“Mind if we do some traveling?” I asked as I started to change the location around us.

“Where will you be creating?” She asked as she watched New York disappear and Bangkok Thailand appear around us. “Ah, South East Asia, The Kingdom of Thailand.” She said as if she was reading from an encyclopedia britannica. “This is where you lived off and on when you were younger correct?” She asked as she turned in place and looked around. I marveled at how incredible the simulation was able to bring me back to this exact spot and this exact place in time in my memory with such ease.

We were standing on a street corner next to a busy looking side street and an even more busy main street in front of us. To the left was a row of buildings with various shops and vendors offering their wares all down the side street. My brothers and I would sometimes eat noodles at one of the sidewalk restaurants a little ways down from here. I smiled at the memory and started to tug at my shirt as it started to get damp from me sweating from the heavy Thai humidity and heat. “Yeah, you never forget this smell or feeling.” I said as I felt a trickle of sweat start to bead at my neck and roll down my back.

A high concrete overpass lay directly in front of me, it was the reason I called up this place in time and asked the simulation to replay what happened so I could see it from a different point of view. So much of the construction in Thailand was concrete. I could see it now and laughed when I remembered some of the reasons why it was this way. In streets that they tried to lay asphalt I remembered my mom getting her high heels stuck in the ground when she tried to walk. Such was the life in Asian countries where the heat was high enough to cause the asphalt to melt.

The overpass wasn’t the real focus for my memory, it was the three little boys that were walking across it from the other side of the street that were. They had just gotten dropped off from school across town and were heading home. One of those three little boys was me. I spotted my younger self as he skipped and hopped down the stairs with his older and younger brother. I think I was 11 or 12 at the time. We were heading to a tiny bus that would take us down the side street and to our neighborhood and home. It was a day just so much like any other day in our lives here. My parents were missionaries and had come here to minister to the refugees and people locked up in the Thai prison system.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

I watched as my younger self finished coming down the stairs and immediately spun around to reach into his pocket and hand some change to the man sitting next to the overpass. It was this man that I had came to see today. The man in the park had reminded me of him. This man in front of us didn’t have any legs though. He sat, day in and day out, to the side of this overpass next to the stairs and begged for alms. I walked closer and knelt next to him while my younger self dashed away to catch up with my other two brothers. Many times I came down those stairs I would see if I had any extra money to give to this man. He was thin and clothed in clothes that had small holes in some places. The thing I remembered from my childhood was what I was staring at again right now. His smile. He smiled at me every time I saw him, regardless if I gave him anything. It was such an amazing sight, to see a man whom life had given so little, to smile in such a bright way at children who had everything in life going for them.

I felt a hand come to rest on my shoulder as Tutor came to stand next to me. “What is this? Why do I feel such pain coming from your mind and heart?” She asked in a quiet voice as I hid my face and knelt in the shade next to the man. He looked to be in his early twenties.

“This is what happens to people here who are born broken or who are disabled.” I said as I wished that I could have done more for him, and for people like him. “His smile stuck with me even though it has been 9 years since I was here last.” I said as I stood up and rebuilt the walls around my heart. “I just wanted to visit this place and memory again.”

“But why come here? After all this time?” She asked me, her eyes intent on trying to understand me. “Because seeing that guy in the park brought me back to my childhood. This guy here, I wish I could have done more for. I was just a child back then and it wasn’t until years later that I realized things about the world around me. How things should have been better. How it wasn’t his fault. Just… stuff.” I said as I couldn’t find a way to fully explain it.

I turned and looked around, the city was just how I remembered it, so noisy and busy, so filled with light and darkness. I watched as me and my brothers climbed up on the stairs of the bus and headed home for the day. It was so good to be back here as an adult. I could now see things differently and in a more true light. While we stood there I heard the beggar man call out to a woman in a noodle stall next to us. He asked for some noodles and held up his hand, holding the Baht that I had given him plus a little bit more from his regular begging. She brought him over a bowl and some chopsticks and I let the surroundings and memory location fade away while we watched him eating his meal.