It was his own.
So when Arthur saw the Exergear X10 Cross Trainer gathering dust in the back of the big-box store’s clearance aisle, he didn’t see exercise equipment. He saw a bridge.
At page 18, he stopped. There was a margin note he didn’t remember writing: Exergear X10 Cross Trainer Manual BETTER
He reached for his phone.
“You remember.”
“I know,” Arthur said. “I wrote it.”
Liam answered on the third ring. “Dad?” It was his own
He bought it for forty dollars.
Liam laughed. “Deal.”
Arthur Pendelton was seventy-three, retired, and profoundly tired. Not of life, exactly, but of the slow, humiliating retreat from it. His knees ached, his doctor had used the word “pre-diabetic” three times in one sentence, and his son, Liam, had stopped returning his calls.
By the time Liam arrived, the X10 stood fully assembled in the living room—a gleaming, ridiculous monument to obsolete engineering. The console blinked “READY.” At page 18, he stopped