“That’s a philosophical discussion she doesn’t have time to get into right now.” Buffy had said. “She has to figure out how to send you back.”
Jack paused at a paragraph about Blackbeard. “Poor bastard.” He muttered. “We were the gypsies of the sea, some of us more famous than the queen herself. And we’re all boiled down to a paragraph in a book.”
He kept flipping. Two World Wars, the British Empire collapsed, the rise and decline of some new system of government, explosives that could level entire cities, ways of communication that had never occurred to anyone in his day. He wasn’t sure what was stranger, his being here in this time and this body, or the fact that man had walked on the moon. WALKED ON THE MOON!
Who had come up with that idea?
Finishing his business, he rose from the head (toilet they’d called it), and closed the lid. Then he lifted it again. He kind of wanted to see this. Pushing down on the handle that Faith had shown him, he watched in morbid fascination as water and waste swirled out of sight, and clean water replaced it. At least there’d been SOME advances in technology that were worthwhile.
He pulled up his pants and looked at himself in the mirror. Nope, he just didn’t quite see it. Maybe if the boy still had both eyes it’d be easier to see the family resemblance. Of course after a few hundred years of breeding, some of his characteristics could have gone away. Still, nice to see that the old Sparrow good looks had continued their course. Though land life seemed to have added a bit of weight that didn’t need to be there. But there was muscle hiding under all that. He could tell that young Harris worked hard. The calluses on his hands were almost worthy of a sailor.
Deciding it was time to face the world, he swung open the door. “Right then!” he said. “Tell me about myself.”