Time Travel #2

The fresh air of the mountains was so invigorating for the short time I experienced it. I thought back on everything that had happened to me and still I wondered, because everything felt so artificial. What happened to TJ? Mom? Dad? And where the hell was Nicole? Nicole. I still guess whether or not she ended up coming home that night. Had I gone with her, I probably would not be sitting above a mountain travelling to obscure periods of time, in a different country every moment. Just when I was about to go through the whole "Why me?" process for the tenth time, my nerves got the shock again. But this time, the shock didn't stop. It went on for over 40 seconds. I felt like I was getting electrocuted. For some reason a mountain lion suddenly appeared next to me on the mountain top, and it was roaring at me. It continued to roar while I sat there feeling so dazed and confused. The lion's roar was getting louder and louder, and my sweat started to intensely drip. I closed my eyes and suddenly felt a weird sensation in my head. THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. The blood was rushing through my body, and the pounding continued. I jumped up. A huge feeling of fresh air took over myself, and I realized that I was no longer on a mountain. "THELONIOUS! THELONIOUS! I THINK HE'S AWAKE!" I forced my eyes open, and looked around. A musty hospital room. Seriously? Was all of this really a dream? Suddenly, that same yelling voice was directed towards me once again: "How are you? Are you feeling alright? It seems like everything went just as planned. For a minute there I started to panic, but everything seems back to normal now." Right when I was about to ask what the hell was going on, another man suddenly walked in. He had a long white robe on like something a doctor would wear, but his face was incredibly distorted. It looked like he put his face in a blender. "Samson, is he fully conscious of everything happening right now?" "He hasn't responded to me at all yet, but he's breathing and looking around. I think we'll be able to ship him out to Chicago tonight." Finally, I stammered. "Where am I and who are you? And what do I have to go to Chicago for? Send me back to Britain!" The two men glanced at each other and began to laugh in a somewhat ridiculous fashion. "Son, you have no idea what's happening do you? Britain no longer exists. Nothing exists, in a sense." I gave him a puzzling look and didn't say anything. This had to be a really weird joke. Or I was on a hallucinogenic of some sort. "Thelonious, look, all of the world was destroyed on January 1, 2000. The story behind us getting to where we are now and what we are attempting to achieve may take a while to explain." "EXPLAIN IT THEN! TELL ME WHAT HAS HAPPENED AND HOW I GET BACK TO WHERE I STARTED." Samson chuckled for a second. "Funny thing is, you CAN go back. But we need your help first." What was to come was something that I could never prepare myself for...

-N.G.