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thought about her words, “I can’t tell you exactly where or when he is…” How odd. Maybe she’s already hallucinating . Now he feared she may only have days rather than months left.
    He said a little prayer, even though he wasn’t much of a praying man. He asked God for help for his sister: that some answer might be revealed that none of them had yet thought of… For a cure even, no matter how unlikely that might be. His mind then meandered; his thoughts turned to Ron’s words, and he wondered what he was planning. He hoped Ron was safe and not breaking the law.

Chapter 16
    In The Future
     
    Dr. Ron put the force of his whole body into levering the crowbar wedged between the door frame and the back door, its frame giving, grunting, until crack ! The door popped open and he sashayed in, no longer concerned about the laws he was breaking or his throbbing hand.
    The world he presently occupied was so much worse than the past one, he didn’t have the luxury of worrying about antiquated laws like Title 7, Chapter 30 of the Texas Penal Code. Something horrible had happened here and it motivated him to move faster to find Dr. Mendelson, at all costs. What irony that he had used a time machine to get here, but now had this horrible sense of racing against the clock.
    When he had left his laboratory yesterday afternoon and traveled the four miles by bicycle, he witnessed a mysterious post-apocalyptic world: none of the cars he pedaled by worked, and all appeared to have been abandoned on the road; all the power seemed to be off, everywhere; and it was much hotter than normal so there were few people wandering around in the midday heat. He had been desperate to find anyone to talk to and discover what the hell had happened and when, still having no idea if he arrived months or years after the moment he stepped through the time slip.
    The only person he had spoken to had been darting across his path, barely stopping. When he asked the man what was wrong, the man yelled back, “They’re after me” and then promptly jumped off the highway embankment they were both on and disappeared. The second person he ran into literally ran into him. He heard rapid footsteps come from out of nowhere and was pushed from his bicycle. He hit the pavement so hard he passed out watching a big man wearing bib overalls and nothing else pedal away on his bike. More irony, since he had stolen the bike earlier. Guess it served me right .
    When he came to, the right side of his face felt flushed, probably sunburned. But what shook him to his core were the lights above.
    Some years back Betsy and he had been guests on a luxury Alaskan cruise, courtesy of some rich benefactors of his earlier research on gamma ray generation. He had been somewhat reluctant to take the gift, but Betsy had insisted, since they had not had a vacation together in years. One night, outside the Port of Juneau, they watched, mouths agape at the aurora borealis. It was magnificent, and they often talked about what that was like. Now, as he stared straight up at what should have been the dark night sky, what he saw didn’t fill him with wonderment. It filled him with dread. The entire sky was carpeted with auroras: red and green undulating currents washing in and out overhead, like some mad psychedelic seascape from Alice in Wonderland. This, of course, was impossible, being this far south of where auroras were ever seen—that is, unless something bad had happened. Then it all fit together: the dead cars, the lack of power, the auroras in the sky, the hotter temperatures. They must have had… rather, were still having a series of calamitous solar storms.
    He pushed himself up, wobbling just a little. His mouth was parched and his head pulsed. Something tugged at his shoulder and he was relieved when he saw it was the canvas bag he had been carrying with supplies from his lab, including a bottle of water. He sucked on it like a pacifier, and the plastic crinkled as he