Greg emerged in the grove of orange trees, just as he requested. The sun was high overhead and the air was filled with a muggy-sweet stench from the dark green trees.
He walked out of the orchard and climbed with care over a barbed wire fence running along the side of the road. Before him was a huge parking lot for busses that was speckled with people. Greg crossed the concrete field toward the entrance of the amphitheater and the ticket shack. He was almost to a sprint by the time he reached the window.
His heart thumped as he discovered that the show was not sold out. A single general admission ticket was $33.50. He bought a ticket and paid with two twenties from his wallet. Too dazed by his surroundings, Greg failed to notice his mistake. He additionally didn't notice the security camera pointed at the customer line, capturing the exchange.
The woman inside the booth never noticed the bills that the boy had handed her. When she added another twenty to the cash drawer, the top bill caught her eye. It looked totally out of place. Leana Carter took them slowly from the drawer and examined them side by side. Compared to the one she still held in her hand, they seemed like new version of the denomination, but she had never seen the design before.
Her eyes widened on the date.
They both were marked 2004. "How can this be..." she muttered, "when it's summer 2002." She had seen a poster showing off the new design for the twenty-dollar bills, but they were still being finalized at the mint. In fact, the new bills were not set to be released until October 2003.
The plates used for printing had not yet even been engraved...
At the end of the day, she pointed them out to her manager, who in turn showed them to the bank when he went to deposit the cash.
The bank called a hotline and a pair of men in black suits arrived.
The Secret Service agents took possession of the bills, and they began an investigation. The tapes from the ticket shack were analyzed and photos of Greg were dispersed. But in 2002, Greg was still a toddler and would take over a decade for him to grow into his face. The cold case was packed away, but five years later, a young man was recognized after applying for a passport. Still in the service, the old investigators were brought back in on the case of the future bills. Their suspect was picked up at the address listed on the passport application, an expensive town house in Chicago. Both the agents were perplexed as to why the boy, looking almost the same as in the security footage from five years before, was living alone in the expensively furnished abode.
The agents coaxed a confession after a week of interrogation. All of it, including the exact spot that Greg had been placed in the field, was recorded in the case files. The government kept all this information to itself. The secret existence of time travel spilled by a kid who had stumbled upon some stolen time coins. But this knowledge had ramifications reverberating up through the time line. Programs were created, committees were formed, and policies were put into place. The tiny chip spread to a wide crack. The people at the top would not allow this to occur. Time would not be altered. Paradoxes would not be committed. The timeline would remain un-split.
Everything that would happen to Greg Thompson after the concert, an unauthorized, uneducated, and unsupervised time tourist, was completely unimportant.
The bills in his pocket lead to Greg's undoing and capture. The Keepers would never allow the kind of split in the timeline that he'd inelegantly created. An experienced time traveler, or one that was accompanied by a Supervisor, would have never made such a mistake. And so, the wave caused by his actions was sent traveling up the arrow of time and was quelled before it had a chance to begin.
Greg emerged in the grove of orange trees, just as he requested. The sun was high overhead and the air filled with a muggy-sweet stench from the dark green trees.
The coin landed in his hand and he slipped it in his front pocket. He took one step forward as a looming figure lunged out from behind him.
Greg was wrapped in the iron arms of an Enforcer. He craned his neck to look back at his attacker and was shocked to see green reptile skin and yellow eyes. The Enforcer's head was shaped like that of a velociraptor, but with a less elongated skull. The creature looked down at its quarry with intense, burning eyes.
Greg was about to scream when the reptile-man suddenly froze and his eyes went wide. The previous uncompromising grip turned to jelly and the large creature fell away.
Greg realized he had just been slightly shocked himself. He turned around to face his downed assailant, and found a small, older man standing in a green cloak next to the fallen lizard. Greg watched the man bend down and hit the reptile a second time with a stun gun as he casually looked at a pocket watch.
"The coin," the older man said. He had grey hair and intense dark green eyes. He put his hand on Greg's shoulder and looked around the orchard. "Use the coin, quick! Now!"
Greg followed the command, fumbling for the coin. To him, the simple act of pulling the oversized coin out of his pocket and flipping it felt like brain surgery. He tried not to look at the unconscious monstrosity at his feet.
The man in the green cloak looked intently at his pocket watch as Greg tossed the metal bit.
For the briefest millisecond, a group of four figures appeared before Greg and the unnamed man, just as the device was triggered.