Mikey suddenly reappeared in a street somewhere completely different from his own home. He took a look around himself, seeing some shops, some houses... and a bus, five metres ahead of him, coming right at him.
It was then that he felt the hands of somebody pulling him out of the way and onto the sidewalk. He watched the bus go along on its way, the driver shouting something unintelligible at him. He heard somebody laugh in relief beside him, and turned in the direction of the noise.
It was a woman, presumably the woman who had saved him just moments before, as she was still holding onto him, almost as if she were afraid he would run off into the streets again. Her hair was long and dark, and she was wearing a thick shirt that felt rather itchy. "I know the war is bad, but 'ya don't gotta kill yourself over it!"
She thought that he was trying to commit suicide. It was as good of an excuse as any as to why he was in the street all of a sudden, so he took it and nodded, not in agreement, but rather to show that he was processing her words. After all, he had just attempted suicide.
"What's your name, good sir?" She asked him. She spoke quietly and softly in her American accent. Mikey always loved the way people spoke when he travelled to old America.
He didn't answer her question. "Well, my name's Lindsey. I'm the mayor's daughter? Are you from around here?"
"Miachel. I-I've never been here before in my life," he answered. He realized he needed to get away from her as soon as possible so he could travel back home. It was a bad idea to go here in the first place. He could lose his job.
"Well then, I'll take you home with me, get you something to eat..." she suggested, and though it was exactly what Mikey needed not to happen, he knew he couldn't reject her. "Where are you from?" She asked as she guided him down the street.
"Far away. Far, far away," Mikey told her. He usually wasn't so vague when people from the past asked him about things, but it fit the character he was putting on. Usually, being specific made the details matter less. If he was secretive, his being there was more important to these people and he could screw things up continuity-wise, so he usually made up details like where he was from when people asked.
The woman, Lindsey, nodded like she understood. "You came here on one of those boats over there?" She asked, and Mikey nodded, going along with the backstory she was giving him. He didn't know what boats she was referring to, but it was better than making up an excuse of his own. "Do you speak English where you're from?" She asked additionally, and Mikey didn't know how to answer. Presumably he should say no, because if he said yes, she would assume he was from Great Britain, which he didn't think would make sense. Would it?
"No," he ended up muttering, hoping it was the right answer. Luckily, she nodded.
"I thought so," she told him. Then she stopped walking, the unexpectedness making Mikey trip a little. "Here we are," she said, gesturing to the house in front of them. It was definitely more put together than the rest of the buildings surrounding them, which wasn't saying much. It was also a lot bigger than most of the houses Mikey had seen since arriving, from what he knew about the houses built around this time it was probably built to house upwards of ten people.
Lindsey opened the door for him, and Mikey stepped inside. He could tell that they were definitely an upper class family judging from the decor, nevermind the fact that Lindsey told him she was the mayor's daughter.
"We house refugees like you sometimes," she explained. "I'll show you your room. You can stay here as long as you like." Which hopefully wouldn't be long, Mikey thought. If she left him alone finally, maybe he could just disappear back into his own time and she wouldn't have to worry about him.
She led him down a hallway and through a kitchen to a room with several mattresses lined up on the floor. She wasn't kidding when she said they housed other people, it seemed. Nobody else was in the room, which was lucky for Mikey, but it seemed that there were previously people sleeping on the mattresses, as recently as that morning. He wondered what time it was. It wasn't particularly early, nor was it anywhere near evening. Possibly around noon, he estimated.
"I think that bed in the corner is free," she said, pointing to one of the mattresses. "The rest of the people staying here are working or looking for jobs. If you can, we encourage you to get a job and give us at least some of your pay as rent. Do you understand?"
Mikey nodded, eager to get alone.
"Alright then. You should probably stay in here today, I don't want you going back into town and trying that again. We have some books in the study if you need something to do," she offered, taking steps towards the door. Mikey gave her a slight smile, trying to force her out of the room with his eyes. Eventually she left, closing the door behind her, and Mikey's eyes immediately flew to his left wrist, where he expected his Communicator to be, displaying a menu page for him.
It wasn't there.
He furrowed his eyebrows, turning it around, trying to find his damn Communicator. Unsurprisingly, it wasn't anywhere he couldn't see on his arm. He looked at his right wrist, lifting up his sleeve to look at it. And there it was, right above his Messenger, not doing anything as he looked at it.
Usually, these devices were controllable via eye contact. All you had to do was look at them and they would show their menu screens. Maybe it was because it was on the same wrist, he hoped, but something told him that when he moved it to the other wrist it would have the same problem.
His suspicions were confirmed when he unclipped it from his wrist and affixed it to his other, only to see that it not only didn't show him the screen at all, it also coughed out a couple sparks. If it doing that didn't guarantee his inability to go home at least for a while, he would have been laughing at it. Of course it would only do that when he needed it to show him that it still worked.
Normally, when he Travelled for work, he kept a small tool kit with him in case something exactly like this were to happen. But since this was a spontaneous and unapproved trip, he had no such thing. And it wasn't like he could ask anyone back home for help either.
He forced himself to calm down. He would try to get through this alone and try to get back home. It might take a while, but surely he would be able to return eventually, even it were in several years' time. That thought scared him. He pushed it away. He needed to focus. He closed his eyes, as if doing so would put him in the mindset of somebody who knew more about this than him.
With the minimal knowledge of how the device worked, it was obvious that the cause of the problem was the interfering signals from the Communicator and Messenger. The first thing he should do would be to separate the two devices. He opened his eyes and looked down at his wrists. He had already done that. Awesome, step one out of the way!, he thought to himself, trying his hardest not to freak out. What to do now, though?
His mind came up with absolutely nothing. Considering the situation, he had no means to get the thing to work again. There was nobody he could ask for help.
It was then that the utter loneliness of his situation hit him. There was nothing he could possibly do, no one knew his situation. He was navigating what may as well be an entire different universe, with no one at his side to guide him.
He thought of what could be going on back in his own time. Had anyone realized he was missing yet? He had been there for less than an hour and it was pretty late when he decided to leave. Did the people at Flasch know he was there? He knew that they could track where their employees were from their Communicators, but obviously his wasn't working.
His Communicator was obviously working enough to transport him here, so would it have been able to track him while he Travelled?
He blinked hard. He didn't need to be thinking about this. He just needed to find a way to get home. What would he do if he had access to the Help department? He would contact them, explain the issue. What was the issue? Well, the device let out sparks when he tried turning it on. It only sparked once he got it onto his other wrist, which meant that whatever he did to make it do that wasn't happening when it was on the same wrist as the Messenger. And with that information, what would they do? He tried thinking back to his training and initiation. He remembered what the room looked like when he was taught what to do in an emergency like this. It wasn't unlike the classrooms he had at school, but the students were different.
He squeezed his eyes shut, trying hard to remember. It was no use, he knew it, but he still tried to pull the information out of thin air. Nothing he was taught brought anything like your Communicator blanking like this into consideration. Everything was all "if there's an issue, contact Help immediately," never anything about what to do if Help couldn't possibly be reached.
He sat down on his mattress, tears stinging his eyes. He wiped at them with his palms. He just couldn't think of anything at all. He was in the shittiest situation he could possibly imagine, and nobody had prepared him for it. That was humanity, though. Nobody wants to even make a plan for the worst case scenario, nobody wants to think about it. At the time, it doesn't seem likely. Until it happens, and you can't do anything but sit and wallow in your self-pity.
If they knew where he was, did anybody feel bad for him? Gerard probably would, he was sensitive like that.
Oh god, Gerard. Mikey had just left his brother all alone in his apartment. Would he still be allowed to stay there if Mikey was missing? Or would he be evicted? Why did he have to leave his own apartment in the first place? He never got a chance to find out. And if he didn't find a way out, he never would.
Jesus Christ, Mikey had o get out of there. The thought of Gerard having to live on by himself saddened him more than anything else about his situation. He was barely getting by even with Mikey's help, how could he possibly live without him?
Great. He had been in the past for maybe two hours now, and he was already crying about missing his brother. He needed to distract himself. He stood himself up and opened the door, not caring that he was obviously just crying. He was human, humans cried all the time. Lindsey had mentioned a study with books. It had been years since Mikey had read an entire paper book. Hopefully he would be able to understand them, what with their old writing style.
He wandered around the house, finding a bathroom and kitchen, remembering their place for later, before finding the study. There was a desk and several writing tools along with some paper at the center of the room. The walls were completely covered by bookshelves. Mikey approached the bookshelf closest to him, letting his fingertips trail over the spines of the books. Many of them were nonfiction volumes about anything, ranging from biology to law to the life of great philosopher Plato. Clearly somebody liked to read. He couldn't see how Lindsey's father could possibly have the time to read and buy all of these books, so maybe it was Lindsey who had a serious passion for books.
He scanned over their titles. He wasn't much for nonfiction, he couldn't imagine how boring it would be to read about animals that went extinct decades ago in his time or laws that were no longer necessary due to the advancement of technology. He kept looking until he found a title he recognized: A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens. He knew the story of A Christmas Carol, he had seen a theatrical adaptation of it when he was a child. He opened it to a random page and scanned through the words.
"Like the fabled rustic who raised the Devil with infinite pains, and was so terrified at the sight of him that he could ask the Enemy no question, but immediately fled; so,Monseigneur, after boldly reading the Lord's Prayer backwards for a great number of years, and performing many other potent spells for compelling the Evil One, no sooner beheld him in his terrors than he took to his noble heels."
He didn't quite understand the context of it, but he understood the meaning of the words themselves. It seemed well-written and he supposed that if he tried hard enough he could understand it. Hopefully it would take his mind off his hellish problem.
He walked out of the study in search of a lounge or somewhere he could sit down and read. He didn't want to go back to his room, he had stared at the walls in frustration too much already. He found what he was looking for, a room with lounge chairs and a fireplace, plopped himself down in one of the chairs, and cracked open the book.
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,"
-
"Miachel? Miachel, are you awake?" A female voice called out to him. He opened his eyes. Oh right, Lindsey. 1934. Mayor's daughter.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm here," he said, rubbing at his eyes and forgetting he needed to talk like people normally talked at the time. Whatever, she probably wrote it off as English not being his first language, which, according to what he told her, was true.
She smiled at him. "Well, it's time for dinner. My father and the others are back, you should meet them."
He paused. They were probably going to ask him loads of questions about where he was from and he would have to make something up. But then again, Lindsey might have told them all to leave him alone. After all, he had just attempted suicide.
He exhaled and got up out of the chair. Apparently, A Tale Of Two Cities was still in his lap from when he fell asleep, as it fell to the floor when he stood up. Lindsey bent down to get it for him. He thanked her as he took it from her hands.
She led him down the hallway to the kitchen Mikey had seen earlier that day. As it turned out, past the kitchen was a dining room with a table too big to possibly have been built for only two or three people. They must have gotten it knowing that they would be housing many people at a time.
That made him wonder when they started doing this, letting people stay at their house. Did they just always do it or was it recent? They were in the middle of the second World War, so maybe it only started with the war. That would make sense, them taking in refugees who couldn't otherwise be let in.
It was only then that he noticed the other people at the table. All of them were dressed in similarly dirty and tattered clothes except one, presumably the mayor, Lindsey's father.
The man smiled at him. "Ah, so you must be Miachel." He seemed almost careful with his words. Mikey decided it was either just his personality or he knew about Mikey's alleged suicide attempt.
"Yeah. And you must be the mayor," he said confidently. The man nodded.
"Yes, but just call me Mr. Ballato," he said, extending his hand for Mikey to shake. Mikey took it, shaking it gently. Then he sat down at an empty seat. Dinner was already on the table, it seemed to be steamed vegetables with a soup of some kind. Why the vegetables weren't simply just put into the soup, Mikey didn't know. Lindsey sat down next to him and took his hand. The man next to him did the same thing. Mikey furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. Why was everybody joining hands? Nevertheless, he just went with it.
He got his explanation when the mayor started speaking, everybody else following along.
"We thank you Lord for the food before us. In Christ's name, amen."
It was a religious tradition known as grace. Mikey had never been a part of one, but he knew of its existence.
Lindsey and the man next to him let go of his hands and started eating.
Mikey sighed. His first day here was almost over and he still didn't know how to get out. Nevertheless, he served himself a bowl of soup.
ok this ended weirdly but i needed to get it out there because of the lack of chapter last week (i was snowboarding ok dont @ me)