The Ring of Time

You walk into Babbage's, which happens to be very close by. With no one else in the store, the slack-jawed stoner with a goatee behind the counter takes a look at you and then smiling says, "Aaaall riiight... skippin' school, huh, dude? Yah - I used to do that all the time and now look at ME - I work in a fockin' video game store, man! Haw haw, all right." Satisfied with his greeting, he returns to reading GamePro. You shudder that you used to share the same mentality as this clown, knowing that his future is either more of the same forever or else something to do with panhandling and food stamps.

You start to examine the best games of the day on the newest systems out: the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and the relatively unknown PlayStation. You decide to skip the Genesis, remembering its relative obscurity in the future, and concentrate more on the PlayStation, which you remember is the system you DON'T already have at home. You try to remember what are cool but hard-to-find titles in the future and all you can think of is Final Fantasy Tactics, of which they have one copy left. You score the highest tech accessorial gear they have and then decide it's check-out time. You bring all of the stuff up to the counter and get several gaming mags to go with it.

"Time to check out, school cuttin' dude?" he chortles. "Uh, yeah, and cool it with that school-cutting stuff, okay?" you say. "Oh, got it, dude." He puts all the things in a big bag as he's ringing them up, and then begins to tell you how much it costs when you get a brilliant idea.

"WAIT!" you shout, beginning to wave side to side like a blade of grass in a windstorm. "This was all a bad trip, dude! I was never even HERE," you say, and then stop time. You chuckle to yourself to think that when he next looks up, finds his computer off, the bag he just packed missing, and you disappeared, that he'll have little choice but to quit whatever drugs he might be taking or question his sanity for the rest of his life. You almost skip out of the store with a small fortune of goods, happily enjoying your newfound powers as everyone else stands stock-still, most mid-stride.

You return home and try to think of a way you might explain this to your Mom in a way that she'll let you keep the stuff. You have the rest of the day (until the bus WOULD HAVE dropped you off) to think of an excuse and you can only come up with three. Will you: