I woke to the sound of gunshots, and instinctively as I had been trained to do, I went for my Colt Peacemaker in my backpack. My subconscious brain analyzed the sounds of the weapons, and so I chose the most effective and least likely to break weapon. My hand slid past the plasma cannon, the needler, the horse pistol, and the micro-missile launcher and straight to the Colt.



Spotting cover, I rolled for it gun in hand, but hidden so as to not draw fire, already I began looking about to spot the opposing forces. The piece of a shattered Frigidaire(r) that I hid behind in the street made me wonder. Did these people have cannons in open use in a city?



I had once I suddenly remembered, run into a world where open gang warfare in Chicago had crossed over into military conflict. Al Capone had been taken out by a coalition of rivals who corrupted the govenment into ineffectiveness, and so no stable central force emerged to stop the Midlands War of 1960. If you thought the Democratic Convention Riots were bad; well at least that didn’t involve Sherman tank skirmishes on the Miracle Mile.



“Stupid Amerikaner, we vill kill you like we did your friends. Slow.” A voice yelled from down the street from behind a black slab-sided monster of a car.



Well that made it easy, I decided. I drew down on the voice, and breathed out slowly. When the crowd behind the car moved to go for another hail of shots, I smiled contemptuously to myself. They were advocates of ’spray and pray’. If they were who I thought they were, then I doubted God was listening to them.



My first shot took a man in the shoulder, and then another in the arm. The leader stupidly stood up and yelled.



“So you being having a sharpshooter friend? I’ll hang him by his fingers for a week.”



That did it. Anyone threatens to torture me deserves no mercy. He was stupid, and a target.



I shot, and missed. I focused, and my second shot hit him in the arm. He visibly shrugged it off, and walked out into the street with a tommy gun in hand.



After a moment, a tall, rangy, cleft-chinned man in a bullet shredded suit jacket stepped from behind a car across the street from me. He nodded, and I felt a jolt all the way to my toes.



Pure charisma. He had the rare quality that would make Arthur, Arthur, and not just another moderately successful warlord. He looked into my eyes, and assessed me with the kind of quick understanding of character that is partly learned, and partly instinctive. Then he conveyed to me his acceptance of my help with his the relief in his manner, and a flickering of his eyes to his left let me know that he was worried about the ones still hiding behind the car getting him.



In less time than it takes to tell, or for him to say if he had, or for a telepathic message to be sent, he had outlined the battle strategy.



“Herr Doctor. You owe me for the fridge your boys tossed out of my apartment.” He adressed his enemy.



Since it seemed to be a world where superhuman body skills were possible, I breathed out and slowwwwwwwed down the apparent flow of time. Then I flexed my eye muscles for maximum effectiveness at the designated range which I just knew to be thirty to thirty-four feet. Then I triggered the “in the groove” effect. Suddenly, it was like I could do no wrong. The downside is that it makes you way overconfident. In preparation for being shot, I mentally rerouted potential pain information to a storage box where it would be noted as numerical data, and not as agony.



Still I was unprepared for the gunfight. Both men went for their shots in a blur, and shots slammed out as they both slid sideways back and forth trying to dodge the hail of lead. Bullets slammed into them, and they kept dancing. They ran out, and reloaded. And they kept firing …



I started on the thugs. It was terribly easy. I shot, they died.



A lucky shot by the mustache-twirling villain clipped my friend on the skull, and laid him out cold. Then the ‘target’ walked up closer to administer the coup d’ grace.



“Better run, little mouse boy. You do not want to face der Dr. Gunnstein, the lovable and feared on seven continents from whom strong men run,”



“Never heard of you.” I said laconically, as I stood up and walked out in the street. The fallen man’s body separated us.



I breathed in and out as he slowly and tauntingly raised his tommy gun. Aiming my gun at the fallen man’s pistol, I fired. The bullet richoted off the gun, a car hubcap, a fire escape, and punched through the back of my enemy’s skull.



It was not sporting, but then I was not a hero in the tradition of this place.



Despite ten bullets, my friend was soon up(in two weeks) and recieving revivifying carriage rides in Central Park. The fact that his nurse was his terrifyingly beautiful fiance’ helped. And his scientific curiousity helped. After mastering biology, oceanography, aeronautics, and metallurgy plus boxing, savate, and gunfighting, he was in no mood for slowing down his studies of astronomy. He was on the verge of discovering Pluto.



He had developed some fascinating new techniques for learning that worked astonishingly well. He generally read three hundred pages an hour and retained almost all of it. I envied that even if I could not seem to grasp it at the level he did it.



As soon as I was sure he was safe, I took advantage of the opportunity to join an expedition to discover a lost island of gigantic animals in the South Pacific. We adventurers got to keep exploring. It helps us develop the skills so that we can be called heros by the less skilled. Besides, without television, you got to do something with your time.



Tadeusz