A loser like me has no right to turn down a gift horse in the mouth, but this one didn’t feel right.

 

Actually, nothing about this gig felt right.

 

The red truck turned up early every morning outside the old car plant to transport me and a bunch of other itinerants to our illegal workplace. But the place was nothing like the backstreet sweatshops I was used to. We labored on a farm that looked like the Garden of Eden, even though only strictly controlled quantities of staple crops were allowed to be grown in these water-starved times. This farm overflowed with water. And it didn’t show up on any map. Not that I had much idea where it was located. Trips to and from the mysterious farm were total blanks because I always fell asleep minutes after the truck left. Which is very odd for someone who can’t sleep in moving vehicles.

 

Strangest of all, the dream farm was a great place to work. As an iterant laborer, I was used to being corralled like a slaughterhouse beast and doing work no self-respecting citizen would consider. Yet the work was pleasantly strenuous, we were treated like human beings, and paid well at the end of each day.

 

That, and the need to support a bottle habit, is why I kept returning.

 

My thoughts were interrupted when Agent Maria Mendez breezed into the makeshift interrogation room.

 

“Okay Jack, you’re all set. Time to go,” she said and threw me a smile warm enough to thaw sections of the emotional permafrost that submerged me.

 

“It’s a secret facility, right? I bet some genius found another water source and you Feds are really pissed!”

 

She fixed me with hot chocolate eyes and sighed impatiently. “If that’s what you want to believe, Jack, go right ahead.”

 

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. No farm hires humans to pick fruit – even derelict ones like us. Not that there’s much fruit to pick anyway.”

 

“If you prefer me to lock you up I can oblige,” she snapped.

 

Most gutter dwellers caught in an FBI raid doing illicit work who are offered a free pass no questions asked would be out of there faster than shit off a shovel. But my reporters’ instincts gnawed at me. It was almost three years since I was framed in a libel lawsuit by political heavies and scapegoated by the New York Times because I was their youngest reporter. Even though a lot of hooch has flowed under the bridge since then, I still had some investigative brain tissue left.

 

“Okay, but just to make sure my booze-busted brain has this right; you’ll drop me off at the pick-up point, there are no charges, and I’ll never see you again?”

 

“That’s the deal,” she said. “And don’t you think the poor-derelict-me routine is getting a tad tired, Jack?”

 

There was that otherworldly feeling again. I’d never met an FBI agent, or any other government official, who acted like he or she had minored in social work.

 

“We checked you out,” she added pointedly.

 

“The past is the past.”

 

“You’d be surprised how often the past shows up as the future,” said Mendez.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Nothing. But it’s weird how things turn out sometimes.”

 

It was a strange thing to say, and I desperately wanted to explore her words of wisdom over dinner and maybe the rest of our lives. She sensed my thoughts and did me the honor of not brushing me off like I was hanging from the bottom of her shoe.

 

“You’ll do okay, Jack,” she said and thawed out another section of permafrost with a smile. “Now, we gotta go.”

 

As usual, I had no recollection of the truck trip back. On arrival, I picked up a bottle of booze a notch up from the floor cleaner I usually buy. But I didn’t start chugging the poison on returning to my shack as was my usual practice. I couldn’t get Mendez out of my mind. On impulse, I rifled through my work sack and pulled out my phone.

 

There was a message from Mendez. It read: “Here’s your past-future, Jack. Good luck.”

 

She had attached a story from the Washington Post about a new law that made it illegal for companies to use time travel to hire workers. The invention of technology to extract water from the atmosphere on a mass scale had ended the world’s water crisis. However, pandemics and other disasters had caused a grave shortage of another vital resource: humans. Automation helped, but incidents with automatons had undermined trust in them, and the “made by humans” label on products had become hugely popular. Time travel came to the rescue. After its discovery, time travel become increasingly accessible to those who could afford it. Companies in dire need of workers started ferrying people from the past to work for them, a practice that threatened the very fabric of time and led to the new law. The FBI was authorized to close businesses guilty of the practice.

 

It was compelling copy, but what floored me were the article’s byline and date. The byline was mine, and I apparently wrote the article 31 years in the future as the Post’s chief political editor.

 

Over the next few days, I showed up outside the old car plant but of course, the red truck – or, more accurately, time machine – was nowhere to be seen. The message from Mendez disappeared without a trace as well.

 

It all added up to a crazy story no editor in his or her right mind would touch today.

 

But for me, it also added up to a new start.