Future Lost

11

I want to ask him why he’s here, but there’s no time. Vincent walks over and clasps both of us on the shoulders. “Ready to get started?”

Dr. Walters drops his head like a submissive dog. “The accelerator is powered up.”

Vincent looks me over. “Thirty years in the future for five hours. By yourself. You sure you want to do this?”

I grip the straps of my backpack. “‘Want’ is the wrong word. But I’ll do whatever it takes to get Adam back.”

He nods. “Good luck. I hope you both make it back safely.”

Dr. Walters opens the accelerator door, and I step inside the small, smooth metal dome. While the other was built for five people and could hold double that if needed, this one is built for maybe half as many. If I stretch my arms out, I can almost touch either side of the walls. When the door slams shut, it’s like I’m trapped in a metal coffin.

Every other time I’ve gone to the future, it was with Adam at my side. Now I’m alone, but I won’t be coming back that way.

I will find Adam. I will bring him back. Or I won’t come back at all.

There’s no other choice. I have no future without Adam.

The countdown starts. The walls and floor begin to tremble. I stand in the center of the dome with a wide stance, ready for what comes next. The shaking grows violent, and the golden light appears, falling on my shoulders like pollen. This part used to excite me and scare me, but this time-travel thing is old news for me at this point. This is my fifth trip to the future. I’m a pro at it now.

But damn, this better be my last trip.PART II

THE FUTURE

00:00

My first thought when I arrive in the future is: not this again.

It’s pitch-black and bitterly cold. I can’t see a damn thing, just like the first time I went to the future. But this time I’m prepared.

I reach into my backpack and pull out a hand-held camping lantern. No flashlight—electronics get shorted out by the accelerator. This one runs on gasoline and spreads a ring of light around me as soon as I light it.

The illumination reveals the first change to this timeline. I’m still inside the accelerator, which has always been gone in the other futures I visited. The door is open slightly, and it’s just as dark and empty outside it. And silent. Utterly, painfully silent.

I raise my lantern and step through the door into the basement of the Aether building downtown. Almost everything from the present is still here, including desks, chairs, and computers, each now coated in a thick layer of dust. I flick a light switch, try to turn one of the computers on, and check the phone line, but nothing works. A calendar on the wall is dated ten years after the present. I can’t be sure of the current year, but if they sent me to the right time, then this place has been abandoned for twenty years.

I check each desk and search every room, looking for clues or any signs of life, but there’s nothing here. Instead I find a dusty sweater hanging from the back of a chair, a very old, unopened bag of chips on a desk, and forgotten pictures of someone’s kids on one wall. As if the people who worked here expected to come back sometime for the rest of their things, but never did.

The elevator doesn’t work, so I take the stairs up. The floor above me is a parking garage, with one lone car in the middle of all the empty spaces. I take a moment to study it, circling it with my lantern held high. It’s a blue Nissan Sentra and the back left tire is flat. The license plate’s registration sticker has the same year on it as the calendar. But the most unusual thing is that it’s a normal car, not a driverless car or a flying car like I saw in the other futures I visited.

The other basement floors all lead to other parking levels, each one of them empty. I keep going up until I reach the lobby level.

A few hours ago, I walked through the lobby, and the place was filled with people in suits and security guards. Now it’s as empty as the other floors. And this time, all the tall windows have been shattered. Glass and other rubble are scattered everywhere. A warm breeze flows through the open space, sending dead leaves skittering across the marble floor.

But the worst part, the part that makes me stumble forward through the rubble to one of the broken windows with my mouth hanging open, is that the rest of downtown Los Angeles looks just as deserted.

I’ve never seen downtown empty. Even late at night there are cars driving by, people playing on their cell phones while they wait for a bus, and the smells of exhaust, fried food, and piss in the air. As the sun beats down from high in the bright-blue sky, making sweat bead on my forehead, I should hear the sound of air conditioners kicking on, of people talking to one another at outdoor cafés, of sirens blaring in the distance. But there are no sounds except for my rapid breathing, my heart pounding in my chest, and the dry wind pulling at my hair.

As I step over the broken glass and into the outside world, I almost believe I’m in a dream. Or that I’ve wandered onto the set of a horror movie and at any moment something is going to lunge at me from a dark corner. But this isn’t a dream, and it isn’t a movie. This is the future. A really messed-up future.

The stillness of the city is unnerving, as is the destruction all around me. The Aether building isn’t the only one with shattered windows and crumbling walls. Storefronts across from it sit barren, as if they’ve been ransacked. A broken sign hangs lows over the door of a restaurant, the letters bleached by the sun. The lone car I see has crashed into a streetlight, the fender dented around the pole, the driver’s door still hanging open.