Who? Ernest & Dan Where? A park When? After Ernest's CB post What? Drinking and chatting Rating? TBD Open? No
This fucking place again.
It had been a couple of years since he'd been sent back to that damn year again. 1939, his groundhog year, and as ever it seemed like everything that had happened even in that world had been erased. Once again, he'd woken up next Marty Gellhorn, and she had apparently no memory of him ever telling her to go to hell, and he'd never told her about some crazy island, or indeed a space station. There was no record of him having been hospitalised, there was no psychiatrict report on him, he'd never received electroconvulsive therapy, and he still had access to his children.
Oh, he remembered the last time he'd been sent home well enough, and he wasn't stupid enough to make the same mistakes twice. He kept his mouth shut, played along, and if anything about the island or the station slipped through he shrugged it off as mere fiction, or said "hell, you know not to listen when I'm tight."
He'd published his novel, married the girl, got on with living his life and the next war he already knew so much about. It made him seem like a tactical genius.
The sobriety had never been going to last back home, not with a war on, and other worlds swimming about in his head. There was always plenty of booze when there was war, and today was no expection. Not that he'd been on the front lines or anything. Far from it.
Even further now, as he meandered along corridors and tried to remember where that damn park was. He had to look out of place on a space station, in cargo shorts, sandals, and a vest that had probably once been white. He had missed Dan, although maybe it was a blessing that he was younger. He wouldn't have to see how he was when he was disappointed. Ernest was far from sober, and he knew whenever the booze wore off, he was going to feel whatever he'd done to his fist. Younger Dan had a good point though - just don't sober up.
He found the place eventually, and strolled on over as if he'd never been away a second, giving the younger man a lop-sided smile as he caught sight of him.
"Hey, kid," he greeted him, with a bit of a mischievous glint in his eye. "Good to see you again."