The California sun felt nice coming through the big windows of the VA hospital. It made everything look kind of yellow and hopeful, which was weird because the place slled like cleaning stuff and dicine.
Connor "Duke" Hauser was trapped. His right leg was a monstrous sculpture of plaster and steel, suspended by a cruel looking pulley system.
The white-hot pain of his initial injury had faded into a deep, bone-gnawing ache, a constant companion reminding him of the helicopter crashing he'd honestly rather forget.
On the bedside table lay a cheap, spiral-bound notebook, a gift from a well aning volunteer.
It was open to the first page, the handwriting a little wobbly, testant to the painkillers swimming in his system.
'Woke up in California in 1966. My leg is hurt. Mind is full. A little too full.'
A few lines down, a more recent entry:
'January 18. Physical training today. The therapist says I'm making progress. It doesn't feel like it. The world is out there anwhile i'm trapped in here.'
On the radio in the nurse's station, The Beatles' "We Can Work It Out" battled with the Mamas & the Papas "California Dreamin" for airti.
Batman was a priti sensation, and everyone was talking about the Gemini 8 mission, set to launch in a few months.
Inside the hospital, ti was asured in pill cycles and the grim wait to the physical therapist.
The chaos in his mind, the collision of two lives had finally settled after 3 days.
The mories of a man from 2025 were no longer a screaming jumble.
The mories were like a library, ticulously re-shelved. He knew where every book was; he was just learning how to check them out.
A familiar tap-tap and the squeak of soles on linoleum announced Joe, the orderly.
A veteran of a different war, Joe had kind eyes in a face etched with the lines of too many hard days.
"How's the leg today, Hauser?" Joe asked, his voice a low rasp.
"Still attached," Connor replied, the faint form of a smile taking shape on his shape. "They tell that's the important part."
"That it is," Joe chuckled softly. He held out two envelopes. "Mail call. Looks like one from ho."
The first was from his friends. His familiar, looking writting sent a pang of warmth through him.
He wrote of the Texas farm, of his neighbor, Lyle, fixing the tractor, of his little brother Michael's ribbon.
The letter was a blanket of support, but he could feel the tight, worried lines beneath the words.
The other envelope, official and stark, was from the Army. More discharge paperwork, more cold, hard facts about his broken body.
He read his friend's letter twice. The normalcy was a balm, but it also felt a million miles away. He missed him, a deep, hollow ache.
But the thought of going back to the quiet of Texas… it felt like a different kind of death. Not after what was in his head. He had a chance.
The boredom that followed was heavier than before, a leaden weight. He just stared out the window, watching a palm tree sway.
It was January 18, 1966. He was still getting used to things. It was the third day since he woke up in this body in 1966
His own reflection stared back from the rain-spotted window a nineteen-year-old with a face sharpened by pain and eyes that held an intensity he didn't rember earning.
"Hauser, you in there?" Joe's rough voice cut through his thoughts. The orderly's face was a roadmap of past battles.
"I'm good, Joe. Just… thinking."
"Right," Joe said, leaning a hip against the bedside table and fingering a pack of Lucky Strikes in his pocket. "Stuff's rough, man. But you gotta keep moving forward. Can't let it anchor you. Stress is a killer. Ruins your chakras."
Connor just nodded. 'Even in this life man, California has its... characters', he thought.
"Thanks, Joe appreciate it. And… thanks for everything." Since waking up in this new-old skin, Joe had been his guide through the maze of paperwork and pain.
"You just gotta take care of yourself for a while. I know a guy, sells so things to take the edge off," Joe offered with a knowing look.
Another nod. He was doing a lot of that lately but weed didnt feel like sothing he wanted to touch right now.
Joe gave his shoulder a firm pat and moved on. The young soldier was left with his thoughts.
So cosmic joke of a god had dumped him at the dawn of New Hollywood.
Neither blockbusters nor superhero stories had beco popular yet.
New Hollywood was still a non existent movent.
If he didn't do sothing with this second chance, he really deserved to rot in this sterile place.
The night ca and desperate to escape the hospital's grip, he used a small stash of his Army pay to hail a cab to Westwood.
He needed to see sothing that wasn't beige walls and somber faces. He needed to prove life was still vibrant.
The marquee of the Fox Theater was a blaze of light. It had been playing for months, but the line still stretched down the block. The film was The Sound of Music.
The sheer, unapologetic joy of it, was the opposite of everything he was feeling but it drew him in.
He bought a ticket and found a seat in the packed, buzzing theater.
The lights dimd. The screen filled with those breathtaking aerial shots of the Austrian Alps. The music swelled.
And as Julie Andrews spun on that hilltop, sothing clicked into place in his mind with the force of a seismic shift.
It wasn't just a mory of having seen the film. The entire movie unspooled in his mind's eye, perfect and pristine.
Every sweeping crane shot, every chord of music, every line of dialogue from the Captain and Maria, right down to the mischievous grin of Gretl. It was all there, etched onto his soul.
His heart hamred against his ribs. He closed his eyes, testing it. He reached for another film from his future Jaws. The sa.
The opening swim, the ominous score, Quint's monologue about the USS Indianapolis it all played out in flawless high definition.
He tried to recall a film he'd only heard of but never seen; nothing. But the ones he had… they were all there. A perfect, private cinema in his skull.
This is it. The thought was a lightning strike. This is my tool. I can rember movies.
A jolt of pure, undiluted excitent surged through him, burning away the ache and the apathy. He couldn't contain it.
His fist ca down softly on the worn velvet of the armrest, the sharp pain in his knuckles a grounding, real sensation.
"Hell yes," he breathed, a wide, victorious smile breaking across his face as the Von Trapp children sang in perfect harmony on screen.
A woman in the next seat shot him a disapproving look. He didn't care.
He sat through the rest of the film in a euphoric daze, no longer seeing the Alps, but seeing premieres, studio lots, and his na on a script that could capture even a fraction of this magic.
When the credits rolled, he took a cab back to the hospital. His mind was a roaring engine, concepts of plans beggining in this life. He had been given a cheat code by so insane or well a rather generous god.
In his past life, he was fighting AI on film, Wokeness, changes to scripts cause of aningless algorithms to appeal to a demographic that normally would never watch my type of film, private equity, bs bosses.
But it was different now.
He had the blueprint.
He now he had to build. And this ti, if he failed, he would have no one to bla but himself.
...
I had already rewritten the first five chapters since a month ago.
As you know, this fanfic will strecht from 1966 to 2020s(if i'm able to)
The protagonist will beco a tycoon mostly focused on movies, videogas, and theparks(without buying Disney)
If you got any recomndations you can say it here.
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