Teresa Nielsen Hayden has written a great account of the time-travellers one encounters on the New York subway system.
This happened one day back in the 1980s. I was riding the subway home from work, and this kid got on at 34th or 42nd. He was at most twelve but I think younger, and slightly built at that. What caught my eye first was that he was wearing a jacket with a waistline seam–not a full-blown norfolk jacket, less obtrusive than that, but in that class. Which was odd; it had been over half a century since boys' and men's jackets stopped having waistline seams.
I started noticing more things about him. His pants ended just below his knees. That was unobtrusive too; his pants were dark, and so were his long woolen socks. If you weren't really looking, the combination would register as black trousers, and you wouldn't think anything of it. He had a flat woolen cap, and a sweater on under the jacket, and his shoes were what you'd expect with the rest of the outfit. Think newsboy, turn of the century or a little later, and you've got it…
Since then I've seen a few more, like the guy who looked like he decided in a fit of enthusiasm to follow Peter the Hermit, and had come to really, really regret it. There've been others. And once I saw a couple of bright-eyed young men on the subway who had a different kind of not-from-here look. It wasn't their clothing or haircuts; those were correct in every detail. But they somehow managed to look separate from the scene, as though the worry and weariness and day-to-day engagedness of the subway ride touched upon them not at all; and yet the way they were openly looking at the rest of us was avid, proprietary, amused, almost too knowing…
Like they were on a ride at Disneyland. Or in a museum.
"Bloody hell," I murmured to Patrick, as I nudged him to look at them. "The little jerks are from the future."
