When Time is Kind

“Excuse me sir, can I borrow a dollar?” The little boy asks the man standing at the counter. The man turns toward the boy and smirks down at him.
“Borrow? You know what borrow means don’t you boy?” The man asks. The boy stands there quietly for a moment, thinking.
“It means that if I give you a dollar, you’ll have to pay be back eventually. How can you do that if I don’t know you?” The man asks. The boy sighs, feeling defeated.
Suddenly the man laughs, throwing his head back and letting roar across the grocery store.
“I’m just kidding young man!” He says. He opens his wallet and pulls out a piece of paper, but its not a dollar. It’s something else.
“What’s this?” The boy asks.
“This is how you are going to pay me back.” He hands the paper to the boy.
It’s a strange sort of paper. The boy runs his fingers along the edge, feeling the grooves cut into the paper. On the front are symbols and numbers that the boy has never seen before.
“Keep that boy. Keep it until the front of the paper changes and do not give it away. Because remember, you are borrowing it. That means someday you’ll have to pay it back.” With that the man walks out of the store.
The little boy looks down at the paper once more before tucking it away in his pocket.

In the years to come, that boy will look in the mirror and see a face. It will be his own face, but it will always look similar to the one he had seen that day at the store. In the years to come that boy will wait, and wait, and wait for the paper to change when it does, that boy will become the richest man alive. So rich in fact that he’ll invent something no one has. He’ll use that invention to visit a young boy, at a grocery store in need of one thing. A dollar.