Free Time After Time by Karl Alexander

carry on as a respectable surgeon would survive in any time sphere.
    Although hungry, thirsty, in sore need of a bath and clean clothes, he decided to spend the night in the park. He was in no shape to test the mettle or hospitality of the San Franciscans. Since insects abounded in the glen—especially mosquitoes—he left the area and climbed the hill where he had been before. At the top, he curled up between a tree and a bush and used his shredded coat as a pillow. He listened to the strange sounds of the city as night came. God, what he wouldn’t give for that pot of tea Mrs. Nelson had made for
him just a few hours ago, not to mention a bottle of passable French claret. Not even in his unhappy, poverty-mired childhood had he ever felt so isolated and alone.
    And then another feeling settled over him like a dull ache. It was more than a sense of helplessness in an alien world. It was the fear of permanently losing his own age. He couldn’t shake it.
    He slept fitfully, to say the least.

4
    He woke with a start just after eight o’clock in the morning to the steady roar of rush hour. He rubbed the film of sleep from his eyes, then felt a burning sensation in them and assumed that it was due to a poor night’s rest. Finally, the day came into focus. From his vantage he stared down at the modern highway, his red eyes blinking.
    He frowned. The eight lanes of machines moved slowly and frequently jammed up, unlike the evening before. It was a clear case of too little road for too many machines. He glanced up and saw machines in the sky circling the highway like annoying soloists in a mechanical symphony. They weren’t as big as the airship he had seen the day before, but hovered much like hummingbirds. His analytic mind quickly figured out that the sky machines were monitoring the snarl of road machines below. He grinned, for he already had a much simpler solution. Put layers of highway, one atop the other. What could be more logical? Or natural?
    He stood, stretched his stiff muscles, then coughed and spat up blood. That confirmed it. One more night out on the ground and he was sure to have a recurrence of the tuberculosis. He resolutely left his lair, stomach growling, hand tightly clutching the jewels in his coat pocket. He walked down the hill, out of the glen, then across the lawns, now covered with dew. He found a fountain and
drank long and deep, then splashed water on his face and felt refreshed. His spirits rose a little, and he left the park.
    This time when he came to an intersection he wisely waited for other pedestrians to materialize, then did exactly as they did when it came to crossing in front of the idling machines. He eyed the vehicles with a touch of suspicion while reminding himself to keep his reactions subdued so that no one would take undue notice of him.
    One strange spectacle compelled him to stop and stare. Workers wearing metal hats and thick orange vests were in the bucket of a yellow crane fifteen feet in the air attaching something to a streetlight. The object was long and flimsy, red and green and dotted with large silver stars. Wells turned and saw that every streetlight up ahead of him was adorned with the same, curious, elongated ornament.
    Another truck was loaded with the things, and more workers were wiring branches of holly to the bases of the streetlights. Not real holly, for there was no pungent odor. Imitation trees on streetlights? Metallic streamers overhead? What had the world come to? Or was there to be a celebration of some kind?
    When he saw an upside-down, cardboard St. Nicholas in the back of the truck, it came to him. He’d always heard that Americans were much more garish than their English counterparts, but decorations in the street? All this to celebrate the birthday of an ex-fisherman who had a way with words and philosophies? Obviously, humanity had not progressed beyond the twelve days of Christmas. He wondered how religion could still have