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.