Hey! Hey man! I threw my head to the left. The sound seemed to be coming from the left. –You ok?
-Cllumm occcey.
-Hey! It was Russell. Not Russ. Never Russ. Russell.
-Gai sahhh wa. Wa ou aaa? What the hell was wrong with him? Didn’t he speak english?
-Speak clearly, Bob. You’re pretty drunk. I took a moment to compose myself.
-Iy sah wha u wan?
-A little better. Try it with a few more consonants. He seemed pretty serious. I should make an effort here. Trouble could be afoot. I sat up and used my hands to hold my head, which turned out to be a mistake as the beer I was holding spilled down the side of my head and all over. Damn my kung-fu grip. Either too much sense or not enough to drop the beer when I should.
I finally managed –Whatsa problem?
-We’re OUT Of WEED, man!
From the speed of my ascent from the couch it must have seemed like it had an ejection seat. –Out of WHAT? What’s wrong with the weed? Now he had my full attention. Just like seeing the police behind you on the way home from the bar, some things just sober you the hell up. Adrenaline’s a hell of a thing.
-This is going to require a plan. Where’s Dave? Dave always had pot.
-Dave’s in Mexico, man. Factory tour or something.
-Who else do we know? What about Steve?
-Steve’s dead, man. Oh right, last month. Steve was too dumb to live, too cool to die (in the sense that a man lives on in the memories of others). Steve was a legend. I picked up a random half-full beer bottle and raised it in a toast. –To Steve! Russell and a few others who were around did the same. –To Steve! They yelled. We all took a long pull.
Shit. I threw the bottle in to the corner and held my hand up to my mouth. I spit a cigarette butt out. Hazards of the job.
Russell saw the whole thing. –Damn man, hard to imagine that you’re one of the smartest guys on the planet. Fuck him, the smartest guy. I must’ve killed a few million brain cells tonight alone and I was still the king. A Doctorate in theoretical physics at nineteen and working on another, just for fun. And the only reason it took so long was because I like to take my time. Live, I say. Anyway, that’s why Russell came to me with the problem. I solved problems.
-All right, give me a minute. And show me to the keg. Good old Russell. Always kept tabs on the keg. He actually surprised me this time by pulling a cold bottle from his cargo pocket and handing it to me. Good old Russell. I don’t know what I’d do without him. Probably sober up. –God bless you, buddy.
-Not yet he ain’t. Anyway, you don’t believe in God.
-No, I said I didn’t like him. Of course I believe in him. Too much shit makes too much sense for me not to. Jesus loves me like my parents do, ‘cause they have to. And I always return a favor.
-Right you do, man. So let’s work on that now.
-What?
-Payback. You owe me, so now I’m calling in a favor. We need a plan. Damn right we do. Weed is of the essence. Spice of life. Variety my ass.
-Ok, ok. This kind of situation requires shots. Show me to the bar. And off we went.

-So let’s sum up the problem, I said. One of my favorite exercises. Got to know what the problem is before you can solve it, right? -No one knows anyone with weed?
Heads shook ‘no’ all around.
-Ok, so there is no weed now. So what we need to do is go to before or later. We know there was weed before, so we could go to the past to get weed, but since we don’t have a time machine here and now, and it’ll take a while to work out how to do that, later seems to be the best option. So what we have to do is invent a time machine, score some great future weed (it’ll be regular weed then), and send it back in time to right now. Or at least when I’m done with the plan.
I thought about this for a minute. –Ok, ok, so I’m the self-proclaimed smartest guy on the planet, right?
-Right! They all screamed.
-Right. I agreed. –So what I’ll do is dedicate myself to inventing a time machine, invent it, and send a bag of weed back in time to five minutes from now. I need an accurate time. Somebody call that fucking number.
-Time and temp? Someone said.
-Yes the fucking time and temp! Amateurs.
-Three seventeen….NOW!
-Thank you Russell. I could always count on him. Good man. –Ok, so in three minutes, we’re going to find out if I’m as smart as I think I am. I sat down and had a shot. Then a beer.
-Shit, I said with one minute left. I’ll need the coordinates to the coffee table! How will I know where to send it?
-No problem, no problem. I’ve got GPS in my phone. Good old what’s his name. I didn’t know the guy, but he was about to be my next best friend. And he’d get second hit. After me, of course.
-All right. GPS is accurate to ten meters, so everyone keep your eyes open. Fifteen seconds. Here it comes!
Everyone says –Five, four, three, two, one, NOW!
-Spread out! Find it! Find it! I was on my feet too, tossing the room. We all were.
An hour later and the room was a mess. We’d gone through the place like the fucking police. For nothing. We found nothing. They were all looking at me, disappointed.
-Hey, fuck ‘yall. Time travel ain’t like baking a cake. So I failed, so what? At least we trashed the house, right?

The party pretty much broke up after that. Grumbling and head shaking all the way out. So they hated me. So what? Fuck them.
Russell and I were the only ones left in a few minutes.
-It’s cool, man. Maybe time travel is impossible. I wouldn’t sweat it. He wouldn’t, either. Good old Russell.
-Are we alone? I asked him.
-Yep, the failed plan killed the party. He threw me a beer and gave a toast. –To failure!
-To failure! I agreed. –Unless…
-Unless what?
-Unless I did succeed, and just didn’t want to tell all those fucks.
-What? Did you? Did it work? He looked more curious than hopeful.
-Turn over the table. I pointed to the coffee table in between us. He kicked it hard from underneath and it flipped over.
-Holy shit, Bob. Holy fucking shit.
-Get the pipe, Russell.

Five minutes later and Russell and I were as high as we’d ever been before.
-This is some fucking great weed, man.
-Of course it is. It’s FUTURE WEED, man!
-I totally can’t believe that worked. Do you know what this means?
-Of course I do. I reached in to my pocket and pulled out a letter. –We’re set for life, that’s what it fucking means. Now let’s forget about that for now and smoke a few more bowls.
And we did.