Through The Hourglass and Into the Future

Chapter One

Suddenly Last January

It was a night much like any other night, except this one would change my life forever. It was a Wednesday night, January 26, 2005, and I had just come into work as a security guard at Reeves Brothers manufacturing. I wasn’t in a good mood, as I was still coming to terms with the breakup of my relationship just a few months before.

The guard I was relieving told me that everything was quiet and that there were no problems, which made me a little bit happier. Granted, the job wasn’t exactly great, but when the economy was sucking as bad as it was locally, you grabbed what you could and held onto it until something better came along. For me, that better thing hadn’t come along yet.

I settled in to keep an eye on things, tuning in to the classic rock station out of Asheville that I always did and looked out at the Express convenience store just across the street. I kept an eye on the camera that was fixed on the entrance gate, which was open as shift change was just a mere hour away.

The first workers on the third shift started to drizzle in around 10:30pm, thirty minutes before shift change. I greeted them with a wave as I always did, keeping my eye on the monitor as well as the receiving gate beside the guardhouse. People were swaddled in jackets and parkas, as a cold wind came from the north, making the southwestern foothills of North Carolina a little chillier than normal.

Eleven o’clock came soon enough, and the second shifters headed out to their cars. Within fifteen minutes, they were all gone, and I closed the main gate soon afterward, settling in for just another night at my boring job in Rutherfordton, North Carolina.

Except on this night, it would be anything but normal.

I got a soda from the canteen to quench my thirst and, in reality, to break up the monotony. Routine is all well and good, but boredom tends to annoy me sometimes. I drank it down and patiently waited until midnight, when I would lock up the guardhouse and make my first key wind round of the night.

But having never been a patient man, I left just a few minutes early, donning my jacket, putting on my safety glasses over my own spectacles, and grabbing the key wind clock to head out on my first round. The wind was chilly as I made my short walk to the building, and I felt some drizzle on my cheek as I opened the door to enter the building.

As usual, I checked the human resources office first, looking to see if anything was out of place and if any doors had been left open. I checked the bathrooms to see if any faucets had been left running or if there might be a problem with the toilet. Then it was from there that I entered the plant itself, starting with the receiving warehouse first.

No one was around this time of the evening, so it was a quiet walk to the first key at the back of the warehouse. I turned it, then turned the corner and proceeded to walk up the main pathway that ran all the way to the secondary receiving dock. I wasn’t thinking much of anything at the moment, which was good because I had had a tough day before even getting to my third shift job.

As I walked out of the warehouse, it happened. One moment, I was walking out towards the calender department; the next, I was overcome by a blinding flash of light. My heavyset body became light, and I thought for a moment that an explosion had somehow happened. But there was neither heat nor any force with this flash, and it seemed to sustain it somehow. I did feel the odd sensation of my body being pulled apart, as if the very molecules of my body were being yanked hither and yon.

When the light receded, I collapsed to the floor, too stunned to realize what had happened. I first realized something was wrong when my hand felt the plush carpet that I was laying on, which was a far cry from the cold concrete floor of the plant. I tried to move, but my body was sapped of energy, and even turning my head was a massive effort of will.

I heard a voice. “Doctor! Someone’s on the floor!” It was a female, with a strange accent. I felt a hand on me. “He’s alive! Get the medical scanner!” I tried to turn over, as I was lying on my belly. “Don’t move. Let’s check you out first!” The female voice was calming, and I obeyed, mainly because I was hardly able to move anyway.

An older, huskier voice spoke up just then. “I’ve powered down the machine. Something must have caused a surge in power, because I wasn’t expecting anything like this!” It was a male voice, and seemed to be German-accented English to my ears.

A younger male voice, this one of a more familiar American variety, asked, “Should I help turn him over, doctor?”

“By all means! Tana, what does the scanner say?”

“Vital signs are stable, so he should be okay.”

The younger man grabbed me by the shoulder and gently helped me to turn over onto my back. I glanced up at him, seeing that he was indeed a young man: white, fresh-faced, and probably in his early twenties. Then I looked over to the older man, who looked very much like the stereotypical college professor, with balding gray hair, white lab coat, and horn-rimmed glasses.

But it was the woman who had me completely nonplussed, because her skin was of a deep blue hue. She wore a silver colored dress and had blond hair, and her facial features looked human-like, except that her eye color was a vibrant scarlet red.

“Where…where am I?” I managed to squeak out as I lay on the floor. My throat was very dry, probably from whatever happened to me. My mind was racing as I stared at what was probably an alien woman. Was I pulled into another dimension? Another timeline of history, perhaps, or was I pulled years (or decades, or centuries) into the future?

“You are in my office, adjacent to my lab. My name is Doctor Julius Chronenberg. Where were you last before you showed up here?”

“I’m Jason Bond, and the last place I was before this happened…whatever this was…was my workplace. I’m a security guard at Reeves Brothers, and I was on my round when a bright light overcame me. Next thing I know, I’m here.”

Dr. Chronenberg looked over at the alien woman, scratching his chin as he did so. He turned back to me and asked, “What date was it when you were at Reeves Brothers?”

“January 27, 2005. My watch had just beeped midnight a few moments before the flash hit me. Why? What’s the date here?”

The alien woman looked at the doctor with a shocked look on her face, but the doctor seemed to be scared half to death. “I…I don’t know if I should tell you. The shock…”

I interrupted. “I’m in the future, right?” The doctor nodded, and I asked, “How far into the future did I travel?”

“Five hundred years, exactly.” The doctor looked at his watch, and said, “It’s January 27, 2505, and it’s fifteen minutes after midnight.”

I didn’t know what to say. I managed to gain enough strength to attempt to stand up, and the young man was there to help me up to my feet, along with the alien woman, who looked lithe and thin, but whose grasp told me that she was wiry and strong. There was a couch behind me, and I walked over to it and sat down on it.

“So I’m five hundred years in the future? Can you tell me what happened for me to arrive here?” I asked, looking the doctor straight in the eye.

“I had developed a machine that I had hoped would allow me to look back in time to a particular point in our history. I was trying to fine-tune it to the year that I wanted when there was an energy spike. The machine malfunctioned, and, somehow, you wound up here. I haven’t any more idea of how it happened than you do, it would seem.”

I sat back, closed my eyes for a moment, and then asked, “Can I have a glass of water please? My throat’s killing me!” Without a word from the doctor, the alien woman went over to the sideboard and poured me a glass of water. She walked over to me and handed me the glass. I muttered thanks and drank it down.

As I was drinking, I was evaluating the three people in the room. They seemed shocked at what happened, and very nervous. I got the impression that whatever they had done, it was unauthorized, because they had the look of someone who was doing something that they were not supposed to do, and something happened that would cause them a lot of trouble.

“So what are you going to do with me?” I asked.

Before anyone could answer, a loud beeping sound came from the desk that the alien woman and the doctor were standing in front of. The young man raced over to the desk and played with what looked like a computer inlayed into the desk itself. “Doctor, security just informed us that they are on their way to look into what caused the energy spike.”

The doctor’s skin went white and he turned to the alien women, saying, “Tana, take Jason to your transport and fly over to my house. Adam and I will straighten things out here. I’ll contact Sarah and let her know what is going on.”

Tana nodded and said, “Yes doctor!” She came over to me and said, “Can you walk alright, Jason? It’s just a short walk to the elevator.”

I replied, “I think so.” I got to my feet and found that I had some strength left in my body. Tana walked ahead and opened the door, keeping an eye on me as I walked out just in case I collapsed.

We walked down a hallway with the elevator car at the end of it. “I meant to ask you where I was, by the way. From the way this hallway looks, I think I’m on a college campus.”

“Yes, you are, Jason. This is the engineering and physics building of Rutherford Polytechnic Institute, but everyone calls it Rutherford Tech.”

I looked at her with a perplexed look on my face. “Rutherford Tech? The only college in this entire county was Isothermal Community College, and that was just a two year school!”

Tana shrugged and said, “Half a millennia is a long time, Jason, and a lot has happened in that time. I should warn you, though, because it will be overwhelming!”

I replied, “I suspected as much. I’ll just be glad to get some rest. Whatever you call pulling me through five hundred years into the future has worn me out!”

Tana smiled as she pressed the button for the elevator. Within moments, the doors opened and we walked into the car. She pressed the button for the roof, and noticed the way I was looking at her. “Yes, Jason, we have flying cars in the future. I always park on the roof when I get the chance.”

Soon enough, the doors to the elevator opened again, and I was shocked at what I saw. “Holy crap!” I said as I stared out into the night skyline. “Where the hell am I?”

“Well, it’s Rutherford City these days. This part is still known as Rutherfordton, part of what’s called the ‘heart of Rutherford City’, because it was once part of the Tri-Cities. But it’s changed a lot since you were last outside.” She pointed out towards the main road, and I noticed the familiar curve and intersection. “That’s what’s known as Railroad Avenue. I believe it was that name in your time, right?”

“Yeah, but it looked nothing like this!” At this time of the night, traffic was scarce in my time, but here in the future, the road and sidewalks (those were non-existent in my time) were chock full of people, even at this late hour. “Across Railroad Avenue is Ruth, which is the center of a thriving artistic and creative community. It’s one of many here in the heart of the city. Many of the students who go to Rutherford Tech live there.”

It was almost too much to take in. It was too dramatic a change for me. What had been a rural landscape just an hour ago had become a futuristic version of New York City. What was once Southern Baptist Church was now a tall skyscraper that had the sign “Andy Warhol Building”, and the sight of it had me shaking my head.

Tana gently took me by the arm and led me to her transport. It looked somewhat like the DeLorean from the Back to the Future movies, except this transport was larger and curvier than what Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox used in that movie.

With a touch to a keypad, the doors slid up, and I got in the passenger side. It was then I noticed that there was no steering wheel. Before I could ask, Tana said, “All the transports are controlled by a central traffic control computer, so all I have to do is input the destination and the transport takes care of the rest.”

I nodded, then leaned back and got ready for the ride. The transport made a slight humming sound as the engines activated, and it slowly began to rise into the skies. “I’m going to turn it around slowly so you can get a panoramic view of the area.” Tana said as she began to input instructions into the computer. As we rose higher and higher into the air, I began to see more and more of the new (at least to me) urban landscape.

We were turning towards the right, and, as the transport began to point westward, Tana pointed at something off in the distance. “See those two buildings, one that’s gold and one that’s silver? Those are the presidential palace and parliament building of the Republic of Carolina!”

“Uh…what’s the Republic of Carolina?” I asked impotently.

Tana laughed and said, “You’ll find out soon enough, dear Jason! Now that we’re pointed towards the northwest, we can head towards Asheville now!” Tana pressed a couple of buttons on the panel screen, and the transport began to move forward.

In less than ten minutes, we were hovering above a country estate just north of Asheville. But in those ten minutes, I saw that most of the area had become a sprawling urban landscape. Sure, there were still plenty of trees and forest areas, as well as lakes, streams, and rivers, but they were accompanied by a vast array of architecture, some of which was distinctly alien.

As we started to land on the driveway of the estate, a buxom blonde woman came out of the main house to greet us. She was there when my door opened, saying in her own lighter German accent, “You must be Jason! I’m Sarah, Julius’ wife! He told me all about you!”

“I know.” I looked around at the snow-covered lawn and shivered. “I hate to be rude, but can we go inside? In all of this, I forgot my jacket!”

Sarah and Tana laughed, and Sarah added, “Come this way! I’ve set up the guesthouse for you! It’s within easy walking distance of the main house.”

She opened the door to the guesthouse, which was large enough to serve as a main estate home in its own right. “Julius told me that you’d probably want to go to bed as soon as you got here! Tana, I prepared one of the lower bedrooms for you, so you can stay here if Jason needs anything!”

Tana replied, “Thank you, Sarah. I’ll make sure that Jason gets settled in good.”

Sarah came up to me and hugged me, adding, “Welcome to our home, Jason! I look forward to talking to you tomorrow morning when I bring breakfast by for the both of you!”

“Thank you, Sarah. I think I’ll turn in now, if you don’t mind!”

“That’s quite alright, Jason! Good night to the both of you!” With a smile, Sarah departed the guesthouse for the main estate.

Tana walked behind me as I climbed the stairs. Thankfully, my legs held up under me as I made it to the bedroom. “The bathroom is to your right, Jason. It’s pretty much the same as it was in your time, so you should be okay. I’ll come by in the morning when I wake up to check up on you.”

“Thanks Tana, for everything so far. I get the feeling that I’ll have to rely on you a lot in the coming days to help me out!”

“Not a problem, Jason! Now get some sleep and I’ll see you in the morning!” She embraced me, kissing me on the cheek, before leaving the bedroom.

I took a moment to look around the room, which looked much like I would envision a chalet in the Alps. Then I stripped and took a shower in the bathroom, and the feeling of hot water on my skin was glorious.

After finishing and toweling off, I got back into my underwear and the t-shirt I wore underneath my uniform top. Before undoing the covers to the bed, I looked out of the window at the mountains. Thankfully, they weren’t much different than they had been in my time, at least from what I could tell at night. But it was easy to see that there were far more lights in the distance these days, and that would have to take some getting used to.

I got into bed, and fell asleep almost instantly. Just before slumber overtook me, I thought to myself, Now to see if this is all a dream.