The Once and Future Man - Prologue

Prologue

David was somehow disappointed.

Shouldn't Heaven be more exciting? If this is Hell then it definitely should be.

He was in what looked like a nicely furnished office. A desk with a computer monitor on it filled one corner. Comfortable looking leather chairs sat around a low square table in the center of the room. The walls were lined with bookcases and a few windows showed brightly lit forest, but there was no door.

"I must be dead. That asshole in the truck killed me!"

The last thing he remembered was leaving the parking garage at work. Just as he pulled onto the road a suped-up Dodge Ram blew through the red light and slammed into the driver's side of his beat up Corolla.

YOU ARE NOT DEAD. YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.

"Who said that?"

No answer.

"Great, I'm either dead or going crazy. Maybe this is just a crazy coma dream, trapped in a room, trapped in a coma..."

YOU ARE NOT IN A COMA. YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.

The voice seemed to come from everywhere at once. Or maybe it was inside his own head. It was a deep voice, not mechanical. There was an odd accent in it that he couldn't place, it made it hard to tell if it was male or female.

"Well, instead of just freaking me out, do you want to explain what's going on? Also, saying I'm not in a coma is exactly what a coma dream would say, isn't it?"

The computer monitor came to life showing a bird's eye view of the truck crashing into his car. It hit so hard his car wrapped around the front of the truck and was forced into an SUV parked on the street. Judging by that and the spectacular explosion that followed, there wouldn't be much left of him other than some teeth and a pile of crispy pink mush. All three cars were burning brightly soon. David couldn't stand to look at what was supposedly his burning corpse. He looked at the rear of the truck instead, his eyes drawn to the Rebel flag mud flaps and the testicles dangling from the trailer hitch.

"I always hated those things." He muttered to himself. "At least he didn't get to walk away either. Judging by his douche-mobile his next Klan meeting will be one asshole short. "

He looked around the room again. Just books, a table, and the screen. No speakers or intercom to be seen. That hadn't stopped whoever was here from responding so far. "You said I wasn't dead. This is pretty solid proof that I am. Is this Heaven? Hell? Limbo?"

YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN.

"Yeah, you keep saying that. Chosen for what?" Nothing like stating the obvious, he thought dryly.

WE ARE CONDUCTING AN EXPERIMENT, OF WHICH YOU SHALL BE THE FOCAL POINT.

"Who is 'WE'?"

No response.

"What are you going to do? See how long it takes me to go crazy in this room with no way out?"

NO. THIS IS MEARLY A STARTING POINT FOR WHAT IS TO COME.

"Where are you? I feel a little stupid standing in a room talking to myself."

WE HAVE NO NEED TO PHYSICALLY INTERACT WITH YOU. YOUR PROGRESS CAN BE VIEWED REMOTELY WITH SOME EASE. JUST AS EASILY AS YOU WERE PULLED FROM YOUR VEHICLE BEFORE IMPACT. YOU HAVE TWO OPTIONS. THE FIRST IS TO PARTICIPATE, THE SECOND IS TO GO BACK WHERE YOU WERE FOUND.

The car crash started to play on the screen again from the beginning.

ARE YOU READY TO PROCEED?

"Proceed with what?" The relief of not being dead was starting to wear off. "This is bullshit! How am I supposed to help with an 'experiment'? I have no idea what you're talking about. My car got T-boned but you say I'm not dead, whoever you are. But you're just a voice so the most likely explanation is that I'm in some kind of coma or I'm dead and this is the lousiest afterlife imaginable. What have you got to prove me wrong? Nothing! I can't even see you. As far as experiments go, the truck and the explosion must have scattered my insides over half the block. Have at 'em! What do you need me for?" He felt a little better after the outburst. It felt good to try to get angry, to have at least an illusion of control.

The explosion blossomed on the screen again.

THE EXPLOSION DID IN FACT KILL YOU. YOUR PHYSICAL BODY WAS DESTROYED. WE REMOVED YOUR, WHAT YOU WOULD CALL A 'SOUL' TO THIS PLACE. WE ARE NOT CONDUCTING A BIOLOGY EXPERIMENT, WE KNOW ALL WE NEED TO ABOUT HUMANITY PHYSICALLY. THIS IS MORE OF A SOCIAL EXPERIMENT. YOU CAN CHOOSE TO ASSIST US, OR WE WILL RETURN YOU TO YOUR BODY JUST BEFORE THE CRASH AND YOU WILL IN FACT DIE.

What a choice that is. The crash and explosion continued to play on the monitor in a loop. He tried to collect his thoughts but his mind wouldn't settle on anything. No matter what they had planned it would be better than being dead, wouldn't it? And if this was a coma then wouldn't he just eventually come out of it on his own? Finally, he settled on something that felt important "Why me?"

He was no scientist. He hadn't even finished college. He'd worked a bunch of odd jobs over the years, warehouses, retail, loading docks. Nothing that really suggested he was the right guy to be observed in his opinion.

WE ARE AWARE THAT YOU HAVE NOT ACCOMPLISHED MUCH IN YOUR LIFE. THAT IS ONE REASON THAT YOU ARE BEING OFFERED THIS CHANCE. A COMPLETELY AVERAGE INDIVIDUAL WITH LITTLE DRIVING AMBITION. YOU ALSO HAVE NO FAMILY, NO CLOSE TIES TO THIS WORLD.

That was true, if a bit hard to hear. He had a few friends but no one he considered all that close. His parents had died a few years ago, his brother and sisters all had their own families across the country. "If I accepted, what would you want me to do?"

YOU WOULD BE SENT TO A WORLD SIMILAR TO YOUR EARTH WHERE HUMAN CULTURE HAS PROGRESSED TO AN ADVANCED IRON AGE STATE. WHAT YOUR OWN HISTORIANS WOULD CONSIDER THE LATE 17TH OR EARLY 18TH CENTURY C. E.. FOR THE PURPOSES OF OUR EXPERIMENT, ALL KNOWLEDGE OF EXPLOSIVES, GUN POWDER, AND STEAM POWER HAVE BEEN SUPPRESSED. THE PEOPLE THERE HAVE NO KNOWLEDGE OF ANY OF THESE THINGS. THERE ARE OTHER DIFFERENCES BUT THIS WOULD BE THE MOST SIGNIFICANT FOR OUR RESEARCH.

"What would I do there?"

THAT IS ENTIRELY UP TO YOU.

David wanted to yell at someone. To tear up the room. Find whoever that voice belonged to and knock out their teeth... If this was even real. What if he was actually dead and this was what happened, like how people were always talking about a bright light. Or maybe he was a vegetable in a hospital somewhere and this was his brain's way of coping. More and more morbid thoughts ran through his head.

None of this is getting me anywhere. Alive in a coma, dead in my car, it all amounts to the same thing. I can refuse to cooperate and stay stuck in this room or in my car, or I can play along and see where this goes. But if this is real then why me?

A twenty-six year old college dropout. Bouncing around from dead end job to dead end job. He wasn't physically imposing at just under five foot ten and a hundred-sixty pounds. If he was asked he'd admit to being decently handsome at least. Brown hair with blue eyes, a slim frame kept fit by swimming. He kept his hair trimmed short along with his beard. Only a small scar under his right eye from a fishing mishap as a kid marred his face. He was a fan of science fiction and fantasy. There were dozens of stories that started just like this, but all of the characters in them had incredible skills to call on. Drop them off on an island with a knife, some string, and some duct tape and they would be living in a three story colonial with two boats inside of a week. He'd be lucky if he could build a one room shack in a year.

All those faults in his education and character didn't seem to bother the mysterious voice at all. They were the one who picked him.

"I accept."

VERY WELL. YOU WILL HAVE ONE HOUR TO MAKE A LIST OF ITEMS YOU WOULD LIKE TO TAKE WITH YOU. EVERYTHING YOU TAKE MUST FIT IN TWENTY-FOUR CHESTS, SIX FEET LONG X THREE FEET WIDE X THREE FEET TALL. ONCE YOU ARE FINISHED OR THE HOUR HAS ENDED YOU WILL BE PLACED AT A PRE-DESIGNATED AREA OF YOUR NEW WORLD AND THE EXPERIMENT WILL BEGIN.

David sat down in one of the chairs and thought about what he would need to start a whole new life. Organizing his brain wasn't easy after everything that he had been through. As if to remind him of the alternative, the car crash still played on a loop on the screen. There was now a notepad and pen on the table in front of him. He hadn't seen it there before and there was nothing to show how it had arrived so suddenly. David picked them up and started with the basics: pants, shirts, jackets, shoes. He remembered reading a book where some racist asshole went back in time and gave the Confederates a pile of automatic weapons to try to win the Civil War. Not the best example of what to do with time travel obviously. But a few guns would go a long way in a society that didn't know what they were. He wrote down an M4 with an attached grenade launcher. As soon as he was done writing it disappeared off the list.

NO MODERN TECHNOLOGY WILL BE SENT. YOU MAY MAKE WHATEVER YOU ARE CAPABLE OF IN YOUR NEW LOCATION BUT NO EXPLOSIVES, ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT, OR INTERNAL COMBUSTION ENGINES WILL BE SENT WITH YOU.

So much for that idea. I haven't been in a fight or had to really defend myself since 5 th grade. The next best thing to protecting yourself was hiring someone to do it for you he thought. He wrote down enough gold, silver and gems to fill six of the chests. The population of his new home was supposed to be human and most people had the same response to precious metals. Nothing said the new guy was OK like a handful of gold coins. He asked for a few knives and even a couple of swords as well. Those weren't modern and as long as he didn't cut off his own foot he might convince someone that he knew what he was doing with one of them long enough to make them leave him alone. When he wrote those down and they didn't immediately disappear it gave him an idea. He wrote down a pair of rifled flintlock pistols and also a flintlock rifle. Those must have been deemed too modern also, they disappeared off the list. Instead he put down a few recurve bows and plenty of arrows.

"Time to find out if summer camp really was lessons to last my whole life", David laughed to himself. He'd gone to an overnight camp for two weeks each summer until he'd been 15. The owner was a former scout leader that thought every canoe trip and hike built you into a future leader of men.

Four boxes of clothes and weapons, six boxes of cash, and fourteen empties with no idea what to put in them.

David got up and walked around the room, trying to think. He could just add in more gold but that didn't feel right. As he walked he glanced at the books lining the shelves. All of them were old style leather bound hardcovers. He saw encyclopedias, law books, biographies. Classics like Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Robinson Crusoe. He stopped when he saw a copy of The Once and Future King by T. H. White. It made him smile to think of the cartoon The Sword in the Stone that was partly based on it, it had always been his favorite kids movie. Merlin trying to explain trains and assembly lines to a young King Arthur while the Owl laughed at him and talked trash the whole time. Then he remembered another part of the movie where Merlin defeated an enemy by giving them chicken pox. From what he remembered of history large parts of Earth had been a filthy germ factory around the time the Voice had said he would be stuck in. That settled it.

He went back to the list and added two chests worth of all the medications he could think of in powder and pill form. They wouldn't be likely to spoil and he hopefully wouldn't die his first week there of some horrible infection or disease. Two perpetually sick parents gave him way too much knowledge of antibiotics and antifungal medications than he would have liked.

The image of Merlin teaching Arthur still wouldn't leave him alone. He certainly wasn't any sort of wizard but 21st century knowledge would look like magic to someone in the 17th century. If gold and silver didn't make the locals happy then maybe some new ideas might. It didn't take a genius to guess that this was the direction the big 'Experiment' was heading. Take a modern nobody and see what happens when he teaches the backwards locals some new tricks. Not exactly an original idea, but hopefully he could do as well as the characters he'd read about in similar situations. At least I won't have to deal with cavemen. So many of the stories he read online had people getting sent back to the Stone Age. If the world is supposed to be the same as the 1700's the people there should at least know the difference between their ass and a hole in the ground.

Books about every science or trade/craft went on the list, especially those having to do with chemistry and metallurgy. He would have to read a bunch of them himself if he ever had to explain anything to the locals. He also asked for everything needed for a standard K-12 education. No need to worry about history but between basic science and the three R's, maybe a few of his potential new friends would be smart enough to work things out on their own once they got the basics down.

Money, drugs, and some books. What else could he need to start a whole new life? David took a deep breath and set his list down. "Ok. I'm ready."

SO ARE WE.