McDougal in the Twenty-Third Century (excerpt)

Copyright 1983, Starbox Press

Once the effects of the freezing had finally worn off, McDougal immediately set about exploring his new environment. However, he didn't make it much further than the laboratory's doorway. In the 200 years he had been packed away, the world had become almost unrecognizable to him. The streets teemed with alien life forms and modes of transportation he could not fathom. With no frame of reference from which to work, the sights and sounds of a Twenty-Third Century city caused him to sink into a nearly crippling state of confused amazement. Xerxes realized that McDougal would need months of instruction just to begin to understand modern society.

It would not be an easy tale to tell. McDougal seemed mentally unstable to a dangerous degree and there was no telling how he would react to news of the massive environmental failure, plagues, and eventual conquest by intergalactic enemies that had befallen Earth in the Twenty-Second Century. But that was not Xerxes' only concern. If McDougal had been a big man in his own century, he was absolutely massive by Twenty-Third Century standards. Because larger humans were such a drain on Earth's limited resources, mankind had been genetically engineered to a smaller size by the Alien Overlords. No modern humans were more than five feet tall, obese or particularly muscular. McDougal, on the other hand, was all three by a considerable margin. Xerxes could not fathom why the people of the past would have made this gigantic maniac their emissary to Earth's future.