I woke from verser transition madness which seemed to take an unusually short time period if time can be applied to such a thing.



And I rejoiced to feel solid, but I could tell I was ill, or damaged. I felt fragile, shallow in my mind. Even if I had wanted to get upset and find out what was going on around me, I could not.



My body wanted to sleep, no, it craved sleep, and I gladly enough acquiesced to the wisdom of the body.



For the next indeterminate amount of time, I woke, considered a few thoughts, or consulted a few memories, made a conclusion of minor nature such as to not worry, and promptly fell back in fathomless slumber like I have rarely enjoyed. Especially since becoming a verser. Living in worlds where plants can eat you, and animals rip you to shreds without warning like I have tends to teach paranoia, and light sleeping.



But being paranoid and taking a plan on that basis would have taken too much energy, I decided with a luxurious mental smile. Then I slept.



It occurred to me that I was probably in some advanced technological society’s regeneration chamber. Nice of them to fix me up after whatever cured me of my fogginess landed me in their world.



Later, they must have decided I needed some visual stimulation because they seemed to have begun shining a bright light on my chamber. It did help break up the tedium which was not really too bad. I slept mostly, and I had a peculiar relation to time. It skipped along, and I let it. And of course, the level of stimulation that would have driven me batty with boredom was the same that would now be overmuch for me.



If I needed any proof of how badly I’d been damaged, that was it.



I’d owe these people big time for all this work.



I started to feel things a bit more which was a decided relief. I could touch the nutrient tube, but I only did this a few times because it was so exhausting.



Later, I began to recognize a female voice. My nurse’s voice was quite melodic and peaceful. I went to sleep quite often listening to her singing either nonsense tunes or something that sweetly melodic and kind of familiar.



The bio-chamber I was in began fluxing in uncomfortable ways. And then shortly thereafter the water left, and I was forced to a conclusion I’d been lazily avoiding for the last five to ten naps. I was being born.



Babies are supposed to be sweet little tykes, so I spare you the litany of curse words that ran through my mind at the time.



I remembered what I’d heard of my own birth, and devoutly avoided being breach, and for the second, I prayed that it was not a Catholic hospital I was heading too, and for the third if it was that they were not idiots. Seems like me and Mom almost went Beyond because of some doc’s odd and hopefully eccentric scruples, and I would not mind that much this time being a verse, but my “nurse” had seemed pretty nice from what I could tell. I’d be ticked off on her behalf, for sure.



We had a normal birthing experience. What does that mean? Well, let’s see, for comparison, I’ve been tortured to death, and it hurt less. And “Mommy” had an amazing array of curse words.



But finally, I got to look into her face, and I could hardly make it out being mostly blind, but it set my little heart to thumping for joy.



The nurses giggled at my first fountain, and I think I blushed. I’m not used to being naked around four or five females. But I got used to it. I had to. We won’t go into that more except for just one word. Okay, two. Cloth diapers. Eeww.



We went home to a ultra-cute nursery room, and a crib, and I got to meet “Dad”. He seemed a very nice fellow if a lot too nervous about dropping me. And I noted that he wore a three piece suit which I vomited on. Sorry guy, really. But he took it mostly in stride.



I began testing some of my psi skils. About the only thing that worked was my perfect memory. I tried a little magic. A prayer for my upset stomach, and that my parents would get some rest instead of trying to super-clean the house.



I’d have told them “You never let me down anyways on the ground. What does a few specks of dirt matter. Go to sleep.” The prayer worked.



Later, I tested a theory I’ve heard that babies can see angels. My guardian angel showed up. Special dispensation he informed me, and often only once, and for me definitely only once.



I told him what I thought had happened. He did not disagree, and neither did he agree which I took as hopeful. Then we had a long adult conversation because I was just a little tired of “goochie-goochie-goo”. It’d been nine months plus since I’d had a real adult conversation.



Later, I saw the fairies that only very young children can see, but they did not want to talk to me since they considered me and adult.



My theory of what was happening was based on what Whisp, another experienced and martially very capable verser had encountered. He got seriously disintegrated by a tachyon grenade (they are nasty stuff. Rip all the neutrons in all the atomic nucleus in a target body into quarkial shreds if you catch the full brunt of it.), and the Multiverse lost track of him sort-of. So he was reborn as a baby.



I could see that applying to me. I’d been phase-shifted and a slowly shrinking tenous cloud of gas that kept dissipating. Maybe, I just slid under some threshold of existence, only to be restored (sort-of) by some hardline second layer of redundancy built into the Multiverse by the Creator.



I spent a minute thanking the Creator for that.



Thing is Whisp also had a Mother who was flaming insane. I should know, I’ve iced her twice. He told her he was a verser when he was a rugrat in her house. She went nuts. Now he has a nutter verser on his trail throughout all time and space.



I did not want to do this to the nice lady who brought me here. So sudden announcements of my adult status at the high chair once I got enough control of my muscles to talk were right out.



She and Dad would likely become versers after being exposed to my blood through childhood scrapes and what not. I’d deal with that later; hopefully in a way that kept everyone sane.



My vision began to improve, and so I listened intently when Edward Murrow came on the black and white TV to tell us the news, and most importantly the date.



May 14, 1952 was the date. Truman was President, and he was conducting the Korean Police Action. MacArthur was giving him grief. “Mommy” told me this was my one month birthday.



She celebrated by putting me in this atrocious outfit. And we went to lunch by Lake Michigan on LSD. Not the drug, Lake Shore Drive in the Windy City–Chicago.



Actually, much of my first year was very pleasant. We lived in a Levittown, and I got to see my lone grandma in an apartment in Chicago. She was great, even if she was suspicious of all this prosperity.



In ways, she and I were kindred souls. See, she’d been born of the Lost Generation, and I’d been born in the original world a Gen Xer. Both of us had seen a chill world, and gritted it out. Now, of course, I was born in a very different time. We were the children of the future. Our simple presence would make everything wondrous. I was a Baby Boomer.



But regardless of society, a baby is a baby, and a parent is a parent.



I was in many ways a very easy baby. I rarely complained about going to take a nap, or things that I felt were justified. But rather than pitch the stewed prunes across the room, I resorted to vomiting whenever I smelled them. It seemed a more effective technique to get what I wanted.



Their doc was a wise old guy, and he saw right through my trick, but he let me by telling me that if I hated them that much, it was okay, and he would not inform on me. I responded by shaking his hand which startled the chap quite a bit seeing as I was not yet one.



The natural baby tendency to obsessively examine and redo things was lent added force by my own decision to try to lay solid foundations of physical and mental abilities to build on later. I think it worried my parents to see me connect, disconnect, and reconnect Lincoln Logs until I could and did do it with my eyes close.



The second year approached, and I was considered a precocious, and rather intense child with a very good vocabulary. It was hard to limit it as much as I did.



Finally, we got out of cloth diapers, and I got “potty trained” in jig time. There were some things I just had to use my superior knowledge on. But still, it was surprising how much influence the body had, and my own natural reactions.



The next door neighbour dog scared me one day even though I knew it shouldn’t seeing as it was behind a fence. But the bulldog was more than twice my mass, and it could kill me with no sweat if it was unleashed physically and mentally.



The owner was a jerk as well as his dog. And “Dad” was close to punching him out which I knew might not go over good at the plant. So I toddled back inside. got the red pepper can, and tossed a grubby handful in the dog’s growling face. No more canine death threats from that pooch. He always kept to the far side of the lawn when I went outside.



My parents bit their lips, and told me I’d been bad, and then they left the room to collapse laughing. Me, I figured, I’d been nice. My real country grandma would have probably shot the dog as a matter of policy.



The Korean War ended. Dwight D. Eisenhower the Republican took over from Truman the Democrat. Everyone thought “Ike” was a dumbell, just like they later thought Reagan was. Strange how things seemed to work smoothly when Ike was in charge.



Of course, it helped that the team-oriented G.I. Joes were in charge of things. They’d whipped Nazis and Imperial Japan and now they pulled together as they had been trained to do, and built the American Century in the physical world largely ignoring the spiritual.



Although, we were recent residents like all our neighbours, and so everyone was desperate for some sense of social order in the Levitttown. So each street became a club. Our club was volleyball. Dad did not much like it, but Mom loved it. Dad shrugged and was a good sport because not only Mom, but everyone else expected it. And it gave Dad the social order that he needed even if he payed a bit more than others.



We were listening to Mickey Mouse Club “M-I-C-K-E-Y…”, and the adult swung much of the focus of their culture on our “wonderful selves”. It was pleasant, and it was suited to creating grand visions that were either delusions or wonders.



And we had the “advantage” of Dr. Spock. It was thought to be an antidote to the “authoritarian” personality which led toward fascism sure as apples make apple pie. The theory seemed highly doubtful to me. But I enjoyed the permissive atmosphere, and it had many benefits, and the defects largely did not touch me since I was already an adult.



I got reminded of “duck and cover” by seeing ads from the Ad Council on our new monstrous TV outlining this pitiful safety precaution. A million degree fireball is going to be stopped by a desk? Well it might save a few at the far edges or by a fluke, but it was mostly a propaganda exercise.



And this reminded me of something upcoming. The Cuban Missile Crisis was coming, and there was no guarantee that this world would survive it like my homeworld had.



I put considerable thought into the problem and the solving of it. In the end there seemed only one solution.



Anyways, I went off to kindergarten which was a new-fangled thing. This time school was far more fun than first time. I deliberately set out to absorb things I’d missed on the first time through.



So, I was a model student and popular with the kids, except that on fairly frequent occasions I disconcerted them by askng questions over my grade level, or by holding views they thought were downright wacky.



Somewhere around this time an intellectual was saying that there was no real American conservatism, it was only a collection of fringe movements and ill tempers, or words to that effect. I was a “conservative”. Of course, that intellecual was right in many ways. They might have had the same name as I, but we had a lot of disagreements.



Still, I wanted to make a point to visit Yale sometime, and meet the college boy who would “Stand athwart History and shout ‘Stop!’”, and reinvigorate the Right. William F. Buckley.



Still, in the first grade when some unreconstructed Stalinist teacher waxed rhapsodic about the dearly departed who survived a bit longer in this world than in my original world, I lost my cool. Red-faced, I stood and shouted at her in the first grade, mind you.



“Stalin is a monster. Do your glasses blind your brain as well, or is it simply not functioning?” Needless to say, I was soon sitting in the principal’s office. Then I was on three-day’s suspension.



My Dad had a serious talk with me. He told me that he agreed with me, but it was not a proper concern for a six-year-old, nor was rudeness to a teacher justified. And besides, he said with a hurtful sigh, the word had leaked out at the office, and people were wondering if he was one of them fanatic anti-communists. See in that day, it was considered worse of a threat to the Union to be an anti-Communists than to be a Communist.



So I shut my mouth and apologized for being so rude, but never for denouncing Stalin. And I got to work on my plan to prevent the Cuban Missile Crisis.



I tried to make up to my Dad his problem at work by helping him with his speeches. At first he thought it a joke, but soon I had him convinced that I was a child prodigy. A natural born writer with a gift for the written word. Oh, if only it were true. What he saw was the end of a lot of practise, but I made it seem easy, and I made obvious mistakes for him to fix.



Soon he recovered his status, and I got to doing an hour a night on his stuff or on others young executives who couldn’t write a speech or a report to save their life. It would have been a lot easier with a word processor, but I had a manual typewriter that my Mom used and I dictated it to her.



We made a good bit of nice spare change off that hour each night, and it was a fun family time. And I got to know people. And I got my hands on a good bit of money for a kid. Which I used to hire private detectives.



Soon I had a rather large file on the misdeeds of the man who stole the election of 1960 from Richard Milhouse Nixon and gave it to John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But not only of Mayor Daley but his closest compadres were all entangled in my web.



Nixon won the radio listeners, but he lost the TV viewers in the Kennedy-Nixon debate.



I showed up the day before election day with a scholar’s award that I had worked hard to get because it entitled one to meet the Mayor. I handed the Mayor a present in a box. The box contained a list of his crimes and solid proofs. He was a pretty good Mayor I think, but corrupt.



And it had a note explaining that I apologized for my actions which were solely of my own invention, but that I would have to insist that he ran an honest election.



I gave him several easy ways to ascertain that it was just me, and in the end he gave me a rueful smile. I don’t think he changed his ways. I think he just resolved to be a lot more clever about hiding it. But Nixon got what he deserved. He squeaked into office.



And I got to meet him because the Mayor was basically a decent fellow, and when Nixon came by for a visit to Chicago and expressed his surprise at the honest election, Mayor Daley showed him to me as the explanation.



I privately in a corner of an office took him off to the side, and dropped most of my kid look. I’m three hundred years old okay? There’s a decided difference of manner and speech for me than from some Baby Boomer good kid of 1960.



Nixon had no idea what he faced, but he was probably the smartest man to ever occupy the office. Not the wisest man to be sure, but the smartest.



I gave him a warning and some clues, and he slipped past the obvious “I don’t believe in fortune-tellers” to questions about who and what I was. The man had a steel-trap mind, and a ravenous curiousity. I ended up telling him more I think than I wanted to even if not in words, but I still thought my secret safe because it was so very outlandish. A multi-dimensional traveller reborn as a baby who is from the future, sort-of? Not even the National Enquirer would buy it.



Oh, no doubt you are curious as to JFK’s fate. He was a guy with a lot of problems, but he had guts, and he had charisma, and he had rumrunner money galore. He got the Senatorship which in my world went to Teddy Kennedy, and began to rapidly climb the Senatorial ladder. No one shot him, and his bracing anti-communism and tax cutting approach to the economy inspired the Scoop Jackson Democrats to fight against their expulsion from the Party a bit harder.



And Nixon tripped Khrushchev up very badly. There was no Cuban Missile Crisis, but there was an attempt a arming Cuba and Nixon used it to torment the Russian Premier. And JFK in the Senate led the fight to oppose the WIN(Whip Infation Now) price controls Nixon thought such a cool idea. I don’t think the economy roared quite as much as it had in my timeline, but that was a decent trade-off to make, I think.



Next we’ll enter the Sixties and head onward…



Tadeusz