A peculiar man repeatedly delays a small-town lawyer from taking what seems to be a most important phone call.
It falls our task to correct untoward trends in history, eliminating unhappy catastrophe.

Variants

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  1. “Stolen Moments” by Brad Strickland, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 1983.
  2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . written by Brad Strickland