“What? No, I’m not a time traveler,” the man said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
I’d been watching him for some time, and I remained skeptical. He was wearing mismatched clothes of several different era — Brooks Brothers trousers, an opera jacket, a battered top hat that was a hundred years old if it was a day — but he also wore a wristband that pulsed gently and didn’t seem to be holding steady in the same dimension we both were. His phone looked normal, mostly, except its screen occasionally extended past the width of the phone like transparent wings.
He was rifling through a stack of money, which seemed n odd thing to do in a park at 2 in the morning.
After some careful observation, during which I was more or less hoping he’d wink out of existence or something, I’d finally just walked over and asked him.
“Nope,” he said again. “I was born and raised right here, in the same basic timeline as you.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “And this is all a costume?”
“Oh, no, this is all from real time travelers. The clearing in the woods behind this bench is some kind of nexus, I guess, and they keep popping in.”
“And you…”
“I mug ’em. It’s very lucrative, it’s not like they can go to the police or anything. I make a fortune.”
“But… but what if they had a vital mission, something only they could do to save the world?”
“Then they can do it without their pants. I never take their time travel doohickeys, that’d be rude. Just cash and jewelry, mostly.”
I stepped through the woods and peeked between the trees. There was a slim young man lying on the ground. He was rubbing his head, and didn’t seem to be dressed as completely as he might be. I waved. He waved back, rather grumpily.
When I came back out the man was tucking a wad of bills into his pocket. “Here,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone, and in a few years you’ll be rich.”
I looked at what he handed me. It was a fat roll of money. I looked a little more closely. All of it was dated five years in the future. Useless. At the moment.
“See you around, kid,” he said, and he strolled off.
I thought about it for a bit. I looked at the money again. I sat down.
Worth hanging around, I thought. Besides, I wanted one of those hats.