“Oh I could have a lot of fun with this,” thought Pem.

The boy would use a number of names, depending on whom he visited, and how he felt at the time about choices of names. One day he would grow up and use his current choice of names to introduce himself to Admiral Nelson of the Seaview. In the latter half of the 20th Century, he would use his power of tampering with time, and use it repeatedly to toy with the Admiral and indirectly with his men. At this point, the time tampering Pem was just a boy. He had travelled around in the time stream and learned that many legends thought to be mere children’s literature had turned out to be well hidden historical facts. The key point in time was a period when places like Wonderland, Neverland, Brobdingnag and other similar realms had been found, and where giantesses had been as real as the woman next door.

It had all started with Willie Tinkerer and his Wonder Beans. Centuries before the Seaview adventures that Pem would have as an adult, Willie Tinkerer had invented beans that would enlarge the growth of various things. Pem understood the science better than Willie himself. Everyone had assumed that Willie Tinkerer’s beans themselves had grown into a beanstalk. In fact, they had dramatically increased the growth potential, and speed of growth, of existing plant roots in the field outside Jack’s house. They could just as easily do the same thing to something else, thought Pem. He knew that he had studied the current timeline enough. To him, it was like a storybook that he had read to the point of boredom. He wanted time to construct a new story for him to observe and enjoy. To that end, he would make time ripple out in a butterfly effect, by changing one crucial event. Once the time ripple effect started, many other apparently unconnected events would be altered or replaced as well. The story would begin anew.

Pem took himself back to the moment when Willie Tinkerer began selling things in the market place, only hours before Jack would arrive with his mother’s last cow to sell in exchange for the beans. Pem had acquired money in the currencies of all times and places on earth. It was not a fortune, but enough to meet small needs whenever he was in a particular time period. He went to Willie Tinkerer and bought his beans.

“A buyer who believes in the value of the unknown at last,” thought Willie, “I’ll have to make some more soon. I don’t have much more to sell today. I might have to leave the market early.”

Having purchased the beans, Pem decided to simply give them to a boy who had been of no consequence to the previous timeline, but who would play a crucial role in the new one. The next day, he met the young boy, when the lad was on his way to school.