Contrails were etched across the bright blue March morning sky. 

Mark had a couple problems with that. One, this was 1859. He didn’t think he should know about contrails. Didn’t think contrails should exist, for that matter. As far as he knew, they didn’t exist yesterday, when he was cutting his lawn’s grass.

But, hold up. Yesterday, he was walking to town. Like he was doing today. Except, he was thinking about the contrails, byproducts of jet aircraft slicing through the atmosphere. Jet aircraft, commercial and military, with the former being used to travel between airports, enabling people to quickly and easily traverse the country which had taken him a couple years. Jet aircraft, which should not exist in 1859. 

He puckered his lips like he was about to whistle. Should they?

Seeing contrails and thinking about them were the seeds of several potential problems. “Shit,” he loudly uttered. His tongue flicked his lips. Fingers pinched together to smooth down either side of his fat graying mustache. He stamped his big boot once, then considered the mildly worn brown boot, which he knew he’d purchased at an REI. Chances were that REI didn’t now exist. Might have in the past. Or the future.

“Shit. Goddamn it.” Expanding the lungs inside of his huge chest, he bellowed, “Vonnegut.”

Mark looked around like he expected Vonnegut to appear. Nothing — not the wind-swept grasses or the one lone, high bird, or the far, snow-covered mountains — responded to him.

He expelled a sigh and sound like he was blowing the candles out on his last birthday cake. That’d been number sixty-six. Julie baked the cake for him. Such a sweet person. And so fucking smart. Fun being with her.

“Fucking Vonnegut.” Vonnegut was the cause behind the past few episodes like this. Mark figured there was a high likelihood Vonnegut was behind this one as well. 

He looked east. South. West. North. No, he hadn’t been going north. South was also considered and rejected. His orientation was a matter of the coincidences of then and now, and the lay of the land. Mountains north and south. That never changed, though the stuff that occupied the land — buildings, roads, people, and other such bullshit — changed. 

A qualification was appended to his thinking. Depending. Depended on how far Vonnegut took him back in time. Or put him forward. Same thing, different direction. The land changed if he went — if he was tossed, like he was a cat toy or something — into the past or future. He’d experienced each of those once. Once had been more than enough.

His broad shoulders sagged. “Why me?” With that plaintive question beginning an internal dialogue with himself about the matter, he turned and began trudging east.

East would hopefully return him to his own time. That’s how it happened a couple times. But there’d been that once. 

Well, shit. He’d just need to see.