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Prologue

Part One: Tragedy

9:15 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Wednesday, October 14^th, 2037
Venture Campus, Thunderblaze Innovations, LLC
Kokomo, Indiana, United States, Earth

"Well," yawned Cameron as he finished putting his things away, "I think it might as well be time to call it a night." Heading up the staircase, he spotted his sister Jennifer occupying the front desk as he finished ascending it.
"Hey, Jenna," he hailed her as he walked behind her workstation to clock out. "Sorry I've kept you here so late."
"Oh, that's OK," Jennifer replied. "I had some reading to catch up on, anyway. By the way," she probed, "What do you do up in the lab all day? I mean…," she fussed, "…you've barely even started working here, but Dad's already dropped you in the deep end!"
"Yeah, I suppose Dad's got me busy, all right," the young intern complained. "I really can't blame him for how hard he's been pushing us lately, though. He's been under a lot of stress lately, what with the big reveal coming up on Monday and all."
"I suppose there is that," she conceded. "I hope he cuts you some slack soon, though. If he keeps this up, he'll have worked you to the bone!"
"Ha, ha; very funny, Jen," Cameron chuckled. "Well, I guess it's time to go home, then."
"Yup," she concurred. "Let's go home and get some rest."
"And, boy, is sleep something I need right now!" he remarked.
"Amen to that," Jennifer giggled as, together, they headed for the door.

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9:20 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Wednesday, October 14^th, 2037
The Seiberling Mansion
Kokomo, Indiana, United States, Earth

Cameron and Jennifer were walking past the old Seiberling mansion when something occurred to the former of the two siblings.
"You know, Jen," Cameron remarked, "Kokomo seems to have retained a lot of its history, don't you think? I mean, Dad told me the other day that the place hasn't really changed that much aboveground since he was a kid. Did you know that he told me that Venture Campus used to be a Walgreens the other day?"
"Really? Well," she continued, "I guess that just goes to show you what can happen when you start building down into the ground instead of up into the sky, doesn't it?"
"I guess you're right," her brother mused.
"Anyway," Jennifer commented, "sorry to interrupt your reverie, but what's all this about some big mystery project that happens to be the grindstone to which our dad's been pushing your nose lately?"
"It's nothing important; just some big order that we're trying to fill," responded Cameron.
"Nothing important, eh?" she contested, "You're trying to hide something from me! Didn't you say something about some kind of presentation that the company's going to hold next week?"
"If I told you, it wouldn't be such a mystery, now, would it?" he retorted.
"Oh, come on!" she implored, "You can tell me! Please?"
"Nope! My lips are sealed," quipped Cameron. "You'll have to wait to find out, just like everybody else."
"Aw!" Jenna whined. "I was looking forward to getting you to spill the beans…"
The look on her face made Cameron yield just a little. Considering his words carefully, he gave in. "Fine, then; I guess I can tell you one thing."
"And what would that be?" she asked brightly as they stopped at a crosswalk opposite St. Joseph Hospital.
"I think it'll be a big surprise," he grinned.
"Hey!" she protested, "That was mean!"
"Sorry," he shrugged "I can't help it that I signed a non-disclosure agreement. Besides, Dad made me promise him that I wouldn't tell anyone, not even you, about this before the big debut."
"I have ways of making you talk!" Jenna growled in a slightly amusing attempt at an ominous German accent.
"I'm sure you do…," muttered Cameron as they began to cross the street.
"Pardon me?" inquired Jennifer, raising an eyebrow.
"Nothing of consequence," he dismissed. "It's just that you don't make a very good interrogator — hey, what was that?" he asked.
"What was what?" Jenna shot back.
"I thought I heard something…," he informed her. "It sounded like…"
"Like what?" wondered his sister.
An unfamiliar voice answered her question for her: "Like a gun being cocked, miss. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some business to take care of." At this, he fired the gun in question right at Cameron's heart.
At such a close range, the assassin didn't fail to miss. Pain erupted in Cameron's chest as the bullet made contact with his internal organs. The boy's eyes grew wide, then rolled back into his head as he fainted at the sight of blood welling up underneath his shirt.
"What have you done?" Jennifer screamed, furious that an attempt would be made on her brother at a time like this.
The murderer smiled and took her aback with the cold, calm, and collected answer of someone who is clearly mad. "What needed to be done to get my revenge. Be glad I didn't shoot you." Leaving Cameron's would-be protector in a slight state of shock, the shadow-cloaked hit-man retreated into the darkness from whence he had come. A few more moments passed before it finally occurred to Jennifer that she should probably take her wounded brother into the nearby hospital.

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9:26 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Wednesday, October 14^th, 2037
The Spryfletch Residence
Kokomo, Indiana, United States, Earth

Dr. Gordon Spryfletch, Ph.D.; president and CEO of Thunderblaze Innovations, LLC; was in his study preparing for next week's event when the phone rang. Sighing, he wondered why he couldn't get even a moment's peace before answering.
"Yes? Hello, you've reached the Spryfletch Residence. With whom would you like to speak?"
A panicked, female voice sounded clearly on the other end of the line: "It's a good thing you're home, Dad. Something terrible's happened!"
"What? Tell me what's happened, Jenna!"
Taking a deep breath to hold back her tears, his traumatized daughter told him what she had just witnessed. "It's Cameronn, Dad! We were walking home together when a crazed redneck in stealth armor popped out of nowhere and shot him!"
"Oh, no… — he must have been hired by Quithersveldt; that son of a heathen is probably still after me over losing that fraud lawsuit he lost to me last summer. Where are you, Jennifer? Did you make it to the hospital?" he pressed.
"Yeah, Dad." she replied. "They rolled him away on a gurney almost as soon as I carried him through the door."
"I'll be right over," he vowed. "Do you know what room he's in?"
"No," Jennifer answered, "but I'll let you know as soon as they tell me."
"Good girl," praised her father. "See you soon, OK, sweetheart?"
"Sure, Dad," she replied.

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11:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Wednesday, October 14^th, 2037
St. Joseph Hospital
Kokomo, Indiana, United States, Earth

Cameron's dad had spoken with his caretakers about his course of treatment earlier that night, but having to wait for news of what kind of state his son was in had made Cameron's worried father stir-crazy. At this point, the august entrepreneur had been pacing anxiously back and forth across the floor of the intensive care unit's waiting room for over two hours and twenty minutes. He finally stopped when the head doctor called his name.
"Dr. Gordon Spryfletch? I have some news about your son."
"Finally!" he exclaimed. "Is Cameron all right?"
"I'm sorry, sir," replied the physician, "but I'm afraid it's bad news."
Having hoped not to hear something like this, Dr. Spryfletch paled. "What do you mean?" he probed.
"I don't like having to be the one to tell you about this," the surgeon began, "but I can't change what's happened. The bullet used on your son was of the hollow-point variety and left everything along its path in tatters. My team was unable to come up with a replacement heart, artificial or otherwise, on such short notice."
Gritting his teeth, Gordon nodded. "I understand. Did you see any electrical activity in his brain and spinal cord before he passed away?"
"We were able to get him under the assymmetrical superconducting magnets one of your experimental very-high-resolution fMRI scanners soon enough that what cardiac tissue he had left was still pumping the blood he didn't lose from his wound through his system. He was still struggling to breath at the time, so his erythrocytes were still able to deliver enough oxygen to his nervous system's cells from dying off. We mapped out as much of Cameron's neuronal tissue and activity as we possibly could have, given the circumstances. You should be proud of your work; without your autonomous imaging system, we wouldn't have been able to record anything."
"Were you able to get a DNA sample off of him? A genome sequence could," reasoned Dr. Spryfletch, "be used to resurrect him some day."
"We'll send it off to a lab for analysis in the morning," confirmed the medic.

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The supposedly deceased young man's father and his daughter departed the ICU, depressed by what they had heard. Tears fell from the grieving man's face as the events of the past few hours finally sunk in. "Why," he moaned, "oh, why did my past have to come back to haunt me tonight, of all nights? Cameron had so much potential, and now he's been murdered and can't fulfill it."
"I wish I could have done more to protect him in the first place," Jennifer moped. "I didn't even register what was going on until it was almost too late…" she mourned.
"It's all right, love," soothed Gordon. "You told me that assassin popped up out of nowhere, so there probably wasn't anything else you could have done for him."
"But I should have seen that infidel coming!" Jenna sobbed.
"It was already getting dark," her father comforted. "Now there's nothing left to do but hope that this isn't the end. "

Part Two: SerendipityPart One: Discovery

…An account of the unexpected rediscovery of Cameron Spryfletch's medical records during the summer or fall of 2506.

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I have a few different reasons for why I want Cameron to have been reawakened by the time mentioned in the main text. First of all, I want him to have been awake for long enough to have already gotten used to living on the Earth of the future before he leaves for Zharus. Second, I intend for young Mr. Spryfletch to be at the 'furry' convention that the story 'The Final Countdown' mentions as an event that will have been held on November 12th, 2506, in Springfield, Missouri, so that he can bear witness to the flight taken from there by Lubyanka the Sturmhaven she-wolf RIDE and her companions. Third, I was thinking of having Cameron established as an employee of the Springfield—Greene County Library by the time that Lubyanka goes there to get the specifications for IPv8 from one of his co-workers.