InsaneJournal

With directions from Father Robert Strickland, Mary was able to find the bus exchange and read through the buses on offer to get her out of Utah and back to New York. That was no short journey and looking at the prices, it wasn't one she was able to make anyway, even with the generous money Robert had shared. She'd just have to get as far as she could and rely on hitchhiking again.

She'd had worse things to contend with in life than hitching. She'd had worse things very very recently to contend with. Mary touched her throat unconsciously and made her way to the counter, booking a Greyhound as far as she could afford: St Louis.

Clang, clang, clang went the trolley, Mary couldn't helping thinking to herself, though there would be no one to meet her in St Louis.

Mary sat down to wait for her bus to arrive, looking at herself in the mirror on the other side of the room. She was swamped in the men's jacket Robert had given her, and underneath the jeans were a little too big as well. The white t-shirt made up for that by being a little too tight, and Mary was sure she'd soon start wishing there had been bras in the charity bin as well.

The bus was much nicer than she'd expected - which was fitting as it had seemed way more expensive than she'd expected as well - and Mary found herself a seat without having to worry about where she'd put any bags. She did feel a little naked without a phone or a wallet, which was such a modern concept. Two hundred years ago Mary had almost always left the house with nothing at all in her hands and no bag. She felt so much more tied to items now, just like the rest of the people she walked around with.

But today Mary carried nothing but herself and all she wanted was to get this body back to her apartment.

The bus ride was almost twenty hours, with two scheduled stops along the way. When they reached the first, Mary was glad to get out and stretch her legs. Maybe it was the 'having been dead for ages' of it all, but Mary was feeling cramped by all the sitting. She sacrificed a little bit of the money she had left to buy a cheaper day old sandwich, but didn't eat it until she was back on the bus.

She read the free travel magazine in the back of the seat very carefully, getting as much entertainment out of it as possible, and watched the movie overhead that she couldn't hear. (They'd wanted her to buy earphones for the pleasure.)

At the second stop she ended up in a conversation with a young mother, toddler on her lap, and a middle aged man. The toddler didn't have much to say but the man had leaned over towards Mary and asked if she'd settle something between them. The question they were (playfully) arguing about was 'would you rather have lived through all of human history so far, or would you rather be present to see the entire future of human history?'

Oh God, Mary thought as they both watched her. Please don't make me stay here for that long.

"I suppose..." Mary said. "Probably the future. I can read about the past in books." Or she could just remember it and how shitty a lot of it was for the majority of people. The future at least would be new.

"Ha!" the mother said, bouncing the child on her knee. "Told you future was better."

The man shook his head. "You girls have no sense of history! Think of all the things you could have seen and been involved with!"

"Think of all the things you could see and be involved with in the future," the mother countered.

"Bah," he said, waving a hand. "It's all falling apart anyway. I should have picked someone my age, you're both ganging up on me."

The discussion soon turned to their hopes for the future, or the crazy things they wanted to see. Mary told them everyone had been waiting for flying cars since cars were invented, although she didn't mention she'd been one of the people hoping for it as well.

By the time the bus reloaded, Mary was feeling upbeat and glad, the interactions with people helping to draw something out of her that she'd lost in the desert. They could be exhausting, humans, but she loved them. She loved them because she had to, and she loved them because she wanted to. Pains in her butt, but they tried. Mary had so much respect for trying.

The seat across from Mary had been empty the whole trip, but the history man dropped down into it and leaned a little way across the aisle. "But how long until they let us all have robot bodies?" he asked with a grin.

Mary smiled back. A conversation about future robots (however that shaped up) was more interesting than watching people in a movie having discussions about something she couldn't hear.

His name was Finlay and he was a school teacher in Detroit who was heading from seeing family in Salt Lake City to picking up a restored T-Bird in St Louis that he would then drive back home. Mary told him that she was a waitress called Mary. The rest she left slightly nebulous but made it clear that she'd left behind a very bad man in a hurry and was trying hard to get back home to New York. It was a good (and accurate) excuse for why she had no bags or personal items, and for why her clothes didn't fit quite right.

When the lights went down in the bus it was so easy for Mary to fall asleep, curled up against the window. Her first day back alive on earth had passed and soon it would be a brand new morning.

It was when they got to St Louis than Finlay made his offer: it wasn't all the way to New York, but he'd be more than happy to let her ride with him back to Detroit. Mary, once again, felt blessed by the kindness of strangers. He even insisted on buying her a proper breakfast before they got his car and went.

If Mary had the power to canonize, he would have been Saint Finlay.

On the drive to Detroit, they talked more about themselves, even if most of what Mary said had to be lies by necessity. Finlay had recently turned forty-five and talked about how he was really starting to feel the years (boy, Mary knew that feeling), and about how all the teens in his classes just kept seeming younger and younger and his slight regrets that he'd never had kids of his own, because maybe it was too late now. Mary shared that she hadn't really thought about kids and didn't think she was much cut out to be a mother anyway.

A few places along the way they stopped, once for lunch and the other times just to stretch their legs, occasionally to look at a roadside attraction.

It was all so companionable right up until they reached the outskirts of Detroit and he pulled into the abandoned parking lot of a Best Buy. His reaching hands and insistence that she didn't need to be rude made her ready to decanonize him right there, and when he grabbed at her breast and shoved his other hand down her jeans, Mary grabbed him by the back of the hair and slammed his face right into the steering wheel of his lovingly restored T-Bird.

By the time he'd managed to recover and shout something after her, Mary was already striding across the parking lot, jacket clenched in her fist as she muttered under her breath about the fucking kindness of strangers.

Behind her the car peeled away and Mary was left with the utter frustration that she was in an unfamiliar city with no way to get home.

She sure as fuck didn't feel like hitchhiking again after Finlay had showed his true colours. And it wasn't the first time a ride had gone badly for her. It was a risk you took when you got in the car with a stranger.

"Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck," Mary hissed, passing under streetlights and heading into more occupied streets, cafes and bars still with their lights on and people gathered outside of them.

She wanted to be home. Dammit, she just wanted to walk up the stairs and unlock her apartment and be home, and let all of this be a shitty dream.

But she didn't have a phone and she didn't know anyone's phone number off the top of her head anyway. She really had let modern technology soften her brain.

Mary stopped walking and leaned back against a brick wall, some sort of nightclub a few doors down pumping a relentless beat out onto the street. Across the street from her, seen between the rushing colours of cars, Mary saw a still lit building with the neon sign INTERNET CAFE.

Reaching into her pocket, Mary checked how much money she had before crossing the street. Who to write to though? Her first thought was of Nicholas, followed very quickly by the thought that she wouldn't ask him to do that. He'd said he would do anything for her and Mary believed him, but that was exactly why she wouldn't contact him and ask him to drive all the way to Detroit and collect her.

It was the second name that came to mind that Mary wrote her message to: Much.

She could only hope that he would see it and reply, and that he'd somehow agree to do this for her. It wasn't a small thing to ask, but he was the heroic type. Maybe Mary was feeling a bit like a damsel in distress tonight.