3. The Future Comes When You Least Expect it

The old man uses a dull knife to slice a runty green tomato on a jagged rock. “You see,” the man says, “them saviours, they didn’t set out to be saviours. They was just two men doin’ a job.”

“A job that involved a pickle?” the lad asks, hopeful he can move his rambling granddad along to an actual point.

The old man looks up from the tomato mush and eyes the lad. Actually, only one of his eyes functions, the other being milky white, so he could more properly be said to look up from the remains of the tomato and eye the lad. “All in good time,” he advises. “All in good time. Gotta start us a tale with their arrival in our benighted land. Now, grab a plate from the shopping cart – we got us some lunch t’eat.”