Chip-tooth watched me closely as if I might try to steal something. Clearly he hadn’t heard of my reputation from the other vendors. I didn’t blame him. Still, I found it frustrating. I was about to give up on his merchandise and go check out some of the Victorian furniture I had noticed two tables back, when my fingers touched a rectangular video game unit. The name Intellivision was printed across the top of it and the majority of the unit was plastered with Star Wars stickers. Two keypad controllers with circular push pads dangled lifelessly from tightly wound cords. Next to it was a pile of game boxes—twenty in all.

Instantly the electric snap of connection flowed up my arm and I fought to keep my poker face in place. I picked up the gaming console, and held it in front of my face as I pretended to examine it, but what I really hoped was that it hid my sudden look of interest. I closed my eyes and the market around me fell away.

In the vision, I was a young male, eleven or twelve years old. I focused quickly for clues to his name or location because if I didn’t figure out who he was or where he lived, it would be impossible to sell this long-lost property back to its original owner, a gambit of mine that’s proved incredibly lucrative over the years, especially with childhood memorabilia like this.

I was in a bedroom and the décor clearly indicated the late seventies or early eighties. From a hook on the back of the bedroom door hung bell-bottomed corduroys and a plaid cowboy shirt complete with pearl white snaps. It was the Farrah Fawcett poster, however, the one every boy in my middle-school class had drooled over, that convinced me of the time period. The Intellivision console was pristine back then and the boy was cutting up bubble gum stickers with Star Wars characters on them. He proceeded to tape the assembled clippings across the face of the console, carefully avoiding the controllers. May the Dork be with you. He then proceeded to add color-coded stickers to the corner of each game box, but I couldn’t make rhyme or reason as to what they meant.