No one would believe it even if you showed them this. People won't believe what they don't understand even if it's right in front of them.

That has helped me quite a lot. I'm not the cleanest time traveler.

How I found my navy blue watch is the classic story of evil genius wanting to use it for his own selfish needs. But I didn't do anything heroic. I was just at the right place at the right time.

Or, if you asked aforementioned evil genius, the wrong place at the wrong time. But you can't. He imploded.

Oops.

Anyway, that meant that I had to find out everything about time travel myself as his lab also got destroyed. Double oops.

One of the greatest things I discovered is that the fuel for time travel is time. Your time.

And I'm about to run out of mine.

As soon as I take the thumb of my left hand off this button, time will start ticking and my heart will stop thumping.

How do I know exactly? I don't know. Like I said, never had a guide to this.

I'm sure you don't know I'm fifty nine. But I look ninety. At least. Even had to have my birth certificate changed.

(I used this watch a lot. Many, many times. Maybe too many. Hmm...)

Anyway, I was all, "There's an error with my birth certificate, lad. "

And said lad was all, "An error, you say?"

And I replied, "I do say an error. I was born 1944."

"Are you sure?" he asked.

Now, this took me quite by surprise. I wasn't born then as you might have guessed, but he was supposed to look at me and not argue. "Young man, I think I would know when I was born, " I answered strongly.

"And the certificate should know as well, sir," he countered smartly.

"But it doesn't."

He looked from me to the paper, back to me and again the paper then sighed.

That took care of that.

Cal, I would have told you all this face to face if you weren't six hours away.

Instead I leave this letter which is a guide I never had. Well sort of a guide, that isn't complete and was written by an amateur.

But hey, something's better than nothing, right?

So, we've established rule one, use your time wisely. In every sense of the phrase.

Two, don't run into your past or future self. I met me in 2007 and I simply couldn't exist simultaneously in the same space as two entities so his mass folded into itself and violently decimated to minute smithereens which then vaporized.

In other words, he blew up. Uh, I blew up, I mean. He (I, we? Ugh, time travel tenses) took out Asafaht, which was also the evil villain's town. Triple oops. That guy must really hate me. Oh, well.

Now you're probably asking "Huh? Asafaht? What's that?"

The answer is "Exactly."

Tip: you can't change the past in any consequential way. The universe will just bring you right back to where you were trying to avoid.

Three, limit your interactions with people in anytime that isn't the present.

Ah, the present. So fickle, ever changing. A moment after it becomes the past, a moment before and it's the future. Yet it's the most stable time frame.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Marienne.

She was beautiful. Absolutely stunning, both inside and out. I bought a cup of 2027 (the future) coffee from her, spent the next few weeks with her and we fell in love.

Then I came back to the present. You always have to come back.

I didn't know if she would know me, still sell coffee or even be old enough.

I went to the coffee shop, she wasn't there. Went to her house, belonged to someone else. Went to he family's house, they didn't know me but, over time said they had felt like they did.

But Marienne wasn't there. Her parents were expecting their first child who was male.

They miscarried.

Three year later, they gave birth to a boy but on the way back from the hospital they died in a car crash.

His mom protected him with herself. He was left with just a scar on his right ear. I adopted him. And named him Calvin.

Cal, this makes you no less my son. Makes Erin no less your sister. Makes you no less you.

Marienne does not exist. And I have made peace with that. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about this. And I'm also sorry if you blame me.

Four, don't loose the watch.

This should go without saying. You don't want it to fall into the hands of evil or worse, someone with no knowledge of time travel who could make a mistake so fatal it'd wipe out all of human life.

I know, I know, evil could do that too. But it'd be worse because the other guy wouldn't do it on purpose. We wouldn't be able to be mad at him.

Time travel. It's a physically dizzying and confusing ride.

A dangerous, beautiful thing. It changed my life in ways I couldn't imagine, made it something I wouldn't have been able to dream up.

There's some money on my beside table. Get the twins the gifts they've been babbling about non stop. Andre, some game. Andrea, some teddy.

And there's a "world's best son" mug there too. I've always wanted one of those cheesy mugs.

And also an amethyst necklace for Erin. I love her.

Love Dre and Rea. And I love you.

Don't let them and yourself forget that.

And this was what happened when time paused.

Adios, Muchachos.

-Aaron.