[NewJerseyJoe]

About the three words...

• "New York City" -- I don't think these words would haunt the author for months, even more so than the foreknowledge of his grandsons' executions
  
  
• "phobos, kerdos, doxa" -- again, wouldn't keep him up at night. Also, the author wrote that "three words I will not share here in this piece," and those three words obviously were shared
  
  
• "The 3 words are RIGHT IN THE STORY!!!!!" also "The names of three of his grandchildren" also "War on Terror" -- again: "three words I will not share here in this piece"

FReeper antiamericans mentions the part about Franklin Roosevelt. I wonder if the three words are supposed to be "Remember Pearl Harbor" -- by which the time traveller, using a phrase already familiar to those of the 20th century, is saying "DON'T get caught unaware again."

[Junior_G]

I think the author hasn't come up with the three words yet, but is reading our responses in the hopes that we come up with something.

[BenLurkin]

It really is a clever ending to a well written short story.

It immediately brought to mind the end of the first (and vastly superior) "Time Machine" motion picture. That movie ended with two minor characters discovering that the Time Traveller had returned to the Eloi with three books from his study.

They don't know which three books and the movie ends with one character's question echoing in the filgoer's minds "Only ... which three books would YOU take?"

[shield]

'Remember the Alamo' 'Remember Pearl Harbor'