Copyright
©
2019 - This is an original work by Zeb Carter and is protected under copyright by U.S. copyright law. It is only submitted at Literotica.Com and any submission to any other site has not been authorized by the Copyright Holder/Author.
Note:
This is the first in the John Abernathy series. It is a long one, 98,000 words long or 26 Lit pages long. Also, there is no sex in this story. I will be posting other John Abernathy stories in the future in the order they should be read.
Order of the John Abernathy Adventures...
1. Aftermath
2. Time and Again
3. The Kings Undoing
4. The Lives of John Abernathy
5. Rerun
6. Winds of Change
A f t e r m a t h
A John Abernathy Adventure
Prologue
On October 12, the end of the world began. At two-fifty-two in the afternoon, the rumbling started. The ground shook for miles around. The geysers spewed their scalding vapors miles into the air. At three-fifteen in the afternoon, the ash blasted forth, followed soon after by the molten rock. The column of liquid rock was twenty-five miles in diameter, reaching heights in excess of two miles. The earth was exploding before the world's eyes.
From San Francisco to Chicago, the earthquakes at Yellowstone shook the ground. The sight of the column of ash, rock, and magma foretold Billings, Rapid City, Cheyenne, Salt Lake City, Boise and Great Falls of the disaster. As the ash cloud drifted to the east, blotting out the sun, the temperatures began to drop, quickly. The ash started to filter down around Pittsburg, blanketing the east coast with gray, gritty snow that would never melt.
After six months, the eruption slowly subsided, covering the northern hemisphere in six feet of ash. To the east of the eruption, the magma was eighty feet thick at its thinnest and still glowing red, covering most of the states of Wyoming and Nebraska. Life was untenable within ten miles of the edge. The atmospheric debris covered the northern half of the globe, trapping the heat from the magma. Temperatures skyrocketed to almost ninety degrees Fahrenheit. The Northern ice packs started melting, as were glaciers all across the northern hemisphere.
Over the next couple of months, the temperatures began to drop and drop and drop. They dropped below freezing, changing the face of the earth forever. The arctic ice sheet reformed and started expanding southward. The earth was entering another ice age. Scientists were predicting temperatures as low as minus twenty degrees below zero Celsius at the Tropic of Cancer in the winter months, with equatorial temperatures well into freezing.
The smaller debris in the air stayed aloft for more than three years, three years in which the sun never truly penetrated to the earth's surface, three years of hardship for the people of the world. Most governments of the world collapsed. The United States, in effect, no longer existed. The people who survived within the borders of the United States now fought amongst themselves for life's necessities.
The governments of China, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, all of South America, parts of India and Indonesia survived. Refugees flocked to equatorial regions to escape the ice as it traveled farther south than ever before in recorded history.
The southern Polar Regions were not as bad as the north. The ash that stayed aloft tended to stay to the north, so the southern hemisphere was sunny and warm.
The Peoples Liberation Army first landed in California, one year after the eruption to assist the brave people of the United States, restore order and peace to their country. They swept inland from L.A., they almost took over the southern tier of states. Texas was the first state to put up a fight and beat back their advance. The Chinese moved farther north and bypassed Texas until Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia repulsed them. When they tried to go north, Tennessee stopped them in their tracks.
Daily for two years, there were battles going on all along their lines from the Pacific to the Mississippi River. On one side they had the fridge cold of the ice pack creeping closer and closer and on the other those American's that had banded together with units of the regular Army and National Guard and other branches of what was left of the US Military.
Chapter 1
A lone figure sat at a desk in a stark office. That figure, who called himself Mike Sullivan, had experienced a traumatic emotional loss and was pondering what he had done. He had just spent the last nine years of his life with two of the most beautiful and intelligent woman he knew. After finishing medical school and their residency together, he left them, left them so they could lead somewhat normal lives. One of them he had fallen in love with and he knew he had broken her heart when he just disappeared, but she was strong, she would survive and thrive. The other he would be in love with, in the future, but he knew her heart was broken also.
Mike, as it happened, was one of a few people in the world who knew what was going to happen in his future. He knew what his future self, knew, he knew the instant it happened. He knew the instant his future self, learned of something new. When it first happened, he thought he was going crazy as his mind was flooded with that knowledge. So stunned, in fact, he withdrew into himself for a period, two weeks. His parents were about to have him committed when he snapped out of his self-imposed withdrawal.
He was fourteen when it happened. He went on to finish high school, aced his SAT's which, gave him his choice of universities to attend. Full scholarship, no it was not a big ten school, nor an Ivy League school. It was a local university, with a medical program. A place where he knew he would need to be in the future. He set up shell companies and started to invent things, throughout his four years of college.
His companies made a tidy sum of money. Some of the things they could not release to the public, as there was no need or infrastructure in place for such things yet. In addition, there would not be for at least ten years, but his company developed them anyway to the consternation of the board of directors. However, his company was not public so the board did not really matter. What mattered was they made money and Mike was free to pursue his future.
After graduating from college, Mike spent the next four years searching for others like him. Others who knew their future, they did not know any future but their own. It was hard to accomplish this without people thinking Mike crazy. Mike set up a research company, which scoured the country for anomalies that signaled people like him. Everyone who started inventing things, which only occurred in the future, they looked at closely.
After six months, they found four others in the U.S. None of them had been as far along as Mike in developing their own companies and inventions. When offered a partnership in his company they jumped at the chance. The research firm kept looking and the five of them put their heads together to come up with new things to sell. In all the research firm found ten people scattered around the world.
As Mike sat pensively looking out the window, he thought back to nineteen-seventy-two, February to be exact. Jenny and Mike had been dating steadily for several months when he popped the question. He told her everything about what was to come in their lives. She was stunned to silence. She left him for a while, not answering his calls nor seeing him when he went to her home. Four weeks later, she showed up at his place. Mike let her in and she walked right to the couch and sat. He joined her and waited.
"I'm not sure," Jenny started, "I can't condone what you are doing or going to do, but I do love you and want to marry you."
"So your answer is yes?" Mike asked as if he did not know.
"Yes, but you already knew that. What I want to know is what, where, when, and how I am going to have to be alone. I want to know every detail of your future life and mine. I know, I know you don't know mine but you do know our future together."
"You're right."
Mike then told her everything. It took him four days to tell her. There were times she was crying and other times she was laughing so hard she was crying. Most of the time she could not believe her ears, but she listened to every word Mike spoke.
Those four days were very stressful for both of them. When Mike told her that he needed to join the Air Force for the next four years she laughed the hardest. He told her they had to get married and he had to join the Air Force. She just nodded her head and asked where and when they were getting married. They flew to Nevada the next day to be married and honeymooned in Hawaii.
The four years in the Air Force were an experience that Mike would never forget. It helped him with some things that he would have to do in the future, which he could not learn any other way. Once his enlistment was up in nineteen-seventy-six he was back at his corporation mapping out things they had to invent. For the next twelve years, he was very busy putting things in place for the future.
There was the invention of computer chips and cell phones, just to mention a few. They still pumped out little things that made them more money than you would ever know. Most of the money, funneled back into research, for things they were going to need in the future and which no one had invented yet. The remaining money, invested in gold went into vaults beneath their office building, for use in the future.
In nineteen-eighty-eight, it was time for Mike to enroll in Med School and make sure Michelle and subsequently Susan became doctors. Those nine years will remain the best and worst time in his life. During this time, Jenny held the reins of the company. During this time, Mike communicated with Jenny about the future items his future self, knew about. The other four then put their heads together and came up with uses for the items in question. She was not happy about where Mike was or what he was doing, but she loved him with all her heart and believed in him.
So, as Mike sat alone in his office, busier than he had ever been in his life, now or in the future, he contemplated the future of two lovely women. He had eighteen years to prepare for what was to come. It was time to start making plans, designing equipment that they would need. Eighteen years, would it be enough time?
Jenny and Mike moved back to Chicago in two-thousand, the year before the turn of the century, Michelle was now their family doctor. For Mike, it was good seeing her again, even though she had not a clue who he was. To her, he was a patient named John Abernathy. She, Jenny and John hit it off. They became not only patient and doctor but also friends, not that they were over at each other's homes but they did attend a lot of the same functions and dinners for various charities and such.
John avoided Susan during all this time. She did work at the same clinic as Michelle but John went out of his way to avoid her. Something that John really did not have control over was what Michelle decided to do with her career. He knew it was going to happen. Yet, there was no stopping her. Sometime in early May of two-thousand-five Jenny and John received a letter from Michelle.
She had chosen to limit her practice to pediatrics exclusively. It meant that they had to switch doctors. There were at least ten doctors at the clinic to choose from, but as fate would have it, Susan was the only one taking new patients. So, John's medical school love was now his doctor, only she didn't know who he really was.
The first time he went in to see her, his heart skipped a beat, he was short of breath and he could not focus his eyes. He was quite sure he was still in love with her. Yet he could not say a word to her about their past, at least not yet, not for another six years. It would be extremely hard not to let on what his feelings were for her, extremely hard. Jenny asked him if he would be okay with Susan being their doctor. John told her it would be just fine.
