The process of shrinking and time travelling also duplicated the backpack, but completely shorted out its circuits. The reduced time travelling backpacks would never work again, for any of the Ryans lost in time.

Ryan#1 arrived in the year when Sandra Corlani was 25, just as he planned to. He had no knowledge of how far in the future from that year each of the other Ryans had ended up. Ellie Blish had shrunken him from behind. So he had no idea that she had caused his mishap with a shrinking device. As he had crossed the time period affected by the Ring of Reversal, he would have shrunken anyway, without her interference. However, the combined effect of both a time machine and a shrinking device had caused him to fracture into several Ryans, dispersed in time.

Ryan#1 was sure that the younger Sandra Corlani would be the only person who might be able to solve the conundrum and help him to be reunited with his other selves at his full size. He had arrived at night. He walked through the school grounds, until he came upon a very reassuring sight. Sandra Corlani was seated on a bench in the outer gardens, wearing a long dark green coat, buttoned like a dress, with a pink shirt underneath. The top of the shirt was showing above the V shaped joining of the coat.

“Sandra!” he called out.

She stood up, walked over and looked down at him.

“Who are you?”

“I’m a student of yours, 32 years into your future. You taught a time travel class. I fell in love with you, finished the course, went out on dates with you, and you asked me to come back to meet this version of you. However, something went wrong with the time travelling process. It split me into many tiny versions of myself. The others are scattered over the next 32 years of time. I think you’re the only person who could help me undo that effect.”

“To me, time travel is only a hypothetical concept. I must have started working on it at some point in the future, but I don’t even know where to start now, let alone how to solve whatever went wrong with it.”

“Then I guess I’m stuck here at this size, but it wouldn’t matter if I’m with you.”

“You’re sweet,” she said, and picked him up and took him home.

She took off the coat and kissed him several times, and then lay down and let him snuggle against her cheek and her neck.

The next morning, a Saturday in this time, she put on a tracksuit and parka and went for a walk to the school grounds and then set him down to watch her taking a jog around the sports oval. She looked incredibly athletic, running with her major size difference, until she ran over to where he was, picked him up and pressed her lips to his face again. Then he saw and felt her tongue sliding across her lower lip and his face. It was the most amazing experience of his life.