Ernest dusted off the time machine, placing it front and center on the folding table. It was more valuable than his old Nordic track, and his vintage Wutang Vinyl and thus, deserved this place of honor. As much as he loathed to admit it, there was a major difference between these things.

The time machine actually worked.

Wutang was well-kept but it would never have been described as lightly used. It crackled on track 10, Protect Your Neck. He’d listened to this track over a thousand times at least. The Nordic track, while also in fairly good shape, had a button that often jammed when trying to shift speeds. Ernest would be able to explain to its new owner that it just needed a strong jab, but it wouldn’t fetch the price he wanted.

So, he’d placed the time machine on the front table, unlabeled. He’d gone back and forth about it but had decided that a time machine wasn’t something you labeled—it deserved a description greater than what the tags he’d purchased from The Dollar Tree would allow.

It had been decades since he’d invented it, and it was smaller than he’d remembered. It was a model he was proud of—elegant but modern-enough. It looked like a watch if you didn’t linger too long on it. It was bronze, had several knobs, and made a whirring noise when turned on. Standard was its operating interface. He’d been happy with it at the time, but considering it remained the only working time machine he was aware of, he was all the prouder now.

He picked it up. It was heavy in his hand—much heavier than its size would suggest. He was careful not to jimmy any of the side knobs. He knew the safety was on, but he didn’t want to risk anything.

Time travel didn’t work like in the movies. You could jump in time, but you left your present body to join with your future or past self. Time was not linear as some suggested and most took for granted. When Ernest had stumbled on this truth, he had been able to create the machine he held now. His first trip he’d joined with his mind a month in the future. He’d reveled in telling his wife the presidential candidate that had won as well as the new flavor of wing at their favorite wing place (Jalapeño Onion). He’d been nervous about the return, but it had gone smoothly this day.

“That’s amazing babe,” his wife, Belle, had said to him through a teary-eyed embrace, “I’m glad you made it back safe to me!”

“Of course,” Ernest said, “I would always come back to you!”

“I was just nervous,” said Belle, “I mean, God forbid you went into the future too far and you’d had an accident. How would it work trying to enter beyond your own life span? If you were dead, could you come back safe? Oh honey, I couldn’t take it.”

She continued to weep but Ernest was lost in thought. Her words held weight, as she was a brilliant scientist in her own right. Ernest’s anxiety was hard at work.

From that moment on, Ernest refused to go further than thirty minutes into the future. It was the only amount of time he could trust that he’d be alive on the either end with any sense of certainty. And even this had more variables than he cared for. Stroke, car crash, meteor falling from the sky?

He’d dialed this down to fifteen minutes, and eventually five.

At some point, he recognized this could hardly be considered time travel at all.

Ernest retired the time machine then. That was over thirty years ago.

Ernest sat now in a folding lawn chair, watching station wagons pull up slowly, the elderly clientele of garage sales slowly mulling out. His feet were propped up, and he sipped his coffee as he waited. He’d positioned himself next to his time machine, the only artifact of his past he felt indebted to. He felt less like a shop owner and more a boss preparing to interview a new assistant.

Ernest hoped the new owner of the time machine was bold. He hoped they were an adventurer.

More than anything though, he hoped they could afford the future, because, for him, the present had always been too steep a price.