John Roberts woke to the smell of stale air and a lit cigarette wafting through his nostrils. The sunlight filtered through the curtains and, as his luck would have it, fell upon his face like a thousand stabbing knives.

"Christ, John..." came a raspy voice, "It's past noon and you smell like a brewery."

John winced at the abomination that was daylight, and slowly sat up in the bed.

The room twisted in ways that would make a physicist squeal with glee, but that didn't seem to do anything for him at this particular moment. The physicists would have to wait before learning of his mind bending discovery, if ever.

"There's some aspirin on the table, get your own water. We'll consider that motivation for getting your ass out of bed."

With his head pounding, John slowly sat up to see the last person on earth that he wanted to see at this moment. His luck is apparently working for a combo today.

"Leah, what the hell are -"

"I saved your ass last night, John. If it wasn't for me, you'd be dead... shit, we'd all be dead if I hadn't stopped you. What the hell were you thinking?"

He would have stopped to think about last night, if it weren't for the freight train sliding across the chalkboard of his mind. All he could remember, vaguely, was some apparatus he was working on at the lab, and something about a beryl crystal catalyst.

"You don't remember, do you?" Leah continued, tapping her foot.

John thought harder, and with herculean mental prowess turned up absolutely nothing but a sharp pain in his head, and now apparently in his ass as well.

"What are you talking about, Leah?"

Leah threw her hands up in disgust. "Sometimes your ignorance amazes me even despite your unparalleled genius."

She moved across the hard wood floor in the way that water flows through a stream, reaching the curtains and, despite the look of horror that fell upon John's face, threw them wide open.

"This, damn it!" clearly she was angry, "You damned near destroyed Manhattan last night! Don't tell me you don't remember!?"

In fact, John could remember nothing of the prior night, except his fondness for his friends, Johnny Walker and Captain Morgan. Looking out of the window, the memories did not come rushing back to him, but the scene that lay before him was equally jarring.

What lay before him was a smoldering wasteland where New York City once had been, and while there were buildings that were untouched on the horizon, the epicenter of the destruction was clearly visible.

"Holy shit, Leah... what happened?"


"I don't know, why don't you tell me? The last anyone had seen you, you had wandered off mumbling something about how you figured out the required catalyst for the gravitational flux generator. John," Leah looked at him worried, "I'm not a scientist, so I have no idea what the hell you are working on. What I, and now the United States government, want to know now is what exactly it was you were doing."

John blinked, which under other circumstances wouldn't have hurt.

"... United States Government?" John was now completely confused.

'Yeah, you know.. the folks who were funding that little device you were building?"

Something was terribly wrong, and John knew it. The United States hadn't existed in over 17 years, and Leah of all people would have known that the group responsible for the Asynchronous Time Generator was the Center for Chrono-development, a department of the New United Americas.

"Leah... are you feeling alright?"

"I'm feeling fine, aside from a few cuts and scrapes. It's you I'm worried about. What the hell happened?"

With a clarity usually reserved for hacking, it all came flooding back. Grabbing his clothes, he ran for the door, only to open it and be greeted by his old friend, an AK-47 butt against his head.

This wasn't his day... literally.


When John wake on the second day, his pants were around his ankles and today all he could smell wake petrolium jelly.

It was a smell and sensation John had recognized.
The sickly sweet smell of copper and cinnamon. He bolted upright and looked around at his surroundings, quickly assessing his current situation.
He then noticed the toaster. He enjoyed watching the silver shine that consumed most of the face of it. DING!! The waffles poped up and he ate them.
after the second waffle he started to feel sick and had to sit down they burried him the next day