Colin took in every detail of his surroundings in an attempt to identify his location. The trees faded off into a blue-gray haze along the horizon, the canopy rising and falling like the ripples in a blanket because of the sloping hills of the underlying terrain. To his left, an imposing chain of mountains reached upward as if to pull down the clouds in the sky. None of it seemed familiar in comparison to the towering skyscrapers, crowded neon streets, and flying vehicles he knew so well.

Since he couldn't identify anything familiar, he decided to follow the mechanical construct resembling a ground-based hover train. If it was some sort of transportation craft, it stood to reason some form of civilization would be at its destination. Once he figured out his current location, he felt certain he'd be able to find his way back home. His lab would have all the information he needed to figure out what had gone wrong in order to prevent the glitch from happening again, but on the positive side, the teleportation effect had been successful in translating him to an entirely new location.

The ground was rusty brown and dry. His shoes kicked up small clouds of dust with every step, and he wondered if this area were in the middle of a drought. The trees seemed to be doing well, their branches long and full of green leaves, but the ground was parched with sprigs of withered and brittle grass sticking up everywhere.

He reached the twin rails of metal he'd seen the odd train utilizing and stopped a moment to examine the materials. Beams of wood had been placed under the metal rails at even intervals, and gravel filled in the gaps between the beams. The rails weren't singular pieces of metal but individual lengths joined by primitive bolts.

"Bizarre," Colin muttered. "It's of recent manufacture but a very primitive technological level."

Putting aside the rails from his thoughts, Colin looked up and easily found the black plume of smoke the machine had churned out along its route. It was already a fair distance away, but it appeared to be holding position, giving him hope he wasn't too far from an outpost or town where he could find more modern transportation back to his lab.

The sun was hot, and after an hour of walking, Colin was covered in sweat. The sharp gravel might've caused him blisters if not for the nanopolymer in his shoes. He only wished he could've done something about the heat. When he stopped at the train station, he looked over the town that lay beyond in combination of shock and dismay.

Old and warped boards of wood composed every building in sight. The streets were bare dirt, hardened by years of use. No flying vehicles were present in the sky, no holographic billboards decorated the sides of buildings, and none of the population showed any signs of cybernetic augmentation. It was as if the entire town was hundreds of years behind the rest of the world in technology.

Colin felt certain the town wouldn't have a satellite uplink station to either pinpoint his location or send a communication to his lab. He doubted they possessed a transport station. He couldn't understand how any city on the planet could be so far behind the times. The realization hit him hard as the answer jumped to the forefront of his mind. The town, its people, and its technology were literally behind the times. His teleportation experiment hadn't changed his physical location but his location in time. Colin had been transported into the past.

Needing time to think, Colin sat down at the base of a tree, enjoying the respite from the heat the sheltering leaves offered. Getting transportation to his lab to analyze the experiment and find out what had gone wrong was no longer an option. Finding a way back into his time might not even be possible. His experiment had malfunctioned, and without knowing how or why, recreating the exact circumstances to send him home was unlikely. To make matters more complicated, he lacked any of the necessary technology to rebuild his lab. Recreating everything with current levels of technology might be possible, but it was a daunting task.

Colin realized he had nothing else to do in this time. He was stuck, so trying to rebuild his lab was his only option, no matter how impossible it seemed. For starters, he would need some form of money as he thought the credit chip in his right hand wouldn't be accepted as the reader required to access his bank accounts wouldn't be invented for more than two hundred years.

Another objective for the present was finding a place to stay as the weather control towers weren't available in this time. He leaned his head back against the tree, feeling completely overwhelmed by the magnitude of the challenge before him.

A rhythmic clanging of metal drew him out of his swirling thoughts. Getting up, he brushed off his pants and followed the sound of the noise to its source. He found a small wooden structure with a perimeter fence made from trimmed tree branches driven into the dry ground. A sign hung over the door with the word Blacksmith painted in dark letters. The shack was quiet as all the activity was taking place in the enclosed yard. Set away from the house so as to not cause it to burn down, a large coal fueled fire was burning brightly. The ringing impacts he'd heard came from a piece of glowing plate held in a pair of tongs and being hammered against a solid block of metal.

Colin watched the large man work with the metal plate, alternating from heating in the fire to hammering it. The metal was expertly shaped and formed. It gave Colin ideas. He lacked the skills necessary to do the metalwork himself, but with the man's help, combined with Colin's knowledge of modern technology, the two of them might be able to craft some impressive things and possibly a way for Colin to get home.