Between Two Worlds

In studying people of a given era, we often find a certain resonance with them. If you can look beyond their stiff poses, their dated clothing, limited technology, and prejudices, you will find in their letters, diaries and other surviving material hopes, thoughts, and aspirations very similar to our own. They were people just like us. This resonance become apparent when you watch a serious silent movie, ride in a classic car, or listen to certain music going back many decades. All you have to do is tune into it. The basic theme of this story takes a reverse tack: If we can relate to an earlier generation, can someone direct from another time relate to our own? He is Dusty Dervin, a pilot who vanished in Alaska in 1931. In 1973 he is found frozen beneath the surface of an Alaskan glacier. He is extracted from the ice and rushed to a prominent scientific research institute in Los Angeles, where he is subsequently revived. He awakens into a world in which time and technology have passed him by. The director of the institute, Edmund Johns, is a corrupt man out to use Dusty to promote his own ambitious agenda. To ensure the pilot's cooperation, Johns clamps down a lid of secrecy and systematically acquires all of his papers and other material which can establish his identity. Furthermore, Johns has the weight of the law and an entrenched system behind him. All Dusty has is his past and they have taken it away from him. In a climate of intrigue for which nothing in his background has prepared him, he finds himself locked in a battle for the rights to his own name. The premise is hypothetical, but the human nature is very real. As you come to know this man from another time, you will acquire a unique perspective of our own, and in so doing reflect upon how far we have come and how much we have gained... and lost.