Wolf 3.0

Austerlitz

Napoleon Bonapart( ERASED ).

As if a North wind blasts over the slopes of the Arctic Cordillera or a tsunami washes away everything on shore( I used to watch National Geographic on TV) , comes the moment of truth. Cassandra wakes with a vision in the middle of the night: Joe is coming right now to take me – Talleyrand -- for my next assignment in the timestream.

She wakes me – terrified.

Joe barges in, he can barely fit in the den entry hole, forcibly yanks me out. Cassandra springs at him and he retreats forcefully.

Now, suddenly, she explodes at me and furiously attacks both me and Joe causing us to flee in terror across the room. She screams and howls in a fury. Both wolf children cry too, even Yearling.

In the middle of all this, I send a silent, masked sub-channel telepathic message to Cassandra. We make eye contact: "I will find a way to get back to you--" .

A new Airstream Trailer/Time Machine with custom fittings and a restraining chair with containment buckles and hooks sits in one corner, equipped for humans or wolves.

Joe pulls me into the enormous vehicle and jumps in for the transit—I now know—to the age of Napoleon, two centuries ago.

Cycles spin between our time of origin and the destination—2 December 1805. "Click, click, click" – the countdown finishes, 3..2..1..and we hurtle into the void with time flashes forming around us.

I am transforming into the human I will play: the master player — the real Talleyrand of early nineteenth century history, the aristocratic architect of Napoleon's empire. The two of us emerge on the battlefield just after Napoleon's first major victory at the battle of Austerlitz.

When in training, it's been a back-process in my head and I have no knowledge or awareness of what's going on during the last part of the time-trip. But now I get this strong brain-itch feeling that something's happening, that something's begging for attention. Wait, it's Cassandra! Not live, not in person, but a remnant of something planted in my head. Quiet but urgent. We are nearing the arrival point. I see a battlefield with soldiers from a historic time splayed below, blurred, as we approach through the time-stream.

Talleyrand. Don't say anything or show any reaction. Just be cool. You're good at that.

Cassandra!

This is a bot of me. I put it in your memory as you were leaving. There's something you need to know.

Ok. I stay cool. A dark jumbled scene bubbles up from my unconsciousness, something else besides the training background stuff, which normally I don't detect.

What is it, Cassandra? Tell me.

Stay cool. You're good at that.

I sense her she-wolf smile in the darkness, coming through the emerging movement. You know what they say, show, don't tell. Here it comes. And don't show a reaction. This will be quick.

Ghost vision: Suddenly there is an overpowering sulfureous gas smell that is suffocating me. In my mind I am in the hold of a ship in pitch darkness – crowded with half-naked men who are struggling and screaming and crying out, some dying – I am not dying because I am there only in sense mode. Cassandra is still in my head also and I scream out to her while outwardly doing my cover act but it is getting difficult. Cassandra! What is this place? I realize it and make a guess. The showers in the Hitler's Holocaust, but the uniforms do not match up. Hitler.