Spencer's life is crumbling around him. In a single weekend he loses his job, his girlfriend, and his apartment. The worst part is, he has no idea how any of it happened. Trying to get away from it all, he instead finds himself confronted with a horrific crime in progress. His intervention leads him to a visit from a strange being who offers him a mysterious gift which has the potential to solve all his problems.
This leads Spencer on an epic adventure through time as he tries to use this newfound power to live his best life and try to find love. Along the way he encounters the best and worst of humanity as he attempts to answer life's most important questions.
Author's Note: This is a novel which I've split into three easily consumable sections. For a bit of context, this novel was written in late 2020. All characters are over eighteen. Enjoy!
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Chapter 15
{ 2005-08-17 }
Spencer came to sitting at the desk from his sophomore year dorm room with his computer science books spread before him. He looked around and groaned at the anachronisms surrounding him. His desk held a laptop computer, which he remembered costing thousands of dollars despite looking horribly clunky to his eyes, and a flip phone. His walls were a bit more timeless, containing Dark Side of the Moon and The Godfather posters.
Spencer heard a dull thumping coming from the wall behind his bed. The dorm room he shared with Mal and two other guys he could not remember, was arranged with a central living space surrounded by four tiny bedrooms. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was fourteen minutes after three. The lack of sunlight outside his window told him it was the middle of the night.
He opened his laptop and groaned once more before cancelling the download of pornographic videos which had been running. He spent a few minutes trying to do some forensic reconstruction of his class schedule. He finally tracked down his school's web page for the registrar, taking a moment to thank his younger self for allowing the browser to remember the password. His first class today was Statistics in a little over five hours. He did not feel tired, despite the early hour. It had been early morning when he had carved up his arm in 2015 after spending several days memorizing stock market data and history from the last decade. Logically he would have expected to be weary in the middle of the night, regardless of how relatively rested his mind was, but then he remembered that the body of a twenty-year-old male was basically a super soldier compared to the mid-thirties body he had had when this adventure began.
Spencer opened up his flip phone and read through his recent text messages. There were the expected messages from his father telling him not to fuck up again this year, the way he had the previous year. He also found a history of messages with Mal which was mostly arranging meetups but also included some uncomfortable pics Mal had taken of coeds, clearly without their knowledge. Next, he was shocked to find a series of message from Molly. His intent had been to come back before their first meeting, but he had clearly misremembered when that had taken place. He briefly considered going back further but reading the messages it was clear that he and Molly had already struck up a friendship. He decided to wait until he could actually meet up with her and only go further back if he found that she was already dating Mal.
He decided to make the best of his time. He got dressed in some comfortable clothes and left his bedroom. He encountered a beautiful young woman wearing nothing but a smile in the kitchen getting some water. She simply said, "Oh...hey Spencer," before heading towards the bedroom next to his.
He mumbled, "I think I'm going to love college."
He grabbed his keys, wallet and phone before leaving their dorm room. He then spent the next few hours just wandering around the campus, refreshing his memory of the layout. He encountered a few other students, all of which fit into the 'still up' rather than 'up early' categories. As the sun began to creep above the horizon, his phone chirped. He saw that it was a message from Molly asking if he had any plans for breakfast. He quickly replied that he did not. Seconds later his phone rang.
He flipped it open and saw that it was Molly calling. He said, "Good morning."
She said, "Look at who's an early riser now. You're going to ruin your slacker reputation. Unless of course you're still up and planning to skip."
"I couldn't sleep so I went for a walk. I'm just heading back to my place to grab a shower."
"You should have called me. I've been up for a while now. We could have hung out."
"Next time I can't sleep, I promise my first thoughts will be of you."
She said, "Don't make promises you can't keep."
"I should be ready in thirty minutes or so," he replied. "How 'bout we meet up in the dining hall?"
When Spencer entered the dining hall twenty-eight minutes later, he immediately heard a voice call his name. He looked for the source and his breath caught in his throat. Molly had always been a beautiful woman, but he had forgotten just how stunning she had been as a college student. She was just under one-hundred-seventy centimeters tall with long, straight brunette hair which she was wearing today in a high single braid. Her face radiated warmth, with large, brown eyes and an easy smile. She had the frame of a dancer with long, lithe legs and that impossible mixture of strength and suppleness which college age females so frequently pull off with ease. Her dancers frame did not, however, extend to her breasts which were rounded D-cups which jiggled alluringly whenever she moved.
Spencer took a seat across from Molly and said, "Fancy meeting you here," as nonchalantly as possible. He was shocked by how nervous he felt all of a sudden. He had known Molly for decades, but now that he was seated across from the astonishingly beautiful twenty-year old version of her, he felt his brain recede back as well. Gone were the decades of being a mature adult male, many of those years spent in reasonably healthy relationships with women who were far more attractive than he deserved. In an instant, all of his confidence and experience seemed to evaporate, leaving only a nervous boy who questioned whether any woman could ever find him attractive, much less one as beautiful as Molly.
"You knew very well I'd be here, ass," she remarked congenially. "What took you so long?"
"I'm sorry if I kept you waiting. I was just getting cleaned up."
Molly reached across the table and laid her hand on his arm before saying, "Spencer...I'm fucking with you. Try to take it easy big guy."
"Right..."
"So, how come you were out walking around so early this morning? Were Josh and that new girlfriend of his bumping uglies all night again?"
"No. I mean, they were, but that's not why I couldn't sleep. At least I don't think it was. I actually ran into...I can't even remember her name. Anyway, I ran into her naked in the kitchen before I headed out."
"What'd she say about you being naked?" Molly asked with a smirk.
This time, Spencer just smiled at her witticism. "She respectfully ignored it."
"But seriously," Molly said eagerly. "Is she hot? Does she shave completely or are we talking 70's porn bush? And what about her tits? Are they real?"
"I'll be honest, I can't really remember."
"Bullshit. You've totally got a high-resolution version of that sight stored up in your spank bank."
He placed his hand over his heart and said, "I swear. I was so caught off guard by it that she was back in the bedroom before I fully realized she was naked."
"Your loss, I guess," Molly remarked as she took another bite of yogurt.
By this point, Spencer had recovered slightly from his initial shock. He quietly remarked, "In any case, she couldn't hold a candle to you."
"Spencer Murphy!" she exclaimed in a stage whisper. "Did you just compliment my looks? I can't believe it." She took her date book from her bag and exaggeratedly scribbled on the page corresponding to the current date. "I'm not forgetting this day. No sir." She returned the book to her bag and said, "I'm feeling lucky today. I'm going to go for two. You up for walking me to class? Or are you all walked out?"
