Future Shock Read Online Free Page A

simulation?” Adam asks.
    Dr. Walters looks to Lynne, then clears his throat. “No, not exactly.”
    “Wait, are you saying…” My voice trails off. The words are too big, too impossible to speak out loud. “That we…The future…”
    “Yes,” Lynne says. “You will all be traveling to the future.”
    I sit back in my chair with a thump as a hush falls over the room. No, I don’t believe it. This has to be a test, to see how we react to something so completely unreal. Or maybe they mean it all as a metaphor. Envisioning ourselves in the future, something like that. Any second now, they’ll explain and it will all make sense—’cause they can’t seriously mean what I think they mean.
    Adam raises his hand. “How does this accelerator work?”
    Dr. Walters smiles, clearly pleased to have a star student. “The accelerator increases the atoms inside it to nearly the speed of light, causing time around them to slow down and—”
    “The details are not important,” Lynne interrupts. “And before we go to questions, I want to make it clear that each of you can back out now, but this will be your last chance. Please remember that all of the information you have seen today is confidential, and that if you leave, you will be in breach of your contract.”
    In other words, if we back out now we won’t get the money and assistance that Aether Corp is offering us. No one speaks, but no one gets up to leave either. Chairs creak as the others trade uneasy looks. Adam’s dark brows are pulled together behind his glasses. The blue-haired girl bites her black fingernails. Chris rubs his chin, his eyes narrowed, while Trent leans forward, mouth open. I don’t know what any of them are thinking, but no matter how impossible this sounds or how risky this may be, it’s the only chance I have for a future. There’s no way I’m walking out that door.
    Lynn’s smile grows wider. “Very good. I’m pleased you’ve all decided to stay.”
    Adam raises his hand again. I have to give it to the guy. He is definitely persistent.
    Lynne purses her lips. “Mr. O’Neill, you have a question?”
    “How far into the future are we going?”
    “We believe you will arrive ten years from now,” Dr. Walters says.
    “Ten years?” I blurt out. They’re serious about this. They’re actually sending us into the future. I think I might throw up. I just…I can’t even…
    “That’s correct,” Lynne says. “Once there, we want you to take notes on the technology you find and bring back whatever you can. We also want your general impressions of the future, including news about the world, in particular related to—”
    “Hold up,” Chris says. “Can we go back to the part where we’re going into the future ? Is this shit for real?”
    “Yeah, this must be some kind of joke, right?” Trent asks.
    “I promise you, this is very real,” Lynne says. “In a few hours you will be in the future. Amazing, isn’t it?”
    Lynne and the scientists smile like they expect applause. Instead, the five of us sit in stunned silence. I feel like someone hit me with a truck and left me lying in the road, bleeding all over the asphalt.
    “What about the grandfather paradox?” Adam asks.
    The what? I want to know if the accelerator is safe and what kind of risks we’ll face in the future and what exactly they want us to do there—and he’s asking questions about grandfathers ?
    “Ah yes.” Dr. Walters nods at the question. “For those of you who don’t know, the grandfather paradox states that traveling to the past is impossible because any changes made would change the future. The famous example is that if you visited the past and killed your grandfather as a child, you would no longer exist, thus causing a paradox. But you won’t need to worry about any of that. Since we will be opening the temporal aperture on our end in the present, the grandfather paradox does not apply. You simply have to make sure you return to the location