Traveller's Mistake

Author : Duncan Shields, Staff Writer

It’s a time traveler thing.

I’m always walking up to people that I haven’t met yet and saying ‘hello’. I jump around so often that I can’t keep it straight. Then I have to go back and stop myself from doing it. It can get confusing but as long as I keep all the distortions to my own timestream, things are okay. A lot of people think I have a twin who occasionally appears, angry, and gets my attention.

It’s cool. I’m my own guardian angel, I guess.

I like seeing these people who I’m not going to meet for years by their reckoning. Some of them will be recruits, some of them will be lovers, some of them will just be pals with no idea of who I truly am.

I do enjoy a good ruse. I’m also quite the practical joker. I like to go around and leave little traps for myself. I’ve had people come up to me in public places and slap me silly because of what I did ‘last night’. I know my future self is laying down more shenanigans for me to find out about. It’s a gas.

What has me worried this time, though, is this woman in front of me. She’s crying in a way that suggests that she’s witnessing some sort of miracle.

“David?” she’s saying through her tears, hope warring with disbelief on her beautiful face. “Is it you?”

And then she says the words that chill me.

“I thought you were dead. I saw you die.”

Now, my name’s not David. I use a lot of aliases. But this woman seems pretty sincere. We talk for a while. She tells me that I died in her arms four years ago after a car accident. After her tears dry, she admits that I do look younger than her late husband but that the resemblance is still uncanny.

I died? Four years ago? I was married? How could I even begin to screw the timestream that much? That goes against everything I’ve been trained for. She has no idea I’m a time traveler, though, so I guess I at least kept that secret from her.

I’m very unsettled now. I hope all will be revealed. In time.