by Danny
Danny Hearn:
"Sit your bum down, lad," I hear from my left. I turn to the source of the voice. A man, looking to be in his fifties. He grabs my arm, and yanks me down into the seat next to him.
"Quite a scene you're makin' there, lad," the man said. His accent is a little strange. What is that? Scottish?
"I don't know when this is, and I'm naked, and I'm on a train, and I'm naked, and I'm not sure exactly what the hell is going on..." I hear myself mumble. Shit. I'm rambling incoherently. I promised myself I'd never do that.
"Yeh look like yeh could use a drink," the man says. I think I'm nodding, but I can't be sure. I'm panicking too much to be in complete control of my bodily functions. There is now very little connection between my brain and my muscles. "Well, first yeh could use some clothes," the man says.
This time I'm almost certain I'm nodding. At this point I notice that all the passengers around me are staring. I hastily arrange my hands to gain myself at least a small measure of privacy. "...Right... clothes..." I say. What the hell is going on?
Time machine. I was in a time machine. Is this the past? Or the future? When am I? Where am I? Who are these people? Where is this train going? Keep thinking rationally, Daniel. It must be the past. This train's an antique, and there are no deserts left in '83.
"Above your head, lad."
"...What...?"
"Above your head." I turn and look at the man. He's pointing to the overhead luggage compartment. "Clothes," he says. I reach up and pull down his suitcase, then hand it to him. He opens it, and rifles through it. "Let's see... pants... shirt..." he mumbles, sifting through his luggage. He pulls out a pair of pants and a shirt, and hands them to me. "They might be a tad big for yeh, lad, but they'll do for now," he says.
"Are... are you sure? That's... generous of you," I say, taking the clothes.
"Yeh obviously need them a lot more than I do, lad," he says, gesturing toward the still-staring passengers.
"Right," I say, and hastily put the clothes on. "Thank you, very, very much," I say to the man.
"Don't mention it. Now, about that drink... 'Ere, lass, could yeh get this lad a beer? Put it on my tab," he yells out, waving to the stewardess at the other end of the carriage. She nods and smiles. I don't think she saw me naked, or I'd probably be kicked off the train.
"Now that the pressing matter of clothing is dealt with, it's time for formal introductions, wouldn't yeh say?" the man says to me, and holds out a hand. "Gus McKellan."
"Daniel Hearn," I say softly, shaking his outstretched hand.
"Pleasure to meet yeh," Gus says. I nod in agreement. The stewardess arrives with my beer. She pulls down the small tabletop from the back of the seat in front of me and sets the beer down on it. "Thanks," I say to her. She smiles at me, and walks away.
"Cute one, eh?" Gus says to me, elbowing me in the ribs and smiling. I laugh. Gus seems nice.
"Excuse me, Gus... this might seem like a strange question..."
"Yeh hopped on a train in the middle of the desert stark bloody naked. We're way past strange, lad."
"...Right... but... do you happen to know what the date is today?"
He smiles. "Twenty-ninth o' September."
"And... the year?"
"It's 2001. I tell yeh, I question the current state of the education system when a young lad doesn't even know what year he's livin' in."
"It's... kind of a long story, Gus."
"This is a long train trip. I could do wi' some entertainment, Danny. But first of all, how old are yeh? Yeh seem a bit young to be hoppin' on trains naked in the middle o' the desert."
"Twenty. Or... minus sixty-two... depending on how you look at it," I answer.
He looks confused at this answer. "All right, then. How 'bout tellin' me that story yeh got now?"
I lower my voice, so as not to be heard by neighbouring passengers. "Uh... hmm. I'm from the future." Gus remains silent. "Uh... 2083, to be exact. I was on a holiday in a small village, name of Fitzroy or some such, just east of some place called Mandelovia. I was born in Australia -- this was quite a trip for me. So I'm wandering the streets, checking out the sites. I end up wandering through some back alleys, and getting hopelessly lost. Worked my way through the brick buildings and everything, trying to find my way back to the main street, just getting more and more lost. Ended up in some tiny alley off some tiny back street surrounded by abandoned buildings with not a person in sight. Then, I stumble across this hologram wall."
"...Hologram... wall?" Gus says.
"A wall that's not really a wall. It just looks like a wall. You can go through it. I figure, there must be people in there, maybe there's a phone or something. I walk on in, wander some hallways for a while. Stumbled on a laboratory... blacked out. Woke up stuck in a plastic tube, being experimented on. After a while, some guys with guns broke into the lab, attacked the place. I crawled into a machine to get out of the line of fire. It was a time machine, though I didn't know that at the... time. The thing blew up, I wound up here in the desert."
Gus is silent. I'm silent. Gus is still silent.
"Most ridiculous thing you've ever heard, right?"
"Pretty much," Gus replies.
"Wait... these experiments... I think I can give myself animal parts." Gus is silent again. "Tiger claws," I say. The pain hits, and I flinch. Something in my brain goes into action. My hand contorts, changes.
Gus looks down in shock toward my newly grown tiger claws. "Holy Jesus on a Harley..." he says softly.
"Reverse," I say. I flinch again. The tiger claws disappear.
The stewardess suddenly appears next to us. "Tickets, please," she says.