Baby’s second morning in Arkansas did not feel any less real.
If anything, it felt heavier.
The air carried the faint chill of early spring, sharp enough to nip at the nose but softened by the warmth of the stove that had burned low through the night. Smoke lingered in the rafters, caught in beams of pale dawn light slipping through the warped glass pane.
His eyes opened slowly.
“Still here,” he thought. “Still small. Still… trapped.”
The hay-stuffed mattress beneath him rustled as he shifted, the motion clumsy and imprecise. Every movement required enormous effort, like trying to pilot machinery with numb fingers. His neck wobbled uselessly when he attempted to lift his head.
“This is insane,” he muttered internally. “I used to draft legal arguments. Now I can’t even hold my own skull up.”
From beyond the thin curtain separating the sleeping space from the main room, he heard his mother humming again. The same hymn from yesterday, low and steady. Pots clinked softly. The scrape of iron against iron.
He strained to listen.
“Thomas,” she said gently, “you reckon we ought to write his name in the Bible today? Reverend says it’s proper to do it early.”
A chair creaked as his father shifted his weight.
“Reckon so,” the man replied. His voice was gravel and fatigue. “Boy oughta have it written clear. Born April twenty-seventh. Strong lungs on ‘im.”
There was a pause.
“We’ll name him proper. Virgil. Virgil Hollis.”
The words sank in.
Virgil.
The name settled strangely in his mind—foreign, old-fashioned, heavy with dust and tobacco fields.
“Virgil Hollis,” he repeated inwardly. “That’s me now.”
April twenty-seventh.
His mind sharpened instantly.
“April 27th… okay. That’s recent. Yesterday was my second day, so I was born April 27. But what year?”
The sound of paper rustling drew his attention. His father unfolded something carefully.
“Paper says more boys shipped out last week,” Thomas muttered. “France. Lord help ‘em.”
France.
Virgil’s thoughts stumbled.
“France? Shipped out? That’s war.”
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
His breathing quickened—not physically, but mentally. The memory banks of his former life flipped rapidly.
World War I.
America entered in April 1917.
His heart hammered in his fragile chest.
“Wait. Wait. If they’re shipping boys to France… and it’s April…”
His mother spoke again, her voice tight. “I heard President Wilson’s speech on it when Mrs. Carter read it aloud in town. Said it’s our duty now.”
President Wilson.
Woodrow Wilson.
A cold clarity crept over him.
“No way…”
He listened harder.
“The draft’ll take the young ones first,” Thomas said quietly. “But if they need older men, I ain’t exempt.”
Silence followed. Heavy. Unspoken fear filling the cracks in the cabin walls.
Virgil’s mind completed the equation.
“America declared war April 6, 1917.”
He had studied it for fun once to help him in trivia night, of all things. The irony almost made him laugh—if he’d possessed the lungs for it.
“I was born April 27… 1917.”
The realization didn’t explode. It settled, slow and suffocating.
“I’m not just in the past. I’m in 1917.”
He stared at the ceiling beams, rough-hewn and splintered.
“No antibiotics. No penicillin yet. No air conditioning. No civil rights movement. No stock market crash—yet. No Great Depression—yet. Spanish flu’s about to hit next year.”
The weight of historical foresight pressed down on him like the Arkansas humidity before a storm.
And here he was. Six pounds of helpless flesh.
He tried to flex his fingers again, watching them tremble uselessly.
“Alright. Think like 2025. Assess. Adapt.”
His old habits surfaced automatically.
Information first. Emotion later.
He noted details: no electrical wiring visible. Oil lamp on the shelf. Cast iron stove. Hand pump outside—he’d heard the metal squeal yesterday. His father mentioned Memphis as a work destination. Rural Arkansas, near the Mississippi River.
The rooster crowed again outside, abrupt and unapologetic.
“I went from drafting motions on a MacBook to listening to livestock as my morning alarm.”
A strange hysterical amusement bubbled in him.
“This is either divine intervention or the universe playing a sick joke.”
His mother stepped into view then, her shadow crossing his small world before her face appeared above him. She looked exhausted. Early twenties, maybe. Hair pinned loosely. Hands red from cold water and soap.
She lifted him gently.
“There’s my sweet Virgil,” she murmured, brushing her thumb across his cheek.
The physical sensation startled him—the warmth of skin, the rhythm of her pulse, the faint scent of flour and wood smoke.
It felt… grounding.
For a moment, his racing thoughts slowed.
“She has no idea,” he realized. “To her, I’m just her son. Blank slate. New life.”
If she knew that behind his unfocused newborn stare was a thirty-year-old attorney who understood compound interest, industrial labor laws, and the geopolitical implications of trench warfare…
“She’d think I was possessed,” he concluded dryly.
As she rocked him, he tested his control again—attempting to focus his eyes intentionally, not randomly as a newborn would.
It worked—barely.
The world sharpened for a split second before blurring again.
“Good. Neuroplasticity’s on my side. Brain’s fresh. I’ll adapt faster than any normal kid.”
But he caught himself.
“Careful.”
A 2025 mind inside a 1917 body was an advantage—if concealed.
He could not speak too early. Could not read too soon. Could not display knowledge beyond what a child raised in this environment would plausibly know.
“This era doesn’t tolerate different kindly.”
Outside, a wagon rolled past on the dirt road, wooden wheels crunching over gravel. A man called out a greeting. Another responded.
Simple lives. Hard lives.
He thought about the office he’d left behind—the hum of fluorescent lights, half-finished coffee gone cold, a legal brief open on his screen. He had been thinking about deadlines, promotions, maybe finally trying dating apps again.
And then—nothing.
No pain. No warning.
Just here.
“I must’ve died,” he accepted. “Heart? Aneurysm? Stroke?”
It didn’t matter.
What mattered was this: he had information no one else around him possessed.
And time.
So much time.
“If I survive childhood.”
The thought was sobering.
Infant mortality in 1917 was no joke. Infection, fever, a bad winter—any of it could end him before he ever learned to walk.
He needed to be careful even about that.
Nutrition. Hygiene. Subtle nudges. Nothing dramatic.
His father stepped closer, peering down at him.
“He’s got a serious look about ‘im,” Thomas muttered. “Don’t cry much.”
“That’s ‘cause he’s strong,” his mother replied softly.
Virgil almost smirked internally.
“If only you knew.”
He felt sleep tugging at him again—relentless, biological, unavoidable. His adult mind could rage all it wanted, but the newborn brain demanded rest.
As his eyelids drooped, he replayed the facts again, anchoring them.
His name was Virgil Hollis.
Born in April 27, 1917.
I am currently approx. Rural Arkansas, near Memphis.
My father is Thomas Hollis, and I guess he is a labourer. Cause they don’t seem well off.
Mother seems to be a beautiful, resourceful lady, already worrying about war and roof repairs. But I have yet to know her name
The world is on the brink of global upheaval. Though they don’t know it’s still coming, I gotta prepare my poor house for the disasters to come.
“This isn’t fantasy,” he told himself as darkness crept in. “No magic. No shortcuts or AI this time. Just knowledge will have to do.”
The Spanish flu would come next year.
The Roaring Twenties would follow.
Then the Crash of ’29.
Then the Depression.
Then another war.
He inhaled slowly, as much as his tiny lungs allowed.
“If I play this right… I won’t just survive it.”
The wagon wheels faded in the distance. The stove crackled softly. His mother’s hymn returned under her breath.
And Virgil Hollis—thirty years old in memory, two days old in flesh—fell asleep in 1917, already planning for decades he had not yet lived.
The world believed he had just begun.
Only he knew he had begun again
