Timeline by Michael Crichton

When your ideas are against the mainstream, when you are not happy about the direction of the society you live in, there are few outlets for your ideas. What you can do? Write attractive stories! Michael Crichton is such a story writer.

Timeline is a science fiction novel by Michael Crichton. In the novel, some graduate students from Yale were sent, via a quantum system, whatever that is, to medieval France when violent fighting was very common. When running for his life, Chris, one of the graduate students, somehow thinks of the seminar room at Yale where they endlessly debated. He reflected,

The academics arguments consist of nothing but thin air and hot air. Their empty debates could never be resolved. Yet there is so much intensity, so much passion in these debates.  ... However frightened he was on this night, it was entirely real and in some way reassuring, even exhilarating. (Roughly at 2:09 of part 2 of the audiobook)

A short time later, when he examined his serious wounds, he pondered, 

The pain might make him gasp for breath. But the pain didn’t matter. He just felt glad to be alive and facing another day. His familiar complaints, cowered uncertainties seem suddenly irrelevant. In their place, he discovered some source of boundless energy and almost aggressive vitality he could not recall he had ever experienced before. He felt flowing in his body a kind of heat. The world around him seemed more vivid, more sensuous than he could remember before. To Chris, the great dawn took on a pristine beauty. The cool damp air bore a fragrance of wet grass and damp earth. The stone against his back supported him. Even the pain was useful because it burned away all unnecessary feelings. He felt stripped down, alert and ready for anything. This is a different world, with different rules. And for the first time, he was in it, totally in it. (2:30)

Kate gave some food to a poor old man. The old man grabbed her. He and his fellow bandits tried to rob her. Chris came up to save her. Later Chris asked what happened. Kate said she was trying to help a poor man. Chris said this only happened in fairy tales. In real life, if you help a poor man, you will be robbed and killed. (4:47)

Andre chose to stay in medieval time and didn’t return to the modern world. His dying word was, “I have children, and a good life.” (7:30)