One of the most anticipated moments for me, though I couldn’t speak for Proctor, was getting a look at what the team’s official procurer could come up with in terms of gear.

It was a tall order I’d stuck with them, come up with bats, gloves, balls according to specifications I’d given orally. The System had information about what the balls, bats, and gloves looked like, but translating this to a stone age person to then get it made into an actual object you can hold and use? Tough to do successfully.

Foal, the procurer found Proctor and I strolling near the site of the future ball park. He was on a large, brown horse, and there were two swollen saddlebags on either side of his mount.

“Hello,” Foal said.

He’d no sooner dismounted, when the merchant Barkley, arrived with his bodyguard.

“Glad to have reached you before the presentation,” Barkley said. “We believe you’ll be pleased.”

“You two worked together on the equipment?” I said.

“Of course,” Barkley said. “We have here, what you’ve referred to as… pro… toe…?”

His voice trailed off, and I knew he was struggling with the unfamiliar word.

“Prototype,” I said. “Great.”

“Please,” Barkley said, waving his arm at Foal, giving the procurer the go ahead to open his saddle bags.

Proctor stood with his arms folded, and a bit of a judgmental facial expression. I think he was more in doubt than I was.

Foal pulled a black object from his saddlebag. It resembled a sock, yet it was made from leather. There was one discernible place where you would put your thumb.

“Your glove,” Barkley said, beginning the presentation.

It was awful. I couldn’t imagine anyone using this abomination to catch baseballs, at least, not ones coming at you with any kind of velocity.

I took the leather sock thing into my hands, and slowly rotated it in front of me. The leather was smooth, with a bit of a sheen on its surface reflecting the white overcast sky from above. It was more form fitting than I’d expected it to be.

When I attempted to hand the thing over to Proctor so he could have a closer look, he simply waved his right hand. He was cringing, and not interested in seeing the thing up close.

This iteration of a baseball glove wasn’t going to work, but I didn’t know how to tell Foal and Barkley without offending them. I tried to remind myself this is a business, and I shouldn’t have to worry about personally offending people I’m paying. Fine, in theory, but I was still shy about saying anything negative.

“Next,” Barkley said, and he snapped his fingers at his bodyguard. “Your bat.”

The bodyguard reached to his right side, and slid a long object from his saddle. He handed a lengthy stretch of wood to Barkley who placed the object in my hands.

It was a thin log, basically. It’d been stripped of its bark, and the knots had been sanded down, but the entire thing was one width. I’d been clear that the bat had to be wider at one end, and thinner on the end held by the batter. This was… not that.

It was all I could do to remain silent as I turned the stick over and over, examining the thing as if I might actually approve. If we were this far apart on what the team’s gear was supposed to look like, how was I ever going to get across exactly what we needed? We were in trouble.

The baseball prototype was every bit as bad. I’ll be the first to admit, I had no idea what the inner core of an actual baseball consisted of, and so maybe the terrible prototype was my fault. But, this thing was essentially a rock wrapped in cow hide. It even had squared off corners, and would barely roll on the ground.

Proctor shook his head, but kept quiet. Clearly he was leaving it to me to deliver the bad news to Foal and Barkley that they were going to have to go back to the drawing board.

Before I could get into it, however, screams from the distance interrupted our meeting.

All of us looked east where villagers gathered in clusters. Even from a distance away we could see they were pointing at something up in the sky.

The sky was cloudy, yet still bright. I squinted when I’d looked up, and I could see what people were panicked about. There were four black squares seemingly hovering several hundred feet up from the village. You could tell they weren’t anything native to this place and time. They weren’t birds. The silhouettes of these things appeared square, not animal like at all.

“Oh my,” Barkley said. “Odd.”

“Indeed,” agreed Proctor.

To me, the things looked like they were growing in size.

“Is it just me,” I said, with watering eyes, straining against the bright backdrop, “but are those things falling?”

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“I fear you may be right,” Proctor said.

A sick feeling gripped my stomach when a faint howl emerged over the cold breeze.

“Do you hear that?” I said.

It was the sound of something careening. It resembled the sound of a falling aircraft, like the kind you’d hear in those old films featuring war planes.

“They’re falling,” Proctor confirmed, “and they’re coming fast.”

Part of me wanted to take off sprinting. I had this overwhelming sense these square-ish objects were headed straight for us, as though about to land on us like pianos dropped from a rooftop.

The other men, just as it was with the villagers in the distance, were so enthralled, they didn’t move.

And, so we all just stood there watching the black objects grow in size with ferocious speed.

Stupid or not, I took the opportunity to speak frankly with Foal and Barkley. Okay, not stupid, maybe craven might be more of an apt word for my timing.

“These prototypes aren’t going to work,” I said.

I admit I was trying to smooth over my criticisms by offering them in a moment when everyone’s attention was on the sky falling.

“Huh?” Barkley said, acknowledging I’d spoken to him, yet not taking his eyes off the heavens. “Say again?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “These examples won’t work. They’re not to the specifications stated. You must try again.”

“Beg your pardon?” Foal said. He too kept his eyes on the plunging squares.

“Fine,” I said. “I must be honest. Everything you’ve shown me is awful.”

That caused Barkley to break from staring above, and to glare at me as though his eyes were LASER beams.

“Well, I never,” he said, breathless. “I’d invite you to change your choice of words.”

“I won’t,” I said. “I’m paying gold to receive what I’ve asked for. This is not what I’ve asked for.”

Proctor waved at me, but kept his eyes upward. “If I may,” he said, with some urgency in his tone.

I could see why. The objects were closing in on our general area… fast. They were rectangles. Large rectangles. Definitely black.

We all stood there watching them come heavy and hard. We watched them fall, and observed them head straight for the tree line at the north end of the village, probably five hundred meters from us.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

I actually felt a slight rumble beneath my feet as each of the four objects made contact with the ground.

I heard a roar come from a crowd. I couldn’t see a crowd of villagers, given we were out in the field west of where most of the huts were located, but you could tell there was a mass reaction near where the rectangles crashed down.

Foal swiftly mounted his horse, as did Barkley. The three on horseback took off to the north to assess the damage. They left Proctor and I in their clouds of kicked up mud. Proctor and I took off running north, and as excited, and curious as I was to see these objects, at the same time I was deathly afraid of the carnage we might be about to witness. Those things were large, and they were falling at such a speed, anything they’d land upon would surely have been completely demolished.

The farther we ran, and the closer we got to the northern tree line, the more villagers I could see, all running to the crash site.

My lungs burned from the chilled air not long after we’d taken off running. I realized the terrible state of my cardiovascular health in that moment. And, I was supposed to be a professional athlete?

When we reached the area north of the village, there were hundreds of people rushing around. I pushed through dozens of folks, and found four large craters. There were a bunch of evergreen trees completely crushed.

People were running down into the craters, and crawling all over the site, chattering, crying, some were in hysterics.

“Was anyone hurt?” I remember shouting. “Was anyone hurt?”

No one had an answer. But, upon further investigation, it turns out the objects missed any of the village’s huts. Not one structure was damaged. As far as Proctor and I figured out, in the immediate, no one had been hit by these things.

Speaking of the objects themselves. They were indeed black rectangles. Specifically, they were shipping containers. Yes, actual shipping containers. To the medieval people they may as well have been space ships.

Trevor found me, and his eyes were bulged. “What a thing,” he said. “What a thing.”

People were so panicked, they were just repeating themselves trying to make sense of what had happened.

“It’s okay,” I said to the giant. “I know what these things are.”

A few other villagers overheard me say this to Trevor, and they told their friends, and those friends told their friends. Next thing I knew, I had large groups of villagers clung to my side looking for guidance and knowledge after this crazy event.

“What are these?” Villagers shouted at me.

“The sun has cast its pieces down,” someone hollered.

“Please, keep calm,” I said. “Was anyone hurt?”

I really think we’d lucked out, and the containers hadn’t hit anyone. Amazing.

I stood at the top of a mud ridge where one of the craters had been made. I stared down at the black steel container. I knew I was probably going to have to be the one person of everyone gathered to open the thing, and see what was inside.

“This is the Devil’s work!” A lady cried. “We must flee!”

I held out my hands, and waved them up and down as a means to calm everyone. “Please,” I said. “Remain calm.”

Yeah, it worked as well as you’d imagine it would. A few people listened, but most continued running around like their hair was on fire.

“What are we going to do?” Trevor said to me.

I glanced at Proctor, and his matter of fact glance back at me told me what I already knew.

“I’ll have a look,” I said.

“A look?” Trevor said. “You want to get close to those things?”

“They’re not here by accident,” I said. “Best have a look inside.”

No sooner had I uttered the words, when the giant’s voice bellowed with a force that caused my ear drums to rattle.

“Back up!” Trevor screamed at the hundreds gathered. “Back! All of you! He’s going in close! Creatures may spring forth!”

The idea of monsters being inside these containers hadn't even occurred to me, but given everything I'd seen in this strange place, I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. Then again, what would be the point of shipping containers containing monsters? I shrugged the notion off.

“Opening them up?” Proctor said to me.

“No choice,” I said. “I’d say the System sent these here for reason. Any theories?"

"You want me to predict what you'll find in there?" Proctor said. "I'm afraid you're on your own."

"Thanks a lot," I said.

"Be careful."