The Future People

hadn't expected that to happen.

  He stood up, trying to get his bearings.

  His feet felt unusually heavy.

  The yawning chasm in front of Mr. Dunkelson's desk had grown wider.

  Kenneth saw Savannah laying on the floor, curled into a ball.

  All thoughts of the names she'd called him during gym class vanished from his head.

  Trying not to touch anything, Kenneth staggered along slowly, awkwardly in front of the row of desks, struggling to maintain his balance, grunting mightily as he fought to walk across the room, something he had done countless times before, no more than ten, maybe twelve steps at most, but had never given much thought to until now.

  What the hell's happening?

  He passed the chasm.

  He thought he heard a voice, though whatever sound registered in his ears had been so faint that he couldn't make out what had been said.

  Had Mr. Dunkelson said something?

  No, he remained sleeping at his desk, even as the whirring noise frantically increased in pitch.

  Kenneth reached Savannah.

  An angry purple bruise lay on her arm.

  Kenneth looked down and saw that similar blotches had developed on his knees.

  He hadn't noticed the pain until he looked down.

  The throbbing suddenly made itself known.

  Pain pulsated in his knees, nearly causing him to collapse.

  He wondered if this was how magnets felt when they were forced towards together.

  If so, he regretted all the time he'd spent in the classroom pushing metal objects with the same magnetic charge together.

  Savannah, still curled in a fetal position, seemed not to notice him. Yet when Kenneth's fingers touched the bruise on her arm, he didn't feel the same force repelling him away.

  Amidst the increasing chaos of the classroom, Kenneth had time to consider that he must not be repelled from Savannah because they must have opposite magnetic charges.

  Why that should matter now when it never mattered before, he didn't know.

  The black space widened until Kenneth saw it for what it was-a doorway.

  He had seen such things on television before, though he hadn't ever expected a man to walk through.

  Yet a man did walk through.

  The man wore a spacesuit so cumbersome that he had to lift one foot up to the height of his shin before he planted it back down. The spacesuit, made completely out of metal, bore markings Kenneth didn't recognize.

  By now, the whirring sound had increased so much that the desks were vibrating. Kenneth felt the sensations in his feet. Even so, each step Spacesuit took rang loud above the din. Every plodding footstep made produced a crash which left an indentation upon the tile floor. Debris sprang up in the air, slowed, then stopped before they could touch the ground. As a result, by the time the man reached Kenneth, he'd left a trail behind in midair to mark his passage.

  Kenneth tried to speak.

  He heard the words inside his head, yet all the noise around him drowned out all sound.

  Spacesuit touched Kenneth on the shoulder with one hand.

  Kenneth felt something puncture his skin.

  Without warning, he felt his consciousness drifting away from him.

  He struggled to stay awake even while his head drooped.

  He had time enough to register Spacesuit touching Savannah on the back.

  He wanted to shout a protest.

  Instead, he crumpled to the ground.

  FIVE

  THE AFTERNOON HAD become unseasonably hot.

  Carol Wren had sweat her way through the afternoon gym classes, thankful at least that she didn't have to be reminded of Kenneth Yardrow for the rest of the day.

  As she changed out of her sweaty, sticky workout clothes in the faculty restroom, she felt a twinge in her knee.

  She held her shirt above her head, stopping to consider what that might mean. Other than her morning run, she hadn't exerted herself too strenuously. Her day had consisted of walking around to make sure each student was able to play badminton or volleyball without injuring themselves.

  Now, of all times, when she finally had a moment to herself, her knee had twinged.

  That meant something, but she did not know what.

  She heard from a distance a sound she wouldn't have expected to hear in a middle school.

  A great roaring noise erupted from somewhere.

  She had time enough to think that someone had torn a hole in the universe, except that idea surely had to be the product of a feverished, overworked mind that had seen too many science fiction movies.

  She slid her t-shirt over her torso and bolted out of the restroom, heedless of the duffel bag she left beside the toilet.

  Behind the roaring, she heard a crunching noise.

  It sounded as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to a classroom floor.

  She brushed shoulders with Iris Oulette, the eighth-grade science teacher, hardly noticing the other woman's astonished expression, nor her insistent pleas to do something for God's sake.

  Carol herself didn't know what to do other than push open the door of Leonard Dunkelson's homeroom class.

  She was suddenly in the presence of a figure in a heavy metallic suit walking forward towards a gaping, black nothingness.

  The figure carried two children under each arm.

  Upon seeing both children Carol's knee gave such a painful complaint that she wondered if the injury had finally come back with all its unrelenting ferocity.

  She struggled to step forward.

  Taking the first step wasn't as easy as she expected. She moved as though mired in molasses while reaching her hand to the girl dangling like a rag doll underneath a powerful silver arm.

  If he even noticed Carol at all, the silver-clad phantom paid her no mind. Each step he took left a four-inch-deep indentation in the floor, pulverizing blue and white patterned tiles.

  He stepped into the black space.

  Harold Dunkelson slumped over sideways, crashing to the ground.

  The figure passed through the portal just the black space closed in upon itself.

  Carol toppled forward just as she had been about to reach it.

  Her knee had given out on her.

  At that moment, her brain spinning and her stomach churning up bile, she didn't feel that pain that would haunt her for weeks to come.

  She didn't even feel her head strike the floor, or see the blood that was leaking out from somewhere.

  She blinked her eyes once, twice, three times.

  She knew enough to say she was awake and alive, but more than that, she could not have explained anything that had just happened.

  DAY ONE

  ONE

  KENNETH AWOKE WITH a metallic taste in his mouth.

  Upon opening his eyes, he saw five bright lights above him.

  He squinted his eyes shut, putting an arm over them.

  He groaned.

  Someone had set him on a hard-packed bed similar in feel to stone that Kenneth felt sore all over. His mind whirled about, trying to recall what had happened to him.

  He felt as though he'd been thrown around in so many ways that he had lost all sense of direction.

  The number seventy-four stuck in his mind, though at first he couldn't remember why this should be significant.

  Then he recalled that this had been his bus number.

  My bus hadn't arrived, and...

  Kenneth sat up.

  Doing so set off alarms of pain throughout his body. He blinked open his eyes, trying to acclimate himself to the light. Bright red stars danced along his vision.

  Kenneth saw that he still wore his school clothes, which had been a pair of jean shorts and a t-shirt with a superhero symbol on it. Two twin bruises decorated his knees. He remembered banging into the desk, though some part of him wanted to believe that all of it had been a dream. He did remember falling asleep in study hall, then being woken up by a teacher.

 
Through parched lips, he called out in a hoarse whisper, "Savannah."

  Someone must have heard him, for directly behind him a door opened.

  He didn't hear the door open. He saw it in the reflection from the shimmering metal walls all around him.

  A tall adult figure entered the room.

  Kenneth turned around to look.

  The man wore a toga after the style Kenneth had read in the history books about ancient Rome. The toga was gray with green trim at the top. The man's left shoulder lay exposed, though his right shoulder did not. He had a long, shiny mane of black hair that ran down his back to his hip. Kenneth saw that the man had bushy eyebrows.

  The thirteen-year-old boy might have laughed if he didn't hurt as much as he did.

  "Good morning, significant citizen," the man said. "I trust you are well?"

  The words came to Kenneth as though they traveled a long way to reach him. He put a hand to his forehead, already despising the headache that he felt growing there.

  "What?" was all Kenneth could utter. The back of his eyes felt like they were being punctured by shards of glass and he blinked his eyes in rapid succession, trying to will away the pain.

  "I am your introductory guide to the 73rd century. My designation is Unquill Hester. Please be at ease. You were chosen out of an infinite number of lives in the time stream because you are special." The man, larger than any man Kenneth could remember seeing, looked delighted. He couldn't stop grinning.

  A light danced in the man's eyes. He looked to Kenneth like a scientist who'd just discovered a particularly fascinating insect in its natural habitat.

  "Say what?" Kenneth violently rubbed at his face with both hands.

  The man bowed before Kenneth. His hair flopped over the front of his head in a way that Kenneth could not help but find comical.

  "Ahh, yes, do forgive me. It always slips my mind that time transport subjects often experience a certain amount of-shall we say, disorientation-upon entering