Disclaimer: no cats were harmed in the creation of this story.

A fluorescent light stuttered to life in the workroom. Dusty shelves full of books, disks and old computers lined two of the four walls. The third was just a wide door that led out to the sitting room with the bedroom attached. It was a small place, but it sufficed for Paul's needs. The fourth wall was just plain brick. Beneath it sat a desk, and at the desk sat Paul.

Gray whiskers stuck out along his pale jawline, coming to meet a full head of hair that was somewhere between wood-colored and steel-colored. It was so messy, it looked like it could have gotten mussed up and filled with pencil shavings and wires on purpose just to fit his mad scientist persona. That was what all his students had called him, and eventually his wife. Paul knew he was mad by most people's definition, but most people hadn't invented time travel.

Somber, mud-colored eyes flicked to the beer bottle. Oh, how he used to drink such fancy champagne. He'd hated the bubbles and the sharp taste of it, but now, with everyone else gone, he drank all the beer he wanted.

Standing, bones cracking in old and new places, Paul drained the last of the beer. His Adam's apple lifted and fell and then he smacked his lips together to savor the last drops.

He picked up the small, round disk that served as his time travel machine, which he dubbed Rapizon 3000. Tossing it toward the ground, you'd expect the thing to bang off the cement floor and prove just how drunk Paul really was, but instead, it came to a hovering position a few feet away. A three-dimensional trapezoid, electric blue in color, popped into existence above the Rapizon.

He placed the beer bottle on the desk and stepped into the Rapizon. He didn't close his eyes, but everything went black anyway. Sound and smell ceased. He didn't exist anywhere anymore, except that hardly two seconds later, the Rapizon spat him back out in his workroom, thirty minutes prior.

Smiling, he walked over to the desk where the beer bottle sat, completely full again as it had been a half hour ago. There'd only ever been one bottle of beer, but he'd drunk five so far that day. Millions of dollars sat in his bank account, but he considered it a huge joke to the science community if he lived his life frugally instead.

"It's the little things, isn't it?" Paul asked himself, his voice strange in the utter silence. He sat down again to resume his work. The photo album stared up at him. There was a whole page that his daughter, Danielle, had dedicated to gluing pictures and letters cut from magazines and newspapers into some haphazard collage. Squinting at all the different fonts, Paul read a collection of names surrounded by pictures of ribbons, flowers and cats. The names read: Sprinkle, Mr. Fluffy, Bobo, Remy and Duchess. He bit his lip, feeling that unfamiliar sensation of guilt stirring in his stomach. All of those cats had taken trips through the Rapizon while he was testing it, and it seemed Danielle had remembered each of their names just to make this dedication page to the cats he'd thrown into the machine.

With a grimace, Paul turned the page and saw pictures of his daughter at ballet recitals—when did she take ballet classes?—and piano performances—I don't remember paying for piano lessons. There was a birthday photo. She wore ice skates and a tiara as she blew out the ten candles on her cake.

After a grueling morning of reliving Danielle's childhood and drinking himself silly, Paul finally knew when he wanted to return to: the day she started high school, almost twenty years ago. He blinked at the picture of her standing at the door with her backpack on, a broad smile on her face.

Sighing, Paul stood again and set the timer on the Rapizon to August 11th, 2003. Before jumping in, though, he had to run to the restroom; time travel wasn't exactly easy on the bowels.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There was a sunlit park balanced on the hills of San Francisco. It was a long-time hangout for people like Elise, who spent the day there drinking rum from coconuts sold by the guy with dreads and a cooler, eating drug-filled candy passed out by strangers, and sleeping in the sun. Her hair was naturally a dark brown, but she'd dyed it a dirty blond color that swung from shoulder-to-shoulder in rhythm with the pink hula hoop at her waist. The constant swinging and the random hair twirls didn't really fit the tune of the reggae coming out of the stereo she'd brought, but she hummed along anyway and pretended it did. The sun burned down, tanning her shoulders quite effectively.

The hula hoop dropped from Elise's waist. Pretending she was a ballerina, she stood on her toes, wobbled wildly, and then jumped out of the hoop. She picked up a paintbrush resting on the easel in front of her and drew red grass at the bottom of her painting. Why? She didn't know. But they'd call it art one day.

When she looked up and saw the deranged-looking man standing behind the easel, she yelled out and dropped the paintbrush.

"What do you want?" she asked, snatching up the hula hoop and raising it in front of her like a weapon. It swung down sadly to her side.

The man had wires in his hair, which was tousled in every direction imaginable. Unfocused eyes tried to fix on her, but kept sliding toward the grass and the view of the city and the bay in the distance. He burped, took a deep breath, and said, "Danielle! What are you doing in this hoodlum's park?"

Elise raised an eyebrow and looked from side-to-side, but no one was coming to her rescue. Shielding her eyes from the sun as if she'd only just noticed it was really bright, she said, "I'm Elise."

The man's mouth drooped into a frown. "My daughter."

"Look, buddy, if you're trying to get me to go in your creepy white van, try a different approach than calling me your kid. Honestly, candy might work with me."

The stranger's shoulders fell to match the curve of his frown. "I thought you were her."

Elise nodded slowly, then decided it might be time to pack up her things and move to another side of the park.

"Will you help me find her?"

Frowning, Elise tried a more direct approach. "Do you have candy?"

When the man shook his head, a bit of wire falling to hang in front of his unfocused eyes, Elise sighed and reached forward to fold-up her easel.

But as her hand landed on it, he grabbed her wrist.

"Hey, let go of me!" she called out, yanking away from him. But his grip was surprisingly strong. Suspended in a strange tug-of-war, Elise and the weird man stared at each other. The sun nearly blinded them both.

"Just listen to what I'm saying, I beg you, or I'll...I'll throw you in the time travel machine and send you to a time where they're weren't any hula hoops and you'd actually have to work for a living!"

A gasp escaped Elise's lips. "You wouldn't. Who do you think you are, Paul Scranton?"

He chuckled derisively. "All I want is to find my daughter and have a chance to talk to her. Please."

Chewing on her tongue for a moment, which was currently bright green from a jolly-rancher, she considered her choices. Option one was to go to a waitress job interview she'd snagged by selling adderall to the manager. Option two was to help this crazy middle-aged man find his daughter since he seemed to have misplaced her.

"Sure, I suppose I'll help. What's your name? I'm Elise."

"Paul Scranton," he said, holding out his hand to shake hers. "You really think you can help?"

She raised a pierced eyebrow at his name. "Paul Scranton? You're the dude who invented time travel! You can find anybody on the Internet. If you invented time travel, shouldn't you know that already?" She shook her head in disbelief. "Alright, let's get going."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Paul was vaguely aware that Elise was making him buy her drinks as payment for finding Danielle, but it was hard to care when he knew his daughter was about to get out of piano practice just a block away.

"You really found out where she takes piano lessons just by typing in a few things on Google?" he asked, amazed.

"The Internet is a crazy thing," she said, balancing her chin on the rim of her glass of beer. The bar was nearly empty since it was the middle of the day, but there were a few overweight, grizzled men sitting at the bar. He and Elise had chosen a seat with more privacy, draped in shadows near an unoccupied pool table. "You sure you don't want a drink? I mean, I can already smell the alcohol on you. It's practically coming off in waves, so there's not much you can do to hide it if you were thinking of impressing this long-lost daughter of yours with sobriety. Might as well keep the buzz going."

He shrugged, then pulled her mug of beer from under her chin and drank it himself, ignoring her protestations.

When the glass was empty and he licked his lips, grinning at her mortified expression, he called over the bartender to order another.

Shortly after, Elise was going on a rant about the rich men who controlled time travel. "Seriously, it's not like any of us can afford it to go back and do something good! I mean, you could, but you're a bit washed up, I think. If people have been time traveling for the past ten years, why hasn't anyone changed something? Why has no one killed Hitler?" She tossed her arms in the air in disbelief.

Paul chuckled a little, finding a sense of humor even though his nerves tingled at the idea of reuniting with his daughter. "I wasn't meant to kill Hitler, if that's what you're suggesting."

"But if everybody thinks that, then of course no one will do it! Come on, give me your Rapizon. I'll go full assassin on his ass, right now!" Elise was so excited, she punched forward and sent the beer glass flying. It landed right in Paul's hands, and they both cheered at his unexpectedly good reflexes.

"That was a complete fluke, I swear," Paul said, laughing. He looked down at his watch. "She's getting out of her lesson now. You want to wait here? I should be back soon, I hope."

Elise nodded, her eyes wandering over to the pool table. She would be able to entertain herself while he was gone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Paul's hands were sweating dreadfully, and it didn't help that the sun was still brutally bright. All he had to do was stand in place a few doors down from the music studio. A bell tinkled. A girl laughed. Gulping, Paul turned and saw his daughter, fourteen-years-old again.

Danielle stopped. The sun highlighted her frizzy brown hair which was never quite tame. She frowned and stared at him, probably wondering what this weird man was doing outside her studio and whether she should walk past him as fast as she could.

Twiddling his thumbs together, Paul watched as realization dawned on Danielle's face. Her mouth fell open in a small 'O' shape, her eyebrows rose to disappear in her chestnut-colored bangs, and she placed a hand on one hip.

"Dad?" she inquired. "What happened to you? You look..."

"Old?" he asked with a chuckle. She didn't say anything right away, so he continued. "I am your father from twenty years in the future. In the present, right now on August 11th, 2003, I was probably slaving away on the Rapizon 2000. Version 3000 is much better, worked out some kinks with the location parameters, but..." He trailed off when he realized she'd stopped paying attention. She looked off into the distance with glazed-over eyes, as though she were accustomed to hearing her father drone on and on about time travel and little else. Paul's shoulders slumped and his head fell to his chest. "Danielle, I...I came back in time to tell you that I am sorry."

"Sorry for what?" Her voice was stiff. At fourteen, she already knew he was a disgrace.

"Where to start? I'm sorry for sending your cats to ancient China. I'm sorry for missing your ninth birthday because I got in a bar fight in Soviet Russia. I'm sorry I told your mom not to show me any videos of your performances because I was too busy. I'm sorry I went back in time so I could beat you at that video game. I'm sorry I was a terrible father. It started out as trying to provide for you and your mother, trying to succeed. But I just failed. My past self can't understand this now, which is why I came back here to tell you this. I am sorry, Danielle."

She paused, biting her lip for a moment and thinking of a reply. As much as she always pretended to not listen when her father droned on about time travel, she knew enough about it that for her father to take a day off work must have meant it was pretty important.

"You're right, you haven't been the best dad," she said slowly. "But thank you for coming back and telling. I'll remember."

Somehow, he believed her.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Twenty years in the future, Paul sat at his desk in his workroom, staring at his intertwined hands. The fluorescent light stuttered above him. The same brick wall stared at him, the same books sat on dusty shelves...but there was a knock on the door.

Paul froze for a moment. He'd just returned from his jaunt into 2003 and was busy recovering his senses. The photo album with Danielle's pictures still lie open in front of him.

Did anything change at all?

The wooden chair squeaked on the floor as he pushed it back. Paul walked to the door, heart pounding in trepidation. When he pushed it open, two people waved at him. One was a woman with frizzy brown hair, and the other with a hula hoop in hand.

"You remembered," Paul said, feeling the first smile in years spread on his face as he looked at Danielle and Elise.