This chapter's official song: "2,000 Light-Years From Home" by the Rolling Stones

"We're here!" Daniel leapt out of the car. "This is great. Come on, we can spend as much time here as we like now that we got everything straightened out." He went up and knocked on the door.

"Daniel! And Rachel! Wonderful to see you two again." John grinned at us from a crack in the door. "Hey everyone, the diabetic boy and that girl who tells the future are here."

"Lovely Daniel, eh?" David Bowie stuck his head out. "You're back. Come in." He grabbed the front of Daniel's shirt and yanked him in.

Daniel grinned weakly at me. "Um…"

I waved him off. "It's okay. Have fun with the Martian transvestite. I have some business to take care of."

"What, you're not coming in? Roger's been talking about you for a week. He really likes you," John said.

I hesitated. It was tempting, but I had to see if my intuitions were right. "I'll come back in a little while, okay?"

I walked over to the gallery. It was bustling with activity; there were sleeping bags on the floor and tables where people were talking on phones and making signs.

I wandered in. "Um, hello. Who's in charge of…whatever this is?"

A girl with a flower tattoo on the side of her face pointed to the back of the gallery. "She's back there."

"Who is?"

The girl looked at me like I was stupid. "Ms. Ono. She's back there."

I made my way to the back of the gallery. "Yoko-chan, are you there? It's me, Rachel-chan."

"Rachel-chan!" Yoko grabbed me from behind and swept me into a hug. "I've been wondering what happened to you."

I smiled. She looked a lot better than she did on the "Two Virgins" album. In fact, she was absolutely beautiful.

Hmm. Those were words I never thought I would think in conjunction with Yoko Ono. Perhaps the only reason I had hated her before was that she'd gotten the blame for breaking up the Beatles.

I decided not to think about that. "I just came to check on you. It looks like you've gotten your life together pretty well."

"Yes! I have. And it is all thanks to you." Yoko led me into a sparsely furnished back room with a white sofa, an interesting coffee table, and a kitchenette. "Sit down. Would you like some tea?" Yoko bustled around in the kitchen. It was all very cozy and domestic. "You kept me from wasting my life on art that didn't mean anything. I am running for a seat in the British parliament now."

"Are you kidding? With the National Front you'll never get elected. Try running for a Senate seat in America; those are easier to get."

"Again you have inspired me." Yoko set the tea tray on the coffee table and sat down cross-legged on the couch facing me. "Do you know what my name means?"

I mentally ran through all the Japanese I knew. Sushi, sashimi, wasabi, hentai, shounen ai, bishounen, bukkake, and sake—all I could think of were things to eat or things you'd find in the back of a seedy comic shop. "Doesn't it mean Ocean Child?" I asked, grasping at straws.

Yoko shook her head. "My family name, Ono, means "on the side". The Ono family has always been on the side of everything, watching from the sidelines. And my given name, Yoko, is a type of battleaxe." She carefully poured tea into two small cups. "A battleaxe worn on the side. My parents named me that so that I would be a formidable weapon, but for someone else. Extra attack power, you could say." She picked up a cup and sipped it. "A while ago I saw a play. I don't remember who it was by, but there was a lady in it who was trying to get her husband to kill people so that he could become a king."

"Macbeth, right?"

"Yes, that was it. I always thought that I would grow up to be that lady—a weapon at the side. But you have helped me to become my own weapon." She put the cup down and smiled. "I have been waiting to see you again. I had to tell you how much that one meeting meant to me."

This was starting to get a little weird. "I want to ask you something too, Yoko-chan. Why is it that I made such an impression on you?"

Yoko thought for a minute. When she spoke again, her voice was low. "Because I knew that you didn't belong there. You and that boy you were with—I could tell by looking at you that you had gone from somewhere that you belonged to someplace you should not have been able to go, and that you were there for a very important reason. I don't know what it was about you, but I could sense."

I took a deep breath and grabbed the sides of my head. "Oh crap. Not this. Not metaphysics. Anything but this," I mumbled. "Let me mess up the future so badly that the world is taken over by ficus plants. Let me destroy the entire space-time continuum. But why does it have to be this New Age Deepak Chopra synchronicity shit? This can't be the true nature of the universe."

Yoko put her hand on my shoulder. "Rachel-chan, what is wrong?"

I sat up. "I'm sorry. I think I've made a terrible mistake."

Yoko gazed into my eyes. "No you haven't. How can this be anything but good?"

"I don't know, I don't know, I don't know! There's just something terribly wrong. Daniel and I—"

"Yes, where is he?"

"He's…um…He's screwing David Bowie right now," I admitted.

Yoko sat up in surprise. "He's cheating on you? With another man? When you're here?"

"It's David "Ziggy Stardust" Bowie," I explained. "And if I know my RPS pairings, Mick Jagger is helping them out."

Yoko sort of stared at me in shock. Her jaw was hanging open.

I waved my hand in front of her face. "Yoko-chan? Are you there?" When she didn't respond, I gently reached over and closed her mouth.

Yoko grabbed my hand and raised my fingers to her lips.

Oh. My. God. Daniel did that sometimes, but it was entirely different when she did it.

She put my hand down. "Rachel-chan, I know you are from another time. But please, I want you to stay here with me. You can help me; you know what's going to happen. You can tell me what to do. Your influence is great."

I took a deep breath, shakily. "I don't know…"

Yoko cupped my face in her hands. "Please. Stay with me. Together we can change the world. Imagine!" Her eyes were shining.

I rolled off the couch. "No!" I yelled. "This is all wrong. All of it. None of this is supposed to happen!" I stood up and brushed myself off. "I have to go change this."

Yoko got up and wrapped her arms around my waist from behind. I could feel her breath on the back of my neck. "This is supposed to happen. It wouldn't have happened if it wasn't supposed to happen."

I closed my eyes. "There's nothing that can be but the way it's meant to be," I murmured. "But John never wrote that, not here."

"What? Who's John? What are you talking about?" Yoko bent her head and kissed the back of my neck.

This wasn't right. A woman I had despised for years, a woman who was in an entirely different form in my time, a woman that I had helped to create was sending shivers up my spine.

I broke her grasp and ran. "I have to go. I'm sorry."

I ran all the way to the car, gasping for breath once I got there. Daniel had left the keys in the ignition, assuming, correctly, that nobody would steal a car if there was no way to get fuel for it.

I climbed in and sat behind the driver's wheel.

Then I started it up.

Time is a mess, isn't it? A time traveler can barely hope to keep track of where she is, what universes she has created, what changes in the timeline she has introduced. Or even where she is.

I think I'm in Michigan right now. Or I might be in England. Or Australia. Or on another planet. I haven't bothered to check the odometer, so I don't know when I am, but I'm pretty sure I'm far in the future because the sun is really low and really red and isn't moving and there are huge purple crab-things all over the place. Just like in the H.G. Wells book.

Daniel's still having fun with Bowie and Mick. I don't think he'll even notice I'm gone. Yoko's still in the back room, probably drinking tea. One of the advantages of time travel is that since you can go back to whatever time you want, you can safely assume that everything's frozen in time. You don't think in such a linear way, here in a time machine.

Maybe I'll stay here for a while. The crabs are pretty cool to watch. Maybe I'll go back home, where there is tea and sitcoms. Maybe I'll go to the ancient past and do some research for that project we're supposed to be doing on the Iliad in English class. Maybe I'll set the time machine on cruise control and drift though the eons until the universe collapses from heat-death and entropy.

I just need some time to sort everything out, is all.