It started out like any typical day in suburbia. Percolators perked, toasters toasted, garage doors opened to disgorge cars heading toward the freeway. Everything was beautifully ordinary, until the shadow appeared at the edge of his vision as he sat down to eat breakfast.

Larry Gibbs turned quickly, thinking somebody had silently entered the kitchen behind him, but there was no one there. A chill ran up his back as he looked completely around the room, and then turned his gaze back to his cooling coffee cup. And there it was again, at the very edge of his vision, a gray shape forming out of nothing.

His big black dog pushed through the flap in the kitchen door just then and loped to his side, growled at the shape, which by now had begun to occupy more and more of his vision. Finally it stood there at the end of the table, not quite solid smoke, wavering like heat in the air above the desert on a hot day.

The dog, Boston Blackie, growled one more time, then sat quietly beside Larry at a motion of the specter's hand. The gray smoke had turned to clear glass -- no, crystal water -- still wavering in the air. The vision moved its mouth, but the sound came from deep in the dog's throat.

"I am here to warn you," growled Boston. "Stay home today. Something terrible is about to happen where you work."

"What?" stammered Larry, unfolding his tall body from the chair and standing before the strange being. It was roughly humanoid, but there was otherworldliness about it. The creature expanded to remain larger than the man. "What is going to happen at work today?"

"An asteroid is going to strike your building in approximately an hour. You will be killed if you go."

"How do you know this? And why are you warning me?"

"I am from the future. It is/was/will be my time ship that actually hits the building. You are a very important factor in the future I come from. You help make time travel a reality."

"But, I've never been interested in time travel. I'm not some scientist with lots of math, or some fancy engineer. I'm just a bank teller."

"Yes, but with the information I need, the combination to the vault where you work."

"How will that help me develop time travel?"

"The money will finance the time research, and it would be destroyed anyway, when my ship hits the bank building. Give me the combination and I will retrieve the money..."

"Whoa, this is the most unique scam I ever heard! What you're asking is criminal. I can't give you the combination." But yet, there the creature stood, the time traveler, if it really was a time traveler. That spoke something about the truth of it all. Maybe he shouldn't go to work to day, just to be sure.

Just then the strange being dissolved back into smoke and dissipated once more into the nothingness from which it came. Boston gave a whimper and slunk out the flap to his doghouse in the yard.

Just to be safe, Larry Gibbs stayed home that day. And an hour later, as predicted, the bank was destroyed, along with all the money. But he was alive, and once more suburbia was beautifully normal, and no more shadows ever appeared in his kitchen.