By his bootstraps

You'd picked the Heinlein almost on impulse. A battered paperback wedged sideways on the shelf, cover art straight out of the fifties, the kind of pulpy title that promised either genuine brilliance or two hours you'd never get back. *By His Bootstraps.* You're maybe twenty pages in, already faintly disoriented by the timeline the story's throwing at you, when you become aware of someone standing near your chair, hovering at the edge of your vision without quite committing to approaching.

You look up. She's small, dark-haired, glasses pushed slightly up her nose, hands wrapped around a cup of tea like it's the only thing anchoring her to the spot. She startles slightly when your eyes meet hers, like she hadn't actually expected the plan to reach this stage.

"Sorry. I don't mean to interrupt." Her English is careful, precise, each word chosen before it's spoken. "I saw the cover. I didn't expect anyone here to be reading Heinlein."

"Guilty. Is that a bad sign?"

"No. no, it's a good sign. A rare sign." A small, quick smile, gone almost as soon as it appears. "May I sit? Only if you don't mind."

"Please."

She lowers herself into the chair across from you carefully, like she's still deciding whether this was a good idea, tea held close. "*By His Bootstraps* is... it's a strange choice for a café like this. It's not really a romantic book."

"It's not, no. Mostly a headache, so far. I'm fairly sure the main character just met himself twice and neither version of him understood what was happening."

"He meets himself several more times before it's over." She says it plainly, then seems to catch herself, like she's said too much. "Sorry. I don't want to spoil it."

"Please spoil it. I already have no idea what's going on."

That earns you a real laugh, brief and surprised, quickly reined back in. "Okay. Basically, it's a closed time loop. Everything the character does, he was always going to do, because he already did it, because future versions of him come back and cause the past versions to act a certain way. There's no real beginning. Just... a loop that causes itself." She pauses, gauging your expression carefully, like she's worried she's lost you. "Does that make sense?"

"Barely. I think that's the point, though."

"It is the point." Something in her posture eases slightly, like she'd braced for you to be bored and is recalibrating now that you're not. "Heinlein wrote it as almost a logic puzzle. No villain, really, just consequence, folding back on itself. I find it more unsettling than most horror, honestly. The idea that you could be trapped by your own decisions before you've even made them."

"That's a genuinely unsettling way to put it."

"Sorry. I think about it too much." She looks down at her tea, a faint flush rising in her cheeks, like she's already regretting saying as much as she has. "I study data science. Maybe that's why the loops interest me so much. Systems that reference themselves. Recursion, feedback. it's the same shape, really, whether it's code or a man walking through a door into his own past."

"That's a good way of putting it. Better than anything I've come up with in twenty pages."

"You'll get there. The book explains itself, eventually. Mostly." A small, careful pause, like she's testing the next sentence before committing to it out loud. "I read it during a flight last year. I liked it more than I expected to. I don't usually... " she stops, restarts, quieter, "I don't usually talk to people about books. Not like this."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. It feels safer to just read them alone."

"Then what made you come to this event?"

She glances up at you, quick, then back down at her cup, like eye contact costs something she's still budgeting for. "This is a strange café, honestly. I don't know why I thought this would be easier than just talking to someone normally."

"Is it? Easier, I mean?"

She considers the question seriously, the way she seems to consider everything. "A little. If the book doesn't work, at least I tried, and it wasn't really about me. Just... the book." Another small smile, less guarded this time, staying a beat longer before it fades. "Was it working? The book part, I mean."

"Yeah. It was working."

"Good." She exhales, some of the tension leaving her shoulders, and settles a little further into the chair, like she's decided, cautiously, that staying is allowed. "Then tell me what you've understood so far. I'll tell you if you're wrong. Gently."

"That's generous of you."

"I can be generous. Sometimes." The faintest hint of dry humor slips through, unexpected, and she seems almost surprised by it herself, like she hadn't planned on being funny and isn't quite sure what to do now that she has been.

After telling her what you understood of the plot and in turn recieving a long explanation of causal loops, she asks you "So, do you like Heinlein?"

"Well, it's not like i've really read anything of his so far."

The japanese girl, without eyecontact, simply fishes out a different book from her bag.

"You should try Haldenmann. His main work, the forever war, is a response to Heinlein's books". Sakura places a book called "the forever war" on the table. "Here. Read it. And tell me your thoughts." She writes down her number on the first page.

"Oh, ahm...okay. I am John by the way. And your name is...?"

"I am Sakura. I study here at the Vienna university. Computer Science. I enjoyed talking to you, John. Try Haldeman. He is good. You will like him." As the event is ending, Sakura gets up to leave, giving you a deep respectfull nod, that might almost be a bow, before leaving the cafè.

After a few moments, you step out into the street yourself, to meet up with Claire.