SW10: Time Bounce #2: 1971

[Andrew Perron]

On Sun, 28 Aug 2011 02:15:31 +0000 (UTC), Scott Eiler wrote:

> Calvin shoves me around and calls me Retard.  Big brothers *always* do 
> that.  Lauren makes Calvin leave me be.  But he's right.  I'm in my 
> *almost* ten-year-old body.  I have a big fat ass, I have to wear 
> glasses with one red lens for Lazy Eye Syndrome, and it's hard to move 
> my arms.

Ahhhhhhhh, I see.  Didn't realize that he was actually in his body from the
time period in the last story.

> Mom drags us all to church, even Dad.  Big wooden pew.  I'd relax, but 
> Calvin pokes me.  I poke him back.  Minister stopped.  Outside church, 
> Dad spanks us both.  No family-friendly church in 1971.

This story is really coming from an interesting perspective.  Intense
bursts of resentment/nostalgia/anger.

> Can people find me from 2011?  Here I am!
> 
> ... Maybe they're trying.  Saw a black girl look at me funny.  No one I 
> know.  No black girls in Clermont in 1971.  I was too scared to go talk 
> to her.  She was older, and even girls my age can beat me up now.  I 
> left.  She followed.  I ran.  Made it "downtown".  By then, people 
> looking at *her* funny.  She gave up.
> 
> Did I just lose my ride?  Or if someone *does* come back for me, will it 
> be my friends?

Oooooooh.  Interesting.  Ambiguous.

> And I'm blah today.  At one point, I fall asleep on a mattress at J.C. 
> Penney.  Mom says Aww, Cute.  Calvin whacks me later.  Aww, famlee.

Aw.  A short burst of... appreciation?  Well, not quite...

> During school playground time, Mrs. Henderson caught me trying to sleep 
> behind a bush.  She sent me to school nurse.  I told nurse I was 
> thinking extra hard lately.  Nurse said I was fine.  I had to go back to 
> class and sit in corner.  No special students in Clermont in 1971.

Eesh.  Painful.

> 6th-graders found me after my 4th-grade school.  Pick On The Weird Guy 
> Day again...  They found a basement to hide in and smoke cigarettes! 
> Uh, why?  Because it's cool.  So I said, $&^% that.  They let me walk 
> once I used *that* word.

Heh heh heh.

> Still waiting for a response from Lucianus.  Hey, this reminds me of 
> when Calvin hooked me on mail-order war games and I'd wait for the UPS 
> truck.  In 1974.  Hmmm...
> 
> I take two sheets of Dad's computer paper.  I draw a crude map of the 
> eastern U.S. on them.  Then I swipe Calvin's soldiers.  Before long, he 
> finds out.  But by then, I'm recreating the Civil War.

Woo!

> So far, enemy action from one black girl.  Only on weekends.  She must 
> be in school too.  She must be on an agenda like I am.
> 
> She took my bike.  But I can still walk.  And I can call the police. 
> Even from Mom's phone.  No 911 in 1971, but I can look up the police 
> number, and I can say I'm tattling on friends with spray paint.

Wait, seriously?  I thought 911 was older than that...

According to wiki, it became the "national emergency number" in 1968, and
would have worked "in theory at least".  That said, it "did not become
widely known until the 1970s", and it doesn't really talk about how quickly
it was implemented, so who knows if it would have actually worked in his
area?

> I would have crossed my arms, but they still don't move that well.  So I 
> just shrugged.  "Your son went on *another* rampage the day after I met 
> him.  Vice-President Corrigan was there."

Oh, okay, *that*'s who we're talking about.

> She said, "No!  I'll go *back*!  I'll see you dead *then*!"  Then she 
> was quiet, her body still on top of me as police came.

That's an (appropriately) creepy image.

> So maybe *this* letter had a pointer to the future embedded within it. 
> As a software engineer, I can *track down* embedded stuff.  Once I find 
> it, I can go home via Hyper-Body Hyper-Transfer Protocol.  I'd 
> transferred that way *into* this body, against my will.  I had a way out 
> now.  But it wasn't, blink your eyes and you're back...

...of course!

> Plain old Body Hyper-Transfer Protocol will get me home - in my 
> ten-year-old body.  Just Hyper-BHTP will get my spirit home to my 
> regular body - if it still exists there.  I'll take that chance.  But my 
> ten-year-old-self will have to come too.  I don't know any variation of 
> HBHTP which *divides* the travelers once they're merged.  I *have* 
> divided myself before - but only when I had cosmic power.  Which led to 
> the *Chancellor* Wyatt. 
> (http://www.eilertech.com/stories/lxmf.htm#fullmoon )

Of course... @.@

> I'm going home to Mom and Dad.  I love the future, but I know I'll only 
> get there the usual way now.
> 
> But I still have my diary.  I know Mom will read it again.  But maybe 
> other people will read it some day too.

Huh.  Interesting.  Wonder what, exactly, this version knows.

> Phew.  Writing my favorite character who now inhabits a body whose brain 
> is untrained and whose body hates writing, is hard - at least at first. 

It worked well!

Andrew "NO .SIG MAN" "Juan" Perron, augh I take forever