attention," I remarked. I wasn't great on openers.

She regarded me with quantum briefness. A terse smile. Lacking in sincerity, it faded quickly.

That was all the encouragement I needed. Besides, I was feeling lucky.

I picked up my glass and moved over a couple of stools. "Do you know why the pervert crossed the road?" She turned and regarded me as if I'd offered her a three-day old tuna sandwich. "Because he couldn't get his dick out of the chicken," I answered. Like I said, I'm not great on openers.

Speedy returned with our drinks. Mine was high on tonic and low on gin. I thought of calling him back and complaining, but it would have been as pointless as scolding a cat.

Like a magic drought, the drink began to loosen her tongue.

"This city sucks." It was a start. But I couldn't place the accent. Maybe a tinge of deep south, say, Alabama. Good. Low I.Q. in a woman worked like an aphrodisiac on me.

"You're not used to big cities?" I inquired.

"I'm used to civilization."

"You just move here, or visiting?"

"Visit. A brief visit. I'm here for the medical research convention, you might say."

She glanced at her watch.

"Meeting someone?"

"Here?" She found the question particularly amusing.

"I'm Anthony Stone. My friends call me Tony. I own a local plastics production plant. And you are?" I wanted a name. You had to be careful these days; who knows, maybe Lorena Bobbitt has sisters.

"I'm called Helena."

One name was enough. It was too late in the evening to be picky. She glanced at her watch again. I noticed that it was one of those new fangled gadgets with a mass of dials and digital readouts of different time zones on its face. She was obviously frustrated.

"What's the local time?" she asked.

I checked my Rolex, which I'd bought from a black guy named Ralph, thinking I was getting a good deal on a stolen Rolex, not a bad deal on a cheap imitation. As long as you remembered to wind it twice a day, and didn't care about an accurate date, it did fine. Ralph had been a regular at the bar, but come to think about it, I hadn't seen him around since I'd bought the thing. In fact, now that I thought about it, Speedy the bartender had introduced me to him. "About midnight."

"Midnight. Is that the exact time?"

"Exactly? It's eleven-forty-nine and counting."

She shivered. "Four hours, more or less." She noticed me staring at her watch, and explained, "This is multi-phase Chronotronic timepiece with a cesium calibrater. It's already been adjusted for my ultimate destination, not this time zone, so I have to adjust mentally for the local time. And sometimes you get phase variations with local time."

"Pardon?"

"Never mind. Not important. Let's just say my bus leaves in four hours, and in the meantime I'm stuck here and bored to death." After a protracted pause, she turned to face me, suddenly as eager to please as repentant Manson Family member before a parole board. "Tell me about yourself."

Emboldened by the gin, I gave a brief and highly amplified synopsis of my experience, status, and pivotal role in world affairs. She listened attentively and didn't contradict my obvious logic faults and glaring historical errors. Finally, she said, "When you moved over here next to me you were hoping for a sexual assignation, correct?"

"Sexual ass---Well, yes. I guess."

"Do you have habitation near here?"

I nodded.

"Hold a finger out."

Cautiously, I extended a digit while she reached in her purse, removed a small thimble-looking thing, and placed it on the end of my finger.

"Ow!"

"Oh, that didn't hurt. You're a tough guy." She held the thimble-thing up and looked at the back of it, nodded, smiled. "Good. No Aids complex. No Rwanda syndrome or Clinton fungus either. And you're clear on twenty-four out of twenty-five infectious diseases. Your cholesterol level is screwed, though."

"What are you? A lab tec? A pain freak?" I looked into her sparkling dark eyes. It didn't matter if she was, since I was as horny as a two-dick billy goat.

"Well, Tony, you're also inebriated, your blood-alcohol level proves that. And by your demeanor and dress, I take it that you're not a citizen of any importance, and probably have little credibility among your peers. Correct?"

I tried my best to act offended, but it was getting late, and I hadn't gotten lucky in a while. I swallowed my pride. It wasn't difficult, being a familiar taste.

"I'm going to be honest with you," she continued. "Like I said, I'm passing through quickly, but I've got a little time to kill---and would love to do a little slumming with the locals. Point is, I was wondering it you'd be interested in a little sexual recreation?"

I slapped a twenty on the bar and we were out of there in a flash.

Shaking in anticipation like a spastic on a tilt-a-whirl, I fumbled with the keys to my apartment door until she finally stepped in and lent a hand. Once inside, she set her large purse down, backed up against me and rubbed her buttocks against my crotch with the unashamed abandon of a cat in heat. "Jeez, you are a man." I didn't like the surprise in her voice. I didn't know the point needed confirmation. She moved away from me, turned and began undressing until she was wearing nothing but silky hose held up by a frilly garter belt. Gazing at her perfect breasts, flat smooth stomach, and neatly trimmed pubic hair, I felt a religious presence and, being a free-thinker, said a silent prayer of thanks to whatever deity was actually in control of things.

With slow and sinuous motion, she approached me, dropped to her knees, unbuckled my pants, and, with the devotion of an acolyte performing a religious rite, began performing on me in a manner that I wasn't sure my heart would survive. Intent on her job, she purred and cooed, only pausing once when I screamed "Mother! Help!" She smiled, interpreting that correctly as approval. With renewed vigor--like an anemic baby who's just gotten hold of a loaded 44 D-- she latched on again until my G-spot exploded. I collapsed: sweating, flushed, contented, satiated, at one with the cosmos. My hips gave involuntary twitches and hunches as the synapses in my brain slowly cooled off.

"When you recover, we can do some more," she purred. "Whatever you want. Understand?"

I moaned affirmatively.

The next few hours provided an exhausting and enthusiastic tour of some of the more obscure positions from the Kama Sutra. I took her in every way I've ever fantasized taking a woman. She proved a spirited complement to my debased desires as we copulated like two monkeys on speed, and never uttered the words "No, don't," "It hurts," or "That's too sticky!" Everything was going fine, although I noticed she occasionally glanced at my watch. She was on top, grinding slowly, all business, oily and smooth like warm honey, when she muttered, "It's great being on the receiving end for a change, not having any dangling parts to get in the way. God. It's better than I ever would have imagined."

Until then my head had been as fuzzy as a Republican's on his first acid trip. Now a cold wind blew the gin-induced haze away. Normally, I would have ignored it. I mean, Christ, if she'd just had a sex-change, I wanted to send her surgical team a dozen roses and a couple of bottles of bubbly: I can be as morally big and open-minded as the next guy when it's to my advantage. Besides, none of my friends would ever know. I asked her if that was what she had meant. She laughed at me.

"Silly. Surgery. How crude. I had DNA therapy a year ago. Had to. So I'm all woman now. But I wasn't allowed to try out the equipment before I left. I don't know," she paused, pensive. "It's hard to miss having a protruding fleshy appendage and a hairy butt that's--what's the matter?"

That did it. The image was as unwelcome as a missed period in a convent. I tried to maintain my excitement by thinking of Mrs. Hinkle, my somewhat authoritarian third grade teacher, but even this usual surefire remedy was of no avail. I groaned as my formerly eager member went as limp as a dead Christmas puppy. I wasn't able to get around my very active imagination; besides, I couldn't help thinking about the odd thing she'd said about DNA. I keep up with the latest scientific periodicals, and Scientific American hadn't mentioned any advancements like this in DNA research.

With scientific detachment, she reached out with a finger and prodded my useless appendage, now hiding in his shell like an embarrassed tortoise. "Oh well, it doesn't matter. I'll be out of here in less than an hour. We had our fun though, didn't we. We gave the equipment--how you say?--a real test drive."

Then, as if she could read my mind, which frankly wouldn't have surprised me at that point, she said, "If you haven't guessed, I'm from the future. I'm here to see the Hyatt Center go up tonight, and all those stupid, bumbling medical bozos with it. It will blow at three-fifty-five, exactly fifteen-minutes before my wave comes by. I just want to see the bomb go off before I'm exiled downtime."

Speedy the bartender! The son of a bitch must have dosed my drink. I made a mental note to either tip better or avoid the place in the future. Helena got up and began dressing.

A moral relativist, I decided to go with the flow. "I guess it's impossible for me to change things, huh, like trying to save the doctors at the Hyatt?"

I was weaned on sci-fi. If the Hyatt was to go up, I knew I couldn't change history, and so didn't stir from my bed; besides, I could see myself calling the police to try and prevent the disaster and eventually getting charged for blowing it up. I was familiar with irony in literature too. Such rationalization justified my lethargy.

"Save them? Silly. I set the neutrino charge that will bring the Hyatt down. Those well intended bastards tinker with viral DNA in an attempt to cure Aids and wind up creating a truly horrendous new form of Aids called Aids Superplex Virus, or ASPV--which is what I now carry."

The overload of info I'd taken in had slowed down my cerebral processing unit by several megahertz, still, I could put the basics together: she had this thing and I had had sex with her. That part was clear enough. Since I was obviously in no position to demand answers, and, since she was the garrulous type, I decided it best to listen.

"I was sentenced to exile downtime for erasing fourteen HOLOSTIFFS at the university. . ."

"Pardon?"

"Holographic-Sentient-Instructional-Faculty-Facsimile. Anyway, in jail, they found out I had ASPV, which complicated matters even more. Since I had to have the therapy before my sentence was carried out, I used the time to plot the probability waves and found out I could stop here for a brief period. That's when I hatched the plan to get revenge on the stupid witch doctors who are liable for my present condition."

Now fully dressed and sitting on the edge of the bed, she removed a sort of vest from her purse and put it on. It was a little harness affair with straps, some chrome gizmos, and dials on it.

"Doctors? Why didn't you just go back in time and kill the one that was responsible?"

"One? Where have you been. These imbeciles travel in packs--the better to hunt down large university grants. Even in your time things were done with medical research teams. The raw data that ultimately led to the creation of ASPV was presented at this convention; subsequently, four different medical teams that were at the convention wound up suing each other in court claiming priority for the process and the right to a share of the patent profits. They'd all done some basic research that was similar and could have led to the creation of the virus. So there's simply no way to know who actually pioneered it. The origin of the Aids One vaccine was the start of one of the longest patent wars in history. But you should have seen them back away from their laurels once the viral mutations linked to their genetic manipulation started surfacing."

"Hmmm. So, since the convention was the one time they were all together, blowing up the Hyatt is the only way to save the future?"

"The future? Hah! Not bloody likely. Get ASPV and you're shipped off to an alternate past time to screw up some other reality's future. "

"Excuse me. Alternate?"

"Of course. Every event where a decision is made splits the time line. If you go downtime and change something, then from that point on the future of that time line varies in some regard from the one you came from. It's all part of the Kennedy paradox--but you wouldn't know about that, would you? I took a freshman course in Alternate Time Line Paradox--hated the HOLOSTIFF, one of the first to go, by the way. Anyway, I decided stopping here would be a good way to discredit the Kennedy Paradox, or at least give it a real good test."

Never having had the benefit of freshman course in Alternate Time Line Paradox, I asked, "And the Kennedy paradox is--?"

"You know--or I guess you don't. Maxwell's first experiments proved that the impetus of large probability trends can't be stopped. Time is like a river; though you can't step into the same water twice, the scenery along the banks doesn't change that much. The scenery would be large scale highly probable events. Maxwell's team tried several times to change the past, then monitored the time lines. What they found was that if you kill Oswald while he's in Russia, JFK slips by the pool and cracks his skull open; you go back and clean up the spot by the pool where John-John's ice cream caused JFK to slip--then Teddy drives himself and JFK off a bridge while intoxicated; you make sure Teddy gets into AA in college, then Jackie finds out about Marilyn and blows JFK's brains out with the gun of the secret service agent she's having an affair with--get the idea? Major trends can't be averted. Their probability is too great."

Feeling pretty smug, I nodded. At least my lack of motivation for trying to save the doctors was justified.

"Now, at least on this time line, there's a good chance the ASPV won't develop. So if they ever monitor this particular line and find it missing, that'll throw a wrench into their little theory. Small victory, huh?" She paused, turned over my wrist and looked at the watch again. "We've still got about forty-minutes before the explosion. That leaves plenty of time for me to recheck my time coordinates and administer your ASPV antidote."

"The antidote--I thought--"

"Hey. Just because I'm blowing up several hundred doctors doesn't mean I'm a cruel person. There is an antidote, but it only works if administered within six-hours of exposure to the virus. Don't worry, I'll give it to you before I leave, just a few pills. But I'll just hold on to them for a little while in case you get any ideas about screwing with my plans."

I made protestations that attempting to stop her was the last thing on my mind. Which it was. I was busy trying to figure out how I might glean some information from her about the future that might help my present state of financial destitution.

"If you don't stop ASPV in the initial stages," she continued, "your only hope is radical DNA therapy like I had, which has the side effect of turning you into a female. Females don't die from ASPV, but they carry it for life; hence, the authorities didn't want me around anymore. Still, the female thing is not so bad as I first imagined. I've completed about ninety-percent of my therapy and," she took a deep breath and huffed her chest up, "just look at me."

I made suitable noises of being impressed, then, still hoping for some sort of knowledge that I could convert to money, I asked, "How does this time gizmo work?"

"Could you explain TV to someone from the Dark Ages? To me, even?" She laughed. "Of course not. You see my problem. Besides, your generation hasn't yet grasped the role of field dynamics in science. What's the local time, now?"

I told her three-fifteen. She sighed. "Ah, what the hell. My "time gizmo," as you call it, is geared to only work in one direction: downtime. It works by means of proton implosion that generates a phase locked probability wave. Naturally, this is connected to several alternate space/time points on the Penrose diagram that are geometric harmonics of it's present position."

"Naturally," I agreed.

"Once the matter inside the implosion moves from pre-bent space into configuration space, it picks up enough kinetic energy to violate locality. Right?"

"Of course," I concurred.

"Like other fundamental processes, its power is inverse to the square of its distance."

"That's elementary," I admitted.

"The process sort of shakes the mathematical tensors of space/time and creates a state specific mathematical model that is localized around similar probabilities. We refer to it as ‘tapping a nexus of probability." She paused and looked at me. "Are you following this?"

I nodded, purely for the sake of intellectual pride. "Probability nexus. Yes, yes, please, go ahead." I had no idea what she was talking about.

"The implosion is calibrated--after the blue shift is compensated for, of course," she gave a little laugh and patted my hand like some patronizing Special Ed teacher, "so that everything within a localized field of space time," she tapped her vest, "is phase-entangled with the nexus probability, stepped up to super-luminal speed, then transported elsewhere." She yawned. "Nano computers do most of the hard work."

I sighed. "Well, that's all very interesting, but would you know anything something specific about future manufacturing trends, say in the field of plastic injection molding--"

Suddenly the sky outside my bedroom window lit up with a tremendous glow, coming from the direction of the Hyatt Center. This was quickly followed by a rolling boom that rattled the windows.

"Shit!" She exclaimed. "It can't be!" We both ran to the window and looked at the eastern horizon and a row of buildings back lit by an enormous red glow.

"My God." She looked at me, down at her watch, back at me. "What's the local time?"

"Uh, three-fifteen?"

"You imbecile! It was three-fifteen the last time you checked thirty minutes ago." Ashen faced, she ran to the center of the room and began adjusting the dials and knobs on her chrome harness. I approached her, a niggling detail about infectious disease in the back of my mind and an urgent question or two on my lips.

"Stay back at least five feet!" She raised a hand to keep me at bay but kept her eyes on the dials of her vest. "I've only got a minute or so to recheck my adjustments. The implosion process has been known to draw in bits of extraneous matter on occasion," she cautioned. "If you get too close I could have a very messy arrival."

Touched by her concern, I backed away.

"About that antidote?" a buzzing sound had filled the room, gradually surpassing the sound of the sirens racing by on the street below. Helena was now encased in a nimbus of blue light that pulsed in sync with the ebb and flow of the buzzing. I could feel my hair standing on end. My bowels were quaking.

"What?" She cupped a hand behind her ear.

"You said you had an antidote." I shouted.

"Antidote? Oh yeah." She fumbled hastily in her purse. The blue nimbus around her was now spiking as high as the ceiling. "Shit! Where are they? Here." She looked at the bottle, frowned, looked at the debris in her purse again, tossed it to me. "Oh hell. Take one a month until they're gone. Be sure to drink an eight-ounce glass of water with each one. You'll be all right." Her voice was wavering now, her image all but obscured by the pulsing blue light. "I was."

There was a loud "whump" then a sudden vacuum of silence as the pressure in my ears changed. I found myself staring at scintillant motes whirling around in the space where she had stood a mere second before.

Within a year new construction had been started by the Hyatt company and the shysters had been silenced by generous settlements. No one seemed to miss the doctors very much.

I never got involved with any of it. Who'd believe me about Helena, anyway. Besides, I was too busy, drinking--I had now advanced to a nine on the "Are you an alcoholic test"--and changing. I acquired a lap dog, gave it a silly name and placed a bandanna around its neck, bought a chenille bedspread and matching curtains, and began watching Martha Stewart religiously. Among my old acquaintances I'd become as socially unacceptable as an outed pederast at a Boy Scout convention--except for Larry, who, misinterpreting my new sensitivity, responded by rewarding me with an unwanted crying jag, wherein he confessed to having had a homosexual affair with his high school football coach. I began avoiding Larry.

The little blue pills Helena left me were responsible, of course. In the confusion I got the wrong bottle. I was now well advanced toward a state of femininity. At first I was as uncomfortable as a jockey with hemorrhoids. Still, I had watched fascinated as my male attributes slowly melted away and the appropriate female parts developed. On the up side, my breasts were already medium sized and didn't seem to be slowing their growth spurt. On the down side, since I hadn't taken a complete course of the pills, the effects were somewhat indeterminate: my lower back still sported several patches of pelt that had proven stubbornly resistant to depilatory agents; and of course nothing could be done about my facial features, which, though they had softened considerably, would only be considered attractive in some of the more culturally deprived areas of the Third World, where Western standards of feminine beauty aren't strictly adhered to.

The smooth feminine purr of voice came and went, suddenly replaced with a masculine croak that provoked either amusement or puzzlement in those around me. Learning to dress properly was difficult (color coordination particularly so, if you're a winter like me) and I used perfume at near toxic levels until a kind soul in the secretary pool where I now work took me under her wing (thought I was a transsexual like her favorite nephew, Orin).

Other than work I had little social life. I remained as virginal as a three-hundred pound teenager with a bad complexion and as lonely as an honest man in Washington. Hence, feeling nostalgic, I found myself walking by the bar where I'd met Helena.

I took my old stool in the back and ordered a strawberry daiquiri. Speedy the bartender hadn't changed. He was as slow and rude as ever.

"Hey, could a lady get a drink?"

"Lady?" he said, turning with a smirk on his face. Approaching, closer, he squinted and asked, "Say, did you have a brother that use to come in here? No? You look familiar. You new around here?"

"Sort of." Whether it was my budding feminine charms, the fact that I had learned to dress up my best features, or that the low light at this end of the bar was flattering, he gave me a sort of grimace--that was apparently supposed to be a smile--before he left to get my drink.

He returned with my drink quicker than I'd expected, given my previous experience with him. "Are you going to be around for a while?" he asked, sotto voice. "Well, if you need anything, I mean anything at all, you just give me a holler, understand?" Then, hopefully expectant, like a sado-masochist whose car has run out of gas in front of a bullwhip convention, he gave me a lewd wink.

"Sure," I said, smiling. "I don't plan on leaving anytime soon." I thought of the Kennedy paradox. Who am I to fight the constraints of probability. ASPV had to start somewhere.

Before Speedy turned to go I returned his flirtatious wink and added, "Besides, I feel lucky tonight."