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system.
    “Such inventions ’twere not even dreamed of in my time, Lance,” he remarked as the Metrolink train sped through the night. His eyes roamed everywhere, at the dark windows, the other passengers, the advertisements papering the interior walls of their train car. “Methinks even Merlin had not foreseen such marvels.”
    Despite Lance’s admonition that Arthur’s medieval-style clothing would make them stick out “like sore thumbs,” Arthur insisted on standard attire for these excursions: heavy leather pants, knee-high leather boots, and a billowy long-sleeved tunic. He’d wanted to carry Excalibur with him at all times, but Lance assured him they’d be arrested for carrying a weapon before they got five blocks.
    “Hell,” he told Arthur, “I could get busted for carrying my little-ass pocketknife on the street, even though I could get killed without it. This city sucks!”
    Arthur frowned at Lance’s use of language, not entirely understanding the boy’s modern slang, but sensing just by the words and tone that his speech was not appropriate for a knight. Ah well , he thought, the boy shalt learn . And, in point of fact, Lance had been incorrect—almost no one even noticed Arthur’s odd attire when they were out and about, except maybe some businessman-types aboard the Metrolink. This was Los Angeles, after all.
    On one particular night, Arthur and Lance cantered through a bleak, ghetto area on Llamrei’s back. The storm drain system allowed them easy entrance and egress to and from many of the more troubled neighborhoods in the city. Lance had begun adopting a clothing style similar to Arthur’s. The man seemed to possess an endless store of clothing of varying sizes, but all of a type worn in his own time, the time of knights and squires.
    He’d told Lance he didn’t exactly know how all these things, including the weapons, had ended up with him in this present time, but he knew why they had appeared, and that was what mattered. Lance wouldn’t wear the leather boots. He lived and would probably die a skater and always wore his skating shoes, in part because he’d often bring his board and skate alongside Arthur when they were walking. But he’d taken a liking to the billowy tunics and baggy leather pants, and the leather overcoats kept him very warm at night.
    They kept to the shadows and mostly just observed life for these disenfranchised peoples. Arthur shook his head in dismay at the sight of homeless people dumpster-diving for food or other needed items, at the run-down, graffiti-covered, dilapidated homes and apartment complexes, at the prison-like housing projects. Small children running unattended in the streets at night disturbed him.
    Tonight, several children, dressed shabbily, most without even shoes, approached Llamrei with caution, but mostly with delight painted across their dirty faces. Arthur smiled down at the children and encouraged them to pet the mare.
    “It’s okay,” Lance assured them. “She don’t bite.”
    The children gathered round and happily petted the silky white coat. Llamrei whinnied with approval.
    “What’s his name, mister?” one little girl asked, giggling with delight at the horse’s reaction to her touch.
    “It doth be a ‘she’,” Arthur replied, “and her name doth be Llamrei.”
    “You talk funny,” a small boy, probably no more than ten years old, stated flatly, causing the others to laugh and Arthur to smile.
    “That I do, lad,” Arthur agreed. Then he glanced back at Lance and nodded. Lance told the children about Arthur’s crusade, outlining in basic terms what they hoped to accomplish. They listened in wide-eyed wonder, in the end agreeing to spread the word. It sounded like great fun, they all agreed.
    “It doth be about more than fun, young ones,” Arthur assured them. “It doth be about thy future and that of all the children in this city.”
    The children nodded solemnly, then skittered off into the darkness to spread