Flash Fiction Friday: Caveman

Every morning I wake up in the armpit of this alien world.

Life has a way for making funny turns.  I was a wealthy shipping magnate, moving cargo and beings between planets.  I had thousands of employees, a young, attractive wife who at least pretended not to only love me for my money.

Then came interstellar war and "civilian shipping" was a "legitimate target" and the insurance wouldn't pay because it was "an act of war" and I lost everything.  My yacht was confiscated in orbit around this planet where I hoped my creditors wouldn't find me.

So here I'm stuck, trying to make enough money to buy a steerage ticket back to Earth.  Or work as a deckhand on a ship going back to Earth.  Or stowaway on a ship going back to Earth.

Only problem is, no Earth-bound ships come here since the Gralvalians won the war.

I sat up on my rock and stretched my body. Fifty-year-old humans were not designed to sleep on rocks.  But the natives of this planet haven't invented the bed, yet.  And they wouldn't for about 50,000 more years.  I walked to the entrance to the cave where I slept.  Because the only transportation on this planet was walking, I was stuck withing about a 20 mile radius of where the repo company's landing boat set me down with only the clothes on my back, which were now rags.  I'd have to kill and animal for some skins, soon.  That was not a problem, I'd gotten quite used to killing animals for food.  I'd developed some weapons of a fashion: a spear, a flail with a rock at the end, and even, of course, a club.

I looked at the sun.  I rued that sun, about 52,000 years younger than I remembered it.  And I swore next time I hid from repo men, I wouldn't go back in time.  And now that the Gralvalians have captured all the wormholes, I'll never go forward in time, either.

A nice seeming Neanderthal family had moved in a bit away.  Maybe I'd go visit them.  Archaeological evidence was that "modern humans" and Neanderthals interacted, including interbreeding.  Funny, I could be the cause of the very articles I read 52,000 in the future.

I slung my club over my shoulder and headed out.  I'll call the neighbors "The Jones."