Dr. Drake Voss dropped his dying data pad beside him on the pile of hay he had fashioned into a makeshift bed at the last minute. His eyes were heavy with sleep. It was all his fault that he ended up in a place like this, and it was very much unlike himself to make such an error.
He shook his head in self-disappointment. He always took the proper measures, or so he thought. Who would have known a stray metallic bullet would end his career prematurely? Who would have known that this timeline had metallic bullets? Everything he'd ever known involved photonic energy beams or pulses. The few metallic bullets he did know of were never strong enough to penetrate his kinetic barriers.
But here, in this strange alternate timeline, his kinetic barriers never even activated. The one-in-a-million chance of a stray bullet obliterating his only means of escape—who could have predicted that?
He sighed heavily, lying on the bed of dried grass. His adrenaline gland was empty, his legs ached from fleeing for his life, and he could only imagine what he smelled like. It had been days since he'd taken a proper shower, much less changed clothes. He was still in his black 24th-century attire and brown pleather jacket. His personal computer was dead from low energy, his Tegnyks didn't work, and his only means of escape or return home was in shambles beyond conventional repair.
He wanted to continue self-loathing and wallow in self-pity, but sheer exhaustion took over. Before he could protest, he passed out on the pile of hay, in a barn, in an unknown world, in an unknown timeline.
Drake's dreams were filled with bizarre technologies the likes of which he had never seen. True, he was from a time where technology and biology were one and the same, where traveling the stars and traversing the galaxy were as common as going to the corner grocery store.
But here, his dreams were of iron, copper, and billowing clouds of steam. Steam bicycles with jets of white steam blasted from the rear of the seats. "Horseless carriages" of copper, bronze, and iron with stacks of steam plumbing from the tops. Flying airships with no neon photonic engines but large copter blades above their galleon decks, or massive gas-filled balloons with billowing trails of steam.
The technology here was the complete opposite of the sleek, slender, and silent tech he was used to. It was all big, massive, and rumbling. It quaked and shook the earth in a rigorous and violent motion.
So much so, that he was awoken from his sleep by the morning sun radiating through the open windows of the barn. The shaking wasn't in his dreams; it was real!
The entire barn shook, shivered, and rumbled with the sounds of creaking iron, rushing steam, and thunderous roars.
Drake sat up suddenly, wide awake. His once neatly groomed blonde hair was now a mess of bed hair and straws of hay. He desperately looked around for the source of the thunderous ruckus.
It didn't take long to identify the source of the noise. With a crash of iron meeting the thin wooden walls of the barn, a behemoth metallic beast stormed through. It was a 15-foot-tall robotic bull, built of copper, bronze, and iron. The raging beast hissed with spurts and spats of steam and dripped with black oil. Its joints were made of gears and cogs, with clockwork mechanisms keeping the giant beast moving as if it were alive and sentient.
"Holy Frak!" Drake yelled as he scrambled to his feet, his adrenaline gland suddenly pumping what it could from his night's rest.
The metallic beast roared a metallic roar, and its illuminated red eyes glared right at him. Its horns looked like rocket launchers, and its metallic nose huffed with jets of white steam. It stomped its front hoof deep into the ground, causing a rumble and shake in what was left of the barn.
Drake turned to his right and ran as fast as he could out the door. His lithe and athletic body didn't betray him, and his relay sprint running hobby paid off as adrenaline coursed through his veins.
He suddenly found himself in a wide-open grassy pasture. The morning sun shone brightly as dozens of real-life cows and bulls huddled at one edge of the pasture, trembling and mooing in terror. Remnants of unlucky cows were strewn across the field, victims of the rampaging robot. The ground continued to quake and tremble as the raging mechanical bull burst through the wooden barn wall in hot pursuit.
With every hoof that struck the ground, it sent a shockwave, causing a small tremor as it sped towards Drake.
Drake locked up, frozen in fear, his adrenaline suddenly spent. His fight-or-flight response decided to freeze instead.
The gargantuan metallic bull charged full speed at him, rumbling the ground as it approached, steam hissing from its nostrils.
"This is it…" Drake thought to himself. "I'm gonna die in this archaic world." He shut his eyes tight, waiting to embrace the eternal blackness of death, or whatever lay beyond it.