"You could send your thoughts from now, today, back into the past."
That's what Joe said in the break room before the incident. Before Daniel passed out.
And this was a flashback Daniel Dolan had while he was unconscious.
It was shortly after he passed out on the factory floor that Daniel's mind began wandering around to other times and places.
One such place was the break room where Daniel seemed to float above Joe Carson as he talked about time travel.
"Why do it the other way, the hard way?" Joe asked in that deep booming voice of his. He might not know much but he could say it loud. "Why go back in time physically with a physical body?"
In case anyone missed the point, Joe tapped his index finger against the table as he leaned forward.
This caused Martin Crane, across the table, to lean back a little as he spread out his hands.
"How else am I going to do it? Am I supposed to be a ghost or something?"
Martin talked like he was going to become a time traveler any moment.
"Not exactly," Joe said, now leaning back and draping one arm over the back of his chair.
Here, Joe paused. You might think it was to collect his thoughts but most likely it was meant for dramatic effect.
During that pause, Daniel thought he heard his mother, from far away, calling him to get up for school. When that sound didn't repeat, Daniel turned his attention back to Joe and Martin.
Joe leaned forward and waved an instructive finger, indicating he was very serious. Or at least very intense.
"Instead of going back in time physically, you send your thoughts now back into the past." A wide-eyed Joe nodded as he pointed to his head. "Think about it. You're already there, you know how things are in that time. You got money, you got a place to stay." Smiling, he leaned forward. "Why not do it that way?"
The voice of Rod Serling was heard.
"Sending a mental note to yourself in the past. Mr. Daniel Dolan is about to do just that in this episode of 'The Twilight Zone.'"
As floating-Daniel continued to watch, Joe, still leaning forward, spread his hands.
"Going back in time physically. Do you know the problems with that?"
"Getting to 88 miles per hour?" a guy joked. The guy's name was Guy.
Acting as if he hadn't even heard, Joe shook his head. "Do you know the incredible amount of energy it would take to send even one person back in time?"
"No one does," floating-Daniel murmured. The people in the break room just shook their heads. Daniel-in-the-break-room put a fist to his cheek as he looked bored and very tired.
Joe nodded emphatically. "It would be a lot of energy, let me tell you." Joe was never one to let an absence of facts interfere with the enthusiastic presentation of an interesting idea.
As part of that presentation, Joe raised his shoulders and lifted his hands. "And why do you need to go back in time physically? You planning on hitting someone?"
"Driving over them maybe," Guy chortled. "With my DeLorean." The others chuckled.
"Maybe I do want to hit someone," Martin insisted, thrusting a thumb at his chest. "Maybe I want to go back in time and stop Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy from getting assassinated."
"Maybe both of them at once," Guy chimed in.
"Ah, yes. The usual," Joe said in a bored voice. It was as if time travel was an everyday topic in the closet-sized break room of the Cartwright Peanut Factory.
Martin spread out his hands.
"Or maybe I want to kill Hitler."
"Yeah, of course you would," Joe said. "Anyone would. Nothing new there."
"Oh, I'd make it new," Martin insisted. "I'd kill him in a real good way."
Guy made a face. "How do you kill someone in a good way?"
"You know what I mean. I'd make it special, unique."
"I won't ask," Guy murmured .
Joe folded his hands as he leaned in. "Here's the thing, though. If you change history too much, you might never be born."
When Martin frowned, it tightened that big stubble-chin of his with the giant wart.
"If I'm never born, how did I go back in time in the first place?"
Joe spread out his hands. "Exactly! And how did you get to Germany?"
It was Joe's usual tactic: ignore a question and ask another question to add to the confusion.
Martin went with it.
"And how did I get inside Nazi headquarters?"
Daniel spoke up. Not floating-Daniel but Daniel-in-the-break-room-back-then-Daniel.
"If I could use my mind to go back in time, I could avoid this whole conversation."
"You could do something," Guy said. "While you're back there, kill Hitler."
Waving his hand, Joe sighed loudly. "Forget Hitler."
"I'd like to. Anyone would."
"Yeah, I don't think anyone likes Hitler," Guy said.
Two guys were in the conversation now: the guy named Guy and Other Guy.
"I'm not sure," Other Guy said. "I knew this girl once. Wrote to guys in prison. Charles Manson types."
"She wrote to Charles Manson?" Martin asked with a look of surprise.
"No, she didn't write to Charles Manson," Other Guy insisted, all peevish. "She wrote to guys who were like Charles Manson."
Martin frowned deeply. "That girl sounds weird."
"She was. She'd probably like Hitler."
"Could we get back to time travel?" Joe urged. Snapped, really.
The two Guys responded
"Sure! Let's get back to NOT saving Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy."
"Yeah! Let's get back to NOT killing Hitler."
Martin snapped his fingers. "I know how you do it. You send a note to yourself in the past."
Joe stared in a way that was only mildly unfriendly. "Think about it. You get a note saying, 'Hi, I'm you from the future. Here's what you need to do to change your life for the better.' You'd most likely think it was a practical joke. You really gonna believe something like that?"
Sometimes Joe talked in a New York accent, making himself even more weird.
While Guy and Other Guy stared at Joe, Martin shrugged. "I would believe it if the note told me about stuff that was going to happen and then it happened."
"So you wait until the stuff happens, you don't change it. Too late!"
Now Martin looked a little peeved. "I'm saying the note would tell you about little stuff before the big stuff happens. 'Hey, Martin. Don't bump your head on that upper shelf in the warehouse at 3 p.m. on Tuesday.'"
Joe leaned back again. "You still got a problem. Maybe while it's traveling through time the note burns up or the writing gets all smeared up so you can't read it."
"Tough break, Marty," Guy said with a smug grin.
Joe shot forward. "There's only one way to do it. You send your thoughts back in time. The thoughts you have now end up in you in the past. You send your thoughts to you in the past."
"I think I get it," Other Guy said.
Martin thought for a moment. "So I'd be like a kid but with the mind of an adult?"
"Something like that. It depends on how powerful it is. The first time you do it, you might have only a vague sense of what to do. Might have just vague visions from the future."
This got various reactions, not all of them sincere.
"Cool."
"Interesting.'
"Huh."
"Whose Coke is this in the fridge?"
"I'm sending my thoughts into the past. 'Bye." Daniel in the break room pulled his cap over his eyes and pretended to nap.
Joe continued. "Think about it," he said. For someone who did not always engage in much thought, Joe certainly encouraged the practice. "The mind is the one constant in time. You hypnotize yourself, you can go anywhere in the past. Your past." Joe nodded and waved his hand as if that made it all perfectly clear. "That means you wouldn't be able to save Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy or kill Hitler."
"Sheez! Could we stop the talk about Hitler?" Guy said.
Joe waved his end-of-lecture finger. "You couldn't change any of that. But you could change things about your own life."
There was time to digest what Joe said, along with lunch. Floating-Daniel thought about "Somewhere In Time" and how Christopher Reeve's character hypnotized himself and sent his physical body back in time. Ridiculous!
It made more sense to take thoughts you have now and deposit them into you in the past.
As floating-Daniel reflected on this very important matter, Joe continued to preach the gospel of sending your thoughts back in time.
"You ever do this? Just before you go to sleep, you start thinking about the future. Then you have a dream. You don't realize it but you dreamed about the future."
"Yeah," Martin said. "I know what you mean."
"Years later, what you saw and experienced in the dream you experience in real life. Your mind went into the future and left a little bit of the future in your mind." Joe gestured back and forth with his hands. "That's because your mind in the future is connected to your mind in the past."
"Huh."
"Interesting."
"Cool."
"I'm drinking this Coke. Last chance!"
"Danny! Danny Dolan!"
Daniel turned his head, assuming someone floating around in his own mind has a head.
Yes, that was his mom calling all right. For Daniel that was strange because his mother had been dead for quite a few years. So naturally he started to move toward the mysterious voice. But then he stopped when someone called to him. Or rather to the him in the break room in the past.
"Hey, Danny-boy! Isn't that your brother on TV?"
Daniel turned back. Now he was watching himself watching TV in the break room.
Here floating-Daniel became part of Daniel-in-the-break-room, Daniel-in-the-past.
"Yeah, that's him." From inside break-room-Daniel, floating-Daniel heard himself speak in a lifeless voice. "It happened on Taco Day."
Daniel realized he must look crazy to the others. He had, in fact, been crazy for a long time. First, his harsh father had left then Roy went crazy. Naturally, that caused his mom to fall apart. Daniel knew all that hadn't helped him very much either.
"What's Taco Day?" Martin asked. His cap was off, and he preened his scant hair with his hand.
"My mom would make tacos for breakfast," Daniel explained. "After Roy went away, she never did that again."
Martin narrowed his eyes or maybe just squinted.
"What happened?"
As usual, Joe jumped in with an explanation.
"Daniel's brother took a baseball bat to Hannigan."
Martin frowned. "Who's Hannigan?"
"A teacher. Everyone hated him because he was always ripping into kids over stupid little stuff."
"Oh," Martin said. "So a typical teacher then."
Daniel's voice, like his look, was distant. "Some say Roy went off over something stupid. But our father had just left us."
Joe nodded and went on like he hadn't even heard.
"One day Roy just had enough, and he took a baseball bat to the guy. He did it during baseball practice in the gym. It was kind of funny. Later on kids were actually laughing and applauding because the guy was such a tyrant, a dictator, a meanie."
"Watch the language, Joe," Guy said.
"I'm telling you, kids were actually cheering and applauding. Except the cheerleaders. They were kind of frightened."
Guy made a face. "They had cheerleaders for baseball?"
"No. They were practicing for a contest or something."
"Competition," Daniel mumbled. "Cheerleaders practice for a competition."
Martin made a face. "This Hannigan must have been pretty mean."
"He was. And Roy let him have it."
"Yeah, he did," Daniel said in that lifeless voice. Inside-Daniel said it along with outside-Daniel.
"Roy was eighteen so he was tried as an adult, and he actually got prison time."
Joe said this with maybe a little more enthusiasm than he needed to. Inside- Daniel murmured, "You don't have to sound so happy about it."
But then Joe said, "As far as I'm concerned, Roy should have gotten a medal for what he did."
A heavy silence followed. Daniel was morose inside and out.
"What I don't get is: what made Roy do it? Just because Hannigan yells at him in front of a bunch of kids?" Joe tensed his shoulders as he spread out his hands.
"Something else happened," Daniel said, still with that lifeless voice.
"Yeah, but you and Roy and your mom, you were okay with each other. You got along, right?"
"We were all recovering from my father. I think Roy was vulnerable at that time. Any little thing could have set him off. And I was caught up in my own little rebellion against Hannigan. I couldn't see the problems with Roy. Plus sometimes a person has stuff going on inside, and no one else knows it. And school was...awful."
"You didn't see anything in Roy?" Joe asked.
"I was busy," Daniel muttered. "Busy with my sweatpants revolution."
The others just looked confused. Daniel said nothing.
"So!" Joe said sharply, so sharply that people in the break room suddenly sat up. A few heads even jerked up, and eyes shot open. "Back to my time travel idea."
"Yes," Martin said absently, maybe even sleepily, as he blinked. "How would it work?"
Joe grinned a little as he leaned forward. "You would think about the time you want to visit. Next thing you know, you wake up, you're you in the past. And you have at least some idea of what you have to do."
"Really? Hmm."
"Interesting."
"Cool."
"Huh."
"That Coke was pretty good."
Joe continued on.
"Basically, you would hypnotize yourself. You would enter a hypnotic state."
Martin frowned. "And how exactly would one enter this 'hypnotic state?'"
"How would two or three people enter it?" Guy asked.
"Or four? Or even more?" Other Guy asked.
Guy turned to him. "Who are you, Dr. Seuss?"
The guy who just had the Coke burped loudly.
Joe ignored them all.
"To enter this deep state of concentration, you'd have to be in situation that's absolutely mind-numbingly boring."
Martin smiled, showing off gray teeth. "Fortunately, we got that right here at the factory."
Everyone laughed, except Daniel who trudged out on to the factory floor. His mind was flooded with thoughts of That Day, as it often was. Once he got to his work station, he entered that state of mind-numbing boredom. He wasn't sure what happened next, whether he started to fall asleep standing up or just slipped into a daze.
In any case, that was when he passed out.
Floating-Daniel stood over his unconscious body and thought, How interesting.
Once again, his mother called to him.
"Danny! Danny Dolan!"
Daniel floated toward the sound of the voice.
As he did, he saw strange images floating in space against a starry background: an eyeball and an open door along with a window. There was also the formula for relativity (just like Mr. Thompson showed them once) as well as some kind of floating wooden human figure.
All of those images were forgotten as Danny Dolan woke up in his bed. His eyes shot open, just like with those guys in the break room he'd been dreaming about.
"Danny! Danny Dolan!" his mother called. "Time to get up for school."
"Okay, Mom. I'm up."
"Tacos for breakfast."
"Got it. Make mine chicken."
"This isn't a restaurant."
"I know."
"But I do have some chicken." There was a smile in her voice.
Stumbling to the mirror, Danny groaned and sighed. Wow, he thought as he looked at his reflection. He looked so young. Shouldn't he be older?
There was a grogginess, a fog. His mind was hazy and jumbled.
He'd been having this dream about people in a break room and his brother on the news. Something about a teacher, a baseball bat, prison?
Dreams were weird.
He'd only recently gotten his own room. Maybe the dream was about how he missed Roy.
He turned away from the mirror. There was this sense, this feeling that there was something he had to do.
Something very important.
Danny shrugged and got on with his day.
Later he sat at the kitchen table eating tacos. As he did, he looked at his mom. Oddly, he thought how he was grateful that she was alive. He should appreciate her while she was around.
"Mom, you feeling all right?"
Martha Dolan looked slightly surprised. "Yes, dear. Fine. Why do you ask?"
Danny thought how his mom looked a lot like June Cleaver on "Leave It To Beaver." She even wore an apron. But that made sense; she did own a catering business.
"I don't know." Danny shrugged then placed a hand on her back. "You should eat better, exercise. Take care of yourself. I want you around for a while."
A smile spread out on that pale tired face.
"Thank you, dear."
This was nothing unusual. Danny had always been sympathetic toward his mother, especially when his father was around. Thomas Dolan had never lifted a hand against any of them. No, he just criticized them and put them down a lot. It had taken its toll on all of them.
Their father was an oppressive tyrant and a dictator. (Roy used more profane terms.) The man was always getting on them about something. Kind of like Mr. Hannigan at school.
As Mrs. Dolan placed a hand on Danny's shoulder, Roy walked in and sat down. Roy was his usual quiet, intense, focused self. Without a word, he grabbed a taco from his brother's plate. This prompted a slap from Danny and a brief frown from Mrs. Dolan.
"How many do you want?" she asked.
"Seven."
"We'll start with three."
"Four."
"Okay, four. If you can still eat more after that, you get more."
Roy looked like a hurt puppy, though a very large one. "I want to take some to school."
"They'll be cold by then."
"They got microwaves at school."
"Okay. We can do that. But now you get three."
"Four."
"Four," Mrs. Dolan said with a grin and a nod.
Roy ate in silence. Danny finally broke that silence.
"Morning, sunshine," he said. "Want to grab anything else off my plate?"
Roy just kept eating.
When they left for school, Roy had to remind his mom about the tacos. Danny had the strange sense that something bad would happen and that Roy wouldn't get to eat those tacos.
Roy walked far ahead of his brother. Danny knew Roy was just trying to get a glimpse of Sherry Huston in her winter coat. In spring, she would wear a halter top but only on the way to school. Once she got to school, Principal Bubblehead insisted she cover up. Much to the dismay of Danny and Roy.
Beyond their mutual affection for Sherry Huston, Danny and Roy were typical brothers. They fought at times but most of the time they were friends. They especially helped and supported each other against their one-time common enemy, their father.
On this day, Roy was his usual silent sulky self, even while holding a bag full of tacos. Since Roy walked far ahead of his brother, Danny decided to imagine what it would be like to talk to Roy about his dream.
"You know how sometimes you have a dream but when you wake up it's gone? 'Poof.' You forget it." In his mind, Danny pointed to his head. Almost like he was that guy in the break room in his dream.
"Yeah," Roy said. There was a slight trace of a grin on his face, which was odd because Roy hadn't been smiling much lately. "No 'poof,' though."
"Or maybe you wake up, you remember some of the dream but not all of it." Danny waved his hand wildly just like he did when he gave a humorous class presentation about Buddha.
"Yeah," Roy said, not talkative even in imagination apparently.
"Normally, after a while, the dream fades away entirely. You forget all about it. More important things to think about."
"Like Sherry Huston."
"Yes. But like Sherry Huston, this dream stays with me."
"What was it about?"
"Someone took a baseball bat to Hannigan."
"About time. Don't give me any ideas."
Feeling a sudden sense of alarm, Danny hurried to catch up to Roy.
When they were inside the main entrance of the school, Roy did his usual grumbling.
"Another pointless day," he said.
Danny nodded. "School is like a company meeting that lasts twelve years."
Roy gave him a look. "How would you know?"
Danny responded with his own confused look.
"I just know…somehow."
Danny was in his homeroom before the bell rang. He loved how, if he was just a few seconds late, Mrs. Horverk put him down as absent.
After homeroom was gym class. Plagued by thoughts of the newscast in his dream, Danny slipped into a daze. When he stood in front of his gym locker, he wasn't sure how he got there.
The sweatpants were hanging there.
To Danny, the sweatpants represented rebellion against stupid unreasonable rules. Like the kind made up by his father who was great at quoting the Bible if it meant cracking down on his sons about behaving and not having any fun. Their dictator-dad would deposit them in the pews at church while he went off to a bar.
Of course, later he'd want to know what the sermon was about. Not for his own edification, you understand, just to make sure his sons were listening and incorporating the lessons he didn't bother with. Fortunately, Danny listened just enough and knew the Bible just enough to fake something convincing. Danny remembered that as he gave his father a cheerful presentation, Roy just glared and sulked. Their mom was off cleaning; someone had to work.
Church wasn't helpful to Danny in his struggles at school. One such struggle had to do with being forced to wear shorts in gym class. Danny had very long thin legs, and the others guys made fun of him and called him "Stilts."
Danny decided today was the day to wear sweatpants under those shorts.
Maybe that's what the dream was about: telling him to stand up to Hannigan.
Once those sweatpants went on, with the shorts over them, the guys started yelling.
"Hey! Check out 'Stilts!'" Mort yelled, cupping his hands over his mouth. Like that would actually increase the volume. If only he'd put his hands over his mouth and shut up.
"Who do you think you are?" Tim Ecklander sneered.
"You're just trying to be different!" one guy said.
Danny never understood why more students didn't stand up to teachers and stupid rules.
Once at a mandatory assembly, 3:30 p.m rolled around. That meant quitting time. A bunch of students stood up to leave.
"Sit down!" Hannigan roared. They sat down. But what if they had all decided to leave? What could one teacher, or even just a few, really do against a whole bunch of kids?
Danny was about to find out what one teacher could do. A glaring Hannigan marched toward Danny with fists clenched. Dressed in an extra-large polo shirt, he looked like a combination of a bulldog and a very surly Ed Asner.
"Get out of those sweatpants," he growled.
Despite fear and nervousness (not as much as he expected), Danny shot back with this.
"Why? You like seeing guys in shorts?"
As the guys in the background murmured, Hannigan's lined dark eyes widened, and he looked almost like an Orc when he scowled. He grabbed Danny by the shoulder; Danny jerked his shoulder away. Hannigan looked startled, just a little, just for a moment. Then he was back to his old surly self.
"Let's go see the principal," he said to Danny. To the other guys, he yelled, "The rest of you, run laps."
The guys groaned.
"You can thank Dolan for that," Hannigan said.
Danny heard some of the guys grumble as they began to run.
"Thanks a lot, Stilts," some of them shouted.
The assistant gym teacher—sometimes called Hannigan, Jr. or Little Hannigan—clapped his hands and loudly barked orders. To Danny, Little Hannigan sounded like he was ordering around a bunch of dogs instead of people.
Once when Little Hannigan yelled at him, Danny stopped running. That resulted in more yelling and more laps not to mention more punches from the guys after gym class.
Great, Danny thought. They'll be letting me have it later.
Danny and Sheriff Hannigan went before the principal. They held their important meeting in the hallway outside the gym. Principal Bubblehead looked just as unhappy, and mean, as the gym teacher.
Were all authority figures grouches? Danny wondered.
Bubblehead, otherwise known as Mr. Mathers, wore a plaid suit that looked like an old couch had been shot for its pelt. His blond toupee hung crooked over a wrinkled forehead. He looked a lot like the aged Biff Tannen from "Back To The Future Part II," and his voice and manner were just as gruff.
"You have to wear shorts," the principal said as he pointed a finger at Danny.
"I am wearing shorts." As Danny pointed this out, he also pointed to his shorts.
"Don't get smart!" Hannigan growled once again.
"One of us has to," Danny said calmly.
Mathers looked like he was about to blow steam out of his ears.
"You will wear shorts," the principal insisted. "Without sweatpants."
"Why? You both like seeing guys in shorts?"
"O-o-o-h," some nearby students "oohed" as they passed by.
"Get to class!" Hannigan shouted, waving his hand.
Mathers scowled as he folded bulky Popeye arms over his suit.
Bubblehead and Hannigan stood there glaring at him. It was probably an attempt to intimidate him. To deal with that, Danny engaged in calm thinking.
He thought how there was probably a good reason for the shorts. It was probably so he wouldn't overheat, and the skin probably needed to breathe during exercise. These two grumpy guys could take a few seconds to explain that but chose instead to waste a lot of time on an argument.
For some reason, people in authority—some of them—took this attitude of, "I'm going to say something, you're going to follow it, and I don't need to explain it."
"I'm wearing the school's shorts with the school's name on them." Once again, Danny pointed to the shorts, which were a drab maroon color. "I shouldn't have to expose my legs. Not if I don't want to. Not if Hannigan won't stop the other guys from making fun of my legs."
"MISTER Hannigan," they said together, sharply and sternly.
"Mr. Hannigan," Danny said dutifully and calmly. "Who didn't do anything when the guys were pulling my swim trunks off."
Danny's gym class rebellion had had its ups and downs. When he wore swims trunks in the shower, the other guys would try to pull them down. When Danny told "Mr. Hannigan," the gym teacher just scowled at him. When Danny accused the other guys of being gay, they finally stopped. No thanks to Hannigan.
"You wore a swimsuit into the shower?" Mathers raised both eyebrows. "Is that sanitary? Is that even allowed?"
"Sorry you weren't there to see it," Danny said. Ignoring the sulking frown from Mathers, Danny went on. "And when some guys taped my locker shut, Hannigan didn't do anything about that either."
"Mr. Hannigan."
"Mr. Hannigan could have had the guys run laps until someone finally confessed." Danny jabbed a finger at Hannigan's polo shirt. "If anybody does anything to me, you deal with them, you got me?"
Danny was shocked. He talking and acting like an adult, not a kid.
Hannigan simply scowled. "You're wearing shorts. Just shorts. If I gotta pull those sweatpants off myself."
Danny thrust his face into the bulbous nose and stubble-chin of the gym teacher.
"I knew you were into young guys."
Once again, Hannigan clenched his fists, and his eyes were wide. Danny was pretty sure smoke would blow out of his ears.
"You little punk!"
"You must be upset. You're using the word 'punk.'" Calmly, Danny narrowed his eyes as he smirked and folded his arms.
While Hannigan glowered, Mathers stepped in like a referee. But his focus was on Danny.
"Starting today you have detention," he said firmly. "Three days. You can wear the sweatpants there if you want."
Gym class was terrible. Danny had to not only wear shorts he had to be skins in a basketball game, which meant wearing only shorts. The more he heard razzing from the guys, the more he was determined to somehow get Hannigan.
It was funny. When he was on the basketball team, briefly, the guys were his friends. When he quit to help his mom, they turned on him. He explained the situation to them but they just kept on hitting him and calling him names. Hannigan was no help, of course.
In the locker room, Joey Carson told him, quietly, that what he did was very brave.
"It kind of reminds me of a young Captain Picard getting in a fight," he said. "That results in him getting wounded and getting an artificial heart so he doesn't become a wimp."
"Um, thanks?" Danny said.
"It's a pretty good episode of 'Next Generation.'"
"'Next Generation?' What's that?"
"Um, 'Star Trek?'"
"Oh," Danny said. "My dad didn't allow us to watch 'Star Trek.' Maybe I could have if it was in a bar."
"Sorry you were so culturally deprived. Anyway, good job," Joey said just before he walked away.
Danny knew Joey had been made fun of for bringing "Star Trek" magazines to school. That was the great thing about high school: people were always so accepting of whatever you were interested in.
It probably wasn't going to help Joey if he was seen as being a friend of "Stilts."
When Danny took a shower wearing his swimsuit, most of the guys just glared at him. There were a few punches afterwards but Danny just ignored them.
Danny was very distracted and very tired during his next class. After that class, he encountered Roy in the hallway. He might not have noticed anything was wrong except for what Roy did next.
"Hannigan!" he shouted as he slammed his locker door shut.
"What'd he do now?" Danny decided not to bore Roy with his latest conflict.
"I left something behind in his class."
Danny nodded. Hannigan taught a class on health, though it was hard to imagine Hannigan teaching anyone anything.
"When I went back for it, I walked in as quietly as I could. I was just there for a few seconds."
"Wouldn't matter to Hannigan."
"Anyway, he caught me sneaking in," Roy went on. "Started yelling at me. 'What are you doing interrupting my class?'"
"Sounds like he interrupted his own class," Danny murmured.
"He stood there and lectured me in front of the whole class."
Danny knew a little about that. When he wasn't able to use pegs to climb up holes in a wall, Hannigan criticized him in front of the other guys. Hannigan could criticize and lecture; he was good at that. But good at being helpful? Not so much.
"I wasn't putting up with that," Roy said with a very angry look on his face. "I walked out."
"Good for you."
"Hannigan chased after me."
"Of course he did."
"He grabbed me, and he slammed me into a wall."
"Whoa!"
"'You little maniac!' he yells." Roy did the gruff garbled grumpy voice of Hannigan but with tears in his eyes. "'This is a school! You don't just get to do what you want!'"
"He does."
Roy nodded. "I yell back, 'Neither do you!'"
"Sounds intense." Danny shook his head. "What a jerk."
Roy seemed to calm down, at least a little. "Finally, he let me go, gave me a little push. He says, 'Get out of here, you little maniac!'"
"He called me a 'punk.'" Danny grinned a little.
Roy spoke in an upset but mocking voice. "I told Principal Bubblehead about it. He just said, 'You shouldn't have interrupted his class.'"
Danny chortled at the near-perfect impersonation. "Yeah, that sounds like Bubblehead."
"They're both evil."
"They are," Danny said. He gave his brother a light pat on the arm. "Unfortunately, I got something I gotta do. You gonna be all right?"
"For now."
"All right. Try to stay calm, don't do anything stupid. At least not without me. We'll figure out what to do after school."
Roy's eyes narrowed as he nodded. They heard sounds coming out of the gym.
"Sounds like they're holding baseball practice in the gym," Roy said.
"Yeah, sounds like it," Danny said absently. He gestured with his thumb in the direction of "that room,"the dreaded detention room. "I got something I gotta do."
"But they are still practicing in the gym?" Roy asked.
"Yeah, instead of in the snow." Danny and Roy often joked that when it was winter the baseball team should practice outside instead of in the gym.
Danny noted the baseball bats lying just outside the gym entrance. This wasn't a sign of how disorganized Hannigan was; instead, it was a sign of what a control freak he was. No one was allowed to hold a baseball bat unless he said so.
When Danny saw those baseball bats, he felt a little alarmed, though he wasn't sure why.
He gave his brother a concerned look.
"You're not really going to do something right now, are you?"
"I'm fine," Roy grunted.
Danny hesitated for a few moments. When he finally walked away, he felt a little uneasy.
In detention, Danny barely listened as the teacher droned on about all the ways they couldn't have fun. No talking, no eating, no drinks, no phones, no devices, no magazines or comic books. In short, no fun.
So in other words, the usual. No fun. At school or in life.
It was while the detention teacher was winding down his sermon that the thought hit Danny.
Baseball!
Danny dashed out of the room. The teacher called after him.
"Hey! You can't leave! Do you understand de-ten-tion?"
Danny just kept running. His over-sized tennis shoes made loud flopping noises as he ran all the way to the door outside the gym.
Sure enough, there was Roy with a baseball bat. He stepped into the gym, and the door closed behind him.
Violently, Danny threw the door open, burst inside and grabbed Roy. Though his brother was a good foot taller than he was and a lot bulkier, Danny managed to pull him out of the gym before the door closed.
The baseball bat clattered to the floor. Danny pushed Roy into the nearest wall and pinned him there. Though gasping and panting, Danny listened to noises inside the gym. All he heard was light chatter from the baseball players and cheerleaders then the grumpy voice of Hannigan.
When Danny was satisfied that no one had seen Roy in the gym and no one was coming through the door to investigate, he whispered angrily to his brother.
"What were you thinking?"
"After we talked, a janitor got on my case. Told me I should clean out my locker. And he said it in a real nasty way." Roy's face was full of intense anger as he clenched his fists. "A janitor did that! A janitor got on my case!"
"Easy," Danny said.
Roy narrowed his eyes. "It reminded me of my first day here when I was trying to find my way around. Instead of helping me find my way, a teacher yelled at me. I had to get one of these guys!"
Danny gave him a fierce determined look.
"This is not how you fight evil," he insisted. "It just lets them win!"
Roy seemed to collapse a little. "I know."
"Then what were you thinking?"
"I wasn't thinking! I just wanted to scare him! Guys like him, they never-"
"Yeah, they do!" Danny shouted. Quickly recovering, he lowered his voice. "Eventually, they do."
Roy nodded then bowed his head.
"Now," Danny said firmly. "If I let you go, you gonna try something else stupid?"
"No, I'm all right now."
Danny let him go but he prepared to grab him again, just in case. When Roy didn't move, Danny thought how ironic it was. Hannigan would be proud of what he just did, pinning Roy to the wall like that. Whenever they had wrestling in gym class, Danny usually just lay there. Partly because he had no idea what to do, mainly because he liked to annoy Hannigan.
"How'd you do that anyway?" Roy asked. "Pin me to the wall like that?"
Danny shrugged. "Adrenaline. Center of gravity. Maybe what Mr. Thompson teaches us isn't so useless after all."
"You mean there might be a class here that's not totally pointless?"
"Maybe."
They both grinned.
Danny gave Roy a serious look.
"In the future, when you feel angry, don't do anything. Give yourself time to calm down until you can think more clearly."
"I'll make a note of it."
They were silent for a moment then Roy spoke in a calm quiet voice.
"Tell you what: Let's find a way to get Hannigan together."
"Maybe I could wear my sweatpants every day, just to bug him."
"Yeah, okay," Roy said.
They walked away from the gym entrance.
"What do you suppose hell is like for a gym teacher? Do you suppose they have to spend eternity doing exercises they're in no condition to do?"
"And forced to do things they're not ready for and don't know how to do. Just like they do to us!"
Danny laughed. Then he pointed to his head as he said, "Okay. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm making a mental note to myself to wear those sweatpants every day."
Suddenly, Danny's mind became a great blur, like he was living years of his life in just seconds.
"Make a mental note to yourself."
This is what Daniel said as he stood at the head of a conference table. On both sides of that table, people in business outfits applauded. For a moment, Daniel looked confused then he smiled and bowed his head.
Once he exited the conference room, he went straight to Joe's office where he plopped down in a chair. Wearing a look of deep confusion, Daniel rubbed his chin.
Joe looked up from his computer.
"You all right?"
"I'm not sure. I've been having this strange dream. You're in the break room at a factory, and you're talking about people sending their thoughts back in time."
Joe's eyes widened.
"I had the same dream."
"I think I did something like that. Sent my thoughts back in time. Changed something very important in my life."
"Did it involve Roy going to prison?"
"Yeah. How'd you know?"
"It was in my dream, too. Only I don't think it was just a dream." When Joe rubbed his chin, it did not seem to be a way to just look smart; he seemed to actually be really thinking. "I think we're tapping into another life that actually happened. We lived in an alternative timeline."
Daniel squinted up his face as he considered this.
"If what you're saying is true, then I stopped Roy from going to prison. But in that 'alternative timeline,' our mom passed away later. I think."
"No. Mom is very much alive and well." As Roy walked into the room, Daniel was quite sure his own eyes bugged out. "We're supposed to visit this weekend. And we can celebrate your anniversary."
"Anniversary?" Daniel recalled that in the dream—or "alternative timeline"-an anniversary was a bad thing.
Roy held up a newspaper.
"Your revolution. The sweatpants revolution. Your kept wearing those sweatpants every day to gym class-"
"Yes," Daniel muttered. "I made a mental note to myself. Then next thing I knew I was here." With a confused look, he shook his head.
Roy stared for a moment then he went on. "Yeah. So, anyway. You kept wearing those sweatpants every day until finally you got suspended. That became a local news story then a national news story. Pretty soon kids all over the world were standing up to stupid unreasonable rules."
"I remember," Joe said loudly. "Hannigan had to quit."
"I'm starting to remember, too," Danny said, now looking less mystified than before.
Roy folded up the newspaper. "When you stopped me from using that baseball bat, you not only changed my life, bro, you changed the world."
The scene is left behind, and the voice of Rod Serling is heard against a starry background.
"A method of time travel that involves sending a mental note back in time. It not only changed a few lives; it had far-reaching consequences beyond just those few. And it happened in 'The Twilight Zone.'"