Chapter 1

How did I get here, and just exactly where is here? I'm walking down a dusty western street at high noon. All of the cliches are in full bloom. I'm headed for a duel with John Wesley Hardin, who never lost a shootout. I'm wearing the classic "cowboy" clothes of the 1880s, including the high-heeled boots, and the broad-brimmed Stetson hat. I don't have any idea why I am here, but I have a compulsion to draw on Hardin and to try to win, even though I know that this never really happened.

At least I have my familiar gun and holster rig. I have my .50 caliber double action pistols with the swing-out cylinder. Each pistol has a grip safety, so I can load six rounds into each gun. I'm wearing my cross-draw holster rig with a gun carried just forward of my hip and high up on my side, almost, but not quite, a shoulder holster. This is the same rig I used in my shooting exhibitions, and I never lost a contest with it. The question nagging at me right now is whether or not it is good enough to beat John Wesley Hardin. Well, I'll know in less than five minutes, if I can believe my feelings.

Even crazier than anything else, I am using smokeless powder even before it was invented, but Hardin is using black powder. How much of an advantage does that give me? I have no idea.

Is everybody ready and are all the cameras lined up? This should be good, and we don't want to miss anything. OK, start the cameras rolling.

I stopped where I had to stop; it was almost like an X was marked for me to stand on. Hardin walked up to his X and said, "All right, ya yeller livered varmint, I told ya ta stop pesterin' me. Now I aim ta make shore ya stop. Ya kin go ahead an' draw first."

I had no choice, I couldn't say anything. I just started to draw my gun with my right hand. I am fast, but I had no idea how fast until that moment. Hardin was reputed to be one of the fastest draws who ever lived, but it looked to me like he was drawing in slow motion. I easily had my gun out and pointed toward him before he had even cleared the holster with his gun. Then I froze!

Hardin kept moving, but my muscles simply would not move. I was stuck in position, ready to fire, and I could not pull the trigger. I saw Hardin draw the hammer back on his gun and aim it at my belly. I saw Hardin pull the trigger, and I saw the blast of smoke and fire come from his gun. Then everything went black.

That was perfect, folks. We got just the result we were looking for. OK, that's a wrap for today. I'll see you for our next shoot tomorrow morning.

I woke up in my hotel room bathed in sweat. My first action was to rub my body looking for the bullet wound that I knew had to be there, but wasn't. Shit, what a nightmare! I'd had this same kind of nightmare for a week, the only difference had been that I had faced a different Old West killer each night. Every time, I had easily outdrawn my opponent, but I had not been able to shoot. This was the seventh time I had stared certain death in the face and awakened in my bed the next morning. Shit! One more dream like this, and I was going to see a shrink!

My name is Abner Hofmann, but most of my friends call me Abe. I'm 32 years old and I have been an exhibition shooter for as long as I can remember. I started out as part of my dad's show, shooting a .22 rifle that was bigger than I was. I'm an expert shot with pistol, rifle, or shotgun. I've been practically every place in the world where there would be an audience for a shooting exhibition, and I make a good living at it. My only regret is that I have never had a family. I don't know why, but no girl or woman has ever appealed to me, and, NO, I am not gay. That's just the way things have happened. Occasionally, I'll have the bell hop send a woman around to relieve the pressure, but, mostly, I just keep it to myself.

I have an exhibition scheduled for this afternoon. I always shoot in the daytime because my shows are too noisy for an indoor arena, and it is too hard for people to see what I am doing without plenty of light. I now work mostly on Saturdays and Sundays, but I will work other days for special occasions, like state fairs, and that sort of thing. Anyway, I am not overworked, and I spend a lot of time in museums and art galleries.

Today, I have a show scheduled for 3:00 PM at the LA County fair, one of the biggest such exhibitions in the world. It's not as big as it once was, but it is plenty big enough for my tastes. I was ready to leave for the fair ground at 10:00 AM, plenty of time to get to the site and have a light lunch before the show. I got into the limousine provided for me right on schedule. Naturally, there was a lot of traffic on the freeway, so I was not surprised when we found ourselves trapped by a bunch of trucks. However, they were all moving fast enough that we weren't being slowed down, so I told the driver not to worry about it.

We were tooling along at about 50 MPH when it happened. We were right next to a truck hauling gasoline when the truck on the other side of him blew a tire. His trailer whipped around, clipped the gas truck and pushed him into our limo. I'm not quite sure what happened after that, but I do remember a big flash of flame just before I blanked out.

Where am I? I hope this is not another one of those damned dueling nightmares. No, it's a different kind of nightmare. I'm in a hospital bed, totally naked and practically without skin! Except that I am also standing beside the bed, perfectly OK, and wearing my normal tee-shirt and slacks that I wear when I am not working. What the hell is going on, now?

Then I notice standing beside me, a perfectly normal looking man, except that he is translucent. I look a little more closely at the me standing beside the bed, and I see that I am translucent, too. Holy shit! The man standing next to me says, "You're in pretty sad shape, Mr. Hofmann. Will you allow us to help you?"

I say, "Sure. I will always accept any help that I can get."

"Ah, an excellent and sensible attitude. Let us adjourn to my office where we can talk more comfortably." The next moment, we are sitting at a small table in two very comfortable chairs. Oh, and we are no longer translucent.

My host says, "That's much better. Let me introduce myself, Mr. Hofmann. I am Lars Orlinski. You may call me Lars. If you should decide to join us, I will be your liaison man with the Organization." I could hear that capital O.

"May I call you Abe?" I nodded, so Lars continued, "As you have seen, you were in a horrible accident that will have killed you by 2:00 AM tomorrow morning, so that is how long you have to decide on accepting our proposition. If you agree to join us, your life will be saved; otherwise you will die. Well, actually, you are going to die anyway, the difference is that with us you will continue to feel like you are alive. Your body will be what you see yourself wearing right now. I should point out that you can still die if you join us, it just won't be within a few hours from now."

I was completely floored by his statements. Strangely, I did not doubt him, it was just the totality of his remarks that had me stunned. "I can see that you need a little while to digest what I have said so far. Let's eat that light lunch you missed and resume this conversation in about an hour."

Lars pressed a button on a console beside his chair, and sandwiches and coffee appeared near at hand. We ate, and it was delicious. Once we had eaten, Lars returned to the previous conversation. "I know you want to know what we want from you that would make it worthwhile for us to preserve your life. Basically, we are looking for a special kind of assassin, and we think that you fill that bill." He held up his hand before I could interrupt.

"Don't misunderstand me. You would not be the hired killer so often seen in the movies and on TV. Our Organization (there was that capital O, again) is engaged in trying to eliminate most of the problems faced by the people of Earth. To do that, we are engaged in some large scale experiments involving millions of people. In essence, we want to know how the world would react if there were no Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, or Mao. We have access to great computers, but we do not yet have the capability of simulating what millions or billions of people would do in specific situations, so we have to run actual experiments with real people.