Brick of Fiction | Larry the Time Traveler

Larry can time traveler, but he can't control it

Photo by Zulfa Nazer on Unsplash

Welcome to the Brick of Fiction.

In today’s Brick the prompt is: Write a story about a time traveler who can’t control his powers.

Feel free to write your own bite-sized piece in 300-1000 words!

Hello, my dear reader!

I don't know in what century this will reach you in, but I hope you are having a good day wherever and whenever you are.

You probably have no idea how this ended up on your electronic device or a stone tablet from which you are reading it.

Well, if it is the former, I can tell you that I'm a time traveler, and I managed to post this sometime around your time. If it is the latter, you have no idea what time travel is, so… well, moving on.

My name is Larry, and one thing you need to know about me is that I love fun little pills, and powders, and herbs, and shrooms. You get the point.

So one day at—eh—an adult party with my wife. There was a guy selling pills with an hourglass. It looked dope, and he said it causes a high of all time. I guess the pun was intended. Because I gotta say that I went through insane highs and horrible hangovers in my life, but waking up in a completely different century was a completely different beast.

Mainly because—as I found out—King Arthur's knights didn't appreciate a skinny dude with colorful tattoos over his whole body in a thong crashing their lovely table. Long story short—they locked me up, ready to burn me, believing I was a demon from another dimension.

I thought I was going to die there. Which is often the case with hangovers. Luckily, they took so much time to figure out what to do with me that I fell asleep, and to my surprise, I woke up on the other side of the planet about fifteen hundred years later. At a place that should've been my home. The Woodstock Festival. For a moment there, I didn't even care about the transport. I just wanted to stay and enjoy the ride.

Unfortunately, since the Woodstock atmosphere—among other things—was so tiring, I passed out and jumped another three hundred years into the future!

Let me tell you.

Future. Is. Insane.

We still don't have flying cars, but we have shit ton of robots everywhere! The population decline continues to be a thing because people enjoy fucking robots more than each other. So, we haven't killed each other yet, but it seems that humanity will eventually die of old age. They also moved past social constructs; anyone can be literally anything, and it, surprisingly, kinda works. The mechanical and biological enhancements help it a ton, though. 

Being in the year 2300 or so made me think the people there would know more about time travel than I do. Spoiler alert; don't know shit. A couple of doctors—who, for some reason, believed me enough to do some checks—sedated me to examine my situation, which made me jump in time again. 

It started to become a bit frustrating y'know? Every time I fell asleep, I moved, so I never spent enough time in one place to figure out a decent plan. 

From ancient Rome to Egypt to California in the sixties and then to the roaring nineties of the Czech Republic after the iron curtain fell. There I got robbed and got the shit beaten out of me; luckily, one of the gentlemen was kind enough to choke me until I passed out, saving my life in the process. 

The more I tried to get back to 2023, the further I jumped.

Running away from dinosaurs was probably the moment when the whole time-traveling shtick got pretty old. All I wanted was to hug my wife again. 

The only time I hit 2023 again, I fell asleep on the plane home. Unfortunate, right? 

Anyway. You must wonder, "Why is this crazy person telling me all this?" 

Well, lesson number one is that you should not take random pills from strangers. If I learned anything on this journey, that would be it. 

But more importantly—at the time of me writing this—I sit here eons in the future, looking at the sky full of colors. Watching the Earth crack and shake as some universal whatever collides with us. 

It's the literal end of the world, and if my sleeping pills don't kick in soon, I'm going to end with it. 

So, if you read this sometime around 2023, can you please tell my wife that I miss her? 

Thank you for reading! Larry is a fun character, and we’ll definitely revisit him in the future!

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