Weird. Very. You have been warned.


When John Smith was five hours old, his mother, Sarah Smith, declared him the cutest little baby in the whole wide world, and dressed him in a blue bunny outfit.


When Johnny was five years old, he loved playing in the neighborhood park with his bestest best friend, Leah. They would pretend to be soldiers and Leah would always win. She was very vicious, for a girl.

Johnny also liked parties and yo-yos and bananas. He was a very curious child, and always disconnecting computers. His father was never very pleased by this. But on the fourth of July, he took Johnny to see the fireworks, and they lay on a grassy hill and watched the sky fill with exploding stars.


When Johnathan was ten, he liked collecting insects. He could never bear to stick them with pins, and instead he put them in jam jars with grass and sticks and let them go after half an hour. He was particularly fascinated by lightning beetles, and spent ages in the twilight racing after flickering points of light.

Jonathan was good at maths and sciences, decent in Languages and dismal in history. He was always getting marked off for tardiness.

Leah moved to a different school and joined the basketball team, but he wasn't too sad because he made a new friend, Kevin. Kevin liked collecting insects too. He had a box full of butterflies stuck to a piece of card.

There was a very pretty girl in his class, Miranda. He tended to stammer whenever he talked to her.


The day after his eleventh birthday he decided to be interested in astronomy.


When Jon was eighteen, he grew his dark hair down to his shoulders. The day after graduation, he threw a huge party to celebrate his scholarship. Keven spiked the punch and played loud music. Miranda was there. She smiled at him. "Guess what?" she told Jonathan. "I'm going to the same university! Won't that be fab?"

After about an hour the party began to pale for Jonathan, and he wandered about, sipping at a glass of spiked punch. He noticed a small blond girl in the corner, just watching.

"I don't think I know you," he said.

"Fred," she told him.

"That's... an unusual name." Silently he thought to himself that he had never seen anyone who looked less like a Fred.

"Fredericka, actually, but Fred's usually better."

Kevin announced that he was going to go traveling next year.


When Jonathan was twenty-five, he earned his doctorate. He married Miranda a few months later.

They bought a brick house in the suburb. It had a picket fence and flowers in the front lawn.


When John was thirty and Susan was three, Miranda filed for divorce.

She got to keep the brick house with the picket fence. He got to keep Susan.

One day Fred stopped by for a cup of tea. Susan fell in love with her immediately. John was not long to follow.

They moved out into the countryside, to a large, rambling old house with trees and swings. Dorothy and Arthur were born at a hospital down the road.

He grew to know every person in town, and he was such a good doctor and such a nice man that soon everyone liked him, too.


When John was forty Leah moved into the house next door with her husband Andrew.


When John was fifty Susan became a physicist and got a boyfriend named David, who was a plumber.


When John was sixty he retired. Fred published a book. Dorothy and Arthur got jobs and moved away. John became a grandfather when Susan had a daughter.


When John was ninety he was in the hospital. Fred was gone, but his children were there. Many of his old patients had brought presents and flowers. John held Susan's hand. "Father," she said, eyes filled with tears, and then John Smith closed his eyes, and then

he opened them again.

He was lying on a cold metal grating. There was a green light everywhere. He gradually became aware that he had the body of a forty-year-old , his head was shaved, and he was wearing some sort of camouflage uniform. There was also some sort of terrible emptiness in his head, and, feeling a bit dizzy, he reached out to a gold-plated wall. Welcome back, Theta, said the wall. The Doctor got up.


I warned you it would be weird. Review, please. Please? Pleeeaaassee?!