I'm Getting A Headache Trying To Follow This.

The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

Here. All you have to do is pull the trigger. You have enough muscular control back for that, I think. Trust me … blowing your brains out is something that even our formidable abilities won't be able to overcome.

The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect. Just when you thought a time-travel jaunt couldn't be more … how do I put this, mind-bending, Marvel Comics in the early 1990s pulled this off. The big green-skinned guy we all know and try to keep out of his way whenever he's angry is brought forward a century into the future – when he's rational and not speaking broken English, no less – to help rebels overthrow another super-strong, super-healing, super-muscled green guy. (Interesting thing: the name this future ruler chose for himself, the Maestro, is almost an anagram of the Monster, the Hulk himself – or is it themselves? – are so often accused of being.) With detail that rivals Watchmen – check out the market scene at the beginning and the trophy room in part one alone – and storytelling that keeps you on the edge of your seat (and ultimately, how is the Hulk going to beat someone, heck, beat HIMSELF, with a century of experience on him?) check it out!

Now you're the one's who bluffing. You wouldn't put yourself at risk.

I alternate this entry today with dialogue between the Maestro and the Hulk after the latter had his neck snapped by the former and half-thought that if he (the Hulk) shot himself then the Maestro his future self would die too. And I get what the Maestro's minister is saying here; I use his words for today's title. ISBN 0785100296 Last night I met with a friend of mine from Shaklee and we were to meet another couple as well, but as I had not been able to get hold of them for the last two weeks it's entirely possible that they had so much fun on their vacation that our appointment went by the wayside. And I can handle that. Besides, I'll see that couple again in a few weeks and tomorrow morning I have another meeting with a young man – I'm 197, everybody's young to me – and I've also gotten to share this, I've wanted to share this more, because of what I've lost (about fifty pounds) and what I've gained (energy, a smaller frame, confidence I didn't have before). Now to grab the ever-changing WHY …

But I'm not at risk. My existence is assured. You see … I have no recollection of any of these events. When your outlaw pals went back in time and pulled you forward, it created an alternate timeline. Time split off from that moment. ONE time branch is now the events that led to me. Along ANOTHER branch are the events that will now happen to YOU … your own “real future,” as it were. In other words: thanks to your friends, I'm now one possible future for Dr. Bruce Banner, unhampered by you. What happens to you, Hulk, is your own affair.

The history within the history. We all know – okay, I'm working on the presumptions there – that Matthew Perry (the naval commodore, not the actor) let the expedition to Japan in the early 1850s that “opened Japan to trade with the rest of the world” after nearly three isolated centuries. Part of what I wrote my senior research from two decades ago about – I tried to read that and connect it with Manjiro, (ISBN 9780374347925) Emily Arnold McCully's artful retelling of a Japanese boy who got lost on a fishing expedition and was saved by an American ship, not to see his homeland for another nine years and when he DID was able to give the Japanese a heads-up on the Americans and their technology – but like the italicized dialogue today, I got a headache trying to follow it. But you know, the longer I love the more of the things I thought were important fall by the wayside and the things I thought weren't so important come front and center. Perhaps that is as it should be.

You could be lying. Perhaps all of this already did happen to you. Perhaps all the things you're saying now … are things that you remember having already heard, when you were in my position. And you're hoping that what worked once will work again. Or perhaps you sent me back to my own time, but with my memory erased. Perhaps you're not as safe as you think you are. 

That is a hazard with time travel theorizing, David