Time Travel Stories: Litterbug

Here is the second of the time travel short stories I'm posting, leading up to my time travel novel, Golden Girl. The first one, Echoes, was very short and tight. This one, Litterbug, is entirely different. If you've read any of my novels, this one should feel familiar, with a high school aged protagonist, in the current day. It was written several years ago in hopes of getting it published in Boys Life, the boy scout magazine. The earlier version had more characters, to give it more scouting flavor, but that was all scrubbed out when Boys Life didn't take it.

At the time I wrote it, I was working at Motorola and the superconducting material that only required liquid nitrogen instead of the much colder liquid helium had just been discovered and a couple of people in the lab had snagged a sample from friends at the University of Texas. I was able to watch as the little magnet lifted off into the air as the liquid nitrogen was applied and the Meisner effect, which says that magnetic fields are excluded from superconductors, showed its stuff.

The earlier train accident mentioned in the story was real, with a messy oil spill when the runaway rail cars jumped the track near Hutto.

As an example of time travel fiction, notice how this story handles the paradox issue and the alternate timeline memories by combining them into one effect.