This story is dedicated to my good friend, Roger Born, who was the catalyst for this story, and indeed this series. I strongly recommend, in order for this story to make more sense, that before beginning Jared’s Tomorrow, you read "Cathy and Mike" By Roger Born, which is posted on this very web site.

Prologue.

As Adi passed the window, he saw the man with white hair out behind the abbey again. He was under the Hakenkreuz by the garden smoking a cigarette.

As the boy let himself out of the door and walked to him, scratching his legs below the knickers, the man waved, "Guten tag, Adi."(Good day.)

"Hallo, Onkel!" Adi ran to the man and hugged him. "Was haben sie fur mich, heute?" (What do you have for me today?)

The man smiled and produced as if magically a pin and a pack of cigarettes. He handed them to Adi with a flourish.

Adi looked at the pin, it was silvery and glittered in the morning sun. It was a stylish pair of letters made to look as if crafted from lightning. SS.

"Diese ist nett! Vielen danke." (This is nice! Thank you very much.)

The man nodded and looked away, his eyes distant and cold.

Adi put the cigarettes in a pocket, and the pin on his collar. He struck his arm out towards the man in mock salute. The man moved as if to return the salute, then waved him away as if he had lost heart with the game.

He looked seriously into the boy’s piercing blue eyes, "Adolph, ein tag die weld wolle dien beim." (One day the world will be yours.)

"A twentieth century physicist named Albert Einstein once said, ‘Life is not a discreet sequence of events. It is a line of perception drawn through a sea of infinite possibilities.’ The man didn’t know how right he was. He had a great sense of humor, though, for a local.

"Inertia is the really tricky part. It can work for you or against you. It can be your best friend when you’re coasting downstream, monitoring for harmonic distortions. In certain zones it will be a hurricane of tachyonic fury when you try to change the stream, even the tiniest bit.

"Consequences. Consequences led to the existence of the continuum. We know that’s true, but the antecedent escapes even the Prometheus Committee. Everything in it from the beginning to the leading edge is laden with them, before and after perspective. If there is an end of time, we haven’t gotten there yet. I feel sorry for those poor saps trying to ride the wave. My job is easier; I have perspective going both ways. Not that that always helps.

"In the end, everything boils down to which string you pull.

"I’m a tuner. My name is Jared."

10…

The Mustang blasted along the empty highway, kicking up a trail of thin dust in its wake. The vaporifics rising from the pavement in the blast furnace heat were disturbed only briefly by it’s passing.

9…

Less than five miles away, the eighteen-wheeler pulled off of I-15, and onto the empty desert highway.

8…

"It has to be here. This is where I remember it being. How could I miss it?" Mike groused to himself, aloud, banging his fist on the hood of his car.

7…

He got back in and drove slowly along the highway, almost off the pavement, looking for anything that would help him find his way back to Cathy.

6…

"The sand couldn’t have blown over it since this morning. The day is clear and there is no wind. Where is it?"