IGMS Issue 17 Read Online Free

time we met, and with another two or three hundred-thousand real years behind me."
    Her words indicated that I wasn't the only one who had lost track of time.
    "I admit that the hive-like changes on Earth were a shock," she continued, laughing. "Most of the other places I went, I couldn't understand the language, and the people . . ., well, let's just say that they've become even harder to comprehend."
    "I've seen the same thing," I replied. "But it hasn't been a few hundred-thousand years since we last met, Eleanor. It's more like a million."
    I told her about my meetings with other pilots of increasing strangeness, especially Shuu Penpen and the splendidly-clothed young Penso.
    Eleanor folded her hands and sighed, accepting the news with far more grace than I had. "So what's to become of us, Wil? What's going to happen to us as we keep winking down the centuries?"
    "Do we have a choice?" I asked. "I don't think I could settle down after all this time, even if I could find some dirty little planet where I'd fit in."
    "As if anyone would even have us," she replied with a laugh. "Still, haven't you ever wondered what it would be like to just stop? To quit winking altogether?"
    We both laughed at that. We knew it would never happen. Winking had become a fascinating and exciting addiction.
    "I don't think I could give up winking after all this time. I don't think you could either."
    "I've been tempted," she said. "Sometimes there were places that . . ." she chewed her lower lip before continuing. "Sometimes there were places that, when it was time to leave, I cried and felt sad. But those feelings never lasted long, not when I knew there could be no return."
    Her words made me wonder again about the price we'd paid, racing down the centuries and watching everything we'd known disappear.
    At the same time, seeing the changes in people and worlds and watching the human race expand to fill the galaxy has been its own kind of reward. Perhaps it was the endless fascination of what was at the next station. Perhaps, somewhere, a dozen, a hundred, or a thousand winks from now, I'd emerge to find something wonderful. Or to find out that the human race as I knew it no longer existed.
    Either way, the thought thrilled me so much that I knew that I couldn't stop; not now, not ever.
    "I think you're right," Eleanor said. "I don't think we have a choice, not anymore." She paused. Then she said, "Just promise me one thing, Wil: Remember me. Remember me, and maybe we'll see each other again at the end of time."
    The likelihood of us running into one another was negligible. There were too many worlds, too many stars, and too many years.
    "Yes," I replied. "Until the end of time."
    She climbed into her Renkinn. The next wink awaited.



An Early Ford Mustang
    by Eric James Stone
    Artwork by Anselmo Alliegro
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    Unfamiliar keys in hand, Brad looked at the ketchup-red 1968 Mustang convertible in Uncle Fritz's garage. Then he re-read the note that accompanied the bequest:
Maybe now you won't be late for everything. I trust you will be a responsible driver. But be careful of the curse.
    Brad understood the first part. His girlfriend, Denise, joked he would be late for his own funeral, while Uncle Fritz had never been late. If anything, Uncle Fritz had been early to his own funeral, dying at only fifty-eight. He'd owned the Mustang over forty of those years.
    And the bit about being a responsible driver was obviously a veiled reference to the time Brad had gotten drunk at a party in high school and had stumbled out of his friend's house to go home. Just as Brad was trying rather unsuccessfully to unlock his car door, Uncle Fritz happened to drive past and recognize him. On the way home, he'd gotten an earful about the perils of drunk driving. Since then, Brad had kept his promise never to drive drunk, and as far as he knew, Uncle Fritz had kept his promise to never mention the incident to Brad's parents.
    But the part about the curse