You turn 30 at Riverview, and birthday celebrations aren't much different in the 20th century than they are in your time. The other patients manage to scratch together a cake, and a staff member gets you a half-melted 3 and 0. You're not allowed to light them, but you mime blowing them out anyway. In the future the candles are electronic, their flames simulated, but the tradition is the same. An embarrassing song and a chant to make a wish. You purse your lips and wish you were home.

Clicking your heels three times doesn't work, despite another patient's insistence to the contrary. Your only shot is access to some kind of nuclear facility. A cutting edge lab working on fusion power. Enough energy to open a wormhole, like your father did. Like you did, defiantly throwing that switch.

You wish you could let go of regret.

This is in between long naps and dazed periods of staring out the window. Birds don't care what time it is, they focus on the present. Maybe you should have wished you were a bird. Your friends worry. They teach you a trick, hiding your pills under your tongue. But the nurse catches on and makes you lift your tongue, to make sure you swallow. New trick is to tuck the pills in your cheek. Spit them out and chuck them in the trash later.

You can't get the hang of it. Your roommate shakes your shoulder and asks for another lesson in quantum physics. You've forgotten what that is.

The discharges are occasional, then become more frequent. Everybody congratulates each exiting resident, who are deemed well enough to leave and make a fresh start on the outside. But some are hesitant, others distraught. Most of them have no money, no family or friends to take them in. The staff reassure them there's a half-way house in Eastside Vancouver and plenty jobs waiting.

Entire wards are emptied out, mostly the recovering drug addicts and patients with depression. The schizophrenics are last, most of them transferred to your own ward. Dr. Melville calls you into his office one last time.

He gives you that tight smile, hands folded on his desk. The cat poster is missing, replaced with two diplomas, one from Concordia University.

"Jason, I'm pleased to tell you that I have evaluated your case, and you have proved functional enough to be discharged from this hospital."

Your mouth drops, then closes again. A swirl of emotions nearly overcome you. Relief, joy, fear, apprehension.

"I...don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything. Just gather your things, and you will be escorted to a shuttle back to Vancouver."

You shake your head. "My friends..."

"You have two hours to say goodbye. I wish you the best of luck."

Rebecca would hug you, but Dr. Melville merely goes back to his work. You don't even get a handshake. He only cares you're one less mouth to feed.

Back at the ward, you shake hands, slap backs, say goodbye to people both lucid and distracted by whatever visions plague them. They look up at you and don't recognize you. The lucid ones congratulate you like they have everybody else. One warns you it's dangerous on the outside, and nothing like having a warm bed and three meals a day.

"I'll get by," you say, but you haven't had to survive on your own a day in your life. This will be a totally new experience. After two years here, you're not sure how you'll manage. No social insurance number, no identification, no record at all. No money.

Trousers, shirt, long coat and sunglasses. Your friends hand you layers of shirts and a headband to cover your ears. It's cold on the outside. Rainy season.

You're back in the city, near the harbor where you first arrived. You check into the half-way house with no bag, only a toothbrush in your pocket. The place is crowded and there's only so many beds. You're directed to a homeless shelter down the street that's also missing free beds, that directs you to yet another. They can't turn you away, but they can't give you a bed either. You learn to sleep on the floor with your coat as a pillow. They can give you one meal a day, and it'll have to suffice until you find a job. But who would hire a ghost?

The others teach you how to get by. How to panhandle for change, how to dumpster dive, how to steal. You experience terrible withdrawal from the Thorazine leaving your system. You were supposed to titrate down dose by dose. Suddenly it's gone, blood clean of the drug. You look like a recovering junkie. Kinda feel like one, too. But clarity returns. Brain fog gone, mind operating on full steam again. Analyzing your situation. Coming up with a plan.

Failing miserably to make any progress.

You're 30 years old and you're starving, stuck in a time that isn't yours, living a life you've never lived, on streets with the same names but filthier sidewalks. You haven't laundered your clothes in weeks, haven't showered in days, but you tell yourself you can make it another day, a day at a time.

But there's somebody following you. Another ghost, in a black suit. An olive skinned man with a mustache. The black man you fought back in 2077. These men appear across the street, then disappear when you turn to look. You feel like you're being watched, like you're being followed. And oh shit, oh no. You forgot about them. How insistent they were you don't send Liber8 back, don't corrupt the timeline. You're a mistake, you're not supposed to be here. You're a danger.

Oh, God, they're going to kill you.