Did you ever wonder what the difference between a botanist and a horticulturalist is?

To quote my favorite professor here, 'oh, about $37,000 a year.'

He might have intended it to be a joke, but, well, he's not wrong.

So last year, when I finished my bachelor's degree here at University of Chicago, I had to make some decisions. What was my next step?

I can't really seem to explain my decision-making process to anyone; nor would I even seriously attempt it. Because ever since 'that thing that happened that time', as Doc and I have always referred to it, I've had this certain ability.

It's not exactly that I know what's going to happen. Déjà vu isn't the right word for it, either. It's more of an innate knowledge. And it's not all the time. But when my sixth sense speaks up, I've learned to listen. Because it's always right. It's weird as hell.

People might call it luck, or perceptiveness. But it's not. Because believe me, I have plenty of bad luck, too. And when my sixth sense does show me something, it's not like I have any idea how things are going to work out, or even if my decision will have anything close to the outcome that I'm hoping for.

Maybe I should start with an example.

The first time I was absolutely certain that there was something distinctly not normal about this, was a couple of months after I started here.

There I was, a recently transplanted freshman from Northern California, trying to get my bearings. Away from home for the first time in my life. Less than a year after my little 'adventure' in 1986. So I'm settling into life in the dorms, and one of my biology classmates asks me if I want to go to the pub to watch the football game that night. We'd finished studying for tomorrow's test, the first of the semester. A football game sounded like a welcome distraction.

Well, okay, yeah, I was thinking. I even started to stand up. And then, without even thinking about it, I thought about the test we'd been studying for. I saw a flash of it, just a glimpse, mind you, of myself taking that test. Sitting down, tomorrow morning, pencil in hand. But no Scantron. Somehow, I knew, that despite what everyone in the class believed, the professor planned to change gears and give us a fill-in-the-blanks test, instead. And it was going to be a lot harder than any of us thought. The kind of test that called for rote memorization. And I knew something else; the professor was going to be making notes on who she would choose for next semester's assistants, more or less based on this one test. It was going to be make-or-break, and I'd better not screw it up.

What the fuck! I couldn't even begin to explain how I knew. But my ass sat itself right back down, and I told my classmate that I still needed to study some more, sorry. He looked at me like I was crazy, but he shrugged, and left without me. And I hit the books that night, in earnest. Just in case I was right.

By the next morning, I had myself half-convinced that I must have imagined the whole thing, but sure enough, as the professor started handing out the tests, I heard a chorus of groans. And when I saw the test, it was just like the one I'd glimpsed, yesterday. Exactly what I had prepared myself for.

It was one of the strangest things that had ever happened in my life. I tried to convince myself that maybe the professor had pulled this sort of thing on previous classes, and that I'd overheard someone talking about it, and somehow subconsciously filed that piece of information away, only to recall it just in time.

Two days later, when the professor posted the grades, I had the only A. She gave me a sort of appraising look, and a nod. She reminded me of Melissa. And suddenly, I just knew what had happened. What had been happening all along. Ever since I got back.

I already changed my future, once. If anyone has ever been personally acquainted with the possible fluidity of a timeline, it's me. Do I exist on multiple planes of reality now? Maybe I do. Who knows? Did the me from the future find some way to tap into the me from the now, to drop myself a few hints? I don't know. I just know that there is something to it. It's real. I can't explain it, but it exists. I exist. Now I just had to learn to listen to it.

Just like building up a muscle that you didn't use much before, when I started to concentrate on it, I got better at it. Picking up on little flashes of actions that I needed to take. Practice makes perfect, I guess.

Eventually, I got to the point where, occasionally, I could ask my sixth sense questions. And I'd just know the answer. Sometimes it was hard to believe, but if the answer was accompanied by that distinctive, sort of, sense of truth that I'd come to recognize, I learned to accept it as absolute fact, and I don't ignore it. Ever.

What would happen if I did ignore it? I have no idea.

I don't want to find out. Because I've made mistakes, no doubt about that. One of them caused the disappearance of five people. It haunts me. I think about them a lot, even now, and it's been six years now, since I made it home.

I still don't know what happened.

I tried asking Doc about it one time, after the dust had settled somewhat from my grand re-entrance to 2016.

"I don't remember," Doc said, and I wasn't sure if I believed him, because how could he not remember? But he didn't sound like he was lying, exactly, either.

"You must remember Alex, at least?" I prodded him. "He worked for you, for crying out loud. We worked together, all of us! He helped us make the hydrazine! The three of us would sit around and talk after we cleaned up the lab. How can you not remember him?"

"Sorry, kid," he replied. "It was just," he paused for a moment, thinking, "a really long time ago. My memory's just not what it used to be, you know."

"But Doc," I badgered him, "They just… they're gone. Even… even if it's something bad. I just need to know. Please."

"I told you already, Mark. I don't remember. I don't know."

There was something a little strange and scary about his tone, and I knew, without knowing how, that it was time to drop the subject. So I did.

Well, I'd known that Doc was getting along in age, and I guess it shouldn't have come as such a shock, but he was diagnosed with early-stage Alzheimer's, the year after I left for Chicago.

A year and a half after that, he'd suffered a small stroke, and he'd never really managed to come back. He'd rallied a little bit at first, but he never made it out of the rehabilitation hospital he'd landed in, after the stroke. Later, they'd transferred him to a long-term nursing facility.

Mindy still lives nearby, and she emails me to let me know how he's doing, but there's usually not much news. Sometimes, once in awhile, he'll recognize her. Even less often, he'll ask about me. But for the most part, he doesn't know anyone.

So anyway, when I was accepted to the master's program here, it was no big surprise. I'd been the darling of the undergrad program for years by then, and it was more of a question of what exactly I wanted to study at this point.

Was I supposed to be studying taxonomy, I asked myself. No, the answer came to me, instantly. What about agriculture? Conservation? No, and definitely no. And then I asked myself, what about biotechnology? Yes. Alright then. Plant biotechnology, here I come. But my sixth sense wasn't done with me yet.

Do I need to be studying something else, too? Yes. And when the flash came to me, that I was going to need a degree in engineering; well, for the first time, I thought maybe it's pretty fucking stupid to be taking career advice from a magical sixth sense in my brain.

But I re-enrolled as an undergrad anyway, and now I'm halfway through that program as well. Sometimes I think I'll never be finished with school.

And what's it leading me towards, anyway? Why do I feel like I'm on some inevitable march towards some predetermined destiny? If anyone knows that fate and destiny are a crock, it's me.