The Walk

The day seemed much longer than it really had been. He could see the heat vapors rising slowly from the baked asphalt like a spirit slowly leaving a body.

He had managed to walk about ten miles in the last three hours. He was thankful the sun was at his back and not in his eyes.

He was trying to recall what had actually happened the night before. He knew he had driven West into New Mexico but had somehow awakened many miles West of where he last remembered.

He was heading East now. Mostly in search of his car because when he woke up this morning in only his underwear, he found his keys but no car. He found his shorts but no shirt. He found his shoes but no laces.

Bizarre couldn’t begin to describe his situation. Why was he on this desert highway? Why did he wake up in the desert? When did he fall asleep? Where was his car?

He made the decision to head east based on the fact that he was closer to the western mountains than he had remembered.

The highway looked faintly familiar although the lack of traffic over the last few hours was unnerving. Where was he? Where was he, really?

Up ahead, there was a sign post. The sign had various traffic signals that he was not familiar with.

The sun beat down on his back and shoulders mercilessly. There was no breeze to cool his skin yet he wasn’t that tired or thirsty.

He walked on.

Up ahead he could see what looked like a metropolitan area. He could make out a few buildings to the south of the highway. Although he was still several miles away, he began to pick up his pace.

He had no watch or phone or any way to tell time, but figured it to be around noon. He figured he could make it to the city in the distance by four or so.

He was on flat ground as far as he see. Way in the distance he could make out the curvature of the earth’s horizon.

He walked on.

After another two hours he came upon a car parked on the left side of the road. He approached it cautiously. The car was looked old and rusty and was half buried in the sand. It looked as if it had been there for decades.

He noticed that the car was the same make and model as the car he had driven the night before except in terrible condition. He padded towards the driver’s door. He slowly opened it. The deterioration was bad. The seats were torn, shredded. The dash was severely cracked, the windshield was shattered but intact and the back seat held a single suitcase that was in disrepair.

Although the suitcase was in poor condition, he could make out three initials engraved on a small brass plate. “JTM”. It was his suitcase, his initials. He muttered to himself, “John Tyler Martin.”

His pulse raced, his breath became shallow and his knees turned to jelly. His mind raced trying to piece together the previous evening.

In a flash it came back to him. He remembered why he was there. He remembered who he really was. He instinctively knew what had happened.

He was an astrologer. He was also a scientist who believed in time travel. He felt there was a way, theoretically, to either reverse time or advance it.

In front of his old car was a box he had set out on that fateful night. He brought the box on a trailer. The box was four feet wide by eight feet long and four feet high.

Inside the box was a large magnet. Attached to the magnet was a large generator. On the night in question it was predicted that dark there would be a huge meteor shower. He believed that by attaching enough magnetism he could alter the course of the meteor shower. By doing so, he could have meteors strike close enough to his contraption that he could study them closer.

Instead, what he did was create a large electromagnetic pulse which created a meteor storm and shut down all electronics in the area. The fallout created a sand storm which aged everything as well as destroying buildings, transit systems and any automobiles.

He still didn’t understand how he ended up in the desert some fifteen to eighteen miles west.

As he pondered his situation, he peered west and just below the mountains on the straight, heated highway, he saw a large SUV type conveyance headed towards him. He could see a bright yellow light flashing on top of it.

Maybe the people in the large SUV could provide answers. He pondered who they could be. Maybe they had saved him the night before.

Who were they? Where were his shoestrings? What did they want?

As the SUV slowed to a stop, he walked to meet them and to see into the future.