Chapter 2

It took me a few seconds to make sense of her words. This nurse is telling me I died today.

"I don't understand. Where am I? How can I be dead?"

The nurse faced the blank wall next to me. "Doctor to Mr. Roy's room, please." Then, to me, "Your doctor will be in to explain everything to you shortly."

She just finished when a man of about 25 walked into the room. He had white shorts and nothing else on. His hair appeared to be its natural color and his face was tan as was the rest of his body.

"Well, Mr. Roy. It's good to see you awake. I suppose you have a lot of questions for me."

"Yes. This nurse tells me I died and I don't feel dead. I..."

"I'll tell you what. Why don't you let me tell you what I think you want to know. If you have any questions after I'm done I'll do my best to answer them."

"OK, Doc."

"Alright. First of all, you should have died in your bed in 2005. There was a fire that started as a result of a cigarette you left burning when you went to bed. We have the technology to go back in time. We picked you up an instant before you actually died, brought you up to the present and rejuvenated your body. Now before we go any further, I need to go over something with you."

"OK. I have to tell you this doesn't make a whole lot of sense."

"I understand. Now, I understand that in 2005 there was quite a lot of activity with people called lawyers. From what we gather, they survived off ' greed. There was a whole culture that existed to profit from other peoples' mistakes and expanded to include plain stupidity. For instance, a woman made a fortune because she ordered and paid for a hot drink and was given a hot drink. When she spilled it on herself, she hired a lawyer who took the suppliers of the drink to task because they hadn't told her the hot drink she ordered was hot and she should be careful. If a company that made buckets didn't have a warning on their products that stated it was dangerous to fill them with water and stick children's heads under the water, they could have their whole business taken away by these lawyers. If a person said something that made another person uncomfortable, he was in trouble. It got so you were risking your job if you complimented someone of the opposite sex.

"You have been saved from death and brought back to a better condition than you were ever in at a great expense to us. We did this because we want something from you, which I'll get to after we handle this point. You aren't the first person we brought back to life like this. There was another with your unique qualifications whose first action upon being resuscitated was to threaten to "take everything we've got" for saving his life. He was under the impression that we harmed him in some way by not allowing him to die and was perfectly willing to make life miserable for as many people as possible because of this. So, if you have any problem with us stopping your death, now is the time to say so. We will be happy to send somebody back to the time we picked you up to make sure that you die as scheduled."

"There never was any love lost between the legal profession and me. I think I owe you thanks for bringing me back to life, not punishment."

"That is the way we feel, too. However, if you change your mind as I fill you in on what we want, know that you still have that option. If you agree to help us out, you'll be stuck here. But I think you'll find that being stuck here will be fairly enjoyable. Before we go further, would you like something to eat?"

"That sounds great. I'm starving."

"Why don't you try some soup, then we'll see if you want anything more." He turned toward the wall and said "Chicken broth."

A couple of seconds later the door where my nurse got ice chips from opened with a steaming bowl on the shelf. My nurse picked it up, got a spoon from somewhere and started to feed me. I could get used to this real quick.

The broth tasted good, but I was full after a few spoonfuls. I held my hands up when the nurse brought another spoon towards me. "I can't believe it, but I'm full."

My doctor said, "That's perfectly natural. You haven't had anything to eat for a long time. You've actually been unconscious for about 9 months as we repaired your body."

"So, you've figured out time travel. So what is this? About the 23^rd century?"

"I'm afraid you're off by a number of years. It's 10,336 years later than when you went to sleep."

I was glad I didn't have any of that soup in my mouth. I would have spit it out. "Ten thousand years later. So that would make this year..."

"Oh, we don't keep track of years. We leave all that up to the scientists. I just knew you would want that information so I looked it up."

"You mentioned you brought me here for a reason. What can I do for you?"

"You can help us survive."