You wake up in a clearing, blinking your eyes and shielding them from the sunlight as you lie against the grass. You're name is Jonas Tobias Everclear III, and you are lucky to be alive.
On December 31, 2012, you were part of a top-secret secret military project to travel through time. Attempts had been made as far back as World War II with Einstein's collaboration using Tesla's secret papers, but the people in those early experiments had been horribly mutilated and most incidents had been successfully covered up. Since the early 1970s, most time travel experiments just failed to actually do anything, excepted for the occasional short-circuited computer here and there. But in your case, something did happen, and you're having trouble remembering exactly what it was.
The last thing you remember is a horrific explosion. You thought you were dying, but somehow you are okay. You're hot and thirsty from the sun, but you don't seem to be injured, or at least you don't feel the scorching pain throughout your entire being like you did when the time portal was destabilizing. You sit up and look around.
You're on a hilltop surrounded by trees. You can see another break in the forest where there are a number of fields and thatched-roof cottages. People and animals are in the fields working. You hope they are willing to help you. Your secret lab was deep underneath an undisclosed English city; you have no idea how you ended up within a half mile of a rural farm. You stand and walk down the hill into the forest, making a straight line toward where you saw the farmers.
However, before you get there, you encounter a man who is walking along a forest path in the opposite direction, wearing a brown hooded cloak. He looks at you for a moment and backs up against a tree. You say "hi" to him and try to calm him down, and he relaxes a bit, but is still obviously confused by your appearance. It becomes obvious that he is awed by your clothing and does not understand anything you say. He speaks a few times, but you don't understand him either, so you bring out the handheld translator that was issued to you in case your time travel journey was successful. It's far more sophisticated than anything on the civilian market: it's programmed with every modern language and an overview of most attested languages from recorded history, plus an AI that can adapt to unknown languages after several hours or days exposure. You hope it's already programmed with whatever language this bloke speaks. You motion for him to try to continue talking. He says some sort of gibberish in a questioning voice.
"PROCESSING VOICE SAMPLE ... COMPARING AGAINST BUILT-IN DATABASE ... FIVE PERCENT," says the object in an awkward computer voice. The cloaked man swipes the object out of your hands and starts looking over it. He mumbles something you don't understand. The computer doesn't either, but it tries.
"NEW VOCALIZATION SAMPLE DETECTED, ADDING TO PREVIOUS SAMPLE TO AID COMPARISON, CONTINUING TO SEARCH DATABASE ... TEN PERCENT ... FIFTEEN PERCENT ... TWENTY PERCENT ... MATCH FOUND! SETTING TRANSLATION MODE TO 'OLD ENGLISH' ... DONE!"
"What strange sort of bewitched object is this?!" he asks, and this time you can understand him via the translator's output.
"Uh, it's ... just a tool I picked up in a foreign country to help me understand other people's languages," you say, hoping the translator is working both ways. It is.
"You have a strange talking box, and you're wearing the most colorful and finely stitched garments I've ever seen," says the man. "You are obviously a witch, a wealthy eastern noble, or both!"
"Or neither," you say, uncomfortable with where this conversation is going. "Look, I'm just a little lost, and I'm trying to find out where I am. So, is this like France or Germany or somewhere? And more importantly, what is today?"
"You are in England," the man answers, "and today is Thursday."
"Um, what year is this?" you ask, concerned that the collapsing portal may have actually sent you to another era after all. Your conversation partner looks as surprised as anyone else would be by the question.
"It is the fourth year of King William, of course, and this autumn will begin the fifth," he replies. Your blank stare clues him in that his answer was unhelpful, so he continues, "It is the Year of our Lord One Thousand and Seventy."
Oh, wow. You're over nine hundred years in the past. How will you get back? And more importantly, what will happen to you in this time period? Will this man help you, or does he have evil intentions in mind?