Absolutely no paradox

At an orderly old men’s club, a casual discussion about a grandson’s working time machine revives a decades-old argument. Ned Brussels remembers the brilliant, reckless Pete LeFranc, who once claimed to have solved the technical problems—and dismissed the familiar paradoxes—only to face one question that science fiction has never answered: if time travel is possible, why has no one come back from the future?

Pete refuses to let the puzzle defeat him. Armed with a machine, a collection of valuable coins, and more confidence than caution, he plans to travel forward and discover what lies beyond his own era. As the club’s robots maintain their quiet routines and an agitated stranger demands to see Ned, the conversation takes on an unsettling edge. This brisk science-fiction mystery blends inventive speculation, dry humor, and mounting suspense as one man sets out to test whether the future is truly waiting to be visited.