John Smith, World Jumper
Book One: Portal to Adventure
Copyright 2012
E. Patrick Dorris
Chapter One
The world you know is but one of many. I do not mean this in the sense that astronomers are beginning to discuss; distant worlds around far away stars, possibly like our own or possibly not. The worlds I speak of are, how shall I put it, duplicates. Some of these realities seem closely intertwined, some only slightly similar to the Earth you know. But all are nearby, separated only by the differences between them.
The only way I can think of to describe these “Earths” is that they are like looking into a mirror, except that what you see is not a reflection, but another world. Add to that the myriad of depth visible, each scene behind the last, when you hold two mirrors facing each other, and you may be able to grasp the number of other worlds I am speaking.
I am neither a scientist, nor an engineer by trade, so if my description here or elsewhere is remiss in any empirical manner from reality the fault is mine alone. I can only describe what my senses tell me, or what those more learned than I have attempted to clarify for me.
How then do I speak of such things even in my limited manner? I speak from experience. I do not yet know how or why I have been given the ability, but I can and have made the transition between worlds on several occasions. What follows is my attempt to record for posterity what I have seen and done so far. Not because I am in any way special for my abilities, but so that someday when the bridge or bridges between worlds become easier to cross, my simple musings might help those in an undertaking of far more significance than my own wanderings.
In any event, the places and events described herein are as I remember them. If my memory is faulty, or fades with time, I offer, now, my humble apologies.
My story begins long ago. As I saw the last of the Great War veterans of this Earth pass on, their names trickling into obscurity, I cannot help but regret that although I was there my name shall not be counted among them.
I am an amnesiac. I do not know who my parents were, or remember anything but bits of my childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood. My limited recollection even after so many years is frustrating, but I have lived so much since my awakening that I cannot complain overmuch.
My military record lists my name as John Smith, a name assigned as an alternative when too many John Doe’s were present at the morgue or in my case, luckily, the hospital. It has been my name, thanks to my Canadian nurse, since June 18th, 1918 when I awoke with no prior memories in a U.S. Military Base Hospital on the outskirts of Paris, France with a bandage wrapped around my head. I learned neither of the battle of Beleau Wood, nor that I had been found wandering that battlefield wounded and naked, for days after.
I am of average height and build, if a little on the athletic side. My brown hair becomes quite unruly if left long, and in keeping with longstanding military traditions I keep it shorn short, and my face clean shaven when practical. For those concerned with such things, my eyes are either blue or gray, depending on the light, or some say, my mood.
That I am in the prime of life is all I can say about my age. I assumed I was in my early 20’s along with most of the other men I served with, but that assumption is quite probably false. In the decades since, I have not apparently aged one day. I remain as hale and hearty as ever, my face unlined by the passage of years.
If this un-aging is somehow linked to my abilities to cross worlds, learn languages remarkably quickly, and heal unnaturally fast, I cannot be sure, but I do think it highly likely. In any event, barring contact with someone who knows my past, the amnesia which blankets my memories stands as the single failure of my body to heal itself, and leaves any conjecture as to my origins and special powers just that.
As to whether I am or was, prior to that long ago day, a soldier by profession I cannot swear, but since my proclivity towards skills related to soldiering seems readily apparent, such an assumption is as likely as any I can think of.
My first personal recollection is of bright lights and a splitting headache. My second is of a pretty but serious-faced nurse gently dabbing, with a cool damp cloth, what little of my forehead was left exposed by the wrap on my head. As she noticed I was awake, she smiled gently but with a hint of something in her eyes. Was it recognition? Something did seem vaguely familiar about her, but at the time I assumed it was merely that she had been tending me for some time while I had been less than coherent. That assumption proved to be incorrect, as I will relate later, but it will suffice for now.
For some reason, over the next several days, various doctors found my case intriguing. My chart read “NN John Smith, service unknown, unit unknown. Diagnosis: Severe cranial trauma with inclusive shrapnel, inoperative, prognosis poor; disassociative shell shock, apparently normal personality.” But from the way I was checked over from head to toe, poked and prodded, had lights flashed into my eyes, there was more to my case than I realized at the time.
When the sixth deceased patient in three days was pushed from the common room where I lay, a doctor came and sat down next to me. To this day I could not for the life of me tell you his name or give you a description of the man, other than that he was rather on the thin side and wore a surgeon’s smock, laundered yet visibly bloodstained. Thankfully he considerately removed his thick operating apron before speaking with me. One of the smells I remember as disconcerting from that time is the coppery blood smell, poorly disguised by an alcohol wash, which seemed to follow those infernal aprons around.
He pretended to read my chart, but I could tell he was merely covering for an unsure bedside manner. After several seconds, he settled for a direct approach “I am afraid we cannot put things off any longer, we need to check your wound and change the dressing. Frankly, you’ve lost a sizeable chunk of your skull. Most of the shrapnel we couldn’t risk removing. It’s a miracle that you haven’t developed a severe infection already, but it could happen at any time, or the shrapnel could shift…”
The doctor was starting to babble, so I interrupted him. “I’ve had worse.” Why I said that, I hadn’t a clue at the time. With what I know now, it makes more sense, but the doctor obviously took it as my attempt at humor. His laugh was strained. “Have you started to remember anything yet? Do you know your name or who your family is? If you take a turn for the worse, we should know whom to notify.”
I thought for a minute, but nothing came of it, only a hazy fog. I shook my head gently. My nurse Lila, I now knew her name to be, wheeled an instrument tray over on a cart with squeaky metal wheels. Her face seemed even more impassive than usual but when she caught me looking at her the smallest of smiles crossed her mouth, and of more import, her eyes. That smile, one she shared on occasion, and seemingly only with me, brought me the first fleeting moments of joy I had known in my, as far as I was concerned, brief existence. Lila had pretty green eyes that were more suited to smiling than the pensive, tired-beyond-her-years look she usually wore. I couldn’t blame her for her normal staid exterior, nor did I envy her for her place in this morbid institution. That slight change in her demeanor meant much to me.
The doctor carefully unwrapped the bandages from my skull. Occasionally I felt Lila’s gentle fingers assisting. Blood had soaked the layers of gauze together and I heard, more than felt, the bandage being cut. After an indeterminate amount of time I felt something bounce off my shoulder and clank to the tile floor. Lila’s sharp inhalation of surprise and the doctor’s more reserved “Oh my,” brought the distinct idea that I was a goner to the forefro
nt of my thoughts.
Several seconds went by, seconds in which I waited for my world to fade into inevitable blackness. When I surprisingly remained conscious I noticed the distinct feeling of fingers probing my scalp, pushing gently on my intact skull. There was no pain.
“Someone must have gotten these charts mixed up,” I heard the doctor exclaim. I raised my head and looked up. Lila shook her head, “No. I was there when they brought him into triage. He had a hole in his skull as big as this,” she held her clenched fist up in an example. The doctor shook his head. Lila continued, becoming exasperated, “You saw the bandages Doctor; they were covered in blood and lymph. No one here mixed up the charts.”
The Doctor raised his voice, “Then how can you explain this?” He tapped on my skull, right in the middle of a large hairless patch, where the hole should have been. Lila shook her head, “I can’t.”
I found myself temporarily ignored as they argued. Bending over, I fished around on the floor until my fingers closed on the object that had fallen, I assumed from my bandages. It was jagged, metallic. I tossed it into the examination tray with a clatter.
Argument forgotten, the Doctor stood, seized the shrapnel, picked up my chart, and strode purposefully out of the room. I turned at a light touch on the side of my head. Lila smiled as her fingers carefully traced the outline of stubbling hairs circling my former wound. Her eyes glistened slightly as she looked at mine, then away, embarrassed at her forwardness. She hesitated briefly before excusing her behavior, saying “I’ve never seen any wound heal this fast. It’s well, some kind of a miracle.”
“Thank you,” I said awkwardly, of a sudden at a loss for words. Apparently I had brought her out of deep introspection. “What?” she asked. “Thank you for your concern.” I added.
She was quiet for a second, looking at the floor. “So many men…boys really, this is their last, I mean, they come here and they die. Or they leave here maimed.” I nodded sympathetically. Lila tucked an unruly strand of auburn hair back up under her nurse’s cap before continuing, “Now you come here… I saw your head. You should be dead with all the others. I’m happy that you made it, really I am, but…”
“But what?” I prodded. Her response, sudden and emotional, surprised me. “All I can think about is that they are going to send you back into that, that meat grinder. I don’t even know you, not from any of the other hundreds of faceless casualties that have come through here.”
I am skilled at numerous things, calmly confident in dealing with many situations. The comforting, much less the understanding, of women is not one of them. If she had not leaned in and placed her head on my chest, I would have said something invariably bumbling in an attempt to reassure her. Instead, I contented myself with silence. I brought my hand up, and it seemed the most natural thing to squeeze her gently to me as she cried softly.
I will not bore you with minutiae concerning the next several days. Despite evidence to the contrary, the examining doctor’s and Lila’s testimony, I was relegated to a ward of suspected malingerers. Somehow, the hospital’s administrative staff found it easier to consider that I was somehow responsible for either substituting myself for a mortally wounded soldier, or falsifying my chart once here, than to consider the seemingly unexplainable medical phenomena surrounding my brief convalescence from what should have been a fatal wound.
The psychiatrist assigned to evaluate me was not convinced of either my guilt or complicity in the matter. I stubbornly refused to exhibit any known or commonly faked symptoms of shell shock, other than the amnesia of my personal history. Although I could not remember any specifics of my own past, I was not ignorant of a significant portion of history in general. Several times during my interviews Doctor Barry would stop me and correct a minor aspect of my narration, always with a puzzled look on his face as if he were correcting some mischievous child who insisted that the sky was green when he knew full well it was not.
The best example I can remember of this was my insistence that of the two Punic wars, Rome had lost the first and soundly trounced Carthage in the second. Doctor Barry calmly corrected me, and his assertion that there had been in fact three wars with Carthage I accepted along with all his other corrections.
Errors in my memory of dry, moldering history however was not what led him to believe I was not suffering from any of the psychological maladies he had heretofore encountered during this war to end all wars. His opinion was formed by my insistence that, although I hadn’t the faintest idea who I was or to which company I was assigned, and indeed whether I was even part of the United States forces, or much less whether I was Army or Marine, that I be allowed to get back in the fight as it were. Once he told me what was known concerning the circumstances and location where I had been injured, I insisted that I be allowed to help, and as soon as possible.
As there was no way anyone was going to make a charge of malingering or desertion stick, the problem became what to do with me. To make matters worse, none of the soldiers or marines who filed through to determine if they recognized any from among the several amnesiacs knew me. Other men were recognized and at least identified, whereas I remained an enigma.
Although my accent clearly marked me as American, my good doctor spent several hours investigating the possibility that I might be of another nationality. That proved to be a dead end as my German was so atrocious that no one who spoke that language could have pretended to be so un-fluent. Although by the end of his questioning, my German had improved somewhat, I still failed all recognition of words not first used by the doctor.
With French, he thought he had hit on a possibility, but while my skill with that language was passable, neither the French-Canadian, nor any of several French physicians or nurses could place my accent. One of the French doctors, a kind elderly gentleman who must have had a much broader set of life experiences than the others, noted that my usage seemed almost archaic, and that some words I frequently inserted into my sentences were completely incomprehensible to him.
In retrospect, this anomaly with languages, and other things recorded in this narrative should have given a clue to my later revealed abilities. The only reason I can give for not noticing or putting the pieces together at the time is quite simply that I wasn’t looking. Frankly, I had other concerns.
But I am wandering too far from anything resembling an interesting story. I am sure that anyone still reading this is more interested in the wondrous places I have seen and the interesting characters, be they fair or foul, that I have encountered. The matter of my enlistment was resolved one day when a squad of US Marines marched smartly into the square, apparently on assignment to retrieve formerly hospitalized Marines recuperated enough and considered fit for duty.
I was able to watch them through the only slightly blurry, multi-paned windows made from leaded glass that lined the hallway where I was encouraged to exercise by Lila who for some reason continued to keep tabs on me even after I was moved from her ward. She would walk with me for a short while when on a break from her normal duties. Although I had little to discuss, I proved an adequate listener and she talked about her hometown and various more pleasant memories to distract her from life in a field hospital.
But I digress from my viewing of the Marines. Being sufficiently impressed with their military bearing I decided then and there to throw my lot in with them. Again, of the details following I do not wish to bore you. Suffice it to say that it was not without effort, and help, that I eventually became “re-assigned” to Company 4-6 4th Marine Expeditionary Force. Despite my acceptance into the unit, and feeling that I fit in there, my newfound occupation and accompanying camaraderie was to be short lived.
Much has been written about this First World War, from a broader and more informed perspective than I can give. I will not dwell on most of my experiences which were similar to those shared by millions of Marines and Soldiers. Two incidents, one of which only later became apparent
was an example of my “world jumping” ability, as I have come to call it, suffice to advance my story.
Compared to what some have described as the sheer terror of charging across the crater scarred, muddy front lines, en masse, into machine gun and rifle fire, the “mopping up” operations I participated in with the 4th Marines through the forest of Belleau Wood were vastly different. It would have been peaceful walking through the mostly intact forest, except for the all too common sight and smell of dead men and dead horses, some bloated and stinking.
Broken artillery pieces and other military hardware littered the landscape. Once we came upon the still smoking wreck of a scout plane in a long yet narrow clearing. The canvas had all but burned away from the fuselage and both upper and lower wings. Upon closer inspection the right upper wing was missing except for a few burnt wooden supports and the loosely dangling support cables. Other than the wing damage, the blackened wooden frame was largely intact, as if the pilot had somehow grounded softly. What I imagined, however, as his heroic efforts in bringing his plane down were for naught. His body, horribly burned like the rest of the plane, sat rigid, still in the cockpit.
The gnawing tension of walking through such an environment, and attempting to keep ever vigilant for signs of living enemy, perhaps waiting in ambush, grated on the men in my platoon. I could see it in their faces as they walked carefully, ears listening for any sound of movement, at times hearing real noises, at other times hearing that which was not even there.
We had just crossed a small babbling stream when the first bullet struck Pvt. Hastings, who was walking some six feet in front of me, in the neck with a thunk. I remember thinking it strange that he seemed to fall in slow motion, when I noticed a movement to my left. Turning, I was surprised to see a bullet moving towards me, leaving a blur behind it as it raced towards me. Now it was not moving slowly by any means and I barely managed to throw myself out of the way in time, but the fact remains that one does not see bullets in mid-flight, or “dodge” them. At least that is what my rational mind told me later.
After an unsuccessful search for the sniper, I related my experience to the corporal in my squad who had seen action before. He reassured me that the mind plays tricks with perception and senses in combat, heightening some and dulling others. I thought no more on the matter for some time.
Although we had several engagements with straggling German units in the days that followed, nothing like that first experience happened again until we were en-route, ironically to the very hospital where I had convalesced. It was also, as you shall soon see, the end of my naive belief that the world I inhabited was unique.
Walking single file alongside a roadway, in the narrow strip of solid ground between the muddy vehicle ruts and the drainage ditch, I had the “privilege” of being last in line. This meant that I was tasked, informally, with minding any traffic approaching from behind and being the first to be muddily splashed should I not.
Not desirous of becoming any dirtier than I was already, I took this job seriously, ignoring the friendly banter coming from the front ranks. To my chagrin, as I looked back towards the approaching sound of an engine, I saw what I can only assume was a Ford Model T flatbed approaching at a high rate of speed. Not only was it traveling rapidly, but it was also swerving erratically to avoid potholes in the road and the driver seemed to be paying little attention to any pedestrian traffic. I saw a man on a bicycle, heading in the opposite direction as the truck missed being hit, by the narrowest of margins, and then only by riding into the ditch.
I shouted a warning as the truck careened towards us, making sure everyone heard me and was moving off the roadway before jumping over the ditch myself. As my luck would have it, I stumbled and ended up several steps into a field before I could catch my balance. Turning, I took a step back towards my squad. An embarrassed grin on my face, I heard a telltale clicking sound under my boot and looked reflexively down towards it. I thought briefly that stepping on a wayward land mine was quite an unglamorous way to die.
When nothing happened, I blinked and looked around. The men of my squad who were looking at me seemed stunned with surprise, the look frozen on their faces. I noticed the truck, swerving as if in slow motion. The engine noise was all wrong, deeper somehow, as if someone was playing a 78 speed phonograph record too slowly by holding pressure on the turntable.
Looking down, I saw a discarded sign lying in the grass. “Nice place for a minefield sign,” I remember thinking. For some reason, until I saw that sign, I hadn’t been thinking of the mine under my foot, so caught up was I in the altered sensations I was experiencing. I felt a strange upwards pressure lifting my foot, so I looked down at the ground again and saw a slight but visibly growing bulge in the ground.
I began to inhale sharply in surprise, but found that my breathing was restrained. The air seemed thicker somehow. Suddenly I knew without a doubt that the mine was in the process of exploding. My perception of time was somehow altered, my movement to a lesser extent. I also knew that despite the apparent slowness of the explosion, it would nonetheless tear me apart. It was not a pleasant prospect to consider, as slow as it seemed to be happening. I began to think that my mind was somehow working much faster than usual.
Looking around again, I searched vainly for options as the explosion bulged inexorably outward. With great difficulty I found that I could move a bit faster than the shock wave and lifted my foot out of the way, for the time being at least.
The noise from the truck had all but ceased and looking up I saw that while it was leaning slightly as if into a skid, in the brief time I was willing to devote to sightseeing, I could detect no forward motion in it.
Glancing behind me I noticed something else for the first time. A section of air, the best I can think of to describe it is a concave lens-like shape, some three feet across glowed and hummed faintly. Lens is a bit of a misnomer. While it was generally circular in shape, it actually had no distinct boundaries, instead fading gradually from the center.
I also use the terms glowed and hummed, but neither of those descriptions are really adequate. The perception was not solely visual or auditory, but somehow a combination of the two along with something else. What was that something else? I cannot say with any degree of certainty, but it reminded me of nothing so much as when one’s neck hairs stand on end in response to an unknown fear. Only in this case there was no accompanying fear. The lens or disc was slanted at an angle of approximately forty-five degrees and through it the ground below appeared refracted slightly.
Another distortion, this one behind the first, was higher yet smaller and hung suspended at a different angle. The explosion continued to expand and as my options were uncomfortably limited I took a wild guess and chance. Since I was already leaning off balance, falling in slow motion away from the expanding blast, I jumped as well as I could off of my grounded foot and leaned backwards towards the closer lens, pulling both knees toward my chest.
It was an awkward position, made more awkward by the time I seemed to hang suspended in mid air as I drifted slowly downward towards the lens just ahead of the only slightly more slowly moving explosion. As soon as my back entered the disc, or I must assume when I entered the disc, things became radically different.
It felt as if I were spinning rapidly, end over end. That was disorienting enough, but a rainbow of lights flashed around my eyes, and my ears were washed in a sound that I can only describe as a hum. It was similar to the hum of a vacuum tube warming up, but imagine if you will that sound on many different frequencies simultaneously.
Luckily, I am not prone to motion sickness, or else I would have had a much rougher time of it. I may in fact have blacked out, but I cannot be certain, as distorted as my perceptions were.
For what seemed like several seconds, I was immersed in these sensations. Suddenly the spinning, lights, and sound stopped, only to be replaced by the feeling of falling. This new feeling w
as, thankfully at least, in one direction. I was somewhat surprised to land on my back, unhurt, legs up in the same position that I had started my fall through the lens. Still dizzy, I managed to open my eyes and lift my head enough to see that I was lying in the middle of a snow covered clearing. Strangely, the sensation of cold took several seconds to register as I struggled to rise.
Failing even in my effort to roll onto my side, I let my head rest, into the snow. Watching the steam of my breath rise into the gray sky, I attempted to gather my faculties. A snorting noise, behind me and above my head, startled me into action. Through some Herculean effort I managed to roll to my right and onto my hands and knees in order to face whatever was approaching.
The effort proved too strenuous in my weakened condition. I briefly caught a glimpse of a large, furry elephant-like creature standing not twenty feet from me with its ears flaring and trunk lifted into the air. Another smaller one stood cautiously behind the first.
Swirling stars rapidly clouded my vision and I sank back to the snow, unable to hold myself up any longer. I was completely spent. My vision faded as darkness engulfed me. I blacked out and knew nothing more.
Chapter Two