It was a peaceful day. The sun was shining in a blue sky, faintly dotted with white, fluffy clouds. Clouds that promised a pleasant light shower to someone somewhere later in the day.

  Here specifically, there was a meadow. There was tall grass that would prove to be about waist high in a few moments. It covered a circular area around 40m in diameter, and was surrounded by a forest. The leaves on the trees as well as the grass were a vibrant green, showing plainly their health and... happiness?

  The trees rustled gently, their taller branches swaying in a wind that wasn't there. Despite this peculiarity, songbirds flitted between the branches, chirping and dancing to nature's song. Mice played in the grass, chasing each other through the stalks. In the trees, squirrels did the same, searching for the seeds and nuts they had buried for winter.

  But the problem is, it was a peaceful day.

  Lightning crackled in the meadow, barely 6 feet from the ground. It arced out, striking some of the grass stalks. Some desiccated, drying to husks in moments. Others grew like they were growing for weeks in just a second. The mice scurried away. The birds flew to the highest branches, ceasing their song. The squirrels hid in the tree roots. The man appeared in the center of the lightning, soaking wet and screaming before he dropped 6 feet and landed on his stomach.

  Grayson choked, coughing water up from his lungs and onto the ground. Climbing to his hands and knees, he spluttered water from his nose and mouth and then sucked in pure, clear, not-made-of-water air. His immediate problem taken care of, his body reported on the second most immediate problem, the matter of his broken wrist. The wrist that was currently helping to hold up a decent portion of his weight. His left arm buckled and he caught himself before he went face first into the dirt again. He growled with the pain, rolling onto his side and gripping his broken wrist with his hopefully unbroken one, holding it steady and straight.

  Fortunately for Grayson, he was a time traveler from a very careful future. A future where things such as broken wrists could be easily solved with the use of advanced nanomachines. As he lay curled up on the dirt mewling like a wounded animal, he opened the settings of his internal network and re-enabled the nanite factories that he had disabled for his trip to the past. It would certainly be odd for someone's wrist to magically get better in the 1800s, but on this particular patch of dirt, hopefully nobody was looking. At least a couple of careless individuals had been retrieved after their unusual recoveries had been noticed, one from a bonfire being burned as a witch, the other from a town where they were about to be declared a saint.

  Grayson grunted and growled as the nanites deconstructed the broken bones and reconstructed them back in the configuration they were supposed to be in. It wasn't exactly painful but it was certainly very uncomfortable. He stood up, letting his temporarily boneless hand flop at his side while it reconstructed itself. Looking around at the silent meadow he found himself in, he felt some of the grass tips with his good hand. The grass came up just past his hips and he decided that this would be good enough for modesty. The sun was out, he was soaked, and he needed to do something to keep his mind off the fact that one of his hands was effectively regrowing by eating itself.

  This distraction came in the form of taking his pants off. He slipped off his shoes first, placing them upside down to drain, but leaving his socks on to give his feet some protection. His pants were a comfy pair of navy blue, faux denim pants for now as they had been blending in with the fashions of 2100's London. They couldn't change properly while they were soaked like this, so he carried them over and hung them on a tree branch where they would still get plenty of sun. Satisfied at his improvised washing line, he turned away to start taking off his jacket when he heard a gentle thump from behind him. It had definitely been the thump of faux denim pants landing on the ground.

  Grayson turned around slowly, expecting to see some unscrupulous hater of drying clothes. Instead, he saw a tree without a pair of pants on it, a pair of pants on the ground, and a conspicuous lack of shady individuals. Looking around, he reached down to pick up his pants, forgot which hand still didn't have working fingers and swore quietly as he had to switch. Again he raised his pants and put them on the branch, spreading them out again to dry. He gave the pants a gentle tug to make sure they wouldn't move, and they maintained their position. Watching the pants this time, Grayson returned to unbuttoning his faux denim jacket.

  The pants didn't move.

  Grayson shrugged off the jacket, wiggling his arms out of the sleeves, all while keeping an eye on his pants. He put his jacket on the branch next to his pants and took another look around. Still not seeing anyone who would do such a dastardly thing as prevent a weary traveler from drying their clothes, he checked out his left hand and found the bones nearly correct. He could roll the wrist, flex it back and forth, and even curl his thumb, but his fingertips were still shifting uncomfortably. To go along with the nearly finished healing, he felt a line of pins and needles as the new nerves were connected. Satisfied that he at least had both his thumbs working, he pulled his shirt over his head, struggling for a moment to get his arms out of the sleeves.

  Thump, thump.

  Grayson froze. He listened for the footsteps of some evil laundry gremlin. He felt the air on his skin, paying attention for the telltale gusts of someone moving. He didn't hear any gremlins. He didn't feel any air moving. He did hear the rustling of the trees in the breeze...

  The breeze that he just realized that he didn't feel. Grayson slowly pulled his shirt off and looked around again. The branches on the trees were still rustling. He looked down at his pants and jacket on the ground. He looked up at the tree.

  "You!"

  He pointed at the tree. He wasn't expecting a response from the tree. It was a tree after all, even if it was moving on it's own. The tree's branches rustled harder.

  "I see how it is. Not willing to let a weary traveler dry his pants? Jokes on you, I know how to fix this!"

  Grayson stepped back into the meadow, finding some very green stalks of grass and picking a few of their longer blades. At around 1m long, they would serve decently for his purpose. He went back to the tree and put his pants back on the branch. Immediately, the bark on the branch became much smoother than it was a second ago and his pants began to slip. Grayson held them in place with one hand while he drew one of the blades of grass up between the legs and over the waist. He tied the grass carefully, then repeated this process 5 more times. The grass held until the pants had slid around the branch and were being entirely supported by the grass. Then the grass snapped and Grayson caught his pants before they could fall to the ground again. He picked up his jacket and shirt, put on his still wet shoes over still damp socks, then with a final admonishment of "You win this round tree," Grayson strode into the forest, firmly aware that his dignity was thoroughly gone.

  After several minutes of walking, Grayson's shirt had dried enough that he could put it back on. It had been pretending to be comfortable cotton, and so dried relatively quickly. His jacket and pants were not. They still felt significantly heavier than normal and dripped uncomfortably cold water down his bare legs as he walked. He changed his shirt to something hydrophobic and draped his pants over his shoulders to give them the best chance to dry out. They still dripped down his legs, his socks were still damp, and his toes were cold. As he walked, he reflected on the advanced society of careful time travelers he came from. He reflected on buying the second cheapest set of camouflage clothes instead of the ones that were waterproof.

  After several more minutes of walking, looking at nature, and lamenting his poor decisions, Grayson stopped. He looked around at the trees. He looked up at the streaks of sunlight gently filtering through the forest canopy. He looked down at the dirt. He inspected a fallen leaf. For the first time since he arrived, he really stopped to consider what this meant.

  Slowly, he looked at the broken watch on his left wrist. His broken watch on his formerly broken left wrist. The broken watch that was crackling faintly. He gingerly pulled at the face of the watch, peeling up the metal that wasn't supposed to peel and looking into the cracked crystal inside.

  It started slowly, the first realization came. He wasn't on Earth in 2132, the date of the London flood. The trees were far more intelligent than trees on Earth, at least before spaceflight. He wasn't at one of his familiar backup points, the locations and times he had saved into his time machine for it to take him to if he decided to cut his time in a particular era short. He wasn't at one of the Time Vacation Agency's emergency recall points, where he should have ended up after whatever had hit his wrist hit his wrist. That left only one option. All pre-programmed destinations in his time machine had been wiped and it's restrictions had gone haywire. It had triggered it's last resort, the one that all time machines had that would teleport their user to any location in time and space calculated to be on a habitable planet.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "Anywhere But Here." Grayson whispered, his breathing speeding up. His neural network caught the trigger.

  Anywhere But Here.

  Connecting to time machine.

  Unable to connect.

  Assumption: Time machine triggered Anywhere But Here in a damaged state.

  Emergency Response: Remain calm.

  Determine your current coordinates.

  Carve your current coordinates into a tablet and bury it at a suitable location.

  Repeat until rescued.

  Remember, you are on a mapped world. Mapped worlds were all scanned and tablets with coordinates were recovered.

  At the time of your departure, there had been 243,475 successful retrievals with this method with a 100% success rate.

  At the time of your departure, all previous time travelers were accounted for with no casualties.

  You will be safe.

  You will be rescued.

  The TVA library has been recovered from the emergency storage section of your time machine through a physical link.

  It will help you determine your coordinates. It will also help you to survive until rescue.

  The whirling ball of horror slowed as the messages were shunted into Grayson's consciousness. His breathing slowed down to a normal level. His rising panic calmed.

  For now I suggest putting your pants back on.

  That...

  That's not right.

  Grayson checked the message log for his neural network.

  It will help you determine your coordinates. It will also help you to survive until rescue.

  End of log.

  "What the fuck?" Grayson breathed. Slowly, he put on his pants. They were still definitely damp. He got the sense they would be for a long time. He resolved not to wear denim in future.

  Realistically, it didn't matter. He'd be a rescue. When they checked his network to find out exactly why Anywhere But Here had triggered, he'd probably be banned from future vacations with the TVA. Still, he wasn't doomed. He picked up a leaf and inspected it, querying the library for potential matches.

  18,231 potential matches.

  He cross referenced the matches with the branch structure and bark of the trees around him.

  2,852 potential matches.

  He inspected a few more leaves to further update his network and hopefully eliminate a few more.

  2,577 potential matches.

  Tentatively, he added his observations on their behavior of rustling without wind.

  0 potential matches.

  Grayson started walking again. It could just be that nobody had thought to write that strange behavior down. It could just be that these trees had become extinct before humans arrived on this planet.

  He started to run. He ran as if he was being chased by the realization that was creeping up on him, as if by running he could get away from it. As if he could escape the truth. He ran until he reached the edge of the forest and found a large hill. It had gone from mid morning through mid day and well into the afternoon.

  Grayson paced around the base of the hill before deciding to climb to the top. It would be good elevation. He'd be able to see for a long way hopefully.

  He couldn't see past the much larger hills on the other side. Swearing he ran down the first hill and up the larger of the two other hills. He reached the top in the evening, just as the sun began to sink below the horizon. He looked out on a sea of fields. Some were evidently tended, some kind of crop grown in ordered rows. In the distance, he could barely make out the smoke plumes of controlled fires. There were several homesteads. He could make out lights through the windows of the closest, over 20km away. 30km beyond the closest home, he could make out the clustered plumes of a village.

  Grayson was about to start running towards the village when he remembered what time it was and how tired he was. He was hungry. He was thirsty. He desperately wanted to sleep in a bed. Instead, he laid down on the wild grass of the hill and stared up at the sky as it slowly shifted from orange to the deep, dark, blue of night. He truly relaxed for the first time since he arrived here. Soon he would know where, and more importantly when he was.

  The stars came out one-by-one. The brightest first, as they always are so impatient to be recognized. They seemed to define the gaps in the sky that were slowly filled in as more and more points of light appeared. Like drips of white paint on a black canvas, the sky filled to a beautiful painting. There was only one thing wrong with it.

  Difficulty calculating current position.

  The panic returned. Instead of the slow creep from before, it flooded back. Anywhere in known space. Anywhere that humans had ever been. Anywhere that he could possibly have ended up through the Anywhere But Here protocol. He wasn't anywhere.

  Grayson felt the same way he did looking at the wall of water that rushed at him just a few hours ago. If the sky was unrecognized, he couldn't write down his coordinates. He couldn't calculate when he was. He couldn't calculate longitude and latitude without the axial tilt of the planet.

  He could practically feel himself turn to run, down into the metro, for no other reason than he knew everyone in the metro had died and that his missing body would be one of many. That down in the metro, regardless of who was watching, he would be able to travel to one of his backup points. He could feel the panic run down his back like it had when the wall of water smashed into him, when he had tumbled down into the metro, when he opened his mouth to breathe in and scream only to fill his lungs with water, when he been tumbled down the stairs in a swirling cascade of water, when his left wrist hit something with a crack that carried even through the roaring of the current. When he had disappeared from there and arrived here. Arrived outside of known space.

  Grayson closed his eyes and reopened them, willing the stars to have changed, willing for his-

  Calculation successful.

  Grayson sighed in relief, closing his eyes and leaning his head back. He waited for the coordinates, but nothing came. He waited for a few seconds, irritation building at the delay before mentally prodding at his neural network.

  Calculation made more difficult by unexpected light pollution levels.

  What? But normally there wouldn't be any light pollution. Any unoccupied world should be totally pure at night.

  Calculated coordinates: Earth. April 17th, 2132.

  Approximately 51° North Latitude 0° Longitude

  London, England.

  Grayson shot to his feet, staring around in complete confusion. The geography was wrong. Even discounting the lack of buildings, the forest had the wrong trees. The topography was wrong. He could see kilometers in every direction, but the Thames was nowhere to be seen. He looked out away from where the sun had set, away from the forest, across the rolling fields, past the village and over at the mountains he could see in the distance far beyond them.

  "Where am I?" He whispered.

  "Where the hell am I?"