Time Travel
This is a guest post by George Alger. Please see the author’s links if you enjoyed this piece.
“Thou hast not the look of any Christian man.”
“I’m beginning to believe you.” Jason slumped against the rough timber of the witness stand. Beyond the open shutters, a rough-hewn gallows stood against the grey Massachusetts sky. He was too exhausted to…
…care about their sneers at his two-piece polyester track suit, which, all things considered, had survived remarkably well.
“Triflest thou with this court?” The magistrate’s voice was cold, echoing through the somber room.
“Look, I had a bad night. Or, apparently, a bad few centuries.”
“From whence hast thou come?”
“Why do you keep asking?” Jason had given up hoping he would wake up from this nightmare in his own bed. “I’m a farmer from Iowa. And then… well, I told you what happened.” The last thing he remembered was taking a dusk jog around his cornfield before a blinding burst of light obliterated and regurgitated reality.
“No man in all his Majesty’s realm hath heard of this ‘Iowa.’ And thou claimest thy carriage flieth through the air without horse or yoke?”
“I said my drone—a flying camera, which works with my robotic tractor—was acting up before the light hit.”
“A camera? Thou speakest of something that draws pictures?”
“It records them. Like tiny, moving paintings.”
“And it flieth through the heavens?”
***
They sentenced him to hang.
Incredulous, Jason stumbled as the guard grabbed his arm. Recalling the little he remembered from high school history about 1690s Salem, he proclaimed again, this time much louder, “I am not a witch!”
The guard ignored him, tightening his grip.
Out of options, Jason wrested free, grabbed his pocket flashlight, and swept the 1,000-lumen beam across the dark floorboards, pinning the magistrates’ boots in a circle of artificial glare. “I am from the future!” He roared, intending to convey divine wrath, albeit with more than a hint of desperation. “And I harness the power of the sun!”
The guard backed away.
The judges fell silent, shielding their eyes.
***
Although they set him free, Jason lived in dread of the day the batteries would die. In the meantime, he ditched the polyester.
George Alger is a writer with a skill for liminal narratives. You can find more of his works online at his substack here. Please be sure to check out his other work there if you enjoyed this piece.
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