Date: June 12, 1883 Location: West Adams, Los Angeles, California Sam's Age: 0
The pain came first—not the pain of birth, but the pain of becoming. Consciousness like a lightning strike. A body that wasn't his, except it was. Lungs that burned when they filled with air. Eyes that registered light as pure sensation before they registered anything else.
What the fuck is happening?
The thought arrived fully formed, complete with profanity and modern anxiety, in a voice that sounded like his own from twenty years ago. He was 42 when he died. He remembered that much. San Francisco apartment, 2:47 AM, aneurysm that came out of nowhere. One second scrolling through his phone—his phone, that small bright screen with infinite information—the next, nothing.
And then this.
A woman's face appeared above him, tear-streaked and radiant. Black skin, dark eyes, a voice like honey over deep water: "My baby. My beautiful boy."
No. No no no. This is—what is this?
But the body responded before the mind could finish the thought. Instinct older than consciousness. He opened his mouth and wailed—a sound pulled from somewhere animal and desperate—and the woman pressed him to her chest.
"Hush, baby. Mama's here. You're safe now."
You're not safe, a voice in his head whispered. The voice of someone who'd lived through 2025, who understood statistics and probabilities and what the world did to Black boys. You're about to be born Black in 1883. You're the opposite of safe.
But the body didn't care about philosophy. The body wanted warmth and food and the sound of that voice. The body was a newborn, and somewhere behind the wall of modern consciousness, the biological machinery was running the show.
He looked at her—really looked at her, his eyes focusing for maybe the first time—and recognized her from somewhere. Not memory exactly. Not how he'd experienced memory before. But knowledge, like data uploaded directly into his skull.
Evelyn. Your mother's name is Evelyn Whitfield. She's twenty-three years old. She learned to read at six. She'll teach you Latin by the time you're four. She will die in 1924, influenza, and you will spend three weeks unable to function.
The thought arrived with the weight of prophecy. Or trauma. Or both.
"Welcome to the world, Samuel," a man's voice said. Deeper. Wary in a way the woman's wasn't. His father—Thomas Whitfield, age twenty-seven, partner at Hellman, Davis & Co. Banking. Strategic. Careful. A man who understood that success in America was a dangerous thing when you looked like he did.
Sam's—and the name felt strange, like wearing a suit that didn't quite fit, even though he'd been Samuel in 2025 too—Sam's father was looking at him with something that wasn't quite joy. It was more like assessment. The way you'd look at an investment you'd just made, knowing the market could turn at any moment.
He's already thinking about what you'll need to survive, that voice whispered. The voice that used to belong to him, before he belonged to a body the size of a cantaloupe. He's already afraid for you.
The room smelled like blood and sweat and something floral—carbolic soap, his mind supplied, though he'd never smelled it before, couldn't have named it. The air was warm, trapped heat from oil lamps because this was 1883 and electricity was still a luxury most of Los Angeles didn't have. Through a window he couldn't see, a rooster crowed. Morning, then. He'd been born into morning.
Congratulations, you've been reincarnated in the worst possible time and place for everything you are.
But the baby's body was already falling asleep, exhausted from the work of being born, and the adult consciousness riding along inside it couldn't do a thing to stop it. He felt himself drifting, the sensory world fading to static, his last thought before oblivion a perfectly modern one:
This is some bullshit.