After hearing of the forbidding world you’ve witnessed at your end of the Cave of Time, Louisa is agreeable to your helping her try to find the way back to her entrance.

“Tell me about the world outside your entrance to the Cave of Time. Is it in America? What year is it there?” you ask, as the two of you walk along. “The year 2022, of course,” she replies.

“You mean people are still wearing blue jeans then?” you ask.

“They’ve come back into style lately,” she laughs.

“You must have some new inventions that we did not have in my time. Tell me about your most modern things.”

“I think the best things are the bicycle trails. Since 1997 they’ve allowed no new roads to be built, only bike trials, and now there are as many miles of bike trails as there are of roads for cars. “So you can really bike all over the country?” you ask.

“Sure! And not alongside buses and trucks and crazy drivers, but through forests and across plains and deserts and along rivers and streams. I sometimes feel like biking forever that way, and there are hostels for bikers where you can sleep in comfort for almost nothing. Most of the cost is paid for by taxes on gasoline.”

Suddenly you feel the ground giving way beneath your feet. You and Louisa are falling. The two of you land at the base of a steep bluff, shaken but unharmed, alongside a road. You wonder what year you have arrived in. Then, nearby, you see a billboard that says, “CADILLAC! The Car of the Year, every Year!”

“What’s a Cadillac?” Louisa asks.