/lit/ - Literature

Here's another fun one, about a student hiking in a state forest stumbling across a future man and his broken down time machine

https://alexbeyman.substack.com/p/the-time-travelers-muse

“What’s with the costume?”

At first it looked as though he didn’t hear me. The object of my interest was a bearded man in his late thirties with an athletic physique, clothed head to toe in white apparel. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a single contiguous garment.

Just as I prepared to repeat myself he leaned over the edge of the seven foot tall white cube he was perched on and reached out to me. I recoiled, which I consider justifiable, not knowing what to expect from a stranger sitting on a white cube in the middle of a national forest preserve.

“Hand me that wrench behind you. And it’s based on old movies.”

I took a moment to process his meaning. Where he’d gestured I found a matte white tool made from the same strange material as the ladder; light and slightly flexible like a very firm plastic but with the outer appearance of porcelain.

There appeared to be two handles, one at the base of the rod and another jutting out at an angle from what I assumed was the business end. Not taking my eyes off him I made a bit of conversation as I handed the tool back.

“So, this is for a movie or something? And this thing broke down before filming? Where’s the camera crew? Also, that didn’t look much like a wrench. How is it useful for anything when it’s so flexible?”

And indeed he wasn’t using it that way. If he was exerting himself physically there weren’t any grunts or heaves to indicate it. “You’re full of questions. But I’m not going anywhere, obviously. I meant my clothing is based on period appropriate movies about time travelers. It’s designed with great care to conform to your pop culture expectations of what a time traveler might look like.”

He’d already gone off the deep end but didn’t slow down for me to laugh or object to what I’d just heard. “The wrench was something I don’t know the correct word for in today’s English, or that it would have any accurate translation in this period. I guess you could say it is a type of multipurpose power tool. It is flexible only when I need it to be.”

My body instinctively lurched as if to force me back to jogging, because the man who before I’d stopped to question as an idle curiosity now seemed either high out of his mind or insane. Or up to something.

I fought off the flight instinct and instead determined to figure out what this guy’s angle was. All I knew so far was that I was living the sort of experience which if left unexplored would keep me awake at night for many years. Plan A was to probe his story for cracks and press him on it, second nature for a journalism student.