Through The Hourglass and Into The Future

Volume Two

Chapter Fourteen

Happy 534th Birthday To Me!

May 2, 2505 was on a Saturday, so the proverbial “day of judgment” for us wouldn’t take place until next Friday, which annoyed the hell out of me. I wanted to get this over with and done and move on with my life. But, having jumped through enough hoops already because of this, I was more than willing to be patient for a few more days, even if I found the whole thing to be foolish.

Tana was still depressed, feeling that she had let her mentor Dr. Julius Chronenberg down. Part of me was a little miffed at her for not standing up to him and telling him that he needed to come clean about me to Dr. Shalitar, but I also realized that it was hard for her to confront people that she cared for. Not that she wouldn’t do it if she needed to do it, but it would hurt like hell if she did, and so I decided not to bother her with my annoyance at Julius.

I had made up my mind to talk to Julius about it as soon as I got him alone, but I hadn’t had the chance to let him know what was on my mind yet, since Tana had been around. He was scheduled to come down later today, while Tana went out with friends tonight. She didn’t want to go, but I insisted that she go out and make it a “girl’s night out”.

I have to admit that I am a little annoyed at her as well for going through all of this, but only just a little. I can understand why she would want to abide by her mentor’s will, but I feel like she wanted to stand up to him at times as well.

I took a walk around the neighborhood, leaving Tana to sulk in my apartment. I think we need a little space anyway. Not that I am even close to thinking about splitting up with her, but being around someone that close for almost all the time in the last two months can be a bit much, which is why I insisted that Tana go out with her friends.

Being used to such a dramatic change in the area, even after being away for two months, was kind of strange, but, nevertheless, the sight of so many humans and aliens milling about, going their separate ways, was much less disorienting that it had been when I had first moved into my flat.

I walked onto Tryon Road and headed down to see what was around. The mental map I had from my time served me well, as virtually all the roads had been salvaged and were now part of the traffic grid of this part of Rutherford City. The area still maintained a lot of the medical profession that it had had in my time, as Tryon Road was littered with a variety of physician’s practices. One plastic surgeon proclaimed himself “the best of all of Doctor’s Row”.

Doctor’s Row went a ways down Tryon Road, though not quite to Tryon, as Highway 108 led to the once small town in Polk County. Tryon was yet another suburb in the great mass that was Rutherford City, and, like Rutherfordton, Spindale, and Forest City, had grown as the reconstruction after the war began. Tryon and its Polk County rival, Columbus, were just as urbanized as the Tri Cities were these days, and had intense sporting rivalries with them as well.

Even with my treatment-enhanced body, there was no way I would walk to Tryon on this day, as it was twenty-seven miles away. The early May sun was already showing signs of the hot, muggy Southern summer that I had never quite manage to become used to despite living in the area all my life. Though I was much lighter and healthier than I had been in my time, I still could feel the mugginess begin to bead sweat on my skin.

I did make it as far as New Hope Road, though, which was busy with a festival that celebrated Southern and Central American culture as well as the strong relationship between the Republic of Carolina and its southern neighbor of Aztlan. That did not mean that the two countries did not have an intense rivalry in sports, which was brought to my attention as I approached a massive flood of people heading to a stadium at the corner of New Hope and Piedmont Road.

“Hey buddy, want some tickets to the game?” said a tall redheaded female who stood beside a couple of her female friends. All three were decked out in the national colors of red, white, and blue, with miniature Carolinian flags painted on their faces, something that was not uncommon in my time.

“Sure, but I’m by myself. How much?” They quoted me a price and I decided to buy them on the spur of the moment. They were in the same row as the three girls, so I made fast friends with Molly Grunfeld, Barbara Hallsworth, and Meghan Studebaker. As we walked to the stadium, they told me about themselves.

“We absolutely love soccer! We played back when we were in college back in ’98, when we attended Rutherford Tech. We were not quite good enough to go professional, so we settled in to our jobs and became huge fans of New Hope FC.” Molly referred to the professional club who played in the stadium, which we were approaching. New Hope FC was a relatively new club in the premier division of the Carolinian FA, having been promoted just two years ago, but they showed every indication of contending with such powerhouses as Cool Springs United, Spindale Armory (located near the old National Guard Armory and founded by an Arsenal fan back in 2051), Spindale City, and Rutherford Town, who were the arch-rivals of New Hope.

This was a special match, though, as the old nations still were recognized by FIFA. Mexico had shocked the defending champions Argentina in the 2502 World Cup held in Australia, and they were looking to defend when the World Cup came to Carolina next year. “But Carolina will be ready for them, because we have our best team since we won four in a row back in the 70s and 80s.” said Barbara, who told me that Carolina had won twenty-five world cups overall, which left Brazil a distant second with only fourteen.

This, though, was an all-star special, as Carolinians joined with Mexicans and other Central Americans to face off against the unified South American squad, nicknamed the Bolivars after the legendary Simon Bolivar. They were decked in yellow, blue, and white, which were the national colors of Aztlan. The two teams came out onto the field, side by side, and the crowd erupted with cheers and chants.

It was not the Bolivars’ day, as Carolina went up early with a stunning second minute goal from Javier Sanchez, who raced through the Aztlan defense and kicked the ball into the top of the net, fooling the goalkeeper with a cheeky fake just before sending the kick into the top left corner of the net. Only fifteen minutes later, midfielder Paul Bryant, who played for New Hope FC, nearly brought down the stadium with an amazing free kick that curled around the wall from thirty-five yards out and completely fooled the goalkeeper.

Carolina went up three goals to nil when Ignacio Perez sent a crossing pass into the box and Sanchez struck it on the volley past the Aztlan goalkeeper in the forty-second minute. The Aztlan side looked shell shocked at being down three as the referee blew his whistle to send the teams into the locker room. Molly, Barbara and Meghan were clearly excited by this, along with most of the 82,000 others who were at the match. The Aztlan fans on the other side of the stadium, though, were not as thrilled.

Aztlan managed to sneak a goal back as the Carolinians fell asleep on defense as the second half started, but that only seemed to make the Carolinians angry that the Bolivars would dare deny them a shutout. Perez scored just three minutes later with a laser into the net, while Damon Phillips converted a free kick into a four goal lead midway through the half. Perez got the hat trick as he scored his third from a brilliant run and chip that put the exclamation mark on this rout. After the match, the Carolinian side lifted the Hemispheric Cup for the first time in six years.

“All that remains now is to see who takes credit for the victory. The Mexicans will probably claim that they did, since Perez is one of their guys, but they’re still smarting from the whooping we put on them in the final of the Copa America last year.” Meghan said as we left the stadium. Carolina had smoked Mexico 4-0 in the final in Buenos Aires, which annoyed the Argentines, who had fallen to Carolina 3-1 in a testy and controversial semifinal.

I messaged Tana to let her know what I was up to, and she said she’d meet us at O’Hanlon’s pub on the corner of Maple Creek and Flynn. When Tana came into the establishment, Meghan got up and pointed at my girlfriend excitedly, “I know you! Didn’t you lead the conga line during the big Mardi Gras dance back in ‘97?”

Tana smiled and admitted to doing that. “Yeah, I did! I remember you three from watching you play for the soccer team. Damned shame we could never quite get over the hump against our rivals.”

Meghan sighed and said, “Well, when you’re in the same conference as Rutherford State, Spindale State, Spindale Tech, and FCU, you’re going to take your lumps if you do not have the talent to compete.”

Molly did cheer everyone up by saying, “We did paint the town red when we won the conference tournament, though, back in our senior year in ’97. Those gals from Forest City University thought they would walk all over us, what with their number one ranking and having the tournament on their home field, but we showed them! Tamara Philco still gets booed whenever she plays against any of the Forest City teams.” Philco had scored the game winner against FCU to give Rutherford Tech the conference title. They would lose in the regional semifinal to UCLA; whole FCU would defend their national title by thumping Florida 4-0 in the final.

None of us drank heavily, but we each downed a pint of Guinness, something I could not have done back before the treatment had fixed the damage that hepatitis had done to my liver when I was twenty-one. It was okay, but I never had been able to develop a taste for beer or lager. I much preferred wine, specifically red. The pub was packed as celebrants came in to revel in Carolina’s victory over its main rival in the biannual event, though there were a few Aztlan fans that did come in to drown their sorrows.

The atmosphere outside was like a gigantic party, as even the Aztlans couldn’t be blue too long over their team’s loss. The Hemispheric Cup marked the beginning of the end of the soccer season, as the domestic leagues were winding down and the domestic cup competitions were coming to a close. New Hope FC was in the finals of the Carolina Cup, and the only obstacle in the way of completing their Cinderella run to the title was Gotham United from New York City. They would meet in two week’s time in Los Angeles to decide who would take home the cup.

We spent most of the afternoon hanging out with Meghan, Molly, and Barbara, as well as some of their friends whom we encountered on our walkabout. We headed up Flynn, where we turned onto Chimney Rock Road and headed to Thompson Road, where Molly told us that she remembered that the Rutherfordton Roughnecks were playing a fieldball match against the Forest City Flyers.

“What’s fieldball?” I asked.

Meghan replied, “It’s one of the two hybrid sports that became popular in the late twenty-first century. Apparently someone found some rules that someone from before the war had written, and then they got their friends interested in the game. It took off from there and it’s become a fairly popular sport, with clubs all over the world.”

When I suggested that we see if we can get tickets to the event, everyone in our group approved of it and we headed to the Trans-Global Bank Stadium at the corner of Thompson and Westbrook. It was much smaller than the stadium where the soccer game had taken place, but the crowd that was making its way towards the venue was just as excited as those who had attended the match earlier today. Many wore the gold and black of the Roughnecks, while the Flyer fans could be seen adorned in silver and blue.

As we took our seats, I was taken up short by the sight of the field. It couldn’t be, I thought, as a chill ran down my spine. The field looked like a rugby union field, but the crossbar underneath the uprights had a net. I asked Molly what the main difference was between fieldball and roundball.

“Well, fieldball uses an oval ball, slightly smaller than a rugby ball but rounder than an American football. Roundball uses, not surprisingly, a round ball, about the size of a volleyball. The rules are somewhat similar: you have fifteen players aside. You can run with the ball, pass the ball in any direction, and kick the ball in any direction. You score five points from touching the ball down in the end zone, three from a drop goal or penalty goal between the uprights and over the crossbar, and seven from putting the ball into the goal.”

The game was won by Rutherfordton, 52-41, but that was of little consequence to me. We said our goodbyes to the others in the group and made our way home. When Tana asked why I was so quiet, I told her, “I’ll tell you when we get home. I don’t want to say it here.” She obliged me and we rode the subway home.

“Okay, what’s up Jason? You’re usually not like that.” Tana asked as we entered my flat.

”I know who invented fieldball and roundball.” I said.

“Oh really?” Tana said with a laugh that ended when she turned around and saw the haunted look on my face. “You mean…?”

I nodded my head and said, “I came up with it years ago, as a kid. I had no idea that my notes had even survived, but apparently they did. I recognized the game as that one I had come up with years ago. When I saw that field, it was like seeing a ghost, because I had come up with all the markings and such when I was a kid.”

We ordered out for dinner, then Tana went to her place next door to get ready for her night out and I waited for Dr. Chronenberg to arrive. I passed the time looking up information on roundball and fieldball, and I was stunned at what I read. From what the article I found said, a construction foreman named Samir Mustafa had found an old filing cabinet buried in the Forest Lake area. The picture looked exactly like the one I had, where I kept most of my writings and other stuff. Being a bit of a pack rat wasn’t something to be proud of, unless you find out that some of your notes had been used to develop a couple of popular sports, along with whatever else.

It led to another article, this one about my disappearance and the fact that I was linked to the filing cabinet. It had been preserved and now sat in the Carolinian Museum of History. I hoped to see it one day soon, but I knew that I had a lot of other stuff to worry about first. But the idea that something from my past had inspired others to start up not one but two sports that I had invented was simply unbelievable, yet I had witnessed one of my inventions played this very afternoon.

Around nine, Dr. Chronenberg arrived. “Sorry I’m late, but I got caught up in some research. Tana told me that you believe that you invented fieldball and roundball.”

“Yeah, I know, and I found some evidence to back it up. Look.” I showed Julius the article, and he read it with scholarly interest.

“So, it appears that you are right. What do you think about that?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It’s sort of like that feeling of someone walking over your grave. I wrote that up just because I was bored one day. Hell, I never even had the chance to actually play either sport.” I asked Julius if he wanted some coffee or something, which he declined.

“I think I know what this is about, Jason. I have to admit that my reasoning for putting you through all of this was faulty.” Julius admitted.

“I just want to know why you felt like you had to hide me. Do you seriously think that they would have put me on display like a zoo animal?” I asked.

Julius shook his head. “No, not really. I just didn’t want to subject you to the kind of inquiry that I feared might happen. That’s why I’ve been very careful about who knew about you, because the last thing I would want for you to go through is to be quizzed about the past by a panel of scholars.”

“What’s so bad about that?” I asked.

Julius replied, “It wouldn’t be like a police interrogation, but it would have been intense nonetheless. Some of my fellow scholars tend to be rather enthusiastic when it comes to the past. Like when they found your file cabinet centuries ago. I’ve seen it myself and I was amazed at all that was inside.”

“Why the hell would you be amazed at some of my ramblings? I mean, most of what I had inside that thing were stories, articles I had written for my high school and college newspapers, doodlings and other assorted stuff that I stowed in there over the years. Hell, I had a hard time closing that thing with all the stuff I crammed into it over the years!”

“It may not seem that big of a deal to you, Jason, but it’s a treasure trove for those of us who study the past. That’s why I wanted to see into the past, so I could get a better idea of how it was back then.” Julius explained that he wasn’t alone in wanting to conduct such an experiment. “That’s why you have the identity that you now have, because one of my colleagues told me about Dr. Richards passing and it was he who suggested that we use it.”

Our conversation was going better than I had expected. Before he left, I asked him, “Is there any way I could see that filing cabinet?”

Julius replied, “I’m not sure. Let me ask around and see if I can work something out.” That was sort of what I had expected, so I shook his hand and wished him good night as he traveled back to his home near Asheville. I watched his transport fly off to the north from my balcony, then grabbed my laptop and looked into what had been written about my old filing cabinet.

What I found astounded me, and it shook me to the core. What I had considered to be just a place where I stuffed my writings done out of boredom had apparently made a major impact on this future, one that, as I read on, became more and more unbelievable. I had to see for myself what the fuss was about, because I had to see with my own eyes that my old file cabinet had indeed survived, and this was not some elaborate joke at my expense.

I never knew what time Tana got home early Sunday morning, but she was in bed with me when I woke up with the rising of the sun. I hadn’t yet told her about what I had found, deciding that it could wait until after the meeting on Friday with Dr. Shalitar. I got up, showered, and dressed for the day ahead. I didn’t have any plans at the moment, so I went out onto the balcony to watch the people pass below and to enjoy some fruit and some orange juice. The morning air still had some of the coolness of spring, but I knew all too well that it would not last long, as experience had shown me that summer would be here all too soon.

I watched the morning news on my laptop and saw that this was a very important holiday weekend, unbeknownst to me. In my time, May Day was considered by some to be a Communist holiday, even though many others had historically marked it as a traditional spring holiday in my time. I couldn’t remember my school ever marking the occasion, nor anyone in the community doing so, which led me to believe that the anti-Communist venom in the United States had tainted the holiday.

That wasn’t the case here. The holiday marked springtime in the northern hemisphere and fall in the southern. As I read further, it had become a tag team partner, so to speak, with the American Thanksgiving, which had become a worldwide event after the survivors marked the holiday for the first time in the first few years after the war. It was still held on the third Thursday of every November, but the traditions had changed somewhat over time.

So there was a lot of activity below as people were out in force on this Sunday morning, and I decided to check to see what events were available to attend. In the old days, my community would have been lucky to have had a series of community events stretch over two columns, and that only came at Christmas time, and most of those were events that had to do with local churches. In this time, however, the events went on for page after page, and had been broken down into categories to assist those who were planning their day.

There was plenty on the docket today, sports wise. Baseball was in full swing, as the collegiate playoffs were underway, as well as the Baseball Premiership, which involved teams from North America, Asia, Europe, Central and South America. The Rutherfordton Racers were hosting the New York Yankees at Cleghorn Park today at noon, and I made the decision to purchase tickets. The seats were not all that great, but sitting behind home plate wasn’t too bad at all.

Tana had woken up as I was deciding on whether or not to go, and she said that she needed to go to the college to finish up some work that she had to catch up on since we had been on our little journey for two months. I said I understood and kissed her goodbye as she headed out to get ready for work. Normally I would have put up some sort of protest about working on Sunday, but I knew just how behind Tana was, so I didn’t mind it so much. Still, it did feel a bit lonely to head out alone to the ballpark.

Cleghorn Park was located at the intersection of Cox Road and Cleghorn Mill Road, and the stadium had a feel of a baseball stadium from the early twentieth century. It was a small park, only seating twenty thousand, which was the norm for baseball these days. It had fallen out of disfavor after the war, and almost died out, but a renaissance of the sport in, of all places, Europe, had kept the sport alive, and it once again began to gain popularity around the globe.

The Yankees still wore their pinstripes and still had the interlocking NY on their helmets and hats, but this team was a far cry from the one that had dominated the late 1990s and early years of the twenty first century. The Yanks had been a bottom half team for a few decades, escaping relegation only by the slimmest of margins when their fortunes had turned sour. They were somewhat better on in this early season, though, as they were in seventh place in the twenty-four team first division.

Professional sports in America had been unalterably changed after the war when most of the cities that supported clubs were so devastated by the conflict that it was decades before many teams were resurrected. In time, sports became a global affair, and there were so many teams that there became a need to develop a system to regulate it all, which led to the system that soccer had used internationally for decades. Lower rung teams were relegated while upper tier teams in the lower divisions were either promoted directly or went to promotional playoffs.

The Racers never had to worry about relegation, as they had been one of the dominant baseball teams in the Carolinian Premiership Division for decades, along with the Spindale Stingrays and the Forest City Riverhawks. They had a fierce rivalry among one another as well as teams from inside and outside of Rutherford City. The Atlanta Braves were perennial foils for the Tri-City teams, and they were hosting a very important series with league leaders Forest City. Spindale was in Chicago to play the Cubs at New Wrigley Field, which was had been lovingly resurrected in its original form after it had been destroyed in the war. The Cubs were the defending champions of the Premiership as well as the World Series, which had become a global version of the Champions League. Much to my surprise, the Cubs had become much more successful after the war than before the war, having won twenty-seven World Series titles in the last five hundred years.

The Yanks had won game one of the three game series on Friday night, but the Racers pounded the Bronx Bombers to even the series at a game apiece, which made today’s day game the rubber match. New York was sending Danny Hawkins to the mound, and the veteran left-hander would contend with Horatio Ramirez, a righty who was the Roger Clemens of this generation. Even with fifty years as a professional pitcher, he still had a fastball that would have amazed the Rocket from Texas.

As I awaited the game to begin, I looked over some of the records in baseball. Naturally, thanks to the treatment and the fact that it extended the lives of humans for decades and centuries, sporting careers went on for decades, which had pretty much put paid to the records from my time. Hiro Tamata had the record for most home runs in a career with 4,239 in a sixty-three year career, and he could have kept playing if he hadn’t decided to give up the sport to become a world-class triathlete, winning three world titles as well as four straight Ironman competitions in Hawaii before deciding to go back to baseball and become a manager.

As I was beginning to learn in my time here, sports were falling back to the way they had seemed in my youth. Players were paid well for their services, but they didn’t seem nearly as arrogant as they had been in my youth. Many of the players came onto the field to meet some of the fans down by the baseline and sign autographs or to just chat. I had seen similar things in some of the sporting events that I had already attended in this time.

The Yankees were still taking batting practice when I opted to look up why this had occurred, and I found an excellent paper by a sportswriter for the Toronto Sun from the late twenty-first century, who was old enough to remember how sports were before the war and how they had changed afterwards.

Lamar Davison wrote: “The professional athlete was an aberration when the war began. How could one complain about playing time when people were dying in the streets from the bloody conflict? Many had to give up their sports and bear arms on either side when called upon, and that made a mark on many of them. Money and fame were of little importance when your life is on the line, and you had no idea if you would live out the next hour, much less the day.

“It was this mindset that led to the change in sports after the war. Sports were forced to rebuild, as so much was after the war. It went into hibernation for the most part, as there were far more important things to do than to go to a (Toronto Maple) Leafs (hockey) game. However, once the rebuilding was in full force, people needed an outlet from all of the work that went into rebuilding. Naturally, sports benefited from this, and the amateur, college, and professional leagues were slowly resurrected.

“Nowadays, the Leafs play in the New Maple Leaf Gardens, which is smaller than the old Air Canada Centre of my youth, but most fans don’t remember the old ACC, and the place has an air of old school hockey. I still remember crying without shame when the Leafs finally hoisted Lord Stanley’s Cup in 2045, ending their drought of almost a century, and all of Toronto rejoiced as the Leafs set a new standard by winning it seven consecutive times, much to the chagrin of the Habs in Montreal.

“It is my hope that we can keep this esprit de corps in professional sports for the years, decades, and, hopefully, centuries to come, and not just in hockey. It is refreshing to see that professional athletes are no longer as interested in long term deals and how much their signing bonus was, as the war had taught all of us that there were far more important things than just the individual.”

As the game began, I noticed that the players seemed to be more humble and low key than they had been in my time. A brushback pitch that may have sent a Yankee batter racing towards the mound only got a chuckle as Chuck Ramsey tossed the ball back to Ramirez and grabbed his bat to see if he could hit the veteran’s fastball, which he did, as he lined a single into left on the next pitch.

There was a lot more team play in this game, which was a decided change from the way it had been in my time, when pros were more interested in stats than wins. The Racers’ cleanup hitter, Jorge Almeda, thought nothing of laying down a sacrifice bunt and racing to first to score the game’s first run, and even managed to beat out the throw. That run was needed, as Ramirez and Hawkins were locked in a pitcher’s duel, which ended when Ramirez struck out Ramsey in the top of the ninth, giving the Racers a 1-0 win.

Afterwards, the players did not just go back to their clubhouses, but went onto the field and shook hands, much like they did in the youth sports of my time. Then the players came over to the baselines and met with the fans, which was a throwback to an era that I had considered long buried, but glad it had been resurrected.

I walked up Coxe Road towards the intersection with Thunder Road and the 221 Corridor. The neighborhood was a friendly urban place full of brownstones, townhouses, small cafes and restaurants, quaint shops, and the small park and garden along the way. On the left side of the road was Cleghorn Creek, which, unlike some of the others in this part of Rutherford City, was open air, and was the center of a mini-river walk section here.

I ate lunch at one of the small café’s along this “creek walk”, for lack of a better term. The day was warm but not overly muggy, of which I was glad. People were taking advantage of this last day of the holiday weekend and were out in force, enjoying the atmosphere. I mainly had my head stuck looking down at my laptop, looking for other events to attend on this day.

I was interrupted when a few protestors came by, shouting “greater rights for the undersea nations” and handing out pamphlets to those who wanted them. A man who looked to be of Samoan origin handed me one and thanked me for taking it, then headed down to hand out even more. Apparently political protests were still popular here, as this one was about a bill currently in the Global Alliance Congress to bring the undersea colonies into more of their control, taking away some of their autonomy.

An hour later, I walked into a bigger protest as I crossed the 221 Corridor and headed down Thunder Road. This one was over the dropping of tariffs among members of the Galactic Confederation, and some of my fellow humans were scared that it might cost them their jobs. It reminded me a lot about some of the disputes over free trade in my time, where Americans worried about losing their jobs to cheaper labor in Mexico, China and India.

Like the Samoan guy did before, a beautiful Indian female handed me a brochure about their position. Before I could ask her about it, she was confronted by an Asian gentleman who was opposed to their position, and they began an argument that, while polite and cordial, was something that I’d rather not get into, so I made a discreet exit and headed down Thunder Road towards the Bypass.

Instead of heading to the Bypass, I decided to take a detour onto Old Stonecutter Road on the spur of the moment. It was more suburban-like than the neighborhoods of Coxe and Thunder Roads had been, and had a bit of an Italian flair. I did a bit of window-shopping as I made my way down towards Poors Ford Road.

The rest of the afternoon was spent just roaming around the area, as I made my way back to my flat in a rather roundabout way. My arms were dragging from the weight of my purchases after my window-shopping became regular shopping. Not surprisingly, most of the weight was taken up by the books that I had purchased, and I managed to jam them into the last bookshelf I had. After making a mental note to purchase a new bookshelf come Monday, I messaged Tana at her office at the university, and then set about making dinner.

Tana did not get in until very late, almost close to midnight. Her eyes looked as if she’d been up for days on end. “And to think, I have to do this again tomorrow!” she said with resign in her voice. I sat her down and got her to eat some of the shrimp and chicken Alfredo I had made, and that definitely helped to lift her spirits. Once I had her belly full, I went over to her place and tucked her in for the night, then came back to my flat, where I spent most of the night writing on my laptop.

Writing gave me a chance for me to work this all out in my head, and I had already written enough to fill a couple of books on the trip to Elara and back. It helped me to piece together how the world of my time fell into the abyss known as the Second American War and the Third World War. I never considered myself a scholar or any kind of historical expert, but I knew what I knew, and I knew that the reasons why the war took place were far more complex than the modern scholars believed.

It wasn’t as if everyone suddenly went dark after the war was over. Sure, billions died, but billions more managed to survive and could tell the story of what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. But the more I read, the more I began to realize that those who had survived the war did not take the time to reflect upon what happened, instead focusing almost exclusively on rebuilding and making sure what happened never happened again.

I fell asleep on my couch, with my laptop beside me. I was awakened the next morning by the bright sunlight streaming into my living room from the balcony doors. I went into the bathroom and showered, and then dressed and made myself some breakfast.

I was scrambling up some eggs when I got a message from Dr. Chronenberg. I put him on hold and finished making breakfast, then put my plate on the dining room table and headed over to the monitor to speak with Julius.

“I have had to pull some strings, but I think I can get you in to see your old file cabinet.” Julius said.

“Well, this is interesting, to say the least! When can I go see it?” I asked.

“This afternoon, in fact. But, Jason, you’ll need to be in full Dr. Richards’ mode, because we’ll be among other scholars who are studying the record.”

I nodded and said, “I can do that, no problem. Who gave you approval to show me the cabinet?”

“Dr. Shalitar.” Julius said, and that piqued my curiosity even more.

“How’d you manage that?” I asked, surprised at this development.

“To be honest, I’m not sure. When I asked her about it at the meeting we had today, she said that she would give us approval to see it, along with other members of the history department. The ones who know who you are will be going to lunch with me at The 19th Hole on Golf Street in Forest City. Meet us there and we can discuss how to deal with the others who don’t know who you are. We’re supposed to meet them at the Carolina Museum of History at 3pm today.”

I decided to dress to impress for this occasion, so I wore a suit that Tana had bought me while we were making our way out of the solar system aboard Magellan. I headed out of my apartment building and caught the subway train to the stop at Hardin Road. It was a short walk down Oak Street to the restaurant, which was located where the old Forest City Municipal Golf Course had been, but now was host to the offices of the World Professional Golfer’s Association. The nine-hole course that I played on as a teen was now an office complex, with this restaurant stuck into the side of the WPGA headquarters.

Not surprisingly, the place looked like a pro shop on the inside, and had a strong golf theme. I gave the maitre d’ my name and he escorted me to a side room where Julius was sitting with six other people at a table of eight. The three men and three women looked at me like Christians looking at Christ come back, and it made me a bit uncomfortable.

It clearly made Julius a bit uncomfortable as well as he introduced me to the others, but only after the maitre d’ had shut the doors at Julius request. The three women were all with the history department: Drs. Shannon Reynolds, Miranda Hawthorne, and Penelope Ruiz. Dr. Alan Swain was also a part of the history department, but Dr. Ian Cramerton was a member of the sociology department, and Dr. Gregory Ohlmeyer taught political science at Rutherford Tech.

“So this is the man you were telling us about, Julius?” Miranda Hawthorne said in an accent that might have been Australian or of someone from New Zealand. “I didn’t believe you until he came in. He matches the description of the person who vanished five centuries ago!” She looked at me as if I was some sort of celebrity, and I knew that Julius had some reason to keep me hidden after all. If I felt this uncomfortable with the stares of six people in a dining room, what would I feel like when it came to sixty, or six hundred, or six thousand?

As we talked about how we would convince the others that I was indeed Dr. Trent Richards, the feeling began to ebb away. It helped that we talked about the events that led up to the war, specifically those that happened in the years immediately before I vanished. I could tell that I impressed them, which amazed me, because I hadn’t expected to convince them that I knew what I was talking about.

“I have to give you credit, Julius! You picked the right man to bring back from the past!” said Dr. Swain as we began to leave the dining room after an excellent lunch. By mutual agreement, we were not to refer to me as from the past after we left the dining room. We boarded a private taxi transport and made our way to the Carolina Museum of History.

The museum was located in the block of Church Road, Old Church Road, South Pea Ridge Road, and 221A in the suburb of Henrietta. It was a mammoth building that looked nothing like the museums that I was used to in my time. The museum had an exterior that was covered with video panels that showcased scenes of history over the last few centuries, as well as crawls displaying historical facts as well as a calendar of events coming to the museum.

Henrietta was barely a speck on the map in my time, but it had grown right along with the surrounding area, becoming a massive urban enclave that comprised the heart of Rutherford City. Yet, even with the rather urban-like landscape, the feeling here was less rushed that it was in the old Tri-Cities. As we walked into the museum, there seemed to be fewer people on the streets, and they seemed to not be as rushed as their compatriots just north of here.

The other doctors that didn’t know who I really was were introduced to me by Julius, and they each gave me a curious look, which I was able to bear up to with ease as I had expected them to be questioning if I was up to their caliber when it came to academics. They were nice enough, but had a dispassionate feeling towards me, of which, given my circumstances, I didn’t mind at all.

We went several levels underground before we arrived at the room that held the cabinet. The assistant curator, a Swedish female named Anka Silverstedt (I wondered in the back of my mind if she was related to the Playboy model of my generation, Victoria, because she bore a strong resemblance), wheeled out the cabinet on a hand truck, and gently set it in front of a long table, where, presumably, the contents of said cabinet could be placed upon.

Julius said to me, “Well, Dr. Richards, if you would like to do the honors!” He gestured to the cabinet, and I walked over to the cabinet. I pressed the button to unlock it, which led one of the doctors who didn’t know who I was to ask, “How does he know how to open it?”

“I assumed that the button beside the handle was some sort of lock, Dr. Wilkins.” I said with a smile, and the dark brown skin of Dr. Lionel Wilkens’ face squinted as if he had been poked with a pin. I shrugged it off and opened the top drawer.

I began to slowly take out the documents out and lay them on the table, where the academics swarmed over them like ants at a picnic, hungry for knowledge. I looked down and saw a familiar green spiral notebook, which contained a story I had written sometime in the early 1990s.

“Ah yes! ‘Birth of the Republic’! I remember reading the version that Dr. Malcolm Eddings of Oxford published in 2345.” Dr. Swain said with some pride.

“I much prefer Dr. Ashwari Al-Hussain’s version, because it is more accurate to the spirit of the author, in my view.” Dr. Adrienne Renard snippily replied to Swain. I had to stifle a laugh as I flipped open to cover and exposed the first page.

“How the hell can anyone read that handwriting?” Renard said, and I had to stifle another laugh. Mrs. Archibald always complained about my handwriting in English class, and it seemed like no one could read it, from the way Renard snicked about it.

“No one knows when it was written. There had been plenty of speculation, but no one knows for sure if it was written before the story begins in 2008 or after.” Dr. Hawthorne said.

Dr. Renard rolled her eyes and said, “Please, Dr. Hawthorne! We all know that Jason Bond wrote this before he disappeared in 2005!”

“I know when it might have been written!” I said aloud as I read through the pages that I had written so long ago. I knew the answer of course: I had doodled with this over the course of my second year of community college, as I was becoming disinterested in my communications major and deciding if I needed to change it to something else. This was in the school year of 1990-91, but I just couldn’t blurt that out.

“You do?” asked several of the academics assembled, and I pointed to a passage I had written on page seven of the one hundred-page epic.

“Look here! See where it says, ‘And when the terrorists attacked the Olympic Village in Beijing to force the Chinese government to abandon the 2000 Summer Olympics, it was seen as a victory for the forces of revolution!’” I read from the text that I had written so long ago.

“So what?” Dr. Renard said with a nasty tone.

“The 2000 Summer Olympics were held in Sydney, Australia, not in Beijing. Beijing did not hold them until 2008.” I said with some pride, and gave a little wink to Julius, who seemed rather flustered by my gesture.

That got their attention, as they began to question me about the material. “It must have been written before 1996, because the description of the terrorist attack that occurred in Atlanta is all wrong from what actually took place.”

“How do you know all of this? I didn’t even know that!” said Dr. Sinjay Tindaker with a disbelieving Mumbai accent.

“The records are there if you look for them!” I began to open each drawer and drag out each piece of paper, pretending I was just bringing all the material out when, in fact, I was looking for an edition of the World Almanac that I had placed in either the back of the middle drawer or the bottom one.

It turned out to be the middle one. “Now this is quite interesting!” I said with a smile. It was a copy of the 2003 edition of the World Almanac that I had picked up at Wal-Mart just a few weeks before I moved to the apartment in Spindale. We had left most of what we didn’t move in the house as we tried to sell it, which was difficult as the neighborhood had become rather bad over the years (hence the move). My mom hadn’t sold it by the time we had finally moved, and, from the looks of it, it hadn’t been sold before the war took place.

They looked through the Almanac as if it were the newest version of the Bible, personally delivered by Jesus himself. They had to have known it was there, but, apparently, they had never bothered to look at this book. “How did you know that book was in there?” asked Anka.

“Just a hunch!” I smiled back at her, and she shook her head, not believing me.

We went late into the night, pouring over the material that was inside the cabinet, and I explained each one of the pieces inside, giving theories of why it had been written. Along the way, I learned that the contents of the cabinet had been the inspiration for the founding of several colleges. As a child, I had pretended that I was a college athlete in my backyard, and had created my own colleges to play against.

“Jason Bond was the inspiration for the naming of Rutherford State, Spindale State, Spindale Tech, Forest City University, Rutherford Tech, and several other universities in the old Tri-Cities area. Why they chose to name it from something like this!” mused Dr. Renard, who was far less snippy at anyone after my analysis of the contents of my old cabinet.

“Well, stranger things have happened!” I said with an ironic smile. Julius and the others, who knew who I really was looked at me with strange looks, while the others continued to sift through the contents.

When we finally broke up the research for the night, it was almost two in the morning. Anka sighed when we finally left, but had told me that she looked forward to the overtime pay in a private moment. I had already secured the promise from her to be able to come back and look at the contents of the file cabinet in the future.

Julius and I arrived back at my flat around four in the morning. “You came close to giving yourself away there. You have to be more careful about that.” Julius said in an almost chiding voice.

I admitted when I said, “You’re right. I was getting a bit too cocky at times in there. I’ll remember that in the future.”

“You certainly impressed them, though. Including Madame Renard, who’s almost impossible to impress.” Julius yawned and said that he needed to get to his office to take a nap before work in the morning. When I offered him one of my guest rooms, he turned it down, saying, “I’m so used to sleeping in my office that I’d probably not get any sleep here. Besides, I already have a change of clothes there, and the lab has a shower that I can use.” He bid me adieu and headed back to the college.

I didn’t finally fall asleep until the sun was peeking over the skyline of Rutherfordton. When I finally woke up that afternoon, it was almost four in the afternoon, and Tana was just walking into my flat. “Julius said you two had a late night last night.”

“Yeah, we were carousing in Henrietta. One hell of a party!” I said this right before I let out a rather loud yawn. “What have you been up to?” I asked.

Tana smilingly replied, “I am now caught up with all my work, and I decided to come by and see if you wanted to celebrate!”

“That’s great! So where do you want to go?” I asked.

We pretty much went all over the place on this night, as many people were getting a head start of Cinco de Mayo, which was not an official holiday in the entire Republic, but was celebrated outside Mexico nonetheless. We wound up on Industrial Park Road, which had the name but the only industry going on these days was of the bar and restaurant kind.

Tana and I spent most of our time at a place known as the Sexy Senorita, which was a gigantic Mexican eatery that was part restaurant, part theme park. It had been inspired by the idea behind the Casa Bonita restaurants of my time, as well as others that had sprang up in south Texas in the late twenty-first century. All I knew was that it had been the location of Aallied Die Casting, a plant where I had once worked security ages ago, and notorious for hiring Mexicans and having them work the worst jobs in the plant, especially the furnace.

The only furnaces here these days were for the stone ovens that were used to make the tortillas. Mexican pizza was hugely popular here, and the hybrid Italian-Mexican creation was the place’s specialty. It was essentially two large corn tortillas, with a layer of melted Monterrey Jack cheese between the two, and the top was covered with salsa and seasoned meat. It was absolutely delicious, and went well with the cervesa that I found myself drinking.

Tana and I paid for it the next morning with massive hangovers, but, thanks to modern medical technology, we were able to rid ourselves of the toxins with a simple pill. The only consequence: we both had to piss like racehorses for about an hour or so.

Tana left for work, still a bit drained from the night before, while I spent the morning searching online for new bookshelves. By the time Tana arrived back after work, I had three new bookshelves that gave me more space to books for the future. “You buy books like some women buy shoes, I swear!” Tana said shaking her head at yet another bag of books that I had purchased after the shelves had been installed.

The night of Cinco de Mayo was even more intense than the last, as all of the streets surrounding my apartment building were jammed with partiers adorned in a vast array of Mexican garb. Tana decided not to follow the example of many of her fellow extraterrestrials, who looked decidedly odd in sombreros.

Another visit to the Sexy Senorita, another wild night of cervesas and a wide variety of Mexican grub, and another hangover the next morning. This time, though, we shared it with a sexy couple that we had met and gotten along with. So I awoke to find a naked human female on my chest, and I could feel that part of me was still inside her.

I remembered her name was Sabrina, and her skin was dark like cinnamon. “Good, you’re awake!” she said as she smiled at me sleepily, and then began to do something to arouse me from my slumber. That promptly woke up Tana and Gabriel, who decided to have some fun on their own.

While the second round of sex was enjoyable, it didn’t help our hangovers, so after taking some more meds and peeing for a while, we went our separate ways. Sabrina and Gabriel worked in the office of Senator Eduardo Oliviedo from Sonora. I had met him the night before at the Sexy Senorita, and I could tell that he probably would have a hell of a hangover this morning, given the sight of him slamming cervesas and margaritas down at an alarming rate.

Tana soon left for work and I was once again alone in my apartment. Tomorrow would be the big day, when Dr. Shalitar would meet with us and bring an end to this whole mad episode of my life. I had no idea what to expect, but I didn’t fear what was to come, because my instincts told me that things would work out fine, and my instincts were rarely wrong.

A crack of thunder and a heavy downpour put paid to any ideas I had of going out. Of course, I could have gone out anyway, but I decided to rest up for what was to come tomorrow. We were scheduled to meet with Shalitar and whoever else was on her committee in the administration building at the corner of East Mountain and US 221 North at nine the next morning. Tana had avoided talking about the meeting, and anytime I tried to chat up Julius about it, he managed to fend me off politely.

So, here I was, five hundred years in the future, wondering what was to become of me. I had no job, and the place where I lived actually was rented out to Julius. I really wanted to find my place in this world, because even though I had made plenty of progress fitting into this futuristic society, there was still a part of me that felt left out.

I pulled up a weather forecast on the monitor, and the report showed that the long line of thunderstorms would last throughout the evening, finally making their way out of the area later in the night. Having nothing else better to do, I fixed myself some breakfast and sat back to watch nature’s own pyrotechnic show unfold, and was rewarded with some impressive lightning flashes and strikes as well as some very loud rumbles of thunder.

After breakfast, I sat on my couch, looking out over the city and writing some more observations into my laptop. If they were going to give me some sort of teaching gig about the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, then I was bound and determined to be ready for it.

Tana informed me that she was on her way, and asked if I had wanted to go out tonight. I told her we probably would be wise to stay in because of the weather, and she did not even bother to offer up a protest. I ordered dinner for us, and it came just before Tana was scheduled to arrive home, so I had the chance to set the table just the way I wanted it.

When Tana walked into my flat, she was taken away with the candlelit dinner I had arranged, and she and I had a lovely time dining on grilled chicken with fresh veggies and white wine. After dinner, we made our way to the bedroom, where we made some magic late into the night.

Sometime during the night, I officially became five hundred and thirty four years old, but I didn’t feel a day over twenty-one thanks to the treatment. The alarm rang at six in the morning, and we both showered together, taking our time and playing around in the shower stall.

Instead of fixing breakfast at home, we opted to walk down Maple, then up North Washington, then take a left onto West Mountain and make our way to the Thunderbird Café, where we had dined at so many weeks ago now. We arrived there with plenty of time to eat and enjoy ourselves before we walked across the street and faced the committee, which would decide my fate, as well as the fates of Alan, Tana, and Julius.

“Are you nervous?” I asked Tana as I took a bite of my scrambled eggs.

“Yes. Are you?”

I shrugged and said, “Part of me is nervous, and part of me isn’t. I guess that part of me is glad that this is coming to an end, one way or another.”

Tana was a slow eater, so I took my time, using the interactive menu to read the latest news and sports results. The big story was the opening of the amateur women’s baseball leagues, now that the college season had been completed the weekend before. President Portina de Soto was to throw out the first pitch for the Rutherford Valkyries as they opened their campaign against the Alexander Athenas, who played in the southern suburbs of Forest City. I used the menu to check to see if any tickets were available, but was disappointed to find that the opening day game was a sell out.

Once we were done, I paid the bill and we both got up to leave. The clouds from the day before had long since departed, and we were greeted by a clear blue sky. The air was still cool, as if the rains from the day before had somehow washed it clean.

Tana and I crossed the street and saw Julius and Alan standing outside the building, waiting for us. Together, we walked into the building and into the unknown. As we entered the elevator, I said to the three of them, “Things will be okay.”

“How do you know?” Alan asked.

“Because it’s my birthday, and I doubt they’d be so cruel to do something bad to me on my birthday!” Alan and Tana were unsure, but Julius smiled slightly at that sentiment, which gave me some confidence as to what was to come.

We sat around a table in a conference room that Dr. Shalitar’s secretary had taken us to when we arrived. At precisely the stroke of nine, the short Arab woman entered the room, followed by an extremely tall black man as well as redheaded female.

“Ah, Mr. Bond! We meet at last!” said Dr. Shalitar, and the meeting commenced.