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?

[valorgigo.livejournal.com]

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

[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.