I hate to be the one to break it to you: You've been chosen for retroactive pre-time non-voluntary employment. In a compromise between relevant ruling parties, to both work to break your spirit and provide a larger typing pool, you are to be sent back to the 1940s or 30s, whichever has greater need.

When you meet that broken down, old old woman at the bar, deflated and rendered treadless by six children and a life of mindless submissive menial labor who looks a little familiar as she drowns herself in the only thing that sooths her spirit, rubbed raw by the friction of an existence without any higher meaning, you'll see the truth. Of course, by then, it'll be too late, trapped by paradox.

After a brief period of acclimation, you marry. His name is Hank. He used to work as a mechanic, but they caught him replacing good parts with used parts, both to resell for profit and to encourage repeat business. Then he went to war, having few other employment options (he was among those who enlisted rather than were drafted). And now (then) he's back, gruff, and works loading dockets at a factory that makes cigarette lighters. You could afford a mink, his cousin works at a farm upstate and could get you a deal, but with the six kids, you don't have a lot of scratch and even if you did you're worried they'd just get their grubby little hands on it and ruin it. Surprisingly, on the upside, though he's a little direct, Hank is surprisingly good in bed and has less of a temper than many of the men he works with. He has a mole on his lower left cheek, which you eventually find a little attractive, as it reminds you of some favored movie star, but you never realize that. You also find his crude sense of humor really funny, though thanks to the processors that dealt with you before your time-relocation, you're not entirely sure why you do. Unlike many of the girls in the typing pool, you live in an actual house, or you do, at least, after marrying Hank (which doesn't take that long, it's an out-of-character whirlwind romance for you both), thanks to the death of his parents and brother a few years before the two of you met.

You're lucky, too. That girl that sits to near you, with the longish hair, she marries a friend of Hanks who tells good jokes, has white teeth, and whose face isn't so asymmetrical you'd notice, but he has a demanding way about him, a rough anger, and though he doesn't drink (his father was an alcoholic and, unlike many children of alcoholics,he angrily chooses not to, though he does smoke), he is profoundly unfaithful and indulges when he can in the small selection of narcotics available. After a few years, he gets in a fight with his supervisor which devolves into fisticuffs, forcing his wife to be the sole money earner (which angers him) as well as refusing to help around the house or pay much mind to the three children they've had by this point. He rarely puts real effort into finding a new job. After a couple of years of this, he is shot, accidentally, while being attacked by a stray dog. A neighbor, aiming for the dog in hopes of helping, missed. The shot hit him in the femoral artery and, though bloodloss was assuaged by a quickthinking mailman who made a makeshift bandage from his jacket, a blood clot reached his brain, causing a massive seizure which overstressed his heart and stopped it, killing him as froth ran down his chin and his eyes bulged red with cracked veins. This leaves poor wife with three children, no husband, a ruined figure (both from childbirth and a slow descent into depressive eating), and a haunted, lost look as she tries to understand how she got to this point in life.