Windman

This story is a sequel to Windboy.

I tried to live a normal life. I really did. But when you've time-hopped with a wind wizard to the middle ages and back, what can life possibly give you as an encore?

I dove into time-warp hurricane physics with a zeal I didn't know I posessed. A year earlier, I would never have believed I could've made that much progress. UCLA's physics department liked my work so much, they agreed to take me on as a grad student for free if I accepted a junior faculty position. Of course, I accepted. I met my wife there soon after.

And three years later, she divorced me. My obsession with Windboy eventually drove everyone away. She even accused me of making the whole episode up.

Stuff I intend to have happen in this story:

• By 1973, Jason is the world's foremost expert on time-warp hurricanes and time-warp tornadoes. He'll never get a Nobel prize for it, though; the physics prize went to the two physicists credited with discovering time-warp tornadoes in the 1960s. In 1972, scandal rocked the world when a time-warp tornado formed on May 6th right before the Kentucky Derby, and the name of the winning horse (Riva Ridge) was sent back to observers before the race had been run. Now, any attempt to send something back in time through a time-warp tornado must be cleared ahead of time and carefully monitored to prevent use of any information gained prior to the tornado's dissipation.
• Spending years working out Windboy's temporal physics, Jason discovers that Windboy's regular every-17-days time resets do not all create new timelines. A few of them could, in theory, intercept other timelines that had "previously" been created by his other time trips.
• He deduces that this was the real reason why the time-warp hurricane in 1127 veered off from its original course. It wasn't the butterfly effect of Windboy bringing Jason with him. It was the butterfly effect from one of Windboy's visits to a previous time-warp hurricane (the one in 808 A.D., perhaps), because in this instance, that specific 1127 timeline hadn't reset and was in fact a continuation of the earlier disrupted timeline.
• Jason discovers how Windboy must've gotten his powers. When he plugs these facts into his physics equations for time-warp hurricanes, he also figures out why he resets when he's in such a hurricane and the hurricane ends.
• In so doing, he stumbles a way to break Windboy's cycle. But it's not something Windboy could figure out on his own. He would need to find Windboy again and tell him the details.
• He decides to use a time-warp tornado to travel forward in time, to the Time-Warp Hurricane of 2534. He figures this is the most likely time for Windboy to revisit. He hopes that one of his many resets will result in him appearing in his timeline, in that hurricane.
• In Jason's timeline, would Windboy even be born? Would little 5-year-old Windboy even be near the hurricane?
• If Jason prevents 5-year-old Windboy from entering the hurricane, there would be no time paradox. His timeline split off from Windboy's original timeline the moment 10-year-old Windboy showed up in 1967.
• He beefs up his old folding wooden hang glider, then joins a group of time-warp-tornado-hunting physicists. When they encounter such a tornado, much to the others' alarm, Jason rushes headlong toward it, carrying his glider with him. "What are you doing?!" one of them shouts after him. He replies, "Saving Windboy!"
• The time-warp tornado throws Jason forward to just a couple days before the hurricane of 2534. He hopes his hang glider might help Windboy recognize him.
• Jason spends those precious couple of days searching for 5-year-old Windboy. He finds him just in the nick of time, and convinces him not to get near the hurricane, despite the wind from the hurricane calling to him.
• A few minutes later, much to Jason's delight, Windboy emerges from the hurricane in his super-hero suit. Only he's not a boy any more. He's grown into a 28-year-old man, and now goes by the name Windman.
• Windman is overjoyed to see "this Jason" again. It's the first time he's met any friends he made in a previous reset. He's deeply touched that Jason would sacrifice his life in the 20th century, for a chance to reunite with him in the 26th.
• Jason tells him it's possible for him to break the cycle, and to survive the end of this time-warp hurricane. But to do so ... he'll have to give up the wind. The wind wasn't being completely honest with him when it told him that, if he's outside a time-warp hurricane when it ends, he will cease to exist. He will only cease to exist to the wind. The wind didn't want to lose the only companion it had.
• Windman fights it, but in the end, he realizes it's his only chance for a life.
• Windman takes Jason on a hang-glider flight one last time, for old time's sake.
• As the time-warp hurricane nears its end, the wind makes a low moan, as though it's begging Windman to follow it into the next reset.
• 5-year-old Windboy can hear this low, begging moan too. They're talking to the same wind. And this wind also tells the young Windboy that he, too, will be cut off from it if he doesn't enter the time-warp hurricane. Now Windman has to fight not only his own urge to continue the only life he's ever known, he also has to keep Windboy from making the same mistake.
• When the hurricane dissipates, Windman can no longer hear or command the wind. But lo! He didn't lose the ability to talk to THE wind, he only lost the ability to talk to THAT wind. There is a new wind, a baby wind, that he can hear and talk to like the first time he spoke to the wind as a baby.
• Little 5-year-old Windboy can talk to this new wind, too. The memory of his first conversations with the wind are fresher in his mind than they are in Windman's, for obvious reasons.
• And they lived happily ever after.

I hope you've enjoyed reading Windman as much as I've enjoyed writing it.

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