Chapter 1: We are Charlie Kirk

Oink! Oink!

The first thing Charlie Kirk realized was that something was sitting on his chest, and it was heavy enough to make every breath hurt.

He tried to inhale and got almost nothing.

His lungs pushed against the weight, but the pressure only seemed to increase. When he opened his eyes, all he saw was a wall of coarse hair above his face. Something warm pressed against his stomach, followed by a wet snort inches from his nose and the unmistakable smell of an animal with absolutely no interest in personal hygiene.

Charlie tried to move his head. The weight shifted with him.

Charlie pushed, his fingers slipping through coarse hair as his chest burned for air. Then he heard it chewing. Somehow, that was the worst part.

His hands found a thick hind leg. He shoved it aside.

The animal squealed.

Charlie rolled, and the weight finally slipped off his chest with a heavy thump. He dragged himself several feet away before dropping onto his hands and knees, sucking in air as his lungs finally had room to work.

He coughed, took another breath, then another, and stayed there for several seconds, too busy trying to breathe to care what had nearly crushed him.

Behind him, the animal grunted.

Charlie turned.

A pig was standing beside him.

It was large, pink, and apparently completely unconcerned by the fact that it had just nearly killed him.

The pig lowered its head to a wooden bowl sitting on the ground and resumed eating.

Charlie stared at it.

His breathing gradually steadied. He looked down at himself, then back at the pig. The animal continued chewing. There was something familiar about it. Charlie couldn’t immediately place what.

He pushed himself upright, one hand still pressed against his chest. His heart was beating hard enough that he could feel the pulse in his throat.

The pig glanced at him.

Charlie stared back.

"Did you just sit on me?"

The pig returned to its food.

Charlie rubbed his face.

That was not the first question he should have been asking.

He looked around.

He was sitting in a small dirt courtyard surrounded by wooden buildings. The ground was uneven beneath him, with patches of grass growing along the edges and a few flat stones marking what might have been a path. Beyond the nearest building stood a low wooden fence, and behind that he could see trees stretching up a hillside.

There were no cars, no road, no power lines, no streetlights, no signs. Nothing immediately recognizable. Charlie slowly got to his feet. The movement made his chest ache. He looked down at his clothes. They were not his.

He was wearing loose trousers made from rough, dark fabric and a plain shirt that was tied across the front rather than fastened with buttons. The material felt coarse against his skin, and the sleeves hung farther down his arms than he was used to.

He checked his pockets.

Nothing.

He checked again.

Still nothing.

His wallet, his phone, his keys were gone.

Charlie stared at the pig for a moment before walking closer. The animal lifted its head from the wooden bowl and looked at him with an expression that seemed almost expectant.

"You know where we are?"

The pig stared back.

Charlie waited.

The pig lowered its head and continued eating.

He gave a quiet sigh. "Worth asking."

He noticed the rope collar around its neck. A faded piece of red cloth had been tied into it, and beneath the cloth hung a small wooden tag. Charlie crouched down to get a better look, reaching toward it before stopping himself.

There was writing carved into the wood, he unexpectedly recognized.

He did not remember ever learning to read them, yet there was no hesitation when he looked at them. He understood what they meant as naturally as he understood the woman’s words when she eventually spoke to him.

A breeze moved through the courtyard, carrying the smell of wood smoke and something cooking nearby. Voices drifted from somewhere beyond the buildings.

Charlie turned toward the sound.

He had barely taken a step when a woman came around the corner carrying a wooden bucket.

Her pace stopped immediately.

The woman stared at him with wide eyes, and Charlie found himself studying her just as carefully. She appeared to be somewhere in middle age, dressed in simple clothing similar to his own. Her hands were rough from work, and a few strands of dark hair had escaped the cloth wrapped around her head.

Then her expression changed. Surprise gave way to concern, and concern quickly became relief.

"You’re awake."

Charlie nodded.

"I appear to be."

The woman set the bucket down with a small wooden knock.

"You’ve been sleeping for about 9 days."

Charlie stared at her.

"9 days ?"

"Yes."

He glanced around the courtyard again, suddenly wondering how long he had actually been unconscious.

"Where am I?"

The woman looked at him as though the question itself was strange.

"You don’t remember?"

"No."

Her brow furrowed.

"You really don’t remember?"

"I don’t."

She studied his face for several seconds, apparently trying to decide whether he was joking. Charlie waited patiently. If she knew something about his situation, he needed her to tell him.

Instead, her eyes moved past him, toward the pig.

"Your little one nearly killed you again?"

Charlie followed her gaze.

"My what?"

The woman looked at him, then at the pig, then back at him.

"That pig. It has been following you everywhere since you arrived."

Charlie stared at the animal. The pig continued eating as though none of this concerned it.

"Arrived from where?"

The woman’s confusion deepened.

"You don’t remember anything?"

"I remember my name."

That seemed to reassure her slightly.

"What is it?"

"Charlie Kirk."

She waited.

Nothing changed in her expression. There was no recognition at all.

Charlie lowered his gaze to his hands.

He had noticed something odd about them before, but now that he was paying attention, the difference was difficult to ignore. The hands looked younger than his own. The skin was smoother, the knuckles less worn, and there was a faint scar near his left thumb that he did not recognize.

He turned his hand over.

His pulse quickened.

"How old am I?"

The woman stared at him.

"What?"

"My age. How old am I?"

She looked genuinely worried now.

"Nineteen."

Charlie did not immediately respond.

He knew his age. He had been thirty-one. He remembered being thirty-one with the same certainty with which he remembered his own name. Yet this body was nineteen years old.

Charlie slowly lowered his hand. The woman was still watching him.

He looked toward the pig. It had finished eating and was now walking toward him. Before Charlie could move, the animal pressed its snout against his leg.

His hand moved almost automatically. He scratched the side of its head. The pig leaned into him with obvious satisfaction.

Charlie looked down at it, confused by his own reaction. He had no memory of owning a pig. He could not remember buying it, raising it, naming it, or doing anything else that might explain why the animal seemed so comfortable around him.

And yet, touching it felt strangely natural.

He looked back at the woman.

"This is my pig?"

A faint smile appeared on her face.

"You’ve called him that for as long as you’ve been here."

Charlie let his hand fall and looked across the courtyard. He had more questions than answers, but there was no point trying to solve all of them at once. First, he needed to understand where he was and what had happened to him.

He turned toward the woman.

"Where exactly is this?"

Charlie turned toward the woman.

"Where exactly is this?"

"Liangjing."

Charlie searched his memory. The name meant absolutely nothing to him.

"And what country is Liangjing in?"

The woman stared at him.

"The Great Liang Empire."

Charlie waited for the name to mean something. There was no Great Liang Empire. His stomach tightened.

"And who rules it?"

The woman’s expression changed. For a moment, she simply stared at him, as though she was trying to decide whether he was joking.

"The empire?"

"Yes. Who rules the country?"

Her concern deepened. "Did you hit your head?"

"No."

"You really don’t know?"

"I wouldn’t be asking if I did."

That seemed to trouble her more than anything else he had said. She looked him over again, perhaps searching for some sign that he was pretending, but Charlie could only wait. From her perspective, the answer was apparently so obvious that forgetting it was less like ignorance and more like evidence that something was seriously wrong with him.

After a moment, she finally answered.

"His Imperial Majesty, Zhao Tianlong."

Charlie repeated the name silently, committing it to memory.

He glanced toward the mountains beyond the village, trying to fit the pieces together. A country ruled by an emperor was unusual, but not impossible. There were still monarchies in the world, and there were certainly communities where people lived far removed from modern society. None of that explained the clothes, the unfamiliar language he could somehow read, the apparent change in his age, or why everyone seemed to know him.

"Do I live here?" he asked.

"You’ve been staying here, yes."

"By myself?"

The woman shook her head. "Mostly. You came here a few months ago."

Charlie looked up sharply.

"A few months?"

"Yes."

"And nobody thought it strange that I apparently knew nothing about where I came from?"

"You told us very little about yourself when you arrived. You said you were travelling."

A young man arriving in an unfamiliar village, refusing to explain his origins, keeping a pig as a companion and somehow speaking the local language. The problem was that he wasn’t that young man. At least, he didn’t think he was.

"I came here alone?"

"As far as I know."

"And nobody came looking for me?"

"Not that I’ve heard."

Charlie nodded, though the answer did little to settle his thoughts.

He had no phone. No wallet. No identification. No familiar landmarks. No memory of travelling here. Yet someone had apparently been living his current life for months before he woke up inside it.

He rubbed his thumb against the side of his hand, feeling the unfamiliar scar near the joint.

There was something else bothering him. He had been able to understand the woman from the moment she spoke.

"Can you write something for me?"

The woman frowned. "What?"

"Anything. A name, perhaps. Your name."

She seemed confused by the request, but eventually nodded. She stepped inside the building and returned with a small wooden writing board and a brush.

She wrote her name carefully.

Charlie looked at the characters on the board. The strange thing was that he could read them without having the faintest idea when or where he had learned them. He knew what they meant, how they were pronounced, and even recognized the structure of the script, yet none of it belonged to any memory he could consciously recall.

"What language is this?"

She gave him a puzzled look. "The imperial script."

If this was still Earth, then he had somehow arrived in a place he had never heard of, inside the body of a nineteen-year-old, carrying memories that did not belong to him and knowledge he could not explain.

And if it wasn’t Earth, he had a considerably larger problem.

"I need to ask you something, and I want you to answer honestly."

She nodded cautiously.

"Have you ever heard of the United States of America?"

She frowned slightly. "No."

Charlie felt the answer settle heavily in his stomach.

"And England?"

Another shake of the head.

"London?"

The woman only looked more confused.

Then something spoke inside his head.

[System activated.]

Charlie stopped.

The woman noticed his expression. "Charlie?"

He raised a hand, asking her to wait while he tried to determine where the voice had come from. It had not reached him through his ears. There was no sound in the courtyard, yet the words had been perfectly clear, as though someone had spoken directly into his thoughts.

Before he could make sense of it, the voice returned.

[Transmigrator successfully identified.]

Charlie frowned.

"Transmigrator?"

The woman stared at him.

He ignored her for the moment, turning his attention inward as though there were actually someone standing in front of him.

"I assume you can’t hear it," he said.

"Hear what?"

"The voice."

She looked around the courtyard. "What voice?"

Either she genuinely couldn’t hear it, or she was very good at pretending not to.

"Never mind."

He turned his attention back to the strange presence in his head.

"If you’re capable of hearing me, answer one question."

"Do you understand what I’m saying?"

A moment passed.

Then the voice returned.

[Confirmed.]

Charlie felt a strange mixture of relief and irritation. At least he wasn’t imagining the entire thing.

"Good. Then let’s establish what you are."

[System.]

"That isn’t an explanation."

There was another pause.

[The System exists to assist the Transmigrator.]

Charlie folded his arms.

"Assist me with what?"

[Primary objective: facilitate the Transmigrator’s development.]

"Development into what?"

[Insufficient information.]

Charlie stared ahead.

"Who created you?"

[Unknown.]

"Who controls you?"

[Unknown.]

"Do you know where I am?"

[Confirmed.]

Charlie waited.

The system offered nothing else.

"And?"

[You are currently located in the city of Liangjing, within the Great Liang Empire.]

Charlie repeated the information quietly to himself.

"Great Liang Empire."

"Yes," the woman said from nearby, apparently having overheard him. "That’s where we are."

Charlie turned toward her.

"You’ve heard of it, I assume?"

She stared at him.

"Of course."

"Right."

He looked back toward the empty space in front of him.

At least the system wasn’t contradicting her.

"What do you know about me?"

The answer came immediately.

[Identity: Charles James Kirk.]

Charlie narrowed his eyes.

"Continue."

[Age: thirty-one.]

His expression changed.

The woman noticed.

"Charlie?"

He ignored her.

"Current physical age?"

[Nineteen.]

Charlie looked down at his hands.

That was the first confirmation he had received from something other than the woman.

"Place of origin?"

The system paused.

[Earth.]

Charlie stopped breathing for a moment.

The courtyard seemed strangely quiet around him.

He looked at the mountains, then at the woman, then back toward the space where the voice seemed to exist.

"Earth," he repeated.

[Confirmed.]

Charlie swallowed.

"So I’m not from this world."

[Correct.]

He closed his eyes briefly.

That answered one question. Unfortunately, it created several dozen more.

When he opened his eyes again, the woman was watching him carefully.

"You look pale."

Charlie gave her a tired smile.

"I’ve had a fairly unusual morning."

She glanced toward the pig.

"That much is obvious."

For once, Charlie couldn’t disagree.

He crouched beside the animal and rested a hand against its back. The pig immediately leaned into him as though nothing about the morning had changed.

Charlie looked at it for a moment before asking the question that had been bothering him since he first saw it.

"System, what is this animal?"

The answer came without hesitation.

[Companion identified: Pig.]

Charlie stared at the pig.

"I could have figured that one out myself."

Charlie scratched behind its ear, and the pig responded by leaning harder against his leg.

"Does it have a name?"

[Confirmed.]

The system said nothing else.

He glanced toward the pig. "Well?"

[Name: Biggie.]

Charlie slowly looked down at the animal.

"Biggie?"

The pig gave a satisfied grunt and went back to investigating the empty bowl.

Charlie rubbed his forehead. Of course it was called Biggie.