Roland Denkon had the special suit constructed, originally, as a revolutionary suit of 'armor', to protect him in the event of a war. It wasn't until after its completion that he discovered it had an extra special property.  Much to his amazement, he could not resist utilizing it, at least as an experiment to test that extra 'power'.

  It was in the winter of 1998.  He was a middle-aged, eccentric, failure of a scientist, with little more than a pile of hand-me-down junk-matter to work with, and slowly but surely, he was going broke.  If he didn't find a new source of income soon, he'd lose his hand- me-down little, suburban house to the local tax-collectors.

   He had always dreamed too much, as his now deceased parents had accused.  He was beginning to see how right they were. He should have been more practical and less of a dreamer. His careless dreams had gotten him nowhere, and the winter of 98 was the most difficult yet.

   With the property-taxes overdue, for the third year straight, he realized he was facing a deadline.  It was unlikely the government would give him another year, and he saw no way to get the money to pay.  It all seemed quite hopeless, until the New Year's Day.  On January 1, 1998, he put the new 'armored' suit to the test, and got the 'shock' of his life.

   Roland Denkon's suburban residence was a meager, little, 7-room, lower-middle class house in a small town outside of Springfelt, Massacusets known as Tagalon.  For some time Roland had been unemployed and living off his life-savings and a small 'inheritance' from his deceased parents.  The situation made it appear that he was squandering the money away on food and foolish little material things, while neglecting utility bills and property-taxes.  But what did they expect?

   Did he not work on low-paying jobs for 20 years, doing other people's 'dirty work' for small change and getting nowhere?  What did they expect? Surely they didn't expect him to continue to waste the remaining years of his life in that foolish way?

   They had already forced him to waste his youth on all work and low-pay (which translates, in laymen terms to 'no-play') jobs. It would be utter stupidity for him to continue wasting the years of his life away with such pointless futility!

   It was with these conclusions that he formulated his new resolutions, after the mother died in 94, leaving him alone in the house.  He convinced himself, with a burst of spiritual confidence, that it was time he put his full potential to work.  So he did just that. The 'suit of armor' he constructed in the autumn and winter of 97 was the kind of break through he needed.

   In all honesty, he did have fears that a war might occur, due to the failure of the economy to 'balance', as the politicians had promised for too long.  For this, he expected a 'revolutionary' suit of armor would have a great deal of value.

   As he thought about it, wearing it with a surge of pride, he carefully relished an optional alternative, in case such a war did not occur.  It was possible, he realized, to go to work as a secret-agent, with such a powerful armored-suit.

   He called the suit of armor, the 'electromanta'.  It was a light-weight suit with secret elements, such secrets he never disclosed in any written account, for fear of industrial spies who would not hesitate to destroy him for it.  He did take account that certain rare-earth elements, metals and fibers, and man-made synthetics, were involved.

   It appeared as a suit of mostly silver and grey, with lines and planes of blue and black here and there. The electronic control-device, which gave the wearer access to several modes and phases of functional operation, was attached to the left forearm and wrist.  To use the controls and trigger the various phases or modes, the user had merely to touch various keys and buttons with the right hand.

   On the eve  of the New Year's Day,  hile all the  children, young and old,  were busy playing with their  Christmas  toys,  he too, though quite alone in that old house,  shared in the spirit,  as he prepared to put the electromanta to the test.

   He looked at himself in the mirror, feeling for the first time in his life, much stronger, like a real tough winner, rather than the sore-loser he had been for the past 20 years.  He resembled a regular gentleman-warrior, as well as a man from the future.  He was reminded of the 'Lensmen' of Doc Smith, of the legendary 'Flash Gordon' and 'Buck Rogers'.

   They were just fictional.  To his utter amazement,  he felt a strong surge of confidence to realize, that his power was real.  The electromanta, he already knew, was the most revolutionary suit of armor to the date, but what of the various phases and operational modes?

   He picked up the helmet and carefully put it on over his head.  He secured and fastened it to the collar, with wonder, as he continued to view his reflection. He already knew what it was capable of; it could deflect most conventional weaponry, including force-3 explosions, it kept water and fire out, it was air-tight, it could counter-balance the pressures of the vacuum of outer-space, etc...

   The final test was radiation.  He was sure it could withstand low-level radioactivity. Now it was time to test the higher-levels.  He touched a set of keys on the forearm controls, pressed a button, and triggered the high radiation.  About 30 seconds later, much to his amazement, he 'phased' out of his home at Tagalon, and appeared in the middle of a field of weeds and sparsely scattered trees.

   He had no idea exactly what had happened, but one of the first things he noticed was that wherever he was, it wasn't Tagalon.  The 'snow' of winter was gone, it was much warmer and there were flowers on some of the trees.
   Whatever had happened, it was much, much more than was expected.  But could he reverse it, and return home? Or did he even want to?

   Roland Denkon stood in a field of weeds with sparsely scattered trees, and wondered where he was and how he'd gotten there.  He looked all about, in every direction, and observed all the sensory criteria, within a mixture of amazement and suspense.

   Somehow, accidentally, he had stumbled upon an extra power to the high-tek suit of armor.  It had reacted to a higher level of radiation, and somehow, transported him to another space-time.

   He looked into the distance.  Across the field to the northwest were mountains, around ten kilometers away.  To the east were hills and the north more mountains, to the south more fields.

   He decided further analysis was necessary before jumping to any conclusions. The portable computer built into the helmet, and the unit attached to the belt, gave a better picture of the scene.  It was 50 degrees Fahrenheit, the atmosphere was rich in oxygen and microscopic airborne spores, which he discerned as pollen, from flowers, and the man-made pollutant content was nonexistent.

   He checked to make sure and zeroed in on the distance with the video-zoom built into the helmet's visor, and checked all quarters for signs of civilization.  There were none. Wherever he was, it was far from civilization, at least the civilization of the late 20th century he knew so well.  No signs of chemical pollutants meant no cars, no factories, no combustion combines or engines whatsoever.

   That didn't seem possible. According to  scientific studies  taken in  the latter half of the 20th century, man-made chemical pollutants were so high in the atmospheric content  that they could  be detected anywhere  in the atmosphere  about the planet  Earth, accept for such places as remote islands in the middle of the oceans or the South Pole.

   He wasn't on an island or at the southern pole, he was sure of that.  Either the studies were wrong, his sensors were malfunctioning, or he wasn't anywhere in the late 20th century of Earth.

   Was it possible he had traversed time, into the past or the future?
   As he speculated, he noticed something that favored such a possibility.  The general structure of the land was almost too similar to his hometown land to be a coincidence. The mountains to the northwest and the north, the hills to the east, and fields and flatland to the south.  It was all very much like his home land, except of course, for the lack of civilization.

   He recalled the river to the north, less than a kilometer away, a tributary branch from the larger river to the east about 2 kilometers away.  He had visited the river many times in his youth.  He knew it well, and if his theory of time-travel was right, there was a good chance the river was still in the general area.

   So he turned north, studied the area, and decided to check it out.  But before leaving the spot he was in, he decided to 'mark' it.   If his guess on the time-traversing theory was right, that spot was placed directly inside his den in another time-period.

   He pulled a few clumps of weed and made a circle about 2 feet-wide in the soil. Then he stuck a stick in the middle and shaved the bark from the top.  He should be able to spot it from 50 meters with the video-zoom.

   He walked through the weeds northward, with the visor open, breathing the fresh air with something like careless abandon.  He was anxious to prove the time-travel theory correct.  The idea was fascinating.  Whether it was right or not, clearly something fantastic had happened, and Roland was full of a spirit of adventure he hadn't felt since his youth.

   He hiked across over 100 meters of weeded fields, and then reached a small desert, about 50 meters wide.  He crossed the stretch of sand, reached more weeds and trees, and walked for another 50 meters.  The trees became thicker and larger, and more mixed. There were huge oaks, elms, and pines, budding a leafy roof high overhead.  There were less weeds, but a few crops of ferns and berry bushes scattered sparsely about.

   For a minute he began to have doubts.  In his own time the trees and forest was not so dense and vast.  There was a drop-off just 20 meters beyond the desert.  But it was not as he expected.  He was about to explore new speculations, when suddenly the land dropped down a steep hill and there it was.

   The river, obviously, had shifted like a snake over the long periods of time. Of course, the question now was, how long a period of time?

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* Zentor was using a few different pseudonyms when he wrote this one. The pseudonym he put on this story in '95 was C. Tenrut.

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