Bepergian flexed his arms and legs and stretched. He could feel a small twinge in his sides but more from disuse rather than injury. He pulled up his shirt to inspect the wounds. There were three scars on each side. They weren't as big as he thought they would be and actually they weren't as jagged as he had imagined. He tried to remember exactly what happened. He remembered being picked up by the dinosaur and shaken. In fact he remembered being more scared than hurt. Then he remembered falling. His next memory was waking up in this hut.

From those events he assumed he was rescued by a group of Neanderthals. He wondered where his things were, in particular his pants.The woman was still busying herself with a basket of herbs, but he had no doubt that she was paying attention to everything he did. He decided to try out his legs.

Now that he was awake, and able to move without debilitating pain, Bepergian was anxious to explore his surroundings and possibly locate the remnants of his gear, particularly the time travel device. As fascinated as he was with exploring history in this manner, he still preferred the comforts of his “home” era.

The Shaman, satisfied that the beeping device was not harmful, nodded to him and ducked out of the hut. Immediately entering was his caretaker. She frowned at him as if his device had caused her some sort of inconvenience. He smiled apologetically at her, hoping to win back some favor. She just nodded and looked aloof. She busied herself with her pots and herbs and ignored him, so he looked around. He sat on what he had thought was a cot, but was actually a rock slab covered in furs. It appeared the hut was built around the rock. He found that interesting and took note of that fact. Her hut was small but built into the walls were niches containing earthenware jars and pots, small figurines and bundles of dried herbs hung throughout.

Anthropologist

For the next few days Bepergian drifted between sleep and semi-consciousness. He was never sure if it was the effect of his wounds or the liquids his caretaker was feeding him. He just hoped he survived the hallucinations and could eventually come back to a solid reality.

A beeping noise entered his dreams and he was annoyed that the alarm had gone off. He was not ready to wake up. Eventually the beeping stopped and he relaxed into sleep again. Suddenly, he felt someone nudging him and trying to get him to wake up. He grumbled. The nudging became more urgent. Finally he opened his eyes. Through the fuzzy blur he saw a strange sight. It seemed the face that looked down at him was not human, but was oddly ... human. While he tried to figure that out the beeping started again. The face contorted in a mixture of anger and fear. It took Bepergian a moment to recognize the beeping. It was his watch. He almost laughed. The fact, that his watch had survived and not been lost truly amazed him. He was even more amazed to realize that it was still on his right arm. He smiled, hoping it would ease the fears of the face, and came fully awake. Aside from some stiffness he felt pretty good.

He looked more fully at the face and realized that it was a male Neanderthal. He was huge. He seemed to fill the hut with his physical size as well as his commanding presence. The fact that he was wearing an amazingly intricate headdress and had painted his face with blue whorls and lines added to his charismatic presence. A little bit of fear clutched at Bepergian, but it was replaced quickly by anthropological fascination. He had ignored the beeping on his wrist in order to study the living history in front of him, but the shaman (as Bepergian thought of him) indicated that he wanted to know what was beeping and why.

Continuing to smile in a what he hoped was a sincere and non-threatening way, he stiffly pulled himself to an upright sitting position and dropped his long unused legs over the edge of his (cot?) to the floor. He felt the aches and stiffness of lying in the same position for several days. He wondered briefly where his pants were and kept his mind from wandering to how his bodily functions has been dealt with. He looked up at the shaman and indicated the watch on his wrist. The time was 1707. The date indicated Wednesday 20Aug, 2140. He chuckled briefly at the absurdity of a time piece when he clearly had no idea of where in time he actually was. He had set the alarm to go off on the 20^th of each month to remind him to fill out his reports and transmit them to headquarters. They weren't due until the end of the month, but the reminder gave him the opportunity to get the reports done.

He looked at the Shaman and again thought of the total insignificance of his reports at the moment. He slowly reached over with his left hand and turned off the alarm. The shaman approached warily to examine the device on his arm. Bepergian wondered briefly if he should let him see it, since the technology would not be around for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. He discarded his inhibition as the shaman fearfully touched his wrist near the watch. He wanted to touch it, that was clear. Bepergian unclasped the watch. The shaman looked at him with wonder. Then he held it out to the shaman who gingerly touched it. Finding it would not harm him he held it gently and examined it all over. He handed it back to Bepergian, but at the same time his expression said he was reluctant to do so as he wanted to examine it further. Bepergian thought of offering it to him again, but decided that knowledge might come in handy later on, so he simply placed the watch back on his wrist.

Bepergian figured that if he could at least move his head that he did not retain spinal damage. In fact, he probably should worry more about infection from the dinosaurs mouth. In fact, the memory of the smell nearly made him gag.
He mentally touched on his various body parts and the pains associated with them. When he concentrated on his sides he definately felt the effects of being mauled. He wondered how much of his injuries were from bruising and how much from actual damage by teeth.
He glanced over at the woman, who was still warily watching him. He raised his left arm, which felt stiff and sore, to touch his sides. As he did so the woman made a small grunt and frowned at him. He slowly continued to move his arm to see what she would do. She continued to frown at him but did not move to stop him. He felt along his left side with the back of his hand. He was surprised to find that his light safari jacket was not shredded but he did feel that there were holes in it. He gingerly touched the area where the hole was and felt with two fingers down to where his skin should have been. He found that he was bound with some sort of leather. 'Hopefully clean leather and medicinal herbs,' he thought.
He lay his arm back down and decided to try his feet. He didn't feel any pain from that area. He tried to lift his leg and found the strain caused a wave of nauseating pain in both his sides. He lay gasping for a few minutes, his eyes squeezed shut. When the pain subsided to a dull throb, he opened his eyes and saw the woman standing over him. Her expression a mixture of a frown and an "I told you so" look of indignation. She bent over and examined his sides and the bandages. After a moment of fussing, she grunted with satisfaction that he had not messed up her work.
He looked at her with what he hoped she would interpret as gratitude for her kindness. She huffed at him a bit and then motioned for him to close his eyes. He shook his head. She again motioned for him to close his eyes and then mimicked snoring. She wanted him to rest or sleep. He nodded to her, not sure if she understood, but he closed his eyes and without much difficulty, Bepergian drifted off to sleep.

Bepergian was first and foremost a scientist. As an anthropologist he had spent his entire adult life examining worlds and studying extinct lifeforms and cultures. Now before his eyes stood a living breathing, moving specimen of his studies. If escaping from a dinosaur wasn't fantastical enough, seeing a Neanderthal woman perform her life in front of him was mythical.

She heard his gasp and turned toward him. He was amazed. Certainly she showed evidence of a larger bone structure and cranial structure than the women of his time, but it did not detract from her appearance. She had light colored hair. Dark blond or light brown by the look of it. In the dim light of the hut, and the way she had it pulled back it was hard to tell. She was somewhat crouched in the hut so her size was not immediately discernible. He could not see the lines of age on her face so he imaged her to be fairly young adult.

She remained at the entrance of the hut and looked shyly at him. He had no idea how he looked after being mauled by the dinosaur, but he felt he probably looked more damaged than dangerous. Not having excavated many sites containing Neanderthal remains he was not real sure of their customs, but looking about the hut, it seemed to be a fairly permanent structure, therefore he assumed her group was not nomadic.

She continued to watch him so he decided it was time to assess his injuries and start thinking about what he would do next.

Bepergian did not want to wake up. Just a little longer, he thought. He lay very still with his eyes closed. He could hear voices quietly murmuring around him. Through the fog in his mind he realized the voices were not familiar. Curious he moved toward wakefulness. With wakefulness came pain. Everything seemed to hurt at once. In fact, he felt so much pain he was afraid to open his eyes. He tried anyways and found he could only open one eye and was rewarded with … more pain. He gasped at the brutality of it and promptly closed his eye again.

At his gasp the sound of the voices changed. They drew nearer and were more urgent. The voices sounded feminine but the language didn’t even register for him. He did recognize inflections of concern. As he wondered where he was he began to remember his last thoughts before he lost consciousness. He remembered being mauled by a dinosaur. That thought was so ludicrous and if he did not feel like he had been mauled he would have chalked it up to dreaming. But the pain told him otherwise.

He remembered then how he had arrived here. The missing Faro, the time travel device (that seemed to malfunction and he still didn’t know how to use and at this point he may have lost), the fish with a mouthful of razor sharp teeth and the incredible meeting with the dinosaur.

Bepergian lay still and used his other senses. He did try to avoid paying much attention to his sense of feel. That one only registered pain at the moment. He concentrated for a moment on the smells that surrounded him. He could smell a variety of herbs so extremely pungent and bitter mixed with soothing smells. He could also smell smoke from a wood fire. Listening he could hear the crackle of the fire and the rustling of at least one other person if not two.

He felt some one lean over him and then move away. He decided to try opening his eye again. He cracked it open. He was lying on his back and could see in the flickering smoky light that he was in a shelter of some sort, possibly a crude hut. All manner of herbs and other things he could not identify hung from the ceiling. He slowly turned his head feeling pain and stiffness in his neck and was able to see who his caretakers were.

Again he gasped. This time with shock rather than pain.

As he walked toward the tree line in front of him he kept a wary watch on the ground and sky for any possible threat. The tall grasses stretched up to Bepergians waistline. He was a fairly tall man at nearly 2 meters tall. For him it was rather disconcerting to have the ground obscured by the grasses, but he was glad he was tall enough to see over the tops. He walked for what seemed a long time. The sun was hot on his head and shoulders. He was grateful for the hat he wore. As he neared the trees the sun had begun its slide down to the horizon toward late afternoon. He could see individual trees on the outer edge of the forest, but he knew it would take another fifteen minutes of walking to get there. The sun was a hand’s-breadth over the top of the trees, when he stopped to take a mouthful of water from his water pack. He readjusted the pack on his back and took only one step. The next he knew he was flat on his face after a heavy blow pushed him to the ground.

Startled, Bepergian lay very still. He hoped to see what had knocked him down. Before he even caught a glimpse of his attacker he heard a deep guttural noise that made the hair on his neck rise. Moving very slowly he reached for the knife strapped to his belt. He hadn’t even touched the knife when he felt something roughly nudge his shoulder and then snort hot breath on his neck. The stench of rotting flesh assaulted his nose and he had to fight the urge to gag.

He could not see what was pushing at him since his head was turned the opposite direction. Suddenly he was lifted off the ground by his pack. Whatever had picked him up had three toed feet with a dew claw in the place of a heel. They looked like enormous lizard feet. He didn’t get a much better look as the creature began to shake him like cat worries or places with a rodent. It tossed him into the air and he landed on his stomach about 3 meters away. The fall knocked the breath out of him and he couldn’t move.

He heard the creature utter a high pitched whine and then he heard it crashing through the grass toward him. He tried to move and felt as if he were swimming in mud. He managed to roll onto his back and get his knife out of its sheath by the time the creature found him.

The creature nearly stepped on him as it hopped into view. He finally got a good look at what it was and nearly dropped his knife. It was a dinosaur. It was bipedal dinosaur with small upper arms and a large body and head. The mouth was large and full of razor sharp teeth. It leaned toward him and sniffed at him. It dripped foul smelling saliva on him and he nearly retched with the stench of its breath. It reared up and called out as if to communicate to others that it had found something. Bepergian felt doomed. While its attention was away from him he started scooting away from the creature toward the cover of the tall grasses.

He nearly got away when it looked down and saw what he was doing. He scrambled faster and got to his feet to run. He ran two or three steps when it caught him and picked him up again. This time it was carrying him and he could see above the grasses. He could not see any other dinosaurs but he heard answering calls in the distance. The image of himself being torn to shreds between two or more of these creatures flashed through his mind.

He still had his knife in hand but he couldn’t reach the creature while it carried him. Reluctantly, as it loped along he decided to cut the straps on his pack. He hated to lose it and his gear but he hated the thought of being eaten more. Quickly he cut the shoulder straps on his pack and dropped three meters to the ground. This time he was prepared to fall and landed on his hands and knees. He scrambled for his knife and then ran as fast as he could for the cover of the trees. This time he ran about ten meters before it caught him again. This time, without the protection of his pack, he felt the teeth as they sank into him. The pain was blinding and he felt his consciousness fade.

Before he completely blacked out he felt the dinosaur tilt and saw the ground rush up to meet him.

He scanned the sky which was clear blue with some light fluffy clouds in the distance. The humidty was minimal, but he could feel some dampness in the air and indeed the sandy soil was a bit damp to the touch, so he determined that it had rained not long before he arrived. He looked up and down the stream but the visibility was approximately a hundred yards in each direction due to the tall grass. He took off his pack and heaved it over the stream. He could have jumped it with the pack on, but after seeing the fish with teeth he decided that clearing the stream with room to spare would be prudent. After making sure his pack landed well away from the stream he backed up a ways to get a run at it. He ran as hard as he could and kicked off the bank as high as he could. As he landed on the other side three of the carnivorous fish lept snapping out of the water at his shadow. He shivered. Those teeth looked so menacing.
Keeping one eye on the stream, Bepergian gathered his pack and restrapped it to his back. He unclipped his floppy hat from the carabiner on his bag and settled it on his head. He looked back at the stream and then continued on toward the line of trees in front of him. He checked the position of the sun and was able to determine (based on the NSEW rules of his own world) that he was heading west.

Bepergian peered into the depths of the stream. He saw the silver flickers of fish as they swam about. He wondered about the savagery of the land and decided that he needed to watch carefuly where he tread.
His training as a multiverse anthropologist required survival training in the most extreme environments and generally he did not travel to new worlds without his equipment. Fortunately he did have most of his gear with him when he jumped to this world. His backpack was loaded with his supplies. He was only missing his tent and sleeping roll. Fortunately his training included survival with only his bare hands. His biggest loss was his Faro and precisely the reason he was here ... wherever here was.

The screen flashed, “Warning! Device poweroff will reformat device. Please use reset command to reset device.” Bepergian was beginning to get irritated by the device. Without an instruction manual or anyone to tell him how to use the device it was increasingly difficult to determine what to do with it. He briefly imagined throwing it as far as he could, but he knew it was the only answer to his missing Faro and now to his location.

The throbbing in his head had receded to a dull ache. He sat up on his knees and peered over the tall grass he was in. He appeared to be in a savanna of some sort with a tree line off in the distance. He could hear insects buzzing around and he could still hear the trickle of running water. He did not see any signs of civilization nor any animals. Just in case he checked the utility belt around his waste and was relieved that it was intact down to the knife he wore.

Still looking warily around, he stood up and looked all around. The sun stood high in the sky, so he assumed it was about midday. That made determining direction difficult. So he looked for the closest stand of trees. That happened to be in the direction of the sound of the water.

He looked again at the device in his hand, then placed it in a pouch in his belt. He would try to figure it out later, after he got his bearings and found a safe place for shelter.

He started off toward the water and trees. He walked about fifty paces when he found the stream. It wasn't very wide. He could easily jump over it, but it was surprisingly deep. If he tried to wade through it he would be up to his knees. He crouched next to the water and watched to see if there were any signs of life. Sitting very still he was able to see some fish swimming in the depths of the creek. They would surface to snatch a flying insect that buzzed near the water. As far as he could tell the fish appeared to be typical fresh water fish of earth. Indeed from all that he could see, hear and smell. He was on an uninhabited area of Earth.

Taking a chance he scooped up some of the water in his hand to taste it. It tasted fresh and sweet. Realizing he was thirsty he went to scoop more water. As he did so one of the fish surfaced and went for his hand as if it were an insect. Startled Bepergian jumped back. The fish submerged again, but not before he got a look at the mouth full of sharp teeth the fish had.

Now he really wondered where he was and what year.

After lying quietly for a moment he realized the ticking was coming from the device he still held in the palm of his hand. He reopened his eyes. With a groan he rolled over on to his back. The throbbing in his head began to recede. He looked at the device in his hand. The red light was blinking and a message scrolled across the devices screen, “Error, time zone exceded ... Error, time zone exceded...”

Puzzled Bepergian tried again to turn the device off.

Anthropologist (cont'd)

Bepergian opened his eyes. He felt as if someone had hit him in the head with a club. He was lying facedown in grass. Tall grass. He turned his head to the left and then right, slowly as pain throbbed in his skull at each movement. He closed his eyes and listened for a moment. He heard a breeze sweep through the grass above his head. To his left he could hear running water, about the size of a creek. The only sound he could not immediately identify was a ticking sound next to him.