The Time Travelers Pub Chapter 1

A Story by gingerman89

Every story needs a beginning does it not?

CHAPTER 1 The day it happened

It was quite warm for November, or so my great grandfather twice liked to tell me. Apparently in his time there was usually snow by the day of gratefulness. As per usual I was home an hour or so before my parents. They worked the traditional 9-5 like most did. This left me about 2 hours before they returned home to enjoy the house to myself. Our community was supposed to be the new developing area that had great promise but to me all I saw were the remanences of the cities that had taken over farm lands long ago.

My parents were never fond of me watching the news. They were rather impartial to it ever since the ewcc bought out every major media source. I however found it entertaining. More specifically on this day in particular. For most this day would change nothing. I suppose nobody really would know for sure seeing how we were all on one timeline anyways and if anything was changed you wouldn’t know any different than the person next to you unless of course you were in one of the pubs.

At the time I was a roundish 5 foot 8. I did have quite the jaw line….. if you pulled my cheeks back a bit. or so I liked to envision myself this way.

The thud of a car door echoed through the house. My older sister had a tendency to leave the garage door open and whenever anyone pulled in the walls of our Victorian would let you know. It was quite strange that our house still stood seeing how most of the other Victorians in our neighborhood had been demolished to make room for the storage unit like apartments that most of the world now lived in.

“DOUGLAS”

The faint shout of my name echoed off of the beige walls in our vaulted living room. “I always hated when my father called me that. I much preferred D.”

“DOUGLAS James Zeitreise!” At this point I knew I had to answer him so I slid my way across the living room.” My sister and I started wearing nylon socks at a young age. We had created a human bowling game that our hardwood floors were quite perfect for and the nylon socks helped reduce the electricity our bodies conducted plus I swear you could slide much further.

“Jesus kid you almost took me out. All I could see was a copper flash from your hair coming at me.”

Sorry dad, what’s up?

“I just need some help with the groceries.”

There wasn’t really anymore groceries than normal. It would have been easy for him to grab everything in two trips but I went outside anyway and grabbed the rest of the groceries out of the car.

My dad was very habitual and liked to park his car in the same spot. There was an oil stain on the ground. He swore that it meant his car was running properly. It had never broke down at least while he owned it so who was I to argue.

I was just about back to the kitchen when I realized my father had not come out to help with the rest of the stuff. His shoes were lying on the floor neatly by the our entrance to the garage door on the black rubber mat that our shoes were supposed to lay on even though I seemed to always kick mine off and was lucky to hit one out of two.

We had an older flat screen. The kind that had the big backs to them. My grandfather twice was a tv repairman and owned his own shop. His knowledge had been passed along down each generation at least until me. My dad swore up and down by these old screens even though no one had used one in almost a century. You could still find them in landfills pretty regularly so whenever ours would go out we got to go dumpster diving which many did now in order to find parts to fix things. The tv would make a sound every time it powered on almost like a game sound from the old Mario games.

Then it hit me. My dad always goes to his chair when he gets home and turns on the TV. I had left the news on and it seemed like quite the big deal that they had perfected time travel. I knew what channel I had left it on.

My parents were of the religious faith and thought that time travel was a hoax and it was just another thing the devils people had been pushing on people to stray from their faith. My parents would never approve of my interest with this whole ordeal. In fact they were not crazy about scientific evolution at all.

“DOUGLAS”

My name had echoed off of our thickly painted walls again. This time with a tone that meant trouble. I dragged my feet across the hard wood floors as I usually did.

Yes?

“You know that we do not support these kind of things in our house and I am very disappointed in you right now.”

Ah yes the disappointment speech. I had heard this many of times just as I’m sure my parents had as well. It makes me wonder how many times history has repeated itself. I guess I know this now. At least better than most but that is a little ahead of where we need to be and this is a story of pubs not my family.