While shopping at the frozen foods section of the local grocery store, our heroine Sheila is transported 300 years into the future to face some bleak truths.  You can start her story here.

I slowly recovered consciousness lying on a futon in a shaded tatami room. The soft cotton "mattress" on the sweet rice straw smelled wonderful. For a few moments I drowsily let myself play with the idea that I was really back in the Japan of my memory in 1988, when I had lived there for a couple of years, and banished from my mind everything that I had witnessed or heard during the last several weeks. It felt good to feel that I was back in a safer time, and cozily sleeping in a warm cocoon.

I really needed a time-out, anyhow. This was all getting too bizarre too quickly. I had just come to terms with the idea of being 300 years in the future and now people in Japan are telling me that the ISS zapped Earth in a mad scientist bid to stem overpopulation and climate change? Quite apart from not being very likely, that didn't even make sense. I wished I were back in 1988. . . .

But my eyes opened again, almost against my will, and focused on a figure sitting in the doorway, leaning against the wall and looking out towards the mountains. It was Jack.

"How does this instant transport thing work? This trip to another country deal?"

"It took me years of practice. But Shimata has implanted all you need to know -- that's why we were able to get here so easily, even though you weren't consciously aware of where we were going."

"But how does it work? I just think of a place, and I'm there?"

I tried concentrating on a place as I was speaking, but the only image that popped into my mind was Stonehenge, for some reason. I imagined the standing stones, what they would look like close up, and how the light would slant through the arches. I didn't even close my eyes, but brought the image before me the way the vids work on the log.

A slight lurch, a slight imbalance in the inner ear, perhaps, and a breeze ruffled the leaves on the distant tree line. The grass rose to my knees. I put my hand out and touched the nearest monolith, feeling the cold stone under my fingers, and looked around. The sunshine was warm and the air smelled fresh. Was I really here? Was this some kind of induced hallucination? Shimata says he had stored something in my brain -- is that what was making me experience this full sensory range?

I took a couple of steps forward. The countryside was wild and overgrown -- no fields, no roads, no orderly English agriculture. Shrubs and saplings dappled the ground. It was monstrously foreign and solitary, abandoned.

It was petrifying.

I stumbled forward now, feeling wrenched from the comfort of the futon and disoriented beyond reason. This was not the majestic monument of my memory, but a wild and alien place. In panic, I thought of the safest place I knew, my home in the States, by the river. I tried to concentrate on it, what it would feel like to walk in the doorway and see the cat on the window sill, but this time there was no lurch, no movement to make the image match the reality.

I stood still, trying to calm down enough to stop the strangled yelling in my throat. Again, I imagined walking into my house back home. Nothing. Why wasn't it working? Forcing myself to breathe evenly, although my heart was thumping into my ears, I pictured the inside of my kitchen, the counter with the letter on it, the formal letterhead, the envelope beside it, the day the divorce was finalized.

I reached out to pick the letter up and read it again all the way through -- the empty platitudes and polite promises of a stranger -- while the cat twined around my ankles. Did she have enough food in her bowl? I reached for the cupboard door automatically, and took out the bag of dry cat food. There was still some in her dish, but I added some more anyway. It had felt good to be home, that day. It felt even better, this time.

It took a while to sink in, but I decided to play along with the idea that this might be real -- which is what I had been doing since that day in the grocery store when I found myself no longer in the frozen foods section, but 300 years into the future. I wondered how it worked -- was I here from the future and here as my old self in 2007, too? I had gone to the future from 2010, so by rights there could be two of me. I opened the fridge and poured myself some orange juice. Oh well. If another one of me came home, I'd know the answer.

No other versions of me appeared, though, so the next question was how long was I here for. Both Jack and Dr. Shimata had said going back in time was temporary. But that was for them. They had never existed in the past they had visited. I had -- at least, the recent past. Maybe I was here to stay?

That would be tough. 2007. That was the year I was sick, and then hospitalized. Would I have to go through all that again? The treatments and the memory losses? Would I do something differently this time? Would my life change? Or would I be whisked back into the future the way both Shimata and Jack had said happened to them?

Or did any of it even happen? It was a relief to be back in the familiar surroundings of my life, among everyday objects and routine concerns. I visited the grocery store, and laughed at my reflection in the glass door of the frozen foods aisle. I bought chocolate ice cream and drank endless cups of coffee. The days went by, and the depression made my actions automatic, but this time I was conscious of the process, this time I knew what was coming next. At least, until the doorbell rang one evening, and I opened the front door to find Jack standing in my front yard.