Ted & Me by Dan Gutman Page A

“Look, I swear, I’m telling you the truth.”
    â€œY’know, I thought something was strange about you,” Ted told me. “Those sneakers you’re wearing. Pretty snazzy. I’ve never seen anything like ’em.”
    â€œThey’re…new.”
    Ted leaned back against the wall again, staring at me and trying to wrap his brain around what I had just told him.
    â€œSo people in the future can travel through time,” he said, shaking his head.
    â€œNo,” I replied. “Not all of them. Just me.”
    â€œI don’t get it,” Ted said. “You traveled to a different century just to convince me to play today? If you already knew I was going to hit .406, you didn’t need to talk me into it. I would have played and hit .406 no matter what you did.”
    â€œYou’re right,” I said, lowering my voice in case anyone was still around. “That’s not why I came to see you. I’m here for another reason. It’s about the war.”
    Ted looked at me blankly. It was almost like he wasn’t sure what war I was talking about.
    â€œI try not to read the papers too much,” he said. “It’s bad for my eyes.”
    â€œY’know the war that’s going on in Europe?” I said. “It’s going to become a big deal here too.”
    â€œThose Europeans can have their stupid war,” Ted said. “It’s none of our business. I say, let ’em fight among themselves.”
    â€œIt’s going to spread,” I told him. “There’s going to be an attack on Pearl Harbor.”
    â€œPearl what ?”
    He had never even heard of it. And he wasn’t a dumb man. It occurred to me that most Americans probably never heard of Pearl Harbor until the day it was attacked.
    â€œIt’s a big naval base, in Hawaii,” I told him. “Japan is going to launch a surprise attack. Here, seefor yourself.”
    I pulled out the other article I had brought along, the one Agent Pluto had given me.
    â€œJapan?” Ted said, surprised. “I thought the war was between the British and the Germans.”

    â€œIt’s going to become a world war,” I told him. “ Everybody’s going to be involved.”
    â€œWe already had a world war,” Ted said as if he still didn’t quite believe me. “They said it was the war to end all wars.”
    â€œThey were wrong,” I told him. “There’s going to be another one.”
    Ted shook his head with disgust. I knew World War I ended in 1918 and calculated in my head that it was just 23 years earlier—the same year Ted was born.
    â€œThis attack on Hawaii,” he said, “how did they pull it off?”
    â€œIt’s going to be a total surprise,” I told him. “Sneak attack. They’re going to sink a good part of the navy. More than 2,000 American soldiers are going to die in two hours. The United States is going to declare war on Japan the next day, and we’ll be in the middle of World War II.”
    Ted thought about it for a minute.
    â€œWell, if you really come from the future,” he finally said, “then you must be able to answer this question. Who’s gonna win the war?”
    I wasn’t sure if I should tell him or not. That wasn’t part of my mission. I remembered what my mother had said about stepping on a twig in the past and causing a chain reaction disaster. But if I didn’t answer Ted’s question, he might think I was some kind of a fraud and he wouldn’t help me at all.
    â€œWe’re going to win the war,” I revealed. “But a lot of people on both sides are going to die for it. Millions of people. We’re going to drop an atomic bomb on Japan.”
    â€œAtomic bomb?”
    â€œIt’s a new kind of weapon,” I told him. “It canwipe out a whole city in one blast. It’s going to change the