PART FOUR
Keely pressed against the gate to the Diffy backyard slowly and walked forward delicately treading the grass out of respect to unknown objects in her path. She was nervous about the Diffy family guest and what he meant to her and her future. He was almost a living crystal ball into her future as if it was all already set in stone. Maybe it had all already happened, to him, and if she did something to change things here in the now, it might all never happen. Expectations and nervous tension played on her senses as she lightly glided into view and looked up to the sounds of competition before her. Ahead of her, Phil and his future counterpart were playing a game of laser ball. Younger Phil had the youth and strength, but the older Phil had experience and ability to predict his young counterpart's moves.
"I seem to be slowing down in my old age." Phil observed about his future self.
"I'm not that old!" Older Phil corrected him.
"Who's winning?" Keely asked.
"No one…" Younger Phil answered. "We can't seem to get a point off each other."
"I guess…" Older Phil looked to his young self and caught the glowing orb in his hand that he'd been bouncing back and forth with his young counterpart. "You two will want to be alone. I just never knew my nephew had such a beautiful girlfriend." He began beaming a steely sort of Hollywood actor grin.
"She knows." Younger Phil replied matter-of-factly.
"She knows?"
"I know." Keely added.
"She knows." Teenage Phil replied.
"She knows…." Adult Phil furrowed his brow worriedly. "That can't be good." He then flashed upon times his wife the investigative reporter always guessed what he'd been up to. Whether he was out horsing around or staying out late, she always knew. It wasn't that far to realize that young Keely was just as intelligent now as she was in the future.
"Phil," Keely reacted demurely uncomfortable. "Can we talk… alone?"
"Yeah, sure." Adult Phil set his laser-ball paddle and the ball aside. "I'll just go see what dad is doing in the…"
"No, I mean with you." Keely looked up partially hidden by her long blonde locks.
"With him?" Young Phil wasn't sure if he should be jealous.
"With me?"
"With him." Keely confirmed.
"With him." Young Phil confirmed. "This can't be good." He forced himself to turn round and walk into the house in a self-induced shock. He looked back a few times until he was all the way into the house. In the back yard, Keely lifted her head and beamed ear to ear once more then frowned uncomfortably. She and her future husband walked circles around each other briefly as if they were pairing each other out.
"I guess I'm a bit of a disappointment." Adult Phil forced a mild grin. "I didn't age very well." His hand insecurely rubbed his round abdomen. "At least, we have several good meals together." He stepped back and sat down on the steps of the wood deck.
"So," Keely lightly pulled her hair back and sat a few feet from him. "You took me to the future with you?"
"Well….. Not really…" Adult Phil looked away with a smirk. "Actually, you stayed behind and I visited you ever so often as much as I could, but when my parents started fighting, I realized that they were so much more closer when they lived in the past, you know, here at the turn of the Twenty-First Century and they decided to retire here. They've never been happier and I came with them, and stayed this time."
"Pim too?"
"Pim got into major trouble in our time for tapping into the world banking system and was exiled to the past with us." Adult Phil continued. "You know Mrs. Mip, the sub, that's Pim."
"So that's why she calls me blondie!" Keely had a revelation, dropped her jaw and lightly shook her head. She looked back to Phil beaming a bit. "And we got together and lived happily ever after, right."
"Well, you kind of suspected it, right?" Adult Phil looked at his wife's younger self with an awkward attraction realizing how young she was compared to him. "Remember when you used the Giggle and saw yourself with the wedding ring. You kind of knew, right?"
"I guess I did…" Keely smirked a bit embarrassed, looked away briefly and regally turned her head back. She looked to Phil's future self a bit reticent and demure. "Why didn't you ever tell me you were in love with me?"
"I don't know." He looked back at her and wanted to hold her, but forced himself to hold back. "I guess I was too scared to. Keely, you were one of the most beautiful girls I had ever seen. I mean, before I met you, even in the Twenty-Second Century girls like you never wanted anything to do with me, but when you confronted me, and we actually became friends… to have you as my best friend, that was more than I could I ask for. It was one of the greatest things to ever happen in my life. I couldn't risk losing that by becoming your boyfriend, but…. Let me tell, you - if I knew then, what I know now, I would have risked it. We became so much more closer afterward…"
"I'm glad…" She abashedly grinned to herself. "So, am I happy? Am I working? Please tell me I have a career!"
"One hundred and third utterance of Keely Diffy." An electronic Wizard from the future was recording for Phil every time his wife said that.
"Yeah, you have a career…" Adult Phil smirked amusingly and fumbled with his Wizard. "I mean, you're going to have a hard time ahead, and I think you only agreed to marry me when you thought your life was going no where, but, believe me, it's a long hard road ahead for you, but the journey's going to be so worth it."
"I got it! I got it!" Lloyd Diffy came charging from the side door of the garage while enveloped in a puff of smoke. With his screams of delighted hysteria, younger Phil also ran from the house with his mother. Adult Phil and Keely stood up from their seats. Behind them, Pim stayed behind and leaned into the patio doors tossing away an empty bottle of Pepto-Bismol and opening another to lift to her lips. This extra big brother business was twisting her stomach into knots.
"I finally got the dual trans-temporal phase alignment to align with the dimensional interface unit." Lloyd excitedly told his extended family. "I'm this close to fixing the time machine!"
"Two hundred and ninety-third utterance by Lloyd Diffy…." Older Phil's Wizard chirped as he switched it off.
"Hundred and twenty-seventh utterance by Lloyd Diffy." Younger Phil's Wizard chirped as well as he and his adult self looked at each other. Lloyd just looked to the two counterparts of his smart aleck son and rolled his eyes disgustedly toward them.
"This weekend," Lloyd continued. "We are going home, and dropping you off." He looked to his adult son shaking his head skeptically. "And stop shaking your head!"
"Three, two, one…" Adult Phil had already lived through this incident when he had lived with his future counterpart. He covered his ears and something exploded in the garage with a flash of light and gray smoke. As the smoke began dissipating, everyone started coughing and Barbara began waving the air to see what was going on around her. Young Phil started patting Keely on the back to help her get the smoke out of her lungs.
"Five more years, Dad." Adult Phil continued predicting. "We were in the past for seven years, no more, no less."
"Stop telling me that!" Lloyd ordered him.
"What was that explosion!" Hackett reminded the Diffys that he was still their next-door neighbor and looked over the fence with wanton unbridled curiosity. As the Diffys tried to think of a logical excuse, Phil's future self once more exercised his talent for improvised excuses.
"Well," Adult Phil trekked over and looked at Hackett over the fence. "Let me put it like this, I told my brother years ago that merging the microwave and the dishwasher was a bad idea." He covered for his father before Hackett. "But does he listen…."
