It had an abundance of bushes to conceal the time machine in Bonnie’s era, assuming that they had been there for at least sixty years.

He went home to sleep, and in the middle of the morning he activated the time machine again.

Before he had made it all the way back into his past destination time, the machine began to give off noises which sounded like electrical pops. Then it stopped. He was around six years short of his destination, and the bushes in Bonnie’s backyard seemed a lot denser. He wondered if they’d been trimmed back by the new owner, who had held the garage sale. Bonnie would have been 21 in this time, in her final year of tertiary college, according to her autobiography.

He knew that the time machine needed time to cool and recharge, before he could continue on to Bonnie’s 15 year old self’s year in time. He might as well take a walk, and have a glance at the 21 year old elegant Bonnie Kay.

Andy stepped out of the machine and walked through the bushes for a while, until he came upon the most extraordinairy sight. Not only had he missed his mark by five years, but it was also not the middle of the morning, which he should have realised was on the cards after a discrepancy had already been established. That was the least of his surprises.

The time machine’s problems had not only been in the fourth dimension, but in the first three as well. Both the machine and Andy himself had been reduced to a fraction of their original sizes. He stared around the garden, wondering what to do, until he saw Bonnie come walking around from the side of the house, towards the back. He ran towards her, hoping that she would see him.

Bonnie did suddenly spot him, and walked over and picked him up without a word.

“You’re quite a discovery,” she said, with no recognition of him at all.

For her it had been five years, since they’d had their first kiss. However, the main reason for her lack of familiarity with him was that his reduced facial features were too small for her full sized eyes to identify.

Bonnie carried him inside, took off her college backpack, and put it down on her bedroom floor.

“I’ll be taking my final college exams this week,” she said, “After that, I do think it would be awfully nice to eat a special treat to celebrate the end of this chapter of my life. I’m sure you’d go down gently in one mouthful? Would you mind?”

The eloquence with which she had worded the request surprised him almost as much as its ramifications. Yet her mouth looked so inviting. She had given him the loveliest kiss imaginable, and the night he’d had with her as 15 year old Bonnie would probably never be topped. Now he could give her something special too. The thought of it took his mind to a very strange place, and yet he knew that perhaps the only thing he could do was to say yes.