Stranded

Author : Suzann Dodd

They were supposed to come for me in a hundred hours. That was the deal.

I was passing for a local, having done the course. I knew how to get over.

I’d been given enough currency to survive for two hundred hours; that was also part of the Contract. What I didn’t spend would be deducted from my bill so I was frugal.

But they didn’t come in a hundred hours, and after a hundred and twenty, I panicked.

I got a job after a hundred and thirty hours, not good pay by any means, but enough to off set my expenses so that I wouldn’t be stuck with a life’s mortgage.

After two hundred hours I had the feeling that ‘something had happened’ and they weren’t coming.

That meant I was stranded.

I moved from the Hotel to a Motel, then to a basement apartment. I changed jobs, and after three hundred hours I realised I might be here for the rest of my life.

I was violently ill. What cured me was that the technology was so primitive I couldn’t dare enter any facility. I had to protect my integrity at all costs and use my knowledge to prosper.

Of course it was a Breach of the Contract and I would be severely punished, but considering I was the victim here, I liked the odds.

I started small, betting on sporting events, investing in stock, using my winnings to purchase value which would double, treble, but staying just under radar.

I traveled to places that didn’t keep efficient records, and occasionally thought about interfering, but kept remembering the ‘Grandfather Principle.’

When I felt like it, I left messages to those from my time who would know that even here, I thought of them.