Let's be honest: time travel is a way of life. There are very few (I don't know of any) casual time travellers -- you know, regular folks who work 9-to-5 Monday-thru-Friday, belong to the PTA, pay their taxes and go time travelling for their vacation once or twice a year. No, nobody does it that way.

Instead, we go all out. Anyone who travels at all builds their entire life around it. Like heroin or having a baby, time travel is not something you just do for kicks. We do have our kicks, but as an adjunct to the truth which defines us. Doing just a little bit of time travelling is like having a little bit of a junk habit - or being a little bit pregnant. Even if you start out that way, it's just going to grow, until it takes over your life. You can't help it. Those of us who have survived to become permanent travellers like this unavoidable condition: we wouldn't have it any other way.

Time travellers are hard-core.

Below is a list I've compiled of various characteristics we time travellers share. It is neither complete nor infallible. A most extremely individualistic lot, we have very little in common but our travelling and our ways of dealing with it. There are things that should be on this list but aren't, and there are travellers who lack one or more of these qualities. Still, even we can be defined quantitatively when there is a big enough sample. How big is big enough? Nobody knows: after all, there is no way to track down a time traveller.

Some qualities most time travellers share are ...

1. RICH
Time travellers are always rich. Why wouldn't we be? Nobody wants to be poor, and time travel makes money easy to come by. You can play the stock market, play the horses, deposit a little in a bank for a long time, or just steal it. For that matter, you can make your own: the manufacturing technology is absurdly simple. No time traveller ever needs to be even near poor, and most of us have far more squash than anyone needs. Our wealth is limited only by our imaginations and, to paraphrase Han Solo, we can imagine quite a bit

2. NON-RESIDENT
Time travellers don't live anywhere, at least not in Historical time. For one thing, we hate having things pass us by, and when you are home everything is passing you by. We like our time in History to be spent out and about, going places and doing things, living in the moment. Historical time is too precious to waste sitting home and watching TV! Oh we watch TV, but it's either at a social event if live or, if at home, recorded. Any time we spend in History, though, we want to be out experiencing things, not sitting home in isolation

Isolation, of course, is necessary for home life: you have to have your own space, after all. We are also extraordinarily long lived, and that presents the problem of keeping our homes safe over time with people snooping around, committing crimes, levying taxes, etc. In truth, the only way a time traveller feels safe in his home is by isolating that home from everyone, even other travellers. That is why we live at various times and places throughout the millions of years of Prehistory that Earth has to offer. Yes, only millions, not billions -- for most of that time we couldn't even breathe, you know.

3. YOUTHFUL, THOUGH BY NO MEANS YOUNG
We maintain perpetual youth for the same reason we make ourselves rich: because the alternative sucks, and who wouldn't do it if they could? This is another reason for us to live away from History, of course: don't want any locals getting suspicious over time. Luckily in big cities, where we like to hang out, people tend to ignore you.

While we are youthful, we are far from young. Indeed we are older than any time-locked person before the 21st Century, when eternal youth became available. Our advanced age and enormous reserve of experience makes us alternately bored, charmed, nostagic, bitter, cynical, optimistic and a whole raft of other contrary emotions.

The only thing we lack is ignorance about the future. To us there is no future, just History as it is, and that makes for a certain sureness that can be oppressive or delightful, depending. You can take heart in the fact that we are not beyond the problems of the human condition, despite our superb health and wealth. Far from it: we are stuck as you will never be, unable to die and unlikely to off ourselves. And we all keep showing up in the same times and places over and over again ... and always will. Are you sure you want to be a time traveller?

4. ALWAYS FLUSH WITH CASH
This is not the same as being rich. Most rich people carry very little cash; time travellers carry lots of it. Why?

For one thing, we are never home in History. Everyplace and everywhere is a foreign country, even the time and place we came from - after all, we're different now, and we are not the same individual currently living "our" earlier life. So we're scared.

All time travellers live with a subconscious dread of being stuck -- that is, suddenly unable to travel. This would make us just like you, and it would cut us off from all that we hold dear. Worse, it would strand us in a milieux where we cannot survive, as we have little experience and no identity documents. Is it any wonder we're a bit paranoid? And paranoids hoard things they're afraid of losing. We're afraid of losing our wealth, so we carry plenty of it with us at all times.

Personally, I carry rare coins. I don't need much room for a coin and just one can set me up very comfortably. Whenever I leave home for a particular milieu, I carry the largest paper notes that would be accepted then. If I need to, I can spend them.

5. USUALLY AMUSED
So far I've given the impression that the travelling life is sad and frightening. Not so! We're actually thorough lovers of life, and most of the time we're having great fun. After all, we can drop in on anything, anywhere, and we know how it's going to turn out. Note also that we live separately from you, so things like traffic jams, politics and social ills just don't concern us. We are perpetual tourists, and as tourists we're just visiting and here for a good time.

A traveller, for example, can chuckle at something a famous person says, knowing it's going to blow up in their face years down the road. We can take in a concert with full knowledge of the artist's entire career unto death. We can watch a movie for the umpteenth time, enjoying the reactions of people seeing it fresh. In each case, it is our knowing perspective that gives us a kind of laconic detachment to whatever goes on. We know, and this knowing makes us feel more than a bit superior.

6. INDEPENDENT
Almost by definition, we have to be independent. After all, we live like no one else. Beyond that though, travellers are of an independent bent, much moreso than the stuck. We live beyond any and all rules and regulations, beyond family, beyond society, so we must rely on ourselves for rules and judgement. So we are ...

7. ANARCHISTS
All time travellers are anarchists. We live in complete autonomy from others which we caused to happen ourselves, having been born into a normal, coerced and oppressed society like you all. We've separated ourselves and made our own way in the wilderness, and nobody has earned the right to boss us around! Thus we live in complete independence, each of us an emperor unto himself, respecting no authority - the embodiment of anarchy. When you are the type that cherishes freedom so much that you resort to time travel, for gosh sakes, how could you be anything else??

8. CASUALLY UNLAWFUL
9. ENRAPTURED BY THE STRANGEST THINGS
10. DRESSED very FASHIONABLY OR very UNFASHIONABLY
11. POSSESSED OF RARE, EXPENSIVE OR UNKNOWN TECHNOLOGY
12. RARELY WORRIED
13. UNUSUALLY HEALTHY OR UNUSUALLY SICK
14. NEVER SEEM TO SLEEP OR GO TO THE BATHROOM
15. THEIR "HOMES" SAY VERY LITTLE ABOUT THEM
16. NO CHILDHOOD FRIENDS OR RECORDS
17. NO FAMILY
18. ALWAYS SURE/NEVER SURE WHAT DAY IT IS
19. ODD VIEWS ON THINGS
20. OFTEN SEEM FORGETFUL, ONE DAY TO THE NEXT