Read The Legend of Garison Fitch (Book 1): First Time for Free Online

courses in astronomy while in college and it had been somewhat of a hobby of his ever since. He had often told himself he could navigate by the stars as well as any sailor, though the only times he had tried had been occasions when he had a pretty good idea where he was to begin with so it was more of a reverse-engineered navigation. Now, he thought it time to put the boast to the test. He found the north star first and, with a piece of paper and a pencil, began to try and make his calculations. They were crude, as he knew they would be, but he thought he could get a pretty fair idea of his locale. If nothing else, he could at least tell which hemisphere he was in.
    After half an hour of checking and rechecking his figures, leaning closer to the fire for light because he had brought no lamp, he was fairly certain he was somewhere on the east coast of North America. He realized his deduction was partly clouded by the smell of the salt air in the distance, but he still thought his figures to be fairly accurate.
    He finally leaned back against the log and chuckled, "I didn't do what I set out to do, but I think I just made the airlines obsolete."
    He stood up, thinking he could at least recheck the figures on his computer as it wouldn't run out of power for, roughly, two or three centuries as long as it was connected to the nuclear power plant. When he powered up the computer, the first thing he got was the journal prompt he had programmed in long before with the idea that he would record his thoughts before doing anything important. Thinking he might be on the verge of a momentous discovery, and wanting something to do to kill time until he became sleepy anyway, he didn't ignore the journal prompt as he so often had in the past.
     
     
    Date Unknown (but presumed to still be March 15, 2005)
    I cannot help but wonder about things back home. Since I have, apparently, just traveled across country rather than into another dimension, my video cameras will be running out of tape some time soon. They should be almost to the end of their sixteen hours. And they have spent it recording an empty room.
    And now that I have nothing else to think about until the morning when I can try to sort things out and get home, how is the situation with the Japanese shaping? Will I be able to get transportation back to the La Plata or is the country on the verge of marshal law? All modes of heavy transportation might be currently engaged to bring supplies and armaments to the front—which wouldn't be far from my house. Or, it may have all been another case of national posturing and there may be no reason for alarm at all.
    I have never realized how disquieting it is to have no idea where you are.
     
    Garison could think of nothing else to write, and he had suddenly lost interest in calculating his position with complicated mathematical formula, so he saved the entry, then shut off the computer and tried to find a comfortable place to lie down. He first hollowed out a little depression in the ground for his hip, then tried to convince himself that his knapsack made a suitable pillow. He made sure he had plenty of firewood handy to feed into the flames through the night then wrapped himself as tightly as he could in his leather jacket and tried to close his mind to the endless sounds of the meadow at night.
     
     
     
     
    Excerpt from A Fitch Family History by Maureen Fitch Carnes
    Darius traveled the Tennessee mountains—those far, blue hills on the farthest reaches of the frontier that few white men had even heard of, let alone seen—and found no other white people after a little settlement its inhabitants didn't even have a name for. It was late summer, by this time, edging into fall, and there was starting to be a hint of crispness to the air early of a morning.
    Somewhere in the woods about half way between where Knoxville and Nashville are now, Darius came upon an Indian brave. The brave was covered with blood, lying motionless, and Darius