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By Rich in Posts

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I knew it had to happen sooner or later, and that it was sooner was no surprise to me at all.

Middle of the night two nights ago. I woke suddenly, a strange feeling of vertigo washing over me as I snapped out of sleep. It was dark, and my wife was sleeping beside me. Taking a deep breath, I willed the vertigo away and stood, holding my arms out to steady my balance, which wasn’t all there. Suddenly I was glad I’d worn a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt to be last night, because what I was afraid was coming…was here.

I looked around. It was still dark, but now I could see moonlight, stars and a few lights from the houses nearby. I knew exactly where I was, the problem was, I just didn’t know when I was. Standing in the middle of the road a couple hundred yards from the house I grew up in, I could see its dark silhouette ahead of me, and started walking toward it, feeling the cold, grainy asphalt beneath my bare feet. There wasn’t much wind, which was good, because the gym shorts and t-shirt weren’t that thick, and I wondered if I was going to have to start sleeping in shoes and socks. Mental note: At least have a pair of Uggs next to the bed.

Fortunately the vertigo was gone, but a little disappointment set in as I approached the house and saw that the landscaping was somewhat different from when we had lived there. Since my father had built the house and I didn’t recognize the way the property now looked, it was obvious that I was back sometime after 1980 or ‘81. Looking into the dark distance, I could see a car parked in the Sanders’ driveway next door. From here, through the dark, the car looked like either a Trans Am or a Camaro, mid to late 80s vintage. So, I figured the year had to be somewhere after 1982 or ‘83. I was physically back in time near my childhood home, but by now we were all on the west coast. Damn. No help here.

Clearly though, I understood that I had finally traveled a long way both in terms of time and distance. I was bodily in Indiana some 25 years in the past.

Our house was bounded on the south by a thick woods that had walking trails cutting through it. I figured the best thing to do was to head for those woods and scout around the house a bit to see if I could find some more clothes to wear. I was relieved to find that my experience was more in line with Dan Vasser’s in Journeyman than it was to Henry’s in The Time Traveler’s Wife. Henry’s time traveling involved him vanishing from within his clothes, which would then be in a pile on the ground. His first job was always to find something to wear. Being a television show, Dan Vasser got off easy. He was able to take anything he was touching, clothes, cell phones, camera, etc…From what I knew about my coming travels, I had been afraid that I’d show up in a different time without a stitch on and have to figure out where to find clothes that fit. The task of seeking out clothing that was just lying around waiting to be picked up by a newly-arrived naked time traveler seemed a pretty daunting one.

Walking toward the woods that mostly surrounded our house, I resolved to pack a small bag that I could always keep handy and available to grab when I felt a shift coming on. I’d experienced the vertigo twice now, and was pretty sure I’d recognize it when it came again. For now though, I was in the early 80s, in the middle of the night barefooted and heading toward the woods. Great. Just great. I was beginning to believe that some of these time travel books and television shows had inspiration beyond that of an imaginative writer.

The air felt like late summer, and the leaves were full and not even starting to turn, so walking through the woods, looking down at the trail in front of me watching for rocks, I had the impression that it was somewhere around early September. My eyes were accustomed to the dark, and I was trying hard to be aware of my surroundings. The almost full moon was bright, and spread a surprising amount of light through the trees. Noises here and there made it obvious that I wasn’t alone out here, but it didn’t sound like anything very big. Finally, after about 10 minutes, I got to a remote part of the area that I knew pretty well, a place I’d gone to play when I was young. These woods had been everything from the forests of World War II Germany, where my fellow Allied commandos and I had fought to Sherwood Forest, depending on what my buddies and I were reading at the time. I loved being here as a child, and so even after all these years, knew every inch of the area. I found the circle of logs in the clearing that had been a central meeting place and walked to the center. Squinting in the dark, I looked around the edge of the treeline, 20 feet or so away from where I stood, and quickly found it. The rock. A chunk of granite, somewhat round, though with enough ridges and sharp edges to be mostly immobile. It probably weighed at least 70 pounds, and was the size of 4 or 5 basketballs.

I quickly walked over to it and knelt down. Bracing myself, I gave a huge push but barely moved it. I took a deep breath, set myself again and heaved. This time, I was able to push the rock up onto one of its ridges, and pivoted it away from its resting place. I looked around for a stick or a thick tree branch. Finding one several steps away, I retrieved it and started scratching the dirt, digging down a little. After 10 minutes or so, I realized there was nothing there. Moving the mini boulder back into place was easier than dislodging it from where it had rested undisturbed for so long.

Nothing there. When I had been here last, during my second go-round in 1976, I had buried a handful of change in a plastic baggie, vowing to return to this spot and see if the 1976 I was in at the time had any relevance to the time I hoped to return to. Apparently, it didn’t. The thought occurred to me that if I was able to gain access to any, I’d bury a couple dollars of paper money here, and come back in 2008 to see what remained, if anything. Coins or bills? Or nothing? My trip back to 1976 took me to my then-body, a transfer of just my consciousness, where this trip and the couple others like it involved my whole body. My operating premise was that my 1976 experience was in fact a trip to a different quantum reality, one that had a completely separate timeline from my life in 2008. I intuitively reasoned that this trip, and any journey I bodily took was in the same quantum reality, and so any changes I made in the past could very well persist in my 2008. Needless to say, at this time, I was reluctant to mess around with anything that approached significant departure from what I’d experienced the first time through. While in 1976, I felt no compulsion to preserve history as I remembered it. Not so now however. This time I felt a powerful desire to not screw around with history, however insignificant this particular part of history may be. Something told me anything I did here would be part of my reality when I returned to 2008.

So I sat on an upturned log sometime in the early 80s and waited for the sun to come up, hoping I’d find myself back in 2008 before that happened. I wasn’t sure how I was going to explain running around the woods, half-naked with no shoes or ID. Fortunately, it didn’t come to that, and I didn’t have to answer those questions.

Several hours later, it was a lot warmer. The sun was up, climbing into the sky and looking at the angle of its ascent, I adjusted my estimation of the time of year to early August, rather than September. I heard traffic starting to build on the highway a half-mile or so from my clearing in the woods. I realized that the time of year it was might give me a cover story for the way I was dressed after all. I could probably venture out of the woods in search of some clothing, but I wasn’t really sure where to start looking. While thinking about it, I realized that while the prospect of burying some money to prove I’d been here was a good idea, it wasn’t really practical. If I had some money, I’d spend it on clothes or food, not bury it in the ground. Also like Dan Vasser in Journeyman, I made a mental note to get some appropriately dated currency and keep it handy in the event of future trips. Another note – in preparation for what was coming, it might be a good idea to get some 30s era currency as well. That would make a lot of sense.

But then, what if I jumped to the 30s from here? What if this was the beginning of the trip that started this whole thing? I couldn’t discount that possibility. And if I was going to be here awhile, and could get somewhat presentable, was there something I could procure from this time period that would be worth some money in 2008? Something that might exist within walking distance of where I was? Since I came here with the clothes I was wearing, and had chronolocated with the Sunday paper in hand, I should be able to carry something of value in 2008 in my hands when I returned.

I considered all this while looking around for something to bury to prove I’d been here. After a few minutes, I found it. A piece of slate half-buried in the ground at the edge of the clearing. Digging and pulling it out of the soil, I brushed the dirt from it, and then started looking around for a sharp rock to write with. Finding a perfect stone, I picked up my piece of slate and went to work.

A half-hour later I was finished, my “message in a bottle” written and buried in the dirt beneath my mini-boulder that I had buried the coins under in my alternative quantum reality 1976. I stood up, brushing myself off, and left the clearing intending to try and find some clothes, or at least something to eat. A few minutes, and I was almost to the edge of the woods. The sound of the traffic was much louder now, and I could begin to see the passing cars through the trees. I stopped while I was still hidden in the woods and looked down, appraising my appearance, which I have to admit, wasn’t great. My white t-shirt was dirty, as were my legs and feet, blackened by being barefoot in the woods all night.

I was a mess. I shook my head, wishing I had a hose to rinse myself off with when the world seemed to drop out from underneath me. I can’t say I really saw anything, but just felt everything shift and drop and the lights went out. I felt my arms flail to balance myself and when I regained my equilibrium, I looked down, feeling wetness and saw that I was standing in water that reached halfway up my calf. I glanced around and realized immediately that I was at home in San Diego, standing in my pool on the second step leading into the shallow end. And it was again nighttime. Once again, I knew where I was, I just didn’t know when I was.

The water.

I had been thinking about needing water to rinse off my bare feet, dirty from walking around in the woods for a few hours, and suddenly I was standing in my pool, hopefully not far chronologically from when I had departed. I stepped out of the pool onto the deck and walked toward the house, pausing to unlatch the mesh pool fence from the inside. I re-latched it and walked across the back patio to the french doors. Inside the house, it was dark. So, I sat down on the chaise lounger, leaned my head back and closed my eyes. I didn’t realize how tired I was.

“What are you doing out here?”

I startled awake. It was morning, and I blinked, confused. I looked up from the chaise lounger at my wife, standing in the doorway to the patio.

“Did you sleep out here? The door was locked and deadbolted…Oh.

I rubbed my eyes, sitting up. “Yea. I traveled. Came back halfway in the pool. What a night.” We had gotten to the point with this stuff that I knew Molly believed me.

She looked at my dirty t-shirt and half dirt/half mud legs. “Where did you go?”

“Home,” I said, half smiling.