The Day I Fell to Earth

I first gained consciousness on a beach of a Caribbean island in the year of our Lord 1630. I had no memory of who I was or where I had come from. I awoke in a sweat; a strange garment of a silver metal fabric encased me from head to toe and seemed to perfectly trap heat. By chance I had at a strange belt about my waist with a utility knife attached which I quickly put to use in cutting much of the strange fabric away from my body lest I should perish from the heat.

I had not time to marvel at the strange dress I wore or why I knew the year was 1630. (1,630 years since what and how do I know this sea is the Caribbean?) Thirst consumed me. Compelled by my need for fresh water I staggered along the beach in hopes of locating some stream or river flowing into the sea. The sun beat down mercilessly upon me and as I began to think of perhaps ambulating toward the verdant vegetation above the high tide line to find cool shade, the sun seemed to grow dim. My vision narrowed as blackness enclosed my sight. I had almost reached the refuge of shade when the world began to spin about me and blackness encased me.

When next I awoke, it was to the pleasure of coolness...

The moist coolness after the burning sun convinced me that I must be in heaven or close upon the journey there. I awoke with a start as I realized that someone or something was touching me. My eyes opened and I thought that I still had not awakened because of the darkness around. My eyes grew accustomed to the dim light from the crescent moon and I saw staring into my face the beautiful faces of no less than three women of various ethnic extractions. My reason was beginning to return, and as I began to wonder how long I had been unconscious or where I was now, I really began to think that I was in heaven. I marveled as much at the curious stares of the women as at their beauty--such beauty that it almost hurt to look upon them. I began to stir and the women faded back out of sight.

I could barely lift my head, but my eyes wanted to follow the retreating figures. My reverie was suddenly interrupted by the point of a nasty looking steel bladed spear placed against my neck. My attention suddenly captured I looked down the long shaft of the spear to see standing before me a tall muscular woman dressed in bronze breast–plate, greaves, and gauntlets and nothing else. The excess of strangeness coupled with my memory loss and my weak physical condition conspired to blank out my thoughts. As I fell back unconscious, before my eyes closed I saw an unpleasant snarl on the mouth of the warrior woman.

Consciousness began to return like the light of pre-dawn as it heralds the bursting forth of the furnace-like sun. I expected to be in pain as I awoke but only felt the cool breeze caressing me as I rested supine on soft and clean linens of fine cotton fabric. My eyes opened to see towering over me a white marble column crafted like those of the Ancient Greeks. I lifted my head to see revealed in the afternoon light a row of these columns surrounding a large rectangular space topped by a white marble roof and supported by these columns. In this large open-air room in two neat rows were more than a dozen beds upon which lay men in various states of injury. Most of these men slept, but at the other end of the first row of beds two men had raised themselves to sitting position and were speaking softly to one another.