This was it.

Joseph nervously flipped and caught his lucky silver-dollar again and again, not bothering to keep track of what sides it was landing on. This was the culmination of all of his studies. A prodigy, Joseph had spent his years in college (admitted at the age of fifteen, graduated by nineteen) studying advanced engineering towards a singular goal that he'd kept to himself; time travel. He'd been a child of science fiction; growing up on shows like Quantum Leap, Doctor Who and Star Trek. He'd been dreaming of having the power over time in his hands since he could put two coherent thoughts together. The good he could do, not just for himself but for the rest of the world drove an insatiable obsession to which this moment was the culmination. It was do-or-die. Literally, since there was a small chance the machine would explode and atomize the entire basement if he had made any miscalculations.

Well, nothing ventured.

The prototype was a handheld device with a panel of switches and dials, and a titanium ring through which the operator of the machine was to view the past. While theoretically matter could pass through the ring in to the viewed timeline, he was just going to use it as a window for now. The introduction of matter in to the past would come eventually, but it was too risky for now, especially since he was in the basement of his family's house. One small slip up could erase him from existence should he experiment with actual changes to the past. That was all in theory, of course.

Joseph picked up a small tape recorder and set it in his shirt pocket. “Time Window Prototype, test number one. I am currently inputting the code sequence to power up the device.”

With the sequence completely set, Joseph held his breath and flipped the final switch. “Now.” The device began to hum, and vibrated in Joseph's hand. He held it as steadily as he could... at arm's length, at least. He clenched his eyes shut and turned his head away, half expecting to be vaporized in that instant. Instead, a small chime announced that the machine was active, and the vibrating stopped. He peeked one eye open and beheld his tiny window in to... well, the present still. The machine hadn't been tuned to the past yet, but the inside of the ring was glowing a faint blue which, in theory, meant it was working. There was only one way to find out.

“O...Okay, so far so good. It seems that the window is stable when viewing the present time...”

Joseph pondered a good time-frame to go back and observe, something of importance that had happened in his house. While the thought of visiting his previous birthday or perhaps Christmas crossed his mind, it seemed too boring to visit moments he'd already witnessed. Perhaps something before he was born. He could go back and witness his own conception. Then again, the idea of watching his parents screw each-other wasn't wholly appealing. Plus as he recalled, his parents had described the event as thoroughly frustrating. His father had arrived home late and by then the two had been trying for nearly a year. The day before that, then. A mundane moment in time, but good enough for him to test the device.

“I will now set the window back exactly nineteen years, eleven months, and four days.” Joseph clutched his silver-dollar and punched in the date. The image through the center of the ring “fizzled” briefly, as if changing the channel on a television, changing to complete darkness. It would be dark of course. Nobody was in the basement at the time. He opened the basement door and ascended the stairs in to the kitchen. Through the device, he saw his view pass safely through the matter of the door. Then, there was light. The wallpaper was different. Much tackier. He entered the kitchen and... there was his father, sitting at the table reading the funnies. The most immediate difference was the fact that his father still had hair. Joseph leaned in, checking the date on the front of the paper.

It worked.

The reality of it was just hitting him now. Habitually he started fiddling with his silver-dollar once more, tossing and catching it without paying it much mind. “Success... Success! I-I-uh... ahem. The window is still stable when viewing the past... Sound doesn't seem to pass through, but I'm seeing everything clearly.” He felt like taking a leap through the air.

“I think we can call this experiment a complete success! Okay!... Okay, next I-ah!” He'd been paying so much attention to the window that he'd neglected to remember how different the furniture was arranged in his time, stumbling against a chair. His lucky coin bounced off of his knuckle and flew cleanly through the time window in a feat that Joseph couldn't repeat even if he tried. The coin fell to the floor in the past, and Joseph's father lifted his attention from the newspaper. Panicking, Joseph immediately shut the window off.

***

Mark Deloria was staring blankly at the paper in his hands. Instead of reading up on the latest news or enjoying the Sunday strip, his mind was a million miles away. Things weren't bad for him and Jeanne. They had a nice house, well-paying jobs as well as a young and passionate marriage. There was a small cloud that hovered over their little slice of paradise, though. For eight months they'd been trying again and again to conceive a child with no results. Sex with Jeanne had become nearly mechanical, and was always followed with the news that, no, she was not pregnant. She had tested herself the night before, and once again it had come up negative. She was so dejected, and that sadness had reflected in Mark. The two were beginning to worry that something was wrong with one of them.

His ruminations were interrupted by the sudden patter of something metal clanking against the tiled floor of the kitchen. He looked up from his paper to see a coin laying in the middle of the floor. He placed his paper on the table and walked over to the coin to pick it up. It was a silver-dollar. It was worn, despite apparently being from 1996, the current year. Had it fallen off of the table? Strange... but fortunate enough. He shrugged and pocketed the coin without much thought.  Who knew? Maybe it was lucky.

***

Joseph flayed as his mind reeled between two time-lines. Memories were beginning to pour in to his mind that weren't supposed to be, even though they had always been. He was Joseph DeLoria. She was Lisa DeLoria. Pins and needles crawled over every inch of her skin, but there was no pain. He cried out as his body twisted and rippled while the universe adjusted around him. She looked down at her hands in horror as they changed. They rippled and wavered like he was watching them through desert heat. Her fingers became slender. The hair along his forearms vanished in whisps. Vertigo struck her as the world around her grew larger from her perspective. His body crushed downward, reducing him from an exceptionally tall young man to petite even for a young woman.

She coughed and fell to her knees. Lungs. Heart. Bones. Womb. Her insides were rearranging themselves to fit the new timeline. Still, there was no pain. Locks of growing hair fell in front of his eyes as he leaned back on to his legs and took in a gasp of air. A soft groan confirmed that her voice had already changed. It was no longer the low baritone it had always been, but was now a the soft soprano it had always been. A shift in his weight made him teeter again as his body rapidly seemed to go through a pseudo puberty, losing its androgyny in favor of feminine curves. Her hips pushed outward and her behind filled out, stretching the fabric of her jeans for but a moment until they too adjusted to the new time-line. She pulled her shirt up just in time to watch as her nipples puffed forward, pushed steadily by growing mounds of soft, warm flesh. They were breasts. Her breasts to be exact, and not a pair to shake a stick at either. While she was never one to brag in public about their size, she had always taken a small amount of pride in just how well she filled out a bra, just like he'd taken a bit of pride in the size of-

As if it were mocking him, the new time-line had decided to save his sex for last. Already he could feel the inches slowly shaving off of his groin. In a panic she unzipped her jeans and stretched the waistband of her panties open to watch as her penis atrophied. She winced as her left testicle was pulled up in to her pelvis, followed by the right, leaving an empty sack of skin that slowly tightened up against her until it was smooth, barring a slit running right down the middle. Her once-proud cock continued to shrink and shrivel. What remained of the organ slithered up under her newly formed clitoral hood, completing her new, feminine ensemble.

And that was it.

Lisa steadied herself against the wall as she slowly stood up. Her mind was still reeling from what had just happened, and the memories ping-ponging back and forth as she wrestled with which one was real. She could remember... activating the Time-Window and accidentally dropping her lucky coin through it... The lucky coin must have been the same one her Dad had told her about; the coin that paid for his bus ride home after the car broke down that night she was conceived. It was a stable time-loop. It made sense. But then why was her mind wrestled between two different time-lines. She could remember Joseph. She was Joseph. But at the same time, she was Lisa. Her memories of the new timeline were a bit fuzzy, but they were there.

She was certain of only one thing. Whoever she really was, something had gone horribly wrong.