He didn’t believe the man in the alley when he first met him.

It started like any other time. The man was there to get his weekly fix, but this time the man in the alley asked if he wanted something different.

At this point in his life he wasn’t exactly keen on saying no to any pharmacological fun.

So it took the pills. They were twice as expensive as his usual stuff but his dealer told it was worth it.

When he first heard what they did he was reasonably sure that the dealer was sampling too much of his own product.

It started with a meeting at work.

It couldn’t take it any more. Not another soul sucking waste of time. He pulled the little bottle of pills out.

He popped one.

And it was 15 minutes later. He wouldn’t believe it if he hadn’t watched his watch move.

He popped another one and another 15 minutes flew by.

Another pill and it was the end of the work day.

And so it began. Everything he didn’t want to do. The dishes. The yard work. A dance recital here. A dinner with the in-laws there.

He never had to be there.

But, he realized something about the pills. They weren’t a normal drug. At first he thought he was just spacing out. After a while he realized that these were not normal pills.

The pills were moving him forward in time. He realized when he missed a whole day, arriving at the next morning and he didn’t need to shave.

There was another thing. They were slowly moving him further forward in time. First, it was 15 minutes, then an hour. Hours turned to days and days turned to weeks.

Now if he wanted to miss a day of jury duty he’d lose a month. But he figured he could be careful.

But that’s not how things work.

It got harder and harder to resist the pills and he moved forward in time.

Finally one day he took too many.

He woke up in what he thought was a hospital room, but it was stark white. It looked much more modern than any hospital he’d been to.

He laid in bed as a holographic read out showed his vital signs.

Finally a doctor walked in.

“How are you feeling?” she asked.

“What happened?” the man asked.

“It was the pills wasn’t it? We keep getting people just appearing from another time. You’re the third one today. Nasty stuff.”

“What about my family?” the man asked.

“What year do you last remember?”

He told her.

The doctor’s face turned grim, “That was nearly 150 years ago. I’m afraid they’re long gone.”