Plenum — Harlen Campbell

In 1999, Arthur Penn was a veteran, a grad student, and a sucker for a lost cause. That's why he stepped in when an old man was ambushed and why he agreed to carry the badly wounded man to a hospital, but he didn't expect the hospital to be five hundred years away. He didn't expect a one-way trip, and he certainly didn't expect to find himself fighting off an amorous girl 81 years before the Pilgrims landed, but those were just inconveniences.

When he saved the wounded Morl, Art accidentally enlisted in a war raging across all the human time lines. The Dragons assured him that they were fighting to defend real human life, even if the genome had a few modifications, against the Knights, a soulless horde of mechanical half-men determined to destroy all that was good and holy in the blah, blah, blah. Art had heard that before and just wanted to go home. Unfortunately, the road home led through pre-Columbian America, ancient Rome, neolithic Europe, and a fallen time ship in the depths of the last ice age. Then the Knights captured him and getting home became the least of his worries.

Art Penn is a nice guy bad things happen to. Think of Gulliver in Laputa, only with stone axes, quantum theory and ray guns. And Indians, and Tin Men. In the face of all that, Art maintains a cheerful disposition. He keeps his knife sharp, his powder dry, his chin up, his head down, and tries not to take the destruction of the universe too seriously.