Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer

He sits there like some statue against the rising full moon, hook nose and narrow chin in profile, eyes lost in shadow beneath tousled curly hair from which wisps of smoke rise, describing silver trails in the moonlight.
“You’re burning.”
“It’s residual slipcharge. Nothing I can do. Pour water on it and I’ll just bubble and steam as well as smoking.”
Which brings us neatly to the important question.
“How are you even here?”
The profile lifts for long enough for a sigh and a cough to escape, then drops back.
“Professor Tifuro told me it’s a confirming anomaly. It means that what we achieved with the Daggerbolt Mission is without precedent in the temporal history of this reality.”
Mission? I thought it wasn’t official?
“So you succeeded?”
“When did Shanghai fall?”
It what? I check my datapad.
“It’s not even under attack. Do I need to alert anyone?”
He shakes his head and smiles at me.
“No… No, you never will. Not now.”
I’m missing something.
“Reo, what happened? You and the Professor disregarded safety guidelines and legal challenges, setting off on an experimental temporal journey to prove time travel was possible, despite it being called reckless, dangerous, and impossible. That was three months ago! Then I come up here tonight to raise a glass in your brother’s memory – and yours – to find you here like it’s our usual memorial night.”
“Three months…”
He closes his eyes and nods his head, then stares at me.
“In the original timeline, a nameless race invaded Earth two years ago. Humanity had lost a horrific war, marked only by the increasingly desperate measures we used while trying to defeat them. By the time the Professor proposed his crazy plan, the Earth was a toxic wasteland. Ninety-nine percent of humanity were dead. He said he’d run projections, and the only way to save ourselves was for the original scouting mission from the nameless race to not find Earth. In fact, he confided in me that alternate timeline versions of himself had left notes telling him the only sure way was a paradox inversion.”
“Paradox what?”
“To rearrange the timelines so this peaceful world is the primary and all versions of the invaded Earth become aberrant realities that dead end in the catastrophic backlash of our temporal meddling.”
Hold on –
“Then how are you here?”
“Slipcharge, again. I can be anywhere because I don’t exist or belong in this reality. So I chose here. To see you. To share a last memorial night.”
I poke his arm.
“You’re pretty solid for a ghost.”
He frowns.
“Don’t know how it works. Tifuro wasn’t sure. Reckoned I’d be good until the residual charge dropped past a certain threshold. He couldn’t even say if you’ll remember me being here.”
“Unlikely to forget this.”
“Purely because you’re confronting the paradox. When that’s over, amnesia is the easiest way for causality to fix things.”
I raise a glass to him, then towards the sky.
“One part of me thinks you’re mad, another thinks I’m mad and hallucinating. So, on balance, here’s to you two for saving the world. I think your brother would be proud.”
“I th-”
There’s sudden cold breeze. Looking round, there’s nothing up here with me. Must have been a bat or something.