A great nephew I've never met just showed up in my high-rise. Well, he said he was my great nephew. His clothes were pretty torn. Said he'd just been running from a bunch of religious zealots in the early eighties; they'd thought he was some sort of demon.

I don't know if if this man was crazy, but I figured I'd play along since I'm mostly indifferent when it comes to...well, everything. So I asked him, calmly and politely, would he get off my carpet so I could put it into its cleaning cycle. You leave blood too long on a carpet without letting it clean itself, it stays and then the carpet goes into depression. It's never happened to me or anyone I know, but the Mead showed a story about it once.

So then this young fellow tells me he's my great nephew, and he's from twenty sixty-five. I don't know if I believe him; maybe I do, the security's pretty tight in my flat and I bio-locked the door behind me when I came in.

So you time travel, I say. He laughs. No one calls it that in twenty sixty-five apparently. It's a moot term. Then what do you call it? The kid says some word in a language I've never heard before. I nod. All right. So you're from the future. You came here why.

He shrugs. You are Alfred Funk, right? The Alfred Funk? I shrug too. I'm the only Alfred Funk I know.

I ask him if he wants a beer and he doesn't laugh. Beer is apparently still relevant in twenty sixty-five. He drinks the beer and says he's got somewhere to be.

I wonder if he'll come back. Maybe I've got something to ask him.

Fuck. That was my last beer.