The Man Who Awoke by Laurence Manning

The next day Winters awoke very tired and with aching bones and was only too glad to be left quietly by himself. Eric led him into a small, dark room and seated him in a comfortable chair. A series of numbered knobs set into a wall panel controlled the sight and sound records and Eric turned the knob which controlled the history records. A screen on the wall lit up. Winters gazed, fascinated, at a forest scene taken ten thousand years before. He again saw the gayly colored foresters and viewed rapidly a complete record of the operations by which their physical needs were extracted from forest products.

And then he saw the dance of autumn festival about which he had been told so long ago. He heard the joyous singing of the maidens in their autumn-colored costumes, and his thoughts went back to that brief and unpleasant adventure. He turned the knob again and again to see new pictures and customs unroll before his eyes. He came to the days when the mechanical Brain ruled supreme and later to the reconstruction period following its destruction. And then, like a shock of cold water, there appeared his own image. He heard himself addressing the council of black-robed educators! How could this be? A recording machine must have been present in the room without his knowledge! He saw again the countenances of his two friends in that age-five thousand years ago-and mused sadly upon the great gulf of years that separated him from them. So real and vivid was the picture-in full perspective and color-that he could hardly refrain from calling out to them.