Skips (Transient)

[talonkarrde]

I am homeless.

If you saw me on the streets, you’d call me a bum, a hobo. You’ve probably kicked people like me aside many times, coming out of your theatre shows and classy dinners. If you were one of the politically-correct academics, you might refer to me as one of the wandering poor, as if we goddamn wanted to be wandering.

But the next time someone like me asks you for some money…spare a bit, please? It isn’t because I think society’s fucked me over, or because I’m lazy and can’t get my own job, or whatever else the sociologists blame ‘the homeless problem’ on – it’s because…well, it's a long story.

Two weeks ago, I went to sleep in my apartment around eleven p.m.. I had a nice loft in Soho, decorated with the post-modernist stuff that’s all the rage.  I remember the TV broadcasting the nanotechnology trial they were doing with Martin whoever, and Malia Obama was talking about the Islamic Caliphate. The day was…Tuesday, July 31st, 2048.

I woke up in what historians would call the Edo period of Japan…in the middle of a goddamn forest, naked. It wasn’t our Japan though, unless they had guns in the 1700s, before contact with the West. I’m sure the other-dimension string-theory-people will have some fun with that; but my problems were more immediate – I was white in a land where there shouldn’t be any, and the limit of my Japanese was two years in high school. I almost got killed on sight, a couple times over, but with some luck, passed myself off as a ronin that had experience with the new weapons, called myself Kisaru. Started to establish myself in that life…and then skipped again, after a month, on April 7th, 1705.

Next jump was farther back, somewhere around 1000, and ended up taking part in a siege of Balansiya, as they called it – it was that, or be hung for being a heathen savage. I wanted to die by then; I charged the city lines like a berserker…but fate wouldn’t have it. We swept the city, and I even got honors for fighting so well. Can you believe that? They said they were going to give me ‘tierra’ …and I just laughed.

The next jump was only a week later, and sent me to the beginning of the third millennium. Being naked on the streets of Manhattan when everyone’s celebrating or fearing the end of the world isn’t so bad…what with the alcohol and the girls being in a celebratory mood…and that kind of a celebration only happens once a millennium. If anything at all good has happened, it was that.

The last five jumps have been every day, when I sleep. I’ve tried not sleeping…but sooner or later I have to, and frankly, I’m getting to the end of my rope.  I want to jump to the future and talk to a scientist, see if they can help me – it has to happen sooner or later, right? I just hope it's not  like skipping a stone across the water - I don't want to know what happens when the stone sinks.

So now that you’ve heard my story, won’t you please spare some change?

Comments

[northern_magic]

Quantum leap?

[talon.livejournal.com]

Good question.

[valorgigo.livejournal.com]

Hiro, nooo!
I like this. Have you read The Time Traveller's Wife?

[talon.livejournal.com]

Actually, no, ironically, though I've bought it for two of my friends.

[lemony-purple.livejournal.com]

From "two weeks ago" to "when the stone sinks," I love this. I hate the last line. The beginning is pretty good, but it feels like it doesn't connect to the rest as well as it could. I like the idea of it; the beginning and end seem afterthoughts somehow, though. It's like the middle, the part I really like, was written first, either with the homeless aspect in mind or not-- and then the beginning and end were added in order to incorporate that aspect, rather than it being a linear, full idea. It works as a whole idea; it doesn't seem like the whole idea was pieced together into a whole story.

[talon.livejournal.com]

Hm. This is interesting, because I both agree with you and disagree with you. I think that it does, indeed, need to be worded better, but when writing it, I had a near perfect picture in my head of a homeless guy approaching a couple after a Broadway show like Wicked and launching into his speil. It would have to be convincing enough, with enough details, to be drawing...but I wanted to leave open the fact that maybe he was insane.

The middle parts are obviously the meat of the story - and, in a vaguely arrogant manner, reference some of the past short stories I've done, adding a bit to them, actually. I was going to expand a bit more and reference some more hops, much like in A Wizard Alone, and pay tribute to some great worlds (Dune, for one) but that nasty word limit came in, so.

[lemony-purple.livejournal.com]

I can see how it could work that way, the homeless guy approaching someone after a show; I think maybe part of the problem I have with this is that it isn't what he's doing this time. I can't tell who it's supposed to be directed at really-- lines like "if you saw me on the streets" pretty much say that he isn't addressing someone while standing on a street (or it implies that; I suppose he could be, but it really isn't worded very well to reflect that, if he is). Maybe I'm annoyed with him asking for change because it seems like there isn't anyone to ask, since it reads like he's... writing it down, or speaking to an interviewer, or something.

I did notice the connections, although only in the vaguest sense at first; I didn't necessarily think of them as expanding on those stories or even being in the same universe, I just noticed the slight similarity. This probably just says I wasn't really paying attention, so I dunno why I'm mentioning it.

Expanding could be both good and bad. Since the middle is the part I like the most, the last line really threw me off-- even though the middle is the story of the homeless guy and how he got there and all that, I was reading it as kind of a separate story in itself since the asking for change bothered me even just in the beginning. I was just reading it as a time-travel story that could be coming from anyone, rather than a really really elaborate "so here's why I need money" story. Expanding would probably mean I'd see it even more as a separate story... okay, here's an example, since I don't think I'm explaining very well. It's like the Princess Bride. When you're watching the movie, it's a fantasy movie and that's it. No one watches the entire movie and remembers through every single scene that it's actually a grandfather reading a book out loud. I don't read this and remember that it's a homeless guy telling his story to someone; the ending is like when a scene cuts off and returns to the grandfather reading.