Anywhere But Here
The Question of the Day was... Would you rather go back in time or visit the future? First QotD in a long while to have some potential as a writing prompt.
I knew it was a bad idea, said as much. You're such a downer, they said. It'll be fun. You'll be fine. It's not like you're going back; there's no danger of stepping on a butterfly and wiping out the mammals, or killing your grandad on Vimy Ridge, any of that stuff.
If not you, they said, we'll send someone else. Sanjit… or Roger. Oh man, not him. There's a reason we don't send him anywhere; have you forgotten what happened in Seattle?
So I went. Just ten years, they said, so it'll be easy to figure things out.
There's not much to tell about the jump. Douglas Adams said it best: It's rather unpleasantly like being drunk. What's so unpleasant about being drunk? Ask a glass of water. That, and a splitting headache at the far end.
We aimed for somewhere, well, not remote, just not central, not likely to have been developed. The headache is nothing compared to re-assembling inside a brick wall or on the fast lane of a new bypass. National parks are good, something like that. So we picked a spot on the North Cornish coast, a mile or so from St Agnes. It looked just as I remembered it.
The painkillers I'd slipped into my backpack were just starting to kick in when it happened. Heading east along the path, up out of a dip and round a blind corner and… Oof!
“Sorry,” I said, looked up, and… What are the odds?
I looked up into my eyes, and I gaped back at me, and I both said bloody hell and stepped back with the shock of it. My foot slipped on some gravel, and I toppled backwards into one of those scrubby patches of gorse that line the coast. And his - my - foot slipped on some gravel, and he - I - stumbled back, too close to the edge and disappeared. And when I shed my pack and scrabbled on all fours as close as I dared, and looked over and down, I knew I hadn't stood a chance.
What the hell was I doing there, that day of all days? I ought to have known to be somewhere, anywhere else. Could kill myself for being so stupid.
Crap.
The path to the beach was still there where I remembered it, fifty yards along. It took me ten minutes to wind down the two hundred feet. I was being careful; I'd just seen what happened when I took the fast route.
I wasn't breathing when I reached my body. Judging by the number of bits of me that were pointing in unusual directions, it was just as well. I still kept my wallet in my back pocket, and luckily, I didn't have to move myself to get it out.
The driving licence told me that I live - sorry, lived - not far away, apparently. I knew the address. I must have done well for myself and retired early. And I couldn't help seeing the photos. And the ring on my finger.
Sh…sugar.
She looked like the sort I'd have chosen to marry. I guess that would be my daughter in my arms, just about ready to start school, and the brooding presence in the black t-shirt would be… what? Her boy? My stepson?
So now what? Call 999 on his, my mobile… and then? Explain to the cops that I'd just happened to bump into myself, hope the DNA tests wouldn't set off a panic, hope that someone from the Lab would be around to explain? Go home? But I have a wife now, two kids, and I don't even know their names. Bad enough to lose your husband or father; worse to find he's killed himself and come back as… a stranger.
Only two things are certain. I can't just sit here. And I can't go back to my own time. Not now. There's no future there for me any more.