Foreignness

The Corridors Of Time, CHAPTER ONE.

Is it possible to speak to someone from the future without picking up some hint of temporal alienness?

Malcolm Lockridge:

"...couldn't quite tell what part of the world had shaped [Storm Darroway's face]..." (p. 8)

"He couldn't place her accent either..." (ibid.)

She reminds him of some Cretan images and this will be significant.

"...he saw a tiny, transparent button in her left ear." (p. 12)

Hearing aid? Translator.

Poul Anderson's readers remember Manse Everard's job interview. Mr. Gordon's smile is unlike any that Everard has seen before. Gordon has a dark complexion, no hint of beard, Mongolian eyes, Caucasian nose and an overall foreignness. His assistant is white-skinned (white, not pink?) and completely hairless. Meter readings are unrecognizable.

"Perhaps [Everard] was already beginning to realize the truth, even then."

-Poul Anderson, "Time Patrol" IN Anderson, Time Patrol (Riverdale, NY, December 2010), pp. 1-53 AT 1, p. 4.

In one of my draft pieces of fiction, I tried to indicate that someone was from another time by stating that he looked Irish but neither from the North nor from the South.

By the end of CHAPTER ONE, there have only been these barely noticeable hints about Storm.