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by K.C. Shaw
Science Fiction, 10 pages.
Originally Published in Triangulations: End of Time anthology, 2007
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I stopped on the way out of Panera to pitch my coffee cup, and almost ran into a skinny blond guy when I turned around. No one had been on the sidewalk when I’d come out of the café. I figured he must have followed me outside.
My first reaction was to jump all over him for standing right behind me, but he had a bewildered look like a lost puppy and I held my tongue.
“Sorry,” he said, and sounded like he meant it. He had a pleasant husky voice and I gave him a closer look. He was dressed kind of retro, with Levis and a close-fitting T-shirt, the kind that’s supposed to show off a guy’s buff chest. He didn’t look too bad in it, even if it was burnt orange with a wide blue stripe. And he had a haircut that made me think of Luke in the first Star Wars movie.
“Um, I’m from the past,” he said. “Maybe you could show me around?”
He looked and sounded so earnest that I busted out laughing. It was the worst pick-up line ever. Or maybe the best, since he’d made me laugh. I’d broken up with my boyfriend Blake four days ago and had been feeling down ever since. It felt good to laugh.
“Yeah?” I said. “You look like some kind of hippie.”
He winced. “Aw, geez, not that far back. I brought a paper.”
He held the newspaper out to me and I took it automatically. It was just a regular paper, except that the main headline read, “Computers offer hope to county” and the date was June 8, 1979.
“Oh, cute. Good job. It even smells real,” I said, but the guy had noticed the newspaper dispenser by the café door and was digging around in his pockets.
I fished two quarters out of my purse and handed them to him. “Who goes time traveling without money?”
“I brought a twenty,” he said. “Just not any change. Thanks.” He got a paper and looked at the front page with an astounded expression. “It really worked,” he said. “Who’s Al Quaeda?”
I laughed again because he’d pronounced it all wrong, like somebody’s name. The guy was good. He’d already gotten a paper out of me. But I had to make a decision to keep him rolling or shut him down and leave.
Too soon after Blake, I decided. I folded the 1979 paper and handed it back to him. “I gotta go. See you around.”
His bewildered look came back. “No, wait—I really am from the past. I don’t know how long I’ll be here. I wasn’t supposed to mess around in the lab at all—I just clean up—but it worked and I’m stuck here. And there might be dangers, you know, that I don’t know anything about. Radiation zones and militia members asking me for my papers, or aliens....”
He sort of petered out, maybe because of the way I was looking at him. “I’m not crazy,” he added. “I really am from the past.”
“Sure you are, honey,” I said.
“No, really!” he said, and his voice cracked like a kid’s. He sounded panicked. “Look—at least tell me where I can find a safe hotel. Within walking distance.”
“Twenty-dollar hotels ain’t safe,” I said, and sighed. Crazy or not, he was cute and definitely non-threatening. He was clutching his newspapers like life preservers, and anyway how can a Luke Skywalker haircut steer you wrong?
“Come on. I can give you a ride somewhere.”
“Thanks,” he said, sounding relieved. He dropped the papers and picked them up again. “What kind of cars are there now? Do they fly?”
I almost laughed again. My mouth sort of twitched. “Just regular cars.”
He gazed around at the parking lot as we walked to my Camry. “Wow. What do they run on?”
“Just gas.”
“Oh. I thought they’d be electric or solar or something by now.” He looked so disappointed that damned if I didn’t catch myself explaining about hybrids. He was sucking me into his crazy.
I unlocked the car and he jumped at the chirp. “Why 2005?” I asked as we got in. “If you’re really from 1979, why not 2009? Or 1999?”
He stopped fighting the shoulder harness and said, “Oh, well, I was going to do 1999 but I figured there might have been a nuclear war so I just dialed past it a few years. 2005 seemed like a good round number—but not too far in the future. I didn’t want to end up killed by aliens or something.” He paused. “I guess that sounds pretty stupid.” He looked out across the tranquil Saturday parking lot, with people walking in and out of Wal-Mart and the summer sky piling up thunderclouds on the horizon.
“Buckle up,” I said, and tapped my finger on the wheel until he figured out how to work the lap belt.
I was silent until we’d pulled out onto the road, wondering why I’d ended up with the guy in my car. I didn’t even know his name. I was about to ask when he yelped, “Gas is only thirteen cents?”
“They don’t have any twos for their sign. Joke’s over, okay? Where do you need to go?”
In reply he unfolded the 1979 paper and looked down at it. “I bought this this morning,” he said. “And I cleaned up in the lab like I do every Saturday and no one was ar -- [End of Preview.]