May 28, 1940, Dunkirk Beach, France.
What did hell smell like?
Arthur Clarke knew now.
It smelled like burning fuel, cold seawater, and the cloying mix of human sweat and blood.
He lay behind a half-destroyed sandbag emplacement. With every distant explosion, sand rained down on his ill-fitting helmet. He wasn't a soldier. Strictly speaking, he didn't even belong in this era. A week ago, he was just an ordinary engineer in 21st-century London, tinkering with old radios and nerding out over World War II history. But an accidental electrocution had him opening his eyes in 1940, reborn as this unlucky schmuck named Arthur Clarke, a combat engineer attached to the army. The merging of memories gave him splitting headaches and made him acutely aware of his current predicament.
And right now, his only mission was to not die.
"Clarke! Is that bloody radio fixed yet?" a voice roared in his ear. It was Sergeant Miller, a hot-tempered man with a red stubble on his chin.
Arthur didn't look up. With trembling hands, he futilely tried to reconnect an antenna that had been severed by shrapnel. His hands were covered in grease and someone else's blood.
"The circuit board... the board's shot, Sergeant! I need tools, at least... at least a soldering iron..."
"A soldering iron?" Sergeant Miller let out a laugh of disbelief, a sound steeped in despair. "Where the hell am I supposed to find you a soldering iron? You want me to wait while I go ask Hitler's HQ to borrow one?"
Arthur fell silent. He knew it was useless. They had been trapped on this beach for two whole days. The shriek of the Luftwaffe was overhead, the rumble of artillery in the distance. Their connection to command had been severed long ago.
Suddenly, a sharp whistle that could pierce eardrums descended from the sky.
"Stuka! Take cover!" Sergeant Miller's voice was distorted with panic.
Arthur instinctively looked up. He saw the vulture-like dive bomber plunging towards them at a near-vertical angle. He could even make out the pilot's cockpit and the bomb detaching from its rack, growing larger and larger.
Time seemed to stretch.
He saw the terror on Sergeant Miller's face, a young soldier next to him futilely firing his rifle at the sky, and in the distance, a destroyer packed with soldiers being broken in half by another bomb, erupting in a pillar of flame.
It's over. Arthur closed his eyes.
He thought of his home in London, the familiar smell of rosin in his lab, and his mother's slightly burnt apple pie.
BOOM—!!!
The violent explosion didn't tear him to pieces as expected. A wave of scorching air slammed him against the sandbags, feeling like it had rearranged his internal organs. A deafening ringing filled his ears, and the world went silent.
He didn't know how long it was—seconds, maybe minutes—before he dared to slowly open his eyes.
Sergeant Miller was gone. Where he had been standing, there was now only a blackened crater.
Arthur lay on the ground, gasping for air. The relief of survival hadn't even had a chance to surface before it was replaced by an even deeper despair. He was alive, but so what? It only postponed his death by a few minutes.
It was then that a pale blue, semi-transparent screen appeared in his vision without any warning.
[SYSTEM ACTIVATED][Welcome, Commander. Red Alert Command Interface initialized.]
Arthur blinked, assuming it was a retinal hallucination caused by the blast.
[Current Objective: Survive][Extreme threat environment detected... Newbie guide protocol initiated.][New Mission: Deploy Mobile Construction Vehicle (MCV) and construct a Barracks.][Reward: 1000 Supplies, 2x Conscript Recruitment Vouchers.]
A series of incomprehensible phrases burned themselves into his mind. The voice was mechanical, devoid of any emotion, yet clearer than any roar on the battlefield.
"I'm going crazy..." was Arthur's first thought. "It's shell shock... I'm hallucinating."
He was an engineer, a materialist who believed in physics and logic. Everything happening now was beyond his comprehension.
However, the blue screen stubbornly floated in his field of view. He could even see several building-like icons on it, one of which, shaped like a truck and labeled [Mobile Construction Vehicle (MCV)], was glowing faintly.
He tried to ignore it, but the voice in his head kept repeating the mission.
"Deploy..." Arthur thought in desperation. He looked around at the chaos and death. He had nothing left. What more could he lose? Even going mad was better than waiting to die.
He focused his will on an empty patch of ground nearby, silently thinking the word.
The next second, the supernatural happened.
A truck-sized, heavy vehicle painted in the iconic olive drab of the Allied forces materialized out of thin air on the beach. The air around it visibly distorted as if space itself was being pushed aside. A few nearby soldiers scrambled away, staring at the suddenly appeared "iron beast" as if it were a monster.
Then, as Arthur watched, the MCV began to unfold itself in a way that defied the laws of physics. Metal struts extended, armor plates flipped, and in just over ten seconds, it transformed into a square, brutally industrial-style building.
[Construction Yard deployed.][Remaining Resources: Supplies 1000, Power -10. Warning: Insufficient Power.]
Arthur stared in stunned silence, his heart pounding. This was not a hallucination!
He forced himself to calm down and began to study the interface in his vision. He quickly identified the problem—the flashing red "Power" indicator. As an engineer, he instinctively knew what that meant.
He immediately found the [Power Plant] icon and selected 'build'.
[Build Power Plant. Cost: 200 Supplies. Build Time: 15 seconds.]
As he confirmed the command with his thoughts, a ghostly outline of the building appeared on the empty ground next to the Construction Yard, a progress bar filling rapidly. Fifteen seconds later, a small power plant rose from the sand, complete with a slowly rotating radar dish on top.
[Power Plant construction complete. Current Power: 150/10. Power supply normal.]
It worked! Arthur felt a surge of elation. He immediately turned his attention to the next, and final, building required by the mission—the [Barracks].
[Build Barracks. Cost: 500 Supplies. Build Time: 30 seconds.]
This was the largest expenditure from his remaining resources. He chose to build it without hesitation.
When the unique architecture of the Barracks appeared on the beach, Arthur's resource panel displayed a dangerously low number: [Supplies: 300].
[Mission Complete: Construct a Barracks.][Reward Issued: +1000 Supplies, 2x Recruitment Vouchers.][Available for Recruitment: Allied G.I. (1/10). Cost: 100 Supplies, 1x Recruitment Voucher.]
His resources were suddenly plentiful again. But as Arthur looked at the [Available for Recruitment] prompt, he was filled with an unprecedented tension.
Recruit? What would it recruit? A clone? A robot?
He didn't know. But it was his only hope.
Overhead, a new air raid siren began to wail.
Arthur glanced at the newly built, metallic-sheened Barracks, then at the flashing [Recruit] button in his vision. He gritted his teeth, reached out with a trembling finger, and stabbed at the air decisively.
The heavy metal door of the Barracks issued a low hiss and began to slide slowly to one side.