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This was the moment Paulette had been waiting for all her life — the moment she proved to all her friends and family that it was possible to travel in time. Greg and Susan helped her into the pod, buckled her in, and shut the clear door. The clear door was there so she could witness everything going on around her as she traversed space and time.
Once the door was closed, she turned her head and entered the year 2280 into the computer. She had decided to go two hundred fifty years into the future to see how humanity had progressed technologically and just all the changes, in general.
She then programed in the location. She thought it would probably be safest to land in a field surrounded by trees at a higher elevation so no one could find her time machine.
The last thing she needed to do was to hit the enter key and hold her breath — not literally, of course — as she traveled through time. She looked out the clear pod door and saw that Greg and Susan were giving her the thumbs up. She took a deep breath and hit the enter key.
The engines fired up, and she saw the wormhole appear before her. Using the flight stick, she eased the time pod into the wormhole.
At first, it seemed as if nothing was happening, but then she felt a huge pressure on her and everything began to spin, shake, and vibrate. She thought it would tear her apart. She tried looking out the door, but all she could see were vibrant colors streaming by as she traveled through the wormhole she had created.
After what seemed like forever but was only a few minutes, the ride came to a jarring halt. At some point, the ride had surpassed the g-forces she thought she’d endure, and it caused her to black out.
Her eyes blinked open, then closed, then opened again as she tried to regain consciousness and determine her whereabouts. I sure hope I landed in the right time and place, she thought as she tried to stay awake. It took a few more minutes to regain full control of her thoughts and body. When she did, she unbuckled the seatbelt and tried to stand. Successful at standing, she unlatched the door, swung it open, took a step, and stumbled out onto the grass.
“Wow, I didn’t expect all those g-forces. I’m glad I put the time pod on autopilot, but I think next time I should have it hover in the sky long enough for me to regain consciousness. It seems I got lucky this time. At least I’m in a field with trees like I planned, so I should be able to step through and see the futuristic Seattle,” she said out loud.
She couldn’t wait to see the flying cars for herself and investigate other futuristic technology.
As she regained her balance, she walked north to find a clear view of the city. As she was walking, though, she realized that she could only hear the sounds of birds and animals. She should have been able to hear all the noise and commotion of the city just below her and planes overhead, or even spacecraft taking off. She paused for a moment and wondered if she had gone somewhere else entirely. Naw, she thought, it’s just me. The time travel must have messed with my hearing a little, and that’s why I can’t hear anything, or maybe the technology is so advanced that they can mask the sound.
She continued her journey and found another clearing. She headed toward it quickly with intense anticipation. As she jogged out of the clearing, she barely caught herself from falling off a cliff and into the ocean. Looking out across the expanse of water that shouldn’t be there, she saw degraded and ruined skyscrapers covered with vines and moss and, who knew what else, growing on them and sticking out of the ocean.
Shocked and frightened by what she saw, she quickly ran back to the time pod, wanting to get out of there as quickly as possible. Arriving back at the time pod, she climbed in, closed the door, buckled herself in, typed the year 2030 in the computer, set her destination, and hit the enter key. Silence ensued. Then tons of alarms and red lights went off, and she sat there in total shock. Her thoughts were racing. This can’t be. I know I programmed everything correctly, and I know, for a fact, my plan to get back to the present was right. So, what the hell just happened? Why am I still here? This is crazy!
Panic set in. She was hyperventilating and had to shake herself out of it and take deep breaths. She continued to rationalize out loud. “So, maybe, the problem has to do with time dilation, or time refraction; or maybe the mouth of the wormhole threw me into hell.”
She decided to see if the problem had something to do with time refraction, or time hallucination. She got back out of the time pod and headed back the way she had come. As she got close to the clearing, she slowed down, then went out to take another look.
What she saw hadn’t changed. She collapsed onto the ground and sobbed uncontrollably, snot running down her nose and all over everything. Her eyes soon became swollen and her face red from all her crying.
The last time she had cried that hard was right after Hurricane Jackson, during her eighth-grade year in school, when she lost her father and everything she ever owned. She couldn’t bear to think that she had worked so hard to accomplish her dream of traveling through time, only to find that there was no future to go to.
Several hours later, she gathered herself together enough to head back to the time pod. She had to think about shelter from the night and whatever was hiding out there. She was thankful that she had brought her go-bag, sleeping bag, pistol, rifle, and a week’s worth of water and food. Although it gave her some comfort knowing she had the tools to survive, to some extent, it still didn’t give her much hope in making it out of the hell she found herself in. She decided, despite how uncomfortable it would be, it would be safer to sleep in the chair in the pod for the night. She figured when she woke up, she’d do a little exploring of her surroundings and see if she could determine what might have caused the destruction she saw. Until then, she’d grab something to eat and then get some sleep. She settled into the uncomfortable seat after eating dinner, and before she knew it, she was out like a light.
She spent the night in a restless sleep, with nightmares plaguing her every moment. It seemed as if she’d never wake up. Soon the sun rose and placed a spotlight of sun rays right through the clear door, practically blinding her while she slept. She woke with a start and immediately covered her eyes and cursed about the direction the pod had put itself in. Errg, what a nightmare, and that sun is too bright. Wish I had brought my sunglasses.
She spent the next few minutes getting her bearings when she realized that she was still in the nightmare, except it wasn’t a dream. It was real. She didn’t know what to do, where to go, or if she’d even find anyone still alive; but she had to do something. She needed to try and find out what happened to this place. Was it only Seattle, the United States, or the entire world? All those thoughts and questions were large ones to tackle if she was the only living human being there. She got up, picked up her go-bag and some granola bars, and went outside to sit and eat, while she contemplated her next move.
As she was eating, she decided she’d start by exploring the nearby area where she landed. Maybe she could find some clues to what might have happened. She had all kinds of theories, some of them based on all the doomsday predictions about climate change. But she needed to find out the answers for herself. That’s just who she was and part of the reason she was so smart. She cleaned up her breakfast mess, strapped on her go-bag, and proceeded to the ledge where she had been the night before, to get another look at what was once the great city of Seattle.
She went to the same spot and scanned the horizon, looking for anything that could help her. If she could find a boat or something, maybe she could get a closer look at the remaining buildings that were above water. Unfortunately, she saw nothing useful nearby, so she skirted the edge of the cliff, working her way around to check out the different areas.
As she walked, she became more aware of the destruction. Some skyscrapers were leaning over against other buildings, and many of them had crumbled. Anything from an earthquake to a tsunami could have caused such damage. She filed her observations away in her head for later retrieval and kept walking.
She noticed the fresh air and scent of the pine trees, and even the grass. She hadn’t smelled these scents in a long time. In her present, she only smelled gas, exhaust, and other human-made smells. Rarely, did she ever have time to go hiking or camping anymore, so she didn’t get away from the city to enjoy the fresh air and other smells found out in the wilderness. Now, here she was in the future, hiking around in an apocalyptic world, and all she could think about were the smells she missed so much from her childhood. She chuckled under her breath at the thought of finding something wonderful in a place so horrible.
Paulette continued her survey of the area, keeping track of things she saw, like the deer, birds, and other critters, and land structures and other formations. She looked out to the distant horizon trying to see some sign of what had happened, but nothing was registering. Before she knew it, the sun was getting low in the sky, so she turned back and headed to the time pod to get dinner, ponder what she observed, and get some rest.
She slogged up the hill to the time pod, deep in thought. She had been so engrossed in her thoughts she almost tripped and fell into the pod. She laughed at herself for being so focused that she didn’t pay attention to her surroundings.
A few minutes later, she had a small fire going from some small branches she had collected on the way back. The fire gave her some much-needed warmth and allowed her to have her first hot meal. It wasn’t the same as a nice home-cooked meal, but the camping meals worked well, in a pinch, and allowed extra room to pack more food. She cracked a smile at the thought of her ransacking the local sports store to buy all the camping food before her trip to the future. At least I got something right.
She enjoyed the spaghetti and meatball dinner and a hot cup of cider she heated over the fire. She took her time eating dinner and afterward sat back to enjoy more cider and the warmth of the fire. She stared into the flames and scrounged around in her memory to recall what she had seen and heard that day.
Suddenly, she sat straight up when she realized that there were a few things she didn’t see that hadn’t registered with her earlier. The Northwest was known for its beautiful, dormant volcanoes. Some of them were so tall they could be seen in the Seattle skyline, or just from the highways when driving around. The mountains there were tall enough, and she should have been able to spot at least one or two.
When she was looking to the north of the city, she should have seen Mount Baker in the distance, but as she recalled what she had seen earlier, she realized she hadn’t seen it. She scurried around in her memory to recall what she had seen to the south. To her surprise, she couldn’t remember seeing Mount Rainer or Mount Saint Helens. She paused in her thought process for a second to absorb this new information.
“What could have happened to those tall wonders,” she said out loud. Then it hit her that maybe the huge earthquake everyone feared would happen in the future had happened but with a lot more impact than anyone could have imagined.
Something cataclysmic must have happened for the tallest mountains in the Cascade Mountain Range not to be visible. As she began to let it all sink in, she suddenly recalled that the entire Cascade Mountain Range seemed smaller. The only thing she could think of that could do what she had seen was a total shift in the tectonic plates. There must have been something huge that caused the Pacific Plate and the Juan de Fuca Plate to crash into and under the North American Plate, producing an apocalyptic earthquake that caused the West Coast to sink into the ocean.
Under normal circumstances, the Pacific Plate going under the North American Plate might have caused the mountains to grow a few centimeters a year, but maybe, just maybe, that earthquake everyone had feared was what caused this. Of course, it was all Paulette’s conjecture at this point. She couldn’t prove one way or the other what happened.
Sighing, she decided that her brain hurt from all the thinking and that she was tired and exhausted from it and hiking all day. She doused the fire with some water and scraped dirt over the fire with her boot. Once the fire was out, she went to the time pod and snuggled in for another restless and uncomfortable night of sleep. In some ways, she hoped that this was all a dream and that she’d wake up in her comfortable bed in her high-rise apartment in the morning. She quickly fell asleep, not knowing what tomorrow would bring.
