The pizza slice was gone in four bites.
It was cheap, greasy, and the cheese had the texture of rubber, but as I stood on the corner of 8th Avenue, wiping the tomato sauce from my lips, I felt a surge of dopamine that was almost dizzying. My stomach, previously a knotted fist of pain, uncoiled slightly.
I was still hungry—a deep, cellular hunger that one slice couldn't fix—but the frantic edge was gone. I could think again.
I looked down at my hand. I had two dollars and forty-one cents left.
Not enough.
If I was going to survive, I needed a strategy. And to build a strategy, I needed information. I was flying blind in a city that felt familiar but tasted wrong. I needed a map. I needed the internet.
I looked up at the street signs. I knew there was a branch of the New York Public Library somewhere in Hell's Kitchen. I remembered it from my previous life—or my other life, or whatever the hell I was supposed to call the time before the water.
Columbus Branch. 10th Avenue.
It was a sanctuary. Warmth. Silence. Computers.
But I couldn't go in there yet. I looked at my reflection in the darkened window of a pawn shop. I looked like a disaster. My hair was matted with salt and sweat. My shirt was stained with dumpster grime. I was the kind of person security guards followed.
I needed to buy myself some time. If I walked in there smelling like a landfill, they'd kick me out in ten minutes. I needed to look... intentional. Like an eccentric writer, not a vagrant.
I spent the next two hours on the grind.
I treated it like a job. I mapped out a grid in my head, moving systematically down the side streets between 9th and 10th Avenue. I avoided the main thoroughfares where the competition was fierce. I focused on the construction sites and the back entrances of restaurants.
It was humiliating, back-breaking work. Bending down to fish a sticky soda can out of a gutter while a businessman walked past, pretending I didn't exist, chipped away at my soul piece by piece. But I swallowed the shame. Shame didn't buy food. Shame didn't get you internet access.
By the time the afternoon sun began to slant through the canyons of steel, casting long shadows across the pavement, I had filled two more bags. I hauled them back to the recycling center, my arms burning.
"Back again?" the man at the scale grunted.
"Business is booming," I rasped.
He didn't smile. He weighed the bags. "Four dollars even."
I took the cash. I now had six dollars and forty-one cents. It wasn't a fortune, but it was a buffer.
I found a public restroom in a park near the river. I washed my face in the sink, using the gritty pink soap to scrub the worst of the dirt from my neck and hands. I tried to smooth down my hair with wet fingers. It wasn't a miracle makeover, but I looked less like a wild animal and more like a tired student who had pulled an all-nighter.
I walked to the library.
The building was a modest brick structure, squeezed between a deli and an apartment complex. To me, it looked like a cathedral.
I pushed open the doors and stepped inside.
The silence hit me first. It was a heavy, respectful silence, broken only by the rustle of pages and the soft clicking of keyboards. Then came the smell—dust, old paper, and floor wax. It was the smell of civilization.
The warmth enveloped me, thawing the chill that had settled deep in my marrow. I felt my shoulders drop two inches.
I walked to the front desk, keeping my head high. The librarian was a young woman with glasses and a skeptical expression.
"Can I help you?"
"I'd like to use a computer," I said. My voice was clearer now, less jagged. "I don't have a card."
She looked me over. Her eyes lingered on my stained shirt, then flicked to my hands. They were clean. That seemed to decide it.
"I can give you a guest pass," she said, sliding a slip of paper across the laminate counter. "Thirty minutes. If there's a queue, you have to give up your spot."
"Thank you."
I took the slip like it was a golden ticket and hurried toward the row of computers in the back.
I sat down at a terminal, the plastic chair feeling impossibly comfortable after a night on a gym mat. I woke the monitor. The blue glow of the Windows desktop flooded my vision.
I stared at the screen.
Windows XP.
The rolling green hills of the default wallpaper. The chunky blue taskbar.
A frown creased my forehead. Windows XP? In 2025? Even public libraries weren't this outdated. Maybe they just had old systems. Budget cuts.
I moved the mouse, the cursor lagging slightly, and clicked on the time and date in the bottom right corner.
A small calendar popped up.
October 15, 2009.
I froze. My breath hitched in my throat.
I blinked, expecting the numbers to change. To correct themselves. But they sat there, mocking me. 2009.
"No," I whispered.
I opened the browser—Internet Explorer 7—and frantically typed "current date" into the search bar.
The results loaded slowly.
Today is Thursday, October 15, 2009.
I sat back, the air rushing out of my lungs.
I wasn't just in New York. I was in the past.
My mind raced, trying to process the implications. The ocean. The fall. It hadn't been a teleportation. It had been a temporal displacement. I had fallen through a crack in time.
I looked around the library. The clothes people were wearing—baggy jeans, layers. No smartphones. Everyone was on flip phones or Blackberries.
Panic flared for a second—I was trapped in the past—but then, something else washed over me. Something electric.
Knowledge.
I started laughing. A short, sharp sound that drew a glare from the man sitting two terminals away. I clamped a hand over my mouth, but my eyes were wide, manic.
I was in 2009.
Do you have any idea what that meant?
I grabbed a scrap of paper and a dull pencil from the desk next to the computer. My hand shook as I pressed the graphite to the page.
Bitcoin.
Bitcoin was barely a thing yet. It had launched in January. It was worth pennies. Fractions of pennies. If I put ten dollars into Bitcoin now... in ten years, I would be a billionaire. Not a millionaire. A billionaire.
I wrote furiously.
Apple. The iPhone 3GS had just come out. The stock was probably trading around $25 or $30 a share. Before the splits. Before the domination.
Amazon.
Netflix. They were still mailing DVDs. Streaming was in its infancy.
Tesla.
The list grew. I felt like a god looking down at a chessboard where I already knew every move the opponent would make.
The fear of the shelter, the hunger, the cold—it all receded. It was temporary. It was just a hurdle I had to endure before my ascension. I wasn't a homeless bum; I was a time traveler in the early stages of his origin story. I just needed capital. I needed a job, any job, to get a few hundred bucks. Then I would invest. Then I would wait.
I opened a new tab. I needed to verify everything. I needed to make sure history was playing out exactly as I remembered.
I went to a finance news site.
DOW JONES INDUSTRIAL AVERAGE HOVERS NEAR 10,000.
HOUSING CRISIS CONTINUES TO IMPACT MARKETS.
It was all there. The recession. The gloomy economic outlook. Perfect. The market was at the bottom. The only way was up.
I felt a surge of arrogance. I was going to own this city. I was going to buy the building that shelter was in and turn it into my personal garage.
I scrolled down the page, scanning the headlines for familiar events.
PRESIDENT OBAMA AWARDED NOBEL PEACE PRIZE.
Check.
BALLOON BOY HOAX CAPTIVATES NATION.
I almost chuckled. I remembered that. Falcon Heene. The kid in the balloon.
My eyes drifted to the sidebar, looking for tech news. I wanted to see how Apple was doing.
TECH SECTOR UPDATE:
MICROSOFT RELEASES WINDOWS 7.
OSCORP INDUSTRIES STOCK JUMPS 4% ON BIOTECH BREAKTHROUGH.
I nodded, reading the...
I stopped.
I reread the line.
OSCORP INDUSTRIES STOCK JUMPS 4% ON BIOTECH BREAKTHROUGH.
Oscorp?
My brow furrowed. That sounded... familiar. But not in a "Fortune 500" way. In a vague, nostalgic way. Was it a pharmaceutical company? A subsidiary of Pfizer?
I typed "Oscorp Industries" into the search bar.
The page loaded. A sleek corporate website appeared. Green and black color scheme. A picture of a skyscraper in Midtown that looked aggressive, jagged.
CEO: NORMAN OSBORN.
Norman Osborn.
The name sat in my brain like a stone in a shoe. I knew that name. Where did I know that name?
Maybe a politician? A scandals involving insider trading?
I shook my head. It didn't matter. It was probably just a company that went bust in the 2010s. Enron style. I made a mental note: Do not invest in Oscorp.
I went back to the news site. I wanted to check the defense sector. I remembered that war spending was huge in this era.
STARK INDUSTRIES SHARES VOLATILE AS CEO REMAINS "UNREACHABLE".
I stared at the screen.
Stark Industries.
"Tony Stark," I whispered.
Now that I knew. That was Iron Man.
But... why was it on a financial news website?
I clicked the article.
DATE: OCTOBER 15, 2009.AUTHOR: BEN URICH.
Tony Stark, the controversial CEO of Stark Industries, has not been seen publicly for months. While company spokespeople claim he is on sabbatical working on new energy technologies, rumors persist of a breakdown following his return from Afghanistan last year.
I sat back, rubbing my temples.
Okay. Weird.
In my world—my old world—Iron Man came out in 2008. It was a movie. Robert Downey Jr.
Was I misremembering? Maybe the movie was based on a real guy? Like The Social Network was based on Zuckerberg?
It was possible. I wasn't a military historian. I didn't pay attention to defense contractors. Maybe there really was a Stark Industries that made missiles, and Marvel just used the name?
Or maybe...
I looked at the date again. 2009.
Maybe I was in a simulation? Or a slightly alternate history?
I searched for "Captain America."
RESULTS:Captain America: Serial from the 1940s.Captain America: War Bond propaganda icon.History of WWII: The Legend of the Star-Spangled Man.
Okay. So Captain America was a WWII figure. A myth. Like Rosie the Riveter or Uncle Sam.
I searched for "The Hulk."
RESULTS:Incredible Hulk (TV Series).Hulk Hogan.
Nothing about a green monster destroying Harlem.
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Okay. It was fine. It was just... coincidences. The human brain looks for patterns. I was seeing comic book names because I was stressed and hallucinating from hunger. Stark Industries was probably just a boring company like Raytheon. Oscorp was probably just a generic biotech firm.
The important thing—the only important thing—was that Apple and Bitcoin existed.
I looked at my scrap of paper. My Almanac.
Get a job (Dishwasher? Construction?).
Buy Bitcoin (Need a computer wallet).
Buy Apple Stock.
Wait.
I had 18 minutes left on my session.
I spent the rest of the time searching for "Day labor jobs NYC cash."
I wrote down three addresses. One for a moving company in Queens, one for a demolition crew in the Bronx, and one for a dishwashing gig at a diner in Hell's Kitchen.
The diner was closest.
"Mick's Diner. 42nd and 9th. Help Wanted. Ask for Turk."
I scribbled the address down.
The computer warned me: 2 minutes remaining.
I logged off, wiping my history. I folded the piece of paper and tucked it into my pocket like it was a sacred text.
I stood up, pushing the chair back. I felt different. I wasn't just surviving anymore. I was hunting.
I walked out of the library and back into the cold evening air of 10th Avenue. The wind had picked up, swirling trash around my ankles. The city was loud, dirty, and dangerous.
But as I looked at the skyline, at the lights flickering on in the skyscrapers, I didn't feel small anymore.
"2009," I whispered to the traffic.
I touched the paper in my pocket.
"I'm going to own this town."
I started walking toward 42nd Street. I had a dinner to scavenge, a mat to sleep on, and tomorrow... tomorrow I had to convince a guy named Turk to let me wash his dishes.
As I crossed the street, a black sedan sped past me, weaving through traffic with dangerous precision. On the back bumper, there was a bumper sticker. It wasn't political. It wasn't a sports team.
It was a logo. A red 'R' inside a circle.
ROXXON.
I stared at it as the car disappeared around the corner.
"Roxxon," I muttered. "Weird name."
I shrugged and kept walking. I had bigger things to worry about. Like how to explain the gap in my resume to a diner manager in 2009.
The world was my oyster. I just had to pry it open without cutting my hands.