I woke up screaming for what felt like the thousandth time in two years. I was in my bedroom in Mom’s apartment. Mom came to check on me, though there was no rush. After all, it was like crying wolf one too many times. She sat next to me on my bed looking exhausted.

  “Eddy,” she said, “you really should talk to someone about this. It’s been the same for two years now. You’ve said again and again that you can’t—that it won’t make a difference. Well, your own efforts haven’t helped. So—please—try talking to someone. I’ll find one that isn’t for children if that’ll help. Just think about it, ok?”

  “Mmm,” I grunted.

  She shook her head but rubbed my back for a while. When she left I thought about what she’d said. Normally, it would have been her just telling me to do it—that was easy to ignore. The difference now was that she was practically begging me to.

  The problem with going to see someone was both what I had done as well as the truth of what was going on. The former didn’t matter as much—who would believe time travel and magic?—but it was the latter that was the issue. If anyone I talked to let the beans spill, my life could be in danger if the wrong people found out my role in all of this. I couldn’t have that. I’d much rather suffer every night than have that happen.

  As I was set to go back to sleep, I remembered the feature I needed to fix. If I were going to speak with someone, I would need an air-tight contract. They would not be able to speak of what I told them. If I unlocked that feature—that Pandora’s Box—I would need to fix it. For that, I needed to talk to a lawyer. I resolved to do that when I woke up—regardless of whether or not I went through with Mom’s wish.

  When I woke up the next morning, I told Mom of my plan. Together, we found a lawyer who specialized in contracts who had an hour to speak with me. That I was paying him his hourly rate to answer some basic questions made it easy from his perspective.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked Mom.

  “Eddy here had some questions for a project he’s doing for school,” she lied.

  “Ok. What are your questions?”

  “First, what makes a good—fair—contract?” I asked.

  “A contract that is fair to both sides will give something—typically called consideration—the other side wants. Maybe that’s as simple as an agreed upon amount of money for a car or a house. Other times it’s an ongoing thing—like job duties and pay. Contracts will also have provisions for what happens if something goes wrong. It could be where the sides will settle a dispute or how to cancel the contract, that sort of thing.”

  I nodded.

  “And what would make an unfair contract?”

  “One where one side uses hidden knowledge to make a contract that seems fair on the surface, but it heavily weighted to one side. Something like buying land for cheap when you know there’s oil underground and the person you’re buying from doesn’t. That’s not really fair.

  “Then you get into the stuff that’s so not fair it’s actually illegal. Like making a contract while someone is unconscious or otherwise incapacitated and having them sign while in that state. The same goes for threats and coercion—forcing someone to sign a contract while they are fearing for their lives or that of their friends or family.”

  I nodded again.

  We talked for the rest of the hour. I focused on nailing down the specifics of what would make a fair contract system. On the car ride home, I found the features I needed to buy to make it work how it should.

  All told, the seven features made it so that one could only sign a System Contract when they were fully aware. This meant no more messing with Hypnotism or Control Mind or anything like that. Any System Contract signed under duress would be void and unenforcible. Additionally, both participants would fully understand the real value of what they were trading under the contract—translated into a language they could understand. Beyond this, the system would forcefully allow the person to understand how the contract operated in such a way that they could not be tricked. Finally, a system contract could only be signed by two parties that were capable of understanding the contract. No contracts with babies!

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  With that in hand, I was willing to give talking to someone a try. Given the nightly terrors I faced, Mom was able to find someone to talk to me a couple of times a week—and on short notice.

  The office was in a four story glass-encased office building. Mom parked in the lot outside and brought me through the revolving door into the lobby—after I pushed the revolving door around several time, of course. The lobby extended up to the second floor, with the ceiling a long way up. The office was on the fourth floor, which necessitated a short ride inside the most mirrored elevator I’d ever been in. Even the steel parts were polished and reflective. It was so bright in there it felt enlightening. Once out of the elevator, we walked down a wide hallway to where the office was. The waiting room was small—just a single couch across from the window where the receptionist was. Mom checked me in while I sat on the couch, flipping through the boring magazines and kicking my feet.

  After waiting for far too long, a man around Mom’s age came into the room and called my name. Mom and I stood up and followed him to his office. It was smaller that the waiting room, even if the accommodations were the same—just a couch for us and a chair for him. I sat next to Mom on the couch.

  “So,” he addressed Mom, “what’s going on with Eddy that brought you here today?”

  “He’s been having nightmares for a long time. I’ve asked him repeatedly to get help, but he was reluctant until now. I’m not sure what changed, but I’m happy he’ll talk to someone because he won’t tell me anything.”

  “I see. Well, let me talk to him and see what I can do to help. It will be just me and him, so please wait in the lobby, ok?”

  Mom nodded and stood up.

  “Talk to him, Eddy, please. I don’t want to wake up to you screaming anymore, ok?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Once Mom had shut the door, I fished a piece of paper from my pocket. It was a System Contract buying his silence on what I discussed with him. A non-disclosure agreement with more teeth—he would forget everything I told him the moment he tried to write it down or tell anyone else without my permission.

  “I am not great with kids,” said the man—whose name I later learned was Jack, “but I do specialize in helping those with ptsd. Your mother must suspect something to have chosen me—and your having recurring nightmares for years would indicate as much. So, let’s start with the simplest stuff and work our way up. Tell me about yourself.”

  “Before we do that,” I said, “I need to give you this and have you sign it. I can’t say much without it. Once signed, I think you’ll understand why I haven’t told Mom or Dad—or anyone else.”

  Jack took the paper from me and read it over.

  “This looks like a standard NDA, but it’s not quite the same… I feel like I understand what it means even without reading it, which is weird. Supremely weird!”

  “I’ll explain only after it’s signed,” I said. “I know you have to keep my secrets by law, but there are some secrets that need to be kept much more tightly than the law. I haven’t done anything you’d need to report me for, that I promise.”

  At least not this life. That went unsaid, of course. I wasn’t stupid enough to say it without him signing it. If he didn’t, I would find another person who would, or give up. I hadn’t exactly decided yet.

  Jack thought it over before eventually pulling out a pen and signing it. I guessed the thirty thousand I promised in order to keep my secrets—and that I wasn’t asking for anything else—was enough. The experience for the System Contract disappeared as it was completed. Jack looked up at me.

  “It’s a fair deal, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “So, can you tell me now?”

  “I can. You won’t believe me without a demonstration, though… do you have a place I can dump some water or do you have a recent injury?”

  “That’s a no on the water, but I did cut my finger last night while making dinner.”

  He showed me his bandaged finger.

  “Can you take it off? What I’m about to do will make a lot more sense if you can see it.”

  “Are you sure? It won’t look great.”

  “It’s not me who needs to see it,” I said.

  “Alright.”

  He picked at the edge of the bandage until he could peel it off. The cut underneath didn’t look too bad, but I was sure it didn’t feel great. I touched his arm and cast Heal. Even at the base level, it was enough to visibly close the cut on his finger in seconds.

  “Holy shit!” he exclaimed.

  “So that should make what I’m about to talk about a lot easier to understand. As you might have figured out, that was magic. Real, honest to God magic. Though I look like a child, I’m close to retirement age. Time travel and stuff, you know? Anyway—”

  “Slow down,” he said. “You can’t just go from casually mentioning magic and time travel and then moving on like it’s nothing!”

  “Right, so I’ve gone back in time four times now. This is the last time. Magic is coming to our world, and I’ve been trying to prepare humanity for it. That I’m the one doing all of this to save the world is why I had you sign the contract—a magic contract, at that. Imagine if the world knew it was me who created the system or whatever? Some would call me a hero while others would try to kill me for it. I’d rather no one know, if you catch my drift.”

  “Ok. I won’t ask anything more about it unless it’s needed to understand the context.”

  “Thanks. Well, the big thing you’ll need to understand is that every action I’ve done has generated points that I use to build a system of magic to assist humans once magic comes so that the negatives that come with it—like monsters or whatever—aren’t damning. The problem was getting enough of those points. That’s where the time travel comes in and why I had to give it four goes.”

  “I think I understand, but I also don’t.”

  “The important context is the points,” I said. “I need trillions of them to finish the system. After my second go, I only had tens of millions. I had to do some terrible things last time to make up those numbers. That’s what haunts me every time I close my eyes. The only saving grace—I suppose—is that the time travel brought everything back to how it was before I did what I did.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Two things. The first was blowing up a couple of oil tankers in an attempt to cause an ecological disaster. I failed because the magic was much more powerful than I had expected and instead cratered the harbor. The second was so much worse. I created a magical plague that turned the planet into a wasteland. I only did those because I knew the time travel would undo it. I didn’t think about how it would affect me, though.”

  “That is heavy,” Jack said. “So what about it bothers you?”

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