"Well, that’s all that I mean."

"It’s beyond my understanding."

Kyoko complained. I took it for granted. The chief Takachiho was too difficult to understand when he talked about the law of causality, the special theory of relativity and the like, and when he raved about the SF novelists whom I hadn’t heard before, such as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clark, Philip K. Dick, John Wyndham. So their names were already familiar to me though I had never read any of their novels.

"I’ll revert to the previous topic, Takahashi."

He called my attention now.

"What were you talking about?"

I pretended to be interested in the topic; a variety of games available in this room were so attractive to me though his topics were not very interesting. Above all, I belonged to the "SF research" club.

"In connection with the circular argument, the same old theme, the ‘grandfather paradox’."

"I know it by name."

"Ok. If you go back in time and kill your parent, how are you supposed to be at this moment?"

"That reminds me of the movie titled something like ‘Back to the Future’."

"Strictly speaking, that’s not about the grandfather paradox, but it’s close."

"What’s going on there?"

"Gee! Kyoko, you haven’t seen it?"

"No."

Takachiho, in thick glasses, looked a ‘geek’ and judging from his way of talking, must have been nothing but a ‘geek’. He insisted that he should be called ‘mania’.

"All right. Why don't you come over to my house some day?"

Though I didn’t think he was so attractive to the other sex, somehow they got along together well with each other.

"Let me avoid the process. In the movie a boy goes back in time and almost prevents his parents from meeting …just by accident."

"So!"

I thought it a wonder: how a boy meets a girl.

"Then what’s gonna happen?"

"The boy half disappears."

"…? What do you mean?"

"His hands are getting more and more transparent."

I butted in.

"I see. Why?"

"This is a variation of the grandfather paradox. He doesn’t kill his father but prevents their parents from meeting, which mean that he will not be born."

"I see. That’s why he half disappears."

"That’s right. But it is impossible."

"Why?"

"In any way Marty, the name of the boy, must be born."

"…? Why so? If his father is gone, he will not be born?"

"Hum, you’re a layman. To put it strongly, even if you go back in time and kill your father, you must be born."

"What? I have never heard such a story. It is too strange. If your father has been killed before you are born, naturally you can’t be born?"

"Well, I ask you a question. If so, who the hell gives birth to him who attempts to kill his father?"

I was confused.

"It's the paradox. Listen. To make this story make sense, first of all, his parents must give birth to him in a certain point of time. You see?"

"Yes."

"Their child grows up and goes back in time …to keep himself from being born indirectly..."

"So!" said Kyoko.

"Yes. If he wasn’t born, he couldn’t even try to prevent himself from being born!"

"What happens, then?"

"Hem," said Takachiho, looking triumphant. "Hence come a number of hypotheses. For example, you try to shoot your own father dead, using a pistol."

Kyoko swallowed.

"Then, strange enough, your pistol will go wrong whenever it is used..."

"What?"

"Or, if you try to hit him dead by a car, you must be involved with a car accident and so on. It is a hypothesis that something called ‘fate’ manages by some means or other to prevent it from happening."

"Hahahah! That’s too funny!"

"Here is the most realistic hypothesis. It says that you cannot make a ‘time trip’ in the space which may cause such a ‘paradox’."

"If you talk like that, we won’t get anywhere."

"Indeed, but it’s much more romantic than just saying that time-machine is impossible to exist, isn’t it?"

"Do you know something else?"

"I should say that I know."

"Then, tell me!"

"Hum, have you seen ‘The Terminator’ an American picture?"

"I know it by name."

Takachiho looked as if to say ‘oh dear’.

"Part 1 is a masterpiece you can hardly find such errors, but part 2 has many contradictions including the circular argument."

"Is that so?"

"However, if some thought is brought to the story, such contradictions are solved. And…"

"And?"

"Even the grandfather paradox is resolved."

There was a hush for some moments.

"I want you to talk more."

Takachiho grinned saying ‘hum’. I felt a little pity for him because he seemed so happy to talk about this kind of story.

"You must reverse a fixed idea. We think the future is uncertain, don’t we?"

"Of course."

"Also, considering the future is uncertain, we think the past is certain."

"Why not?"

"But this idea doesn’t draw those conclusions. For example, if you had killed your father, what should be called ‘fate’ would revise the ‘past’ to make everything go together."

"..."

"Even if you kill your father before your birth, naturally you are impossible to be born, but you would turn out to be the other person’s child, as a result of revising the past. That’s it."

"Huh. Bullshit. It’s nothing more than SF."

"…" Takachiho kept silent for moments. "If so, we would be very lucky."

"Do you think I’m wrong?"

"You seem to overestimate your …human being’s ability to perceive. Can you feel at this very moment we are moving at some hundred kilometers per hour?"

"What?"

"I mean the earth’s rotation."

"Oh … I see."

"You know, the universe keeps expanding. So, even if things, including us, double in size per second, we cannot perceive it. Because all things around us double in size."

Kyoko had her face drawn with fear. I took for granted that she did so; it was too weird a story though it might be a scientific hypothesis.

"Keep listening. Even if the past is revised, we can’t perceive it at all as long as we live in the world where the past has been revised. Don’t you have a queer memory of the past you cannot make reasonable."

"…"

"I have. As a child I often played in a vacant lot, but after a certain moment of time I could not manage to get there."

"It’s just a misapprehension. Do you mean to say it is a ‘revised past’?"

"I don’t mean it. But I feel there are too many things that we cannot explain about, such as missing links in history and the like."

Takachiho went on with the story, but I could hardly pay my attention to the latter part; I had too big a problem then.

It was dark when I called up to my father from a telephone booth on my way back home.

I had bad news; my mother’s violence was not over.

In my opinion she had been a strange person.

She was of good intuition and could foresee big events more often than not. She could easily read persons’ minds; she guessed right what I was going to do. Strange enough, however, she wasn’t good at the game ‘paper, stone and scissors’.

Since this summer she had not been a woman she used be; drinking in desperation and speaking disorderedly.

A peaceful home was gone.

Though we had an option to send her to an establishment, we still could not make up our mind.

I hated very much to go back home. I heard she had been sleeping after going on the rampage. I agreed to have a dinner near here with my father and left the telephone booth.

It took place at the moment when I turned the corner.

Suddenly light filled my eyes. I didn’t see what it was: car light or something else. Anyway, I passed out.

Dazzling.

It’s hot.

I sweated a little while I was out.

The situation was beyond my apprehension.

No doubt I was on my way home in the evening. But it's daytime now. Where the hell am I?

I looked around.

It must have been a familiar place, but I felt something different.

I was too confused to get it right. What should I do?

I began to walk unsteadily on my feet.

"Watch out!"

As soon as I heard the voice, I was pushed away.

Then came a harsh noise.

How dizzy.

Now I could be watching clearly what was going on before me: the girl who seemed to have pushed me away was knocked by a rushing car, being forced to be queerly twisted and fly in the air.

"Then, if you kill your father under such circumstances, what will happen?"

"Well, I can show you some cases," said Takachiho with an air of importance. "Now that you have killed your father, you are the only person who has your own gene. Right?"

"I think so."

"Then, to answer for the consequences of the fact that you have changed the history, you should transmit your gene."

"You mean that he should get married to his own mother?" said Kyoko with an innocent look.

No people got together.

We didn’t have that much time.

The car ran away as if nothing had happened.

Terrified with the accident that happened before me, I was shaking all over. I could not stand up.

Obviously she was dead. Far from here, I could confirm it. I was blanching. I found myself walking, leaning on the fence …with my bag and everything left.

"Are you all right?"

W-what? I am cold below at my legs. Is this a skirt? I wear a sailor blouse and a skirt. How long have I been wearing such a school uniform? H-has my body also turned female?

The girl in a sailor blouse knocked up some minutes ago flashed across my mind. I was losing all my strength.

"Careful!"

I was held up by the strong arms.

"Why!"

Seeing his face, I apprehended everything: I would get married to him and have a baby. And in the summer when he was 14 years old our child would be missing, never to return.

It must have been a terror beyond words. However, somehow my heart under the sailor blouse was throbbing heavily due to a hunch that we would fall in love.