Now Squint finally gets the chance to send his mind back in time and possess his past self from the future.  His mission is to disrupt the timeline in the past so that scientists in the future can observe the differences, this way they'll know what happened to the Earth five thousand years ago (in our present time).  For this mission Squint will need to pretend like he's homeless or on drugs as he travels across America.  Nobody would ever suspect a crazy looking homeless guy of interfering with the timeline from thousands of years in the future.

I'm including a music video with this post to serve as an artists rendering of this adventure and also as a sound track for this chapter.  (The music video contains references to drug use and may be considered NSFW or offensive by some.)

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Did you miss the previous chapter?  If so, then click here.

And if you'd like to start from the beginning of the story, then click here.

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Chapter 30 - How To Dolphin Punch Yourself

  Before I knew it I was dolphin punching my brain in the past from the computer interface in the future, and everything was ready to go.  It felt good to be back in the past again, everything seemed more familiar to me.  There was only one problem, in that timeline I didn’t have a car yet so I needed to get a ride to the bus station, which was in the city about 50 miles away.  At first I had asked my ex-girlfriend, for a ride to the bus station.  She wanted to know why, of course, but I told her something about wanting to go check out Canada that summer because it was getting too hot lately.  Eventually she refused to drive me though.  I think she could tell that something was a little bit out of place. 

  Later that night I walked about a block away to a mini-mart where I bought a six-pack of beer to help me relax.  I had to be careful about who I asked for a ride.  The less people who knew about me leaving town, the better.  Eventually I asked my family for a ride.  My mom wasn’t happy about me going, but my uncle gladly gave me the ride, plus some money to help me get away. 

  I didn't want to say where I was going (the truth was that I didn't even know where I was going), but my family just assumed that I wanted to go back to where I grew up.  On the way to the bus station we probably saw two or three cars pulled over by the police about every mile of the ride.  My uncle jokingly asked if I was sure that they weren’t looking for me.  When we finally got to the bus station my uncle left me at the door but commented inside about how he thought that I was intending to go back to the town where I went to high-school.  Luckily there was hardly anybody there so it didn't seem to matter that he said it kind of loudly. 

  I approached the ticket counter and asked for a ticket to that town that my uncle had mentioned.  I probably should have called ahead to find out the bus times, because my bus didn’t leave for a while yet.  The bathroom door was locked though, and eventually I needed to go.  I waited for as long as I could, but nobody ever came out of the bathroom.  It was just simply locked. 

  Nature demanded that I do something though.  So I stood up and walked out of the bus station, there was still plenty of time to find a public restroom before my bus arrived.  Looking around there was a gas station with a mini-mart nearby, but looking closer I saw that there was no way into the place, it had a window and a ‘slot’ for a cashier to exchange money for gas and snacks.  But the door was obviously locked, it even had a metal grate and a chain over it.  I sighed a little bit and tried not to wet myself as I searched farther and farther away for a restroom. 

  Shortly after I had relieved myself and got back to the bus station, another traveler was complaining to the staff about the bathroom door being locked.  Why didn’t I think of that?  Eventually somebody who worked there unlocked the bathroom door and looked inside, only to come back out moments later, scratching their head and commenting about how it had been locked from the inside but there was nobody in there. 

  Then my bus finally came and a guy who looked like he was homeless kept talking to me and saying really weird things while we were lining up for the bus.  While I was getting onto the bus, someone said the driver wanted me to sit up front so they could talk to me.  I thought it was a joke, so I just smiled and nodded and kept walking.  I’m pretty sure my backpack hit that person in the head as I was walking past their seat.  Then as the bus pulled away from the station, one of the people who I had seen getting off the bus as I was waiting to get on, they threw a couple of eggs at some windows on my bus like they were mad at somebody who was on it.  But everybody on the bus seemed surprised and nobody spoke up to say what it was about. 

  The buses first stop was at a truck stop.  I went into the restroom to relieve myself once again, and somebody followed me into the stall.  They kept saying “Brian.  Brian!  Hey, Brian!”.  I didn’t know who Brian was, so I didn’t answer them.  I just pretended like they weren’t really there, standing right behind me, shouting at me while I was trying to take a leak. 

  Eventually, when I was done, I turned around and gave the guy a weird look.  Then for some reason the bus driver, who was also in the bathroom washing his hands told the other guy something very strange.  I didn’t understand any of it, so I just walked past them, out the door, and back onto the bus.  But this time I sat down in a different seat.  Then, as the bus pulled away from the truck stop, a man who looked like he was from the middle-east reached under my seat and pulled a bag toward him.  It wasn’t my bag so I didn’t say anything, I figured I had probably taken his seat. 

  When the bus got to the next station, I had some lay-over time so I walked around the station looking for a way to waste time.  I saw a row of seats that had small television sets attached to them, and I thought maybe watching some TV would help me relax.  But when I approached that row of seats I saw what appeared to be the insides of one or two eggs spilled onto the seat that I was going to sit on.  I stopped in my tracks and just stared at the eggs.  Then I looked around and noticed a small group of people by the exit, just standing there, starring at me. 

  I was getting nervous and decided to leave the bus station instead of getting on my next bus.  I asked someone behind the ticket counter about taxi fares in that city and they asked how far I wanted to go.  I wasn’t sure so I asked what ten miles would cost, and they said it would be about twenty dollars.  I had never gotten a taxi before, but I walked outside, right past that group of people who were still watching me and hailed a taxi with one wave.  I said I wanted to go to a hotel, and they drove me ten miles and asked for about twenty dollars. 

  At the motel, I had just paid for a room and was beginning to sign the motel guest-book.  But then someone came in behind me and the receptionist asked them, “Hey, are you the guy?” and they answered, “Yep.”  So I started getting nervous again and signed the guest-book with a fake name that I made up on the spot.  It was then that I realized I was terrible at making up fake names, I ended up with two first names instead of a last name, but it was written in ink so I had to leave it that way.  The ‘guy’ was still behind me, so I hurried up and left the reception area and headed for my new motel room on the second floor. 

  My room had two beds and I tried sleeping in the one by the window.  But then I heard people checking into the room next to mine.  I recognized one of the voices as that guy who answer ‘yep’ to the receptionist, so I kind of eavesdropped on them, listening to see if I could find out anything about them to ease my mind. 

  That only made me even more paranoid though.  Eventually I heard one of them say something like “So, when are we gonna go blast down that door?”  I was so nervous and paranoid about them that I was compelled to call the police for some reason which I couldn’t explain, I just felt certain that I would die if I didn't.  The police asked me for an address and I told them I was at a motel.  They said they still needed an address so I apologized for bothering them and hung up. 

  I tried watching some TV to calm down, but it was all violence and that didn’t help my stressed out mind.  So I started drinking some of the beer that I had brought with me.  It tasted like laundry soap for some strange reason.  Every single can in that bag tasted like soap.  And to this day, my stomach still makes a lot of strange bubbling noises as if I really had been drinking soap. 

  Eventually I went back to listening through the walls for more clues.  Then they said something else that scared me again.  So I looked around the room for any sign of what the address might be.  I found it on a booklet near the telephone and dialed 911 again.  They said someone would be there soon. 

  It seemed to take forever.  I turned the TV on again, just in time to see the beginning of one of my favorite anime shows about cybernetic cops in the future.  It was the last episode of that series and I felt compelled to watch it.  I enjoyed watching that show in the past had been anticipating the final episode. 

  The show was just starting to get interesting, but then there was a loud knock at the door.  “Police.  Open up.” someone said on the other side of the door.  I stood up and removed the chair I had wedged under the doorknob to barricade it from being opened.  “Open Up!” they shouted and began banging on the door.  Eventually I got it open and a police officer stepped into the room.  He asked me what I thought was so suspicious about the people next-door and I told him that I thought they had followed me from the bus station.  When I mentioned the thing about the eggs he gave me a weird look. 

  He said that he just gotten done talking to them, and that they did in-fact come from the bus station, but that there was no way I could have known that.  Then he asked me about the fake name I wrote in the guest-book.  I told him I that used a fake name because I didn’t want to end up in the hotels mailing list.  He told me that using an alias like that was highly suspicious, and asked me if I had ever considered checking into a mental hospital.  I admitted that the idea had crossed my mind once or twice in the course of my lifetime.  He looked away from me just in time to see someone in the parking lot below us quickly walking away with some large bags in their hands.  He got a good look at them and then said, “That’s weird.  That’s the person who answered the door over here when I went to talk to them.” said the police officer who pointed at the door next to mine.  But he had been standing by those two doors the whole time.  And there were no other exits.  Whoever was walking away from us had to of jumped out through a second-floor bathroom window on the back side of the motel to get around that police officer.  The cop just scratched his head and watched the guy walk away.

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Did you enjoy reading today's chapter?  Then stay tuned for more tomorrow.

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