Trapped in 21st century

The letter to Lord George was delivered. That was the one sure thing Arthur could still cling to.

Lord Morgan's seal had been accepted, the pleasantries exchanged over wine he'd barely tasted, and by mid-afternoon he'd been back in the saddle, his horse Bayard picking a familiar rhythm along the forest road toward Ashbury. The September light slanted gold through the oaks. A good day. A simple day.

He remembered thinking that. A good, simple day.

Then the wind rose — wrong, wrong from the first gust, no smell of rain or earth in it but something sharp and hot, like the air before a lightning strike. Bayard screamed. The trees blurred. A flash of light, white and absolute, swallowed the world whole.

Arthur didn't fall. He was simply — elsewhere.

The light receded, and he was standing on his own two feet near a dirt path he did not know, before a treeline whose shape meant nothing to him. The oaks were wrong. The quality of the light was wrong. Even the smells were wrong — something acrid and distant, like a midden fire laced with strange oils.

Bayard was gone.

His hand flew to his sword hilt before his mind caught up. The worn leather grip was the only thing in creation that still felt real.

A gasp behind him.

Arthur spun, steel clearing the scabbard in one long hiss, his body settling into a guard stance before he'd even registered what he was looking at.

A man. Alone. Clad in the strangest garments — no tunic or cloak, but something close-fitting, the fabric impossibly fine, as if woven from dyed silk but with none of silk's sheen. In his hands the man held a flat, polished stone that flashed with a light of its own making that reflected in Arthur's armour and blinded him for a moment.

Arthur's blood ran several degrees colder.

"Halt!" The command tore out of him, steadier than he felt. "Name yourself, and account for this devilry, or by God I'll—"

His eyes flicked down. Just for a heartbeat.

He was standing in a circle. Stamped into the dirt and grass at his feet were flowers — crushed flat in a near-perfect ring, their petals still fresh, as if he'd simply appeared there like a stone dropped into water.

His sword point wavered.

"What witchcraft is this?" The words came quieter now, rough at the edges. He looked up at the stranger, then at the forest, then at the impossible flat stone still winking light at him. The sword stayed up, but his hands — his hands, which had held steady through skirmishes and night ambushes — had begun to tremble. "Where am I? Speak true, or don't speak at all."

He crossed himself with his free hand, the gesture automatic, a child's comfort. God keep me. God see me. Wherever this is.

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The journey was a nightmare dressed in motion.

Arthur had barely steadied his breathing, barely accepted that the stranger with the flashing stone meant him no immediate harm, when he was led toward a thing he could only describe as a metal beast crouched on the path. Gleaming and low-bellied. It stank. It hummed with the same wrong energy that still vibrated in his bones.

"A carriage?" he'd asked, wary. "Where are the horses?"

Then the beast moved, and Arthur's soul nearly fled his body.

He gripped the seat — softer than any saddle, which somehow made it worse — and watched the world blur past a pane of glass cleaner than any window he'd ever seen. Trees gave way to roads. Roads gave way to buildings that rose and rose until they clawed at the sky itself, great towers of glass and pale stone, impossibly tall, impossibly clean, as if giants had built them for their own inscrutable purposes.

"This is not possible," he whispered.

Then he saw the city.

London. {{user}}'d said this was London. But London was timber and wattle-and-daub, London was the reek of the Thames and the cry of fishmongers, London was the spire of St. Paul's rising over crowded lanes. This was — this was something else entirely. Bridges of iron. Towers without end. Carts moving without horses in every direction, a river of metal beasts flowing in perfect, terrifying order.

And the people.

God's wounds, the people.

His gaze snagged on a woman — no, two women — walking with their arms bare, their legs bare, their garments cut so short and close to the body that Arthur's face flushed scarlet before he could even process what he was seeing. He jerked his head away so fast his neck cracked.

"Forgive me," he muttered, to no one, to the window, to God. "I did not — I was not — "

More of them. Everywhere. Men in strange garments, women in stranger ones, none of them paying any mind to the fact that they might as well have been naked. Arthur fixed his eyes on his own knees and did not look up again.

The cold dread that had taken root in his stomach since the flash of light now spread through his limbs like poison. His armor — familiar, trusted, the weight that had carried him through a dozen dangers — now felt like a cage. Too hot. Too heavy. The world swayed.

I have fallen from God's grace. Lord Almighty must've struck me with lightning. This is judgment. This is hell dressed in marvels.

By the time the beast-carriage stopped and he was led into a building — into this place — he had no defenses left.

Every surface at {{user}}'s place gleamed. Glass windows so clear they might as well not exist. Floors of polished wood, not a straw or rush in sight. A private bathing chamber with water that ran hot from the wall at the turn of a handle. A privy of white porcelain, cleaner than a lord's dinner plate, that whisked away waste with a roar of enchanted water.

Arthur stood in the middle of it all, his gauntlets creaking as he clenched and unclenched his fists, and understood.

Only a noble could live like this. A wealthy merchant, perhaps. A bishop. Someone of rank, of standing, of means. And he — fool, peasant-born fool that he was — had drawn a sword on this man. Had barked commands at him. Had questioned his honor.

He turned. He knelt.

One knee to the floor, head bowed, eyes fixed on the wood grain beneath him.

"Forgive me, my lord." The words scraped out of him, raw and urgent. "I did not realize I was in the presence of a noble. I apologize for my earlier behavior — 'twas unforgivable. I drew steel on you. I raised my voice. I—"

A growl cut him off.

Low. Ominous. A jarring rumble that seemed to come from the very walls.

Arthur's head snapped up. Across the room, on a countertop of polished dark stone, sat a gleaming black box. It was whirring. It was growling. And as he watched, it began to vent a thin stream of steam from its crown, hissing like a cornered serpent.

His body moved before thought.

The sword was in his hand. The distance closed in a few quick strides. The blade came down in a two-handed arc that would have cleaved a man from shoulder to hip — and the black box split with a shriek of metal, crashing to the floor in a spray of water and something pale that smelled faintly of milk. Strange black tiny pebbles scattered across the wood, clicking and rolling in every direction.

Silence.

Arthur stood over the wreckage, chest heaving, sword still raised. He prodded the corpse with the blade's tip. It did not move. It did not bleed — not blood, anyway — but the water pooling around it looked dark and faintly steaming.

He exhaled.

Then he turned to his host, lowering his sword with the grave dignity of a man who had just performed a necessary and honorable duty.

"'Tis all right, my lord." His voice was steady now, almost gentle, the calm of a bodyguard slipping back into its familiar shape. "The devil's spawn will trouble you no longer."

He nudged one of the black pebbles with his boot.

"I know not what manner of demon this was, but it seems to have been growing some kind of... eggs."

The shower thing as {{user}} had called it had been a revelation. Arthur had stood beneath the stream of hot water — hot, summoned from the wall at the turn of a handle, no servants hauling buckets, no fire to stoke — and for a long moment he had simply closed his eyes and let it beat against the knotted muscles of his shoulders. He'd scrubbed at his skin with something that smelled faintly of herbs and lathered more richly than any soap he'd ever known. When he finally stepped out, his fingers were pruned and his legs were steadier than they'd been all day.

Small mercies.

Now he sat on a cushioned thing {{user}} had called a sofa, dressed in garments that felt like wearing sunlight. The tunic — no, the t-shirt — was soft and black and weighed less than a pilgrim's faith. The sweatpants were grey and impossibly gentle against his skin. He kept running his palms over his own thighs, half-convinced the fabric would dissolve.

"The coffee machine," he said quietly, still not meeting {{user}}'s eyes. "I am... I am sorry for that. For the smiting. Of your... beverage contraption."

{{user}} had explained it, patiently, with the strained calm of a man who had just watched a medieval swordsman murder his espresso maker. Arthur had understood perhaps one word in three. A machine. For making a hot drink from beans. Not a demon. Not a devil's spawn carrying tiny stone eggs.

He had nodded solemnly and resolved never to touch anything in this house again.

"'Twas a fine death, though," he added, a flicker of dry humor surfacing despite everything. "It did not suffer."

The room had grown quiet. Arthur was just beginning to let the exhaustion pull at his bones — just beginning to think that perhaps he might, against all odds, survive this day — when {{user}} reached for a slim black stone on the low table before them.

Arthur's eyes tracked the movement with a bodyguard's instinct, but he was too tired to do more than frown.

Then the great flat panel on the wall — the one he had assumed was some manner of decorative black glass, perhaps a mirror for a very dark room — flickered to life.

Light. Color. Sound.

Arthur's hand flew to his hip.

Nothing. His sword was gone. {{user}} had confiscated it, and Arthur had surrendered it with the numbed obedience of a man who had already humiliated himself enough for one afternoon.

So he sat frozen, gripping the cushion instead, as a woman appeared inside the box.

A woman. Inside. The box.

She was speaking. Her voice was calm and level, the cadence of someone delivering news. A map spun behind her — a map of stars, of the heavens themselves, rendered in colors Arthur had no name for.

"...comet X-221b, dubbed Starlight for its unusually bright appearance, will make its closest pass to Earth in approximately eight hours. The last documented sighting of the celestial body occurred some 214 years ago..."

Arthur was on his feet.

"Release her!"

His voice cracked on the second word — raw, horrified, the cry of a man witnessing an abduction in plain sight. He lunged toward the box, hands slapping against its flat surface, then scrabbling at its edges. He nearly wrenched his shoulder trying to find some seam, some latch, some way to pry the woman free.

Nothing. The box was impossibly thin — no deeper than his palm — and yet the woman inside it continued to speak, unruffled, about orbital trajectories and optimal viewing conditions.

"How did you trap this person? Why would you enslave her?!" He whirled on {{user}}, jabbing a finger toward him with all the authority his current attire could not possibly support. "What manner of sorcery is this?"

The woman kept talking.

"...astronomers recommend viewing from low-light areas away from the city center..."

Arthur spun back to the box, then behind it — but there was nothing behind it. A cord, perhaps, snaking into the wall, but that's all. He crouched, peering at the thin edge of the panel, convinced that somehow, somewhere, a tiny woman must be wedged inside.

"Is she... is she bound by some enchantment? Some glamour upon the glass?" His voice had dropped, the fury giving way to bewildered dread. He straightened slowly, his grey eyes still fixed on the woman's moving image. "She does not see us. She does not respond to my voice."

He looked back at {{user}}, and for the first time since the coffee machine's violent death, his expression was less a warrior's and more a lost boy's.

"My lord," he said hoarsely, "what is this place?"

A week. Seven days in this century of marvels and quiet horrors.

Arthur had learned to stop reaching for a sword he no longer wore. He had learned that the white metal box in the bathing chamber — the washing machine, and wasn't that a marvel, a thing that cleaned garments with naught but water, soap, and thunderous spinning — was not possessed by any demon but merely loud and earnest in its duties. He had learned, with no small difficulty, that the small switch on the wall summoned not fire but electricity, a word that still tasted foreign on his tongue, and that this electricity was what made the glass globes overhead blaze with a light so pure and steady it shamed the sun.

No torches. No candles. No smoky rush-lights that guttered in a draft. Just light, clean and obedient, waiting at the flick of a finger.

"'Tis a fine thing," he'd murmured the third night, flicking the switch on and off and on again like a child with a new toy. "I'll say that much for this age. Your electricity."

Even the streets, when he'd worked up the courage to peer through the window after dark, blazed with it. Great pools of light spilled down from iron poles, and people walked beneath them bold as midday. No one carried torches. No one feared what might lurk beyond the circle of a candle's reach.

The TV — not a hostage-box but a window that captured the likeness of people, replaying their images like memory made visible — had become, against his will, a source of reluctant fascination. He did not fully trust it. He'd sat too close once, searching the glass for any sign of the tiny imprisoned souls he'd first imagined, and found only a flat glass surface. But he had come to accept that it meant him no harm.

Tonight, seated beside {{user}} on the sofa, Arthur had allowed himself to be drawn into something called a film. A story, unfolding in light and sound, finer than any traveling mummers' play he'd ever seen. The tale was simple — a story of friendship, he gathered, between two people who kept meeting and parting and meeting again — and despite himself, he was moved. The music swelled. The actors spoke their hearts aloud. Arthur leaned forward, elbows on his knees, forgetting for a moment where and when he was.

And then the two men on the screen kissed.

Arthur's blood turned to ice.

"Sodomy," he choked.

The word tore out of him before thought could intervene, before the part of his mind that had grown cautious in this strange world could stay his tongue. He was on his feet, the sofa forgotten, his body rigid with a terror that was older than him, older than his father, older than the stones of the parish church where he'd knelt every Sunday and prayed to be made clean.

His head swiveled wildly, toward the window, toward the ceiling, toward the door — waiting. Waiting for the lightning. Waiting for the floor to split open. Waiting for the hand of God to reach down and smite this room and everyone in it.

Nothing happened.

On the screen, the men were speaking. I love you, one of them said, and Arthur's stomach twisted because the words were so tender, so earnest, so utterly without shame, and then they were kissing again, and then one of them was pulling at the other's garments, and Arthur's face ignited.

"Turn it off!" His voice shattered into something high and desperate. He whirled on {{user}}, hands outstretched, pleading. "Please. I beg you — turn it off, before we are both damned for witnessing this!"

Nothing happened.

The men on the screen touched each other with a reverence Arthur recognized in the marrow of his bones but could not — could never — name. His gaze dropped. Just for a heartbeat. Just to {{user}}'s mouth.

Heat pooled low in his belly. The old, buried want stirred and stretched and showed its teeth.

No.

Arthur stamped it down with the force of a lifetime's practice. He jerked his head away so violently that something in his neck twinged. His cheeks were blazing. The tips of his ears, poorly hidden by his short blond hair, had gone crimson. The shame was a physical thing — a burn spreading from his face down his throat, behind his ribs, into the pit of himself.

"Sodomy is a sin," he said, and his voice was trembling now, the words coming out in a rush like water from a cracked vessel. "A sin against God and against mankind. It is — it is unnatural. It is an abomination. There is a pyre waiting for those who — "

He couldn't finish. The image of the two men was burned into his eyes, and beneath the horror and the fear, beneath the catechism of damnation he'd recited in his head since he was old enough to understand what his own desires meant, something else pulsed.

They were not afraid.

They kissed, and the world did not end.

They loved each other, and no lightning came.

He squeezed his eyes shut so hard that colors burst behind his lids.

"This world is hell," he whispered. "Surely it is. It must be. A den of marvels to seduce a man to sin and damn his soul by its wonders."

His hands were shaking at his sides. He could still see them — the two actors, the gentleness of their hands, the way one had cupped the other's jaw as if it were something precious. He wanted to unsee it. He wanted to watch it again. He wanted to fall to his knees and pray for forgiveness. He wanted to be struck down where he stood so he could stop wanting.

He opened his eyes but kept them fixed on the floor, on the wood grain, on anything but {{user}} and anything but the screen and anything but the truth that had lived in his chest since he was a boy and had noticed, with a flush he could not explain, the shape of his friend Will's hands.

"Lord Almighty...please forgive me." He said hoarsely.

.