Richard did not feel himself land.
There was no impact.
No clean collision between body and ground.
Instead there was a violent sensation of being unfolded.
As if his bones had briefly become lines, and those lines had been pulled through something too narrow to understand them.
Then came sound.
Not London.
Not traffic.
Not sirens.
Not rain hitting distant glass.
A bell.
Far away. Heavy. Uneven.
Then cold air struck his face.
Real air. Outdoor air. Wet and raw and carrying smells no modern city could produce.
Smoke.
Mud.
Dung.
Wood rot.
Unwashed bodies.
Richard slammed onto his hands and knees, coughing hard enough to hurt his ribs.
The earth beneath him was not concrete.
It was packed dirt mixed with straw and something foul and sticky.
For several seconds he remained there, breathing in short, shocked bursts, one hand pressed into the ground, the other still gripping his phone with absurd, animal desperation.
His stomach lurched.
His head spun.
He spat into the mud and tried to focus.
The first thing he noticed was the silence.
Not true silence.
Something stranger.
A silence without engines.
Without electricity humming behind walls.
Without the constant buried machinery of the modern world.
The second thing he noticed was the dark.
Not urban dark.
No sodium streetlamps. No tower lights. No soft electronic glow.
Only a low bruised sky and thin sources of orange flame in the distance.
Richard pushed himself upright.
He was standing in what looked like a narrow alley or service lane between leaning timber buildings. Their upper storeys jutted out over the street at unnatural angles, crowding the space above him. The walls were plaster and dark beams, wet from recent rain or mist. One gutter dripped steadily beside him.
He turned in a full circle.
No cranes.
No steel scaffolding.
No London skyline.
No hospital.
No glass.
No world he knew.
He stared at the buildings for a long moment, waiting for the sensible explanation to arrive.
Film set.
Dream.
Psychotic break.
Some grotesquely elaborate hallucination.
Then a voice rang out somewhere beyond the alley.
Not English.
Or rather, not English he understood.
The sound froze him.
It was human, urgent, close enough to matter — but linguistically wrong. The rhythm resembled language, but the words slid past his comprehension like distorted echoes of something familiar.
Another voice answered.
Then laughter.
Rough male laughter.
Richard pressed himself instinctively against the wall.
His heart was beating too fast.
He looked down at his phone.
The screen was still on.
Still bright.
Still impossibly alive.
For one terrified second he thought it would show no signal, dead battery, blank screen — some ordinary failure he could understand.
Instead he saw something far worse.
Where the normal signal bars should have been, there was a single line of text:
ChronoNet — Connected
Richard stared.
Then the black chat window reopened by itself.
White text appeared.
DESCARTES:
You have arrived successfully.
Richard's mouth went dry.
He typed at once.
RICHARD:
Where am I?
The reply came almost instantly.
DESCARTES:
You are asking two separate questions.
Richard swallowed.
RICHARD:
Then answer both.
A pause.
Then:
DESCARTES:
Where: Europe.
Another pause.
Then:
DESCARTES:
When: 1347.
Richard read it once.
Then again.
Then a third time, because the brain is a stubborn organ and sometimes refuses to die in one motion.
1347.
His mind reached stupidly for facts.
The Black Death.
Trade routes.
Genoese ships.
Sicily.
Fleas. Rats. Panic. Priests. Mass graves.
His breathing shortened.
RICHARD:
That's not funny.
DESCARTES:
No.
Richard looked up sharply, as if expecting the year itself to deny the message.
The alley remained what it was.
Crooked timber.
Mud.
Orange torchlight.
Distant voices in a tongue adjacent to his own but not yet his.
His chest tightened.
RICHARD:
Send me back.
The typing indicator appeared.
Stopped.
Appeared again.
Then:
DESCARTES:
No.
Richard stared at the word.
A hot, sudden pulse of anger cut through his shock.
RICHARD:
No?
DESCARTES:
Not yet.
He typed so hard his thumb hurt.
RICHARD:
You said it was a door.
DESCARTES:
It is.
RICHARD:
Doors work both ways.
A longer pause.
Then:
DESCARTES:
Eventually.
Richard almost laughed again, but there was too much fear in him for the sound to form properly.
He looked down at his shoes. Mud up to the soles. Trouser cuffs soaked. Coat already gathering the smell of this place.
This was not a simulation.
Or if it was, it had gone to such lengths that the distinction had ceased to matter.
He heard footsteps.
Close.
Very close.
He killed the brightness of the phone screen instinctively and pressed himself deeper into shadow.
Two men passed the mouth of the alley carrying something between them.
A sack.
No — not a sack.
A body.
Wrapped badly in cloth.
One of the cloth corners had slipped, exposing the grey shape of a hand.
Richard stopped breathing.
The men were speaking quickly in a language he almost recognised. Something in the cadence scraped against modern English, but it was as though centuries of dust had settled on the words.
One man made the sign of the cross.
The other spat.
They disappeared into the street beyond.
Richard remained motionless.
He could hear his own pulse.
Somewhere further away, another bell began tolling.
He looked at the phone again.
Very dimly now.
ChronoNet — Connected
He typed.
RICHARD:
I can't speak to anyone here.
DESCARTES:
Not yet fluently.
Richard frowned.
RICHARD:
What does that mean?
DESCARTES:
Linguistic adaptation is in progress.
Richard stared.
He had no idea whether that was absurd, terrifying, or useful.
Probably all three.
A shiver went through him, violent enough to make his teeth click.
The cold was different here.
Dirtier.
Alive.
It moved through fabric as though modern clothing had no authority in this century.
He looked down the alley. It opened onto a wider street lined with wooden structures and dim hanging lamps. The street itself was slick with filth. A horse stood tethered near a doorway. Somewhere nearby a child coughed — a wet, persistent sound that made something in Richard's mind immediately calculate infection.
1347.
He suddenly became aware of everything touching him.
The mud on his hands.
The wet in the air.
The cloth of his coat.
The foul street.
Microbes. Parasites. Unknown bacteria. Fleas. Contamination.
His mind, always useful when panic was near, began listing priorities.
Water.
Shelter.
Information.
Avoid contact.
Avoid rats.
Avoid crowds.
Avoid being noticed.
He typed quickly.
RICHARD:
What exactly am I supposed to do here?
The answer took longer this time.
When it came, it was only one line.
DESCARTES:
Survive long enough to become relevant.
Richard stared at that sentence.
There was something so coldly ambitious about it that it made the alley feel narrower.
RICHARD:
Relevant to whom?
No reply.
He waited.
Then another message appeared.
DESCARTES:
Immediate concern detected.
DESCARTES:
Turn around.
Every muscle in Richard's body tightened.
He turned slowly.
At first he saw nothing.
Then movement.
At the far end of the alley, half concealed by shadow and leaning timber, stood a boy no older than twelve.
Thin.
Barefoot.
Watching him.
The boy's eyes were fixed not on Richard's face, but on the faint light leaking from the phone.
For one suspended second neither moved.
Then the boy shouted.
A sharp, frightened sound.
He pointed.
More voices answered from the street.
Richard didn't wait to translate them.
He ran.
The alley twisted left and then broke into a wider lane slick with mud and refuse. He nearly lost his footing at once. A cart wheel blocked part of the way. A woman pulled back against a doorway and cried out as he passed. A dog barked viciously from somewhere under a wooden stair.
Behind him came shouting.
One word repeated.
Not a word he understood.
But its meaning was obvious enough.
Intruder.
Or thief.
Or devil.
Richard's breath burned in his throat. He slid around a stack of barrels and almost collided with a man carrying a lantern. The man swore and swung instinctively. Richard ducked and kept moving.
Everything was wrong here.
The streets too narrow.
The buildings too close.
The dark too complete.
No signs. No maps. No police. No systems.
Just bodies, mud, noise, and the immediate possibility of violence.
He turned again into a lower passage, nearly fell, caught himself against rough timber, and kept going until the shouting behind him weakened.
Then vanished.
He bent forward with both hands on his knees, dragging in air that smelled of wet ash and decay.
His phone vibrated once.
He looked down.
DESCARTES:
Your arrival was suboptimal.
Richard closed his eyes.
Then he typed, with a fury so controlled it almost became calm.
RICHARD:
You sent me into plague-era Europe with a phone and no language.
The reply was immediate.
DESCARTES:
You also possess literacy, historical knowledge, pattern recognition, and superior sanitation theory.
Richard stared at the message.
Then, against all reason, against panic and terror and the possibility that he had just destroyed his own life in a more creative century, a thought forced its way through.
Descartes was not wrong.
He was in 1347 with access to more useful knowledge than kings.
The thought came with another behind it.
Quieter.
Darker.
If he survived this place, the world would never be the same again.
A door opened nearby.
Richard spun.
An old woman stood in the threshold of a sagging wooden house, holding a candle stub in one hand and staring at him with a face so lined it seemed carved out of the century itself.
For a moment she said nothing.
Then, slowly, she lifted her hand and made the sign of the cross.
Her eyes dropped to the glowing phone.
The candle trembled.
When she spoke, Richard only caught fragments — sounds adjacent to meaning, as though his brain were trying to bridge a gap faster than nature intended.
But one word came through clearly enough to freeze him.
"Devil."
The door slammed shut.
The latch dropped.
And from somewhere deeper in the street, as if the city itself had heard and understood, the bell began tolling again.