Train of Thought

The man who called himself Loren Olsen had a hard time sleeping. While this hotel was cheap and located on a back street— and thus excellently suited to his purposes—getting a good night's rest proved nearly impossible. He slept with his clothes on, as the blankets were too thin to provide any protection from the cold of an English winter night. His rickety bed creaked every time he moved, and his pillow was lumpy and felt as if it had been stuffed with straw.

He was almost glad for the distraction, because his sleep was restless and filled with swirling lights.

His dreams took him back to space, weightlessly floating among the galaxies. He had longed to be back there, to be absolved and forgotten; yet this time there was nothing peaceful about his voyage. A strange necessity filled his mind. Something needed to be done, and he was the one who must do it.

No matter how hard he tried, however, he couldn't go faster. The laws of physics didn't budge—not even for him. His journey would take years, and all that time the urgency would fill his mind. He strained, cursed, pleaded, cried...

… and then he'd wake up in the cold hotel room, shivering, his appeals faltering as he realized that he was directing them at a web-covered board ceiling.

This was the fourth time. At least he could see the ceiling now. Dawn—paltry and wan as it was—had come at last, and it was time for him to move.

Loren Olsen swung his legs over the edge of the bed, groaning as he felt his cold muscles strain. I hate this place. The thought that someone or something wanted me to be here... He shuddered, and not from the cold. Is this my punishment, then?

Was the atonement only in my mind?

He shied away from that line of thought. Now wasn't the time for self-recrimination. Now was the time to plan, to scheme, and to make sure he wasn't anywhere in the general vicinity of Europe when the Blitz hit.

The Blitz...

What am I going to do?

Yesterday he'd felt that he could just stay in England and wait out the war, but now he wasn't so sure. He rose and walked over to the small bathroom. The tiles were moldy, the pipes were rusty, but the mirror was relatively spotless.

At least the lack of sleep doesn't show, he noted. A small blessing. He still looked the same as when he saw his reflection in the hospital—too lean and fragile for his tastes, but alive and kicking. Not for the first time he wondered why he hadn't fully recovered yet. Yes, Midgard's magnetosphere made for a very magic-unfriendly environment, but he was supposed to be powerful enough to ignore it.

So what's wrong with me? Loren asked himself.

Perhaps his near-death experience had destroyed his capability of gathering new energy. He was probably still rebuilding the... organ? Part of his brain? The... whatever was responsible for that. He supposed there must be a way to kickstart it, but how could he know what to do when he didn't even knew what was wrong with him?

… and there are way to many perhapses and probablies in that train of thought.

He sighed and opened the faucet. A cold and slightly muddy-looking stream of water trickled out, and he reluctantly splashed some of it on his face. He smoothed down his hair with his wet hands and then wiped them on his pants.

The most logical thing to do would be to find some kind of power source and use it to literally recharge his powers. Any power plant or nuclear reactor would do, really. Then he realized that he was stuck in 1938 and groaned. The humans wouldn't learn to harness nuclear energy for another fifteen years, and their current fossil fuel plants were not quite sophisticated enough to deal with the kind of power output he needed.

I could always wait it out, he reminded himself. Yesterday it had felt like a viable option. Brian Falsworth and his friend had taken stock in every single thing he'd said. Apparently the whole 'silver tongue' thing still worked. He could con himself into a decent living and... survive.

He shuddered at the thought. Whatever sense of security he'd felt before he knew about the aurora borealis was gone, and the dreams had only made his sense of insecurity worse.

Stay like this? For years? Not bloody likely.

There was a war coming, and it would be worse than anything he had ever seen. It would kill an estimated fifty to seventy million humans—a shocking death toll, even to those accustomed to war—and the slightest accident could result in him becoming part of that statistic. Not to mention that Heimdall and the other Asgardians were looking for whatever landed in Little Wigborough while he was standing here.

Then again, I spent several weeks in that hospital and no-one found me.

An interesting thought came to him. Perhaps Heimdall can't find me because he's looking for something a lot more powerful than I am... in my current state, that is. So for the moment my curse is also a blessing. I'm a sitting duck, but as long as they don't see me they can't shoot me.

He sighed. At least it's something.

The man named Loren walked back into the bedroom, away from the haunted face in the mirror. He sat down on the edge of his bed. This isn't going to work this way. I'm confused, out of my depth, and thinking aimlessly. Let's do this right.

First question: How much time do I have?

Answer: Depends on what I want to do. He only had a month until the Anschluss. A year until outright war. Hitler would launch the blitzkrieg in the spring of 1940, and he estimated the Battle of Britain would follow in the fall of that same year.

Refined answer: I need to leave this island within a year. Otherwise I will be stuck here until the end of the war.

Having a solid time limit made him feel more grounded. Now he could start planning.

Second question: Planning what?

Answer: Planning to get my powers back.

He didn't have to think long about that one. Without his magic he felt debilitated. Crippled. And like the only advantage of being a cripple was being offered chairs everywhere you went, the advantage of being invisible to the Asgardians was rather paltry. If he wasn't crippled, he would have been perfectly fine with not sitting.

I can think of ways to evade Heimdall without having my hands tied behind my back, thankyouverymuch.

And until he was his old self again, his options were severely limited. How far away from the war could he get within the year?

Loren grinned to himself. World War, he thought. There won't be very many safe places in this whole damn realm.

Different, third, question: Do I want to get away from the continent of Europe?

Answer: If I stay this weak, yes. The farther the better. If my condition improves... we'll see.

He needed to reclaim his magic first. So: Fourth Question. What power sources are there on this planet?

He had already ruled out the power plants and the nuclear energy. He had to look at the older things. Stonehenge was the most reliable, of course, but it only worked a couple of times a year. And I'll be damned if I remember the ritual. He wasn't desperate enough to try Cardiff, and he reckoned the humans would've lost Camelot by this time.

It was a silly place anyway.

He sighed. So he needed to get off this island. Where to? There were supposed to be several relics hidden in Greece and Egypt, but those things belonged to other pantheons. He wasn't sure he wanted to enter their territories—especially considering his own weakness.

Did he know any friendly pantheons? Or just gods, for that matter?

Loren snorted. Bah. Asking for help is admitting you've lost. And making friends was never really my thing, now was it?

So he had to work with what he knew. Which meant: the Asgardians. Did they have any temples left by this time? Any worshippers, any artifacts?

Suddenly he knew. It was as if someone had softly whispered its name in his ear, and the knowledge rang in his mind like a bell.

How could I be so blind? he marveled. I knew it was here. I was the one who found out that we'd lost it, and I was the one who found out where the humans kept it.

The Tesseract is here on Midgard.

The man named Loren Olsen crisply rose and walked towards the window. Last night, he'd noticed that his room was at the back of the hotel, and his one window opened out onto a little-used back street. He had to push quite firmly to open it—made an awful creaking noise, too—but then he could at least see if he had any chance of slipping away unnoticed.

He grinned when he saw the many window-ledges and ridges this red brick building offered him.

Loren turned around, giving the dingy room one last disgusted glance, and put his feet on the ridge under the window. With a few stiff movements he traversed to the rainpipe. Then he clamped his hands around the rusty metal tube and slowly, step by step, made his way down.

He jumped down the last meter, landing on the cobblestone street with a firm thud, and wiped his hands on his trousers to get rid of the rust. A quick look around told him that nobody had seen his descent.

That's easy savings.

He slipped into a nearby alley, feeling jubilant. The Tesseract! If only I'd possessed a weapon of that magnitude the last time I was on Earth.

I'm back!