STEVE ROGERS WOKE in unfamiliar surroundings. He felt refreshed. His head was clear and he was full of energy, but he couldn’t figure out where he was or how he’d gotten here.
The institutional-looking room was spare. The steel-frame cot that Steve slept on looked like government issue. The mint-green walls were bare. At the far corner of the room, a radio played a baseball game. The Brooklyn Dodgers. Something was wrong.
Steve looked over toward the window from his bed. The sun was shining and a pleasant breeze was blowing in. By the angle of the sunlight it appeared to be late morning.
Judging by the soaring brick towers, he could tell he was in Manhattan. He was dressed in a T-shirt emblazoned with the insignia of the SSR—the Special Scientific Reserve organization that had given him strength and agility that were the pinnacle of human potential.
Steve again considered the game on the radio. The Dodgers had scored another three runs. Yes, something was very wrong.
The steel knob of the only door in the room turned, and a pretty nurse walked into Steve’s quarters.
“Good morning,” she said. “Or should I say afternoon?”
“Where am I?” Steve asked.
“You’re in a recovery room in New York City.”
“Where am I, really?” Steve asked again, more emphatic this time.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the nurse said, smiling.
“The game. It’s from May 1941. I know because I was there. Now I’m going to ask you again—where am I?”
“Captain Rogers…” the nurse tried to explain.
“Who are you?” Steve shouted.
Steve noticed the nurse click a device concealed in her hand. He sprang up and used all his power to smash through a far wall. The illusion of the room fell away as Steve stepped into what looked like the backstage area of the movie sets he knew from recording newsreel footage.
“Backstage,” Steve realized that the images of New York skyscrapers and the late morning sky were simply extremely high-tech projections. He rushed out of the strange room and found himself outside of the building in an alien world that seemed something like the one he’d known, but unbelievably different at the same time.
An imposing man in a long trench coat stepped forward. He wore a patch over his left eye.
“At ease, soldier,” the man called out. “Look, I’m sorry about that little show back there, but we thought it best to break it to you slowly.”
“Break what?” Steve asked.
“You’ve been asleep, Cap. For almost seventy years.”
Steve was speechless. To the passersby in Times Square this was all ordinary.
But to Steve, this was the future.