Eugene did not consciously see himself as superior to his peers, but still, the following day in Theoretical Astrophysics, he could not help but look around the room with a sense of smug detachment. The other students were chatting amongst themselves and comparing exam results, working towards a degree that might someday land them a job as a fifth grade math teacher. He couldn't help but feel that he was above all of this. The professor, a ragged looking woman called Faye Burrell that Eugene admired profusely, sat on the edge of her desk as she finished going over the exam. She looked up from her papers to scan the rows of desks and their restless occupants. Her eyes looked distinctly weary, either from lack of sleep or a grossly thick coat of mascara and caked on makeup. Eugene was tapping his pencil against the corner of his desk, but he stopped abruptly upon noticing that the led had broken off and fallen to the floor, and cast a look at the wall clock. Only two minutes remained before they were to be dismissed, so he crammed the flattened pencil into his backpack. He raised his hand and the professor approached his desk, eyeing him wearily through tired, charcoal lined eyes. "Yes, Eugene?"

"I need to talk to you after class," he said quietly.

She looked to the clock, then back to him. "We can talk now, if you like, class is almost over."

"See you all on Monday," she called as the students stood, still comparing results as they gathered their bags and shuffled out of the room. Eugene waited for the crowd to clear out before approaching his teacher, who appeared to be engrossed in grading a new set of papers at her desk. "Faye," he said, and she looked up abruptly, first at the doorway and then at Eugene.

"What can I do for you, Eugene? You know I don't like to meet between classes like this."

He nodded, and lowered his eyes to her minimally decorated desk. On it sat only a stack of papers and folders, a cluster of pens and a framed photograph of her husband and young daughter, turned away to face the class. "It's pretty important," he said.

She set the papers aside and looked up at him expectantly. "Is it finished?"

Eugene nodded, slightly disappointed in having been robbed of the chance to say it himself. "I'm going on a test run today, up five years."

"Hmm." She slid a golden wedding band from her hand and rolled it between her thumb and index finger. "Well, congratulations." Absently she spun the ring like a top on the surface of the table, and added, "I'm quite proud of you. It's amazing, what you've done, I'm sure you're aware. The lavender room could be the most groundbreaking project of our time." She paused, her eyes trained on the ring. "Just be careful. I'm sure you know that."

He nodded and watched as the ring came to a shuddering stop and lay motionless on the table. "Linda's waiting for me," he said.

"Is she going with you?"

"No, it can only handle one person, for now."

Burrell nodded and replaced the wedding band on her finger. "That's probably best. I would advise you not to tell anyone else about this, even if it all works out. Not yet, at least, I wouldn't expect you to go running your mouth of course, but…well, you can't be too careful."

"Don't worry." His eyes lingered on the doorway. "I'll see you on Monday, I guess, I'll let you know how it went then."

"Sure. Good luck, Eugene. It's been a pleasure working with you on this, as little as I know I contributed, I'm honored to have had any part in it."

In the hallway, Eugene found Linda leaning against a poster advertising an upcoming concert. She straightened herself out when she saw him coming and smiled solemnly. It was a short walk to Eugene's apartment. With each step, he felt the urge to throw up growing in the pit of his stomach.

"Are you okay?" Linda asked.

He nodded with difficulty.

"This could still wait."

"I just want to get it over with."

It was raining, and she was holding an umbrella over the two of them. They trudged through last week's snowfall, now stained a dirty gray, and passed street lamps adorned with wide red bows and houses lined with sparkling Christmas lights. If Linda hadn't been wearing mittens, he could have felt the warmth of her hands.

"Do you wanna come in?" Eugene offered as they reached his doorstep. She hesitated.

"I'm already late for my next class," she said reluctantly, and Eugene nodded and began to ascend the steps. "Hey, wait," Linda called, and ran up after him. She placed her gloved hands on his shoulders and they kissed deeply, and then pulled apart and stood in silence for several moments. "Well, good luck," she said finally, and turned to trudge back through the rain and snow.

Eugene did not meet any of the other occupants of his apartment on the way up to his floor, as they must have all still been at work, or school, or confined to their rooms. He towel dried his hair and changed into dry clothes - unsure of the effect moisture might have in the lavender room - and closed the door behind him when he entered. The room was called as such because the previous occupant had painted it a striking violet for her young daughter, and with the fluorescent lights Eugene had strung everywhere, the room gave off a distinct and almost otherworldly purple glow. He switched the lights on and the room whirled to life all at once. He could taste of bitter flavor of radiation at the back of his throat, and he pulled a thin surgeon's mask over the bottom half of his face, although it offered little protection. After setting the controls to the appropriate levels, he stepped into a modified shower stall and braced himself. The mechanical buzz grew until it was an ear splitting roar and the florescent lights shone an increasingly blinding white. Eugene squeezed his eyes shut and the vivid white gave way to an electric red which felt as if it were leaking through his eyelids. The pain was more than he had expected. Inside the stall, pressure was increasing to where his ears popped and his head felt as though it where on the verge of explosion. His skin seemed stretched too thin to contain himself, and he was sure if it lasted one moment longer he would burst open. To his immense relief, the pressure gradually began to lessen. Finally, the lights dimmed and roar settled back to a quiet buzz.

When Eugene opened his eyes, the first thing that came to his attention was that he was in an uncomfortable position on the floor, having evidently fallen to his knees in the pain of the transition. He was cradling his head, and as the florescent lights continued to subside, the crippling headache too faded gradually and he slowly rose upright. He drew his hands away from his face to find them covered with blood, and, alarmed, gently dabbed at his face before realizing that he was bleeding steadily from several orifices. He ripped off the surgeon's mask, which was now stained a shade of pastel pink, and stumbled unsteadily from the shower stall. Trying to keep a clear head, Eugene grabbed a handful of tissues from a box sitting on the shelf, reminding himself that this wasn't unusual, the pressure could cause bleeding, it was normal. He stuffed the tissues in each of his ears, his nose, and pressed one against his lips before fumbling for the switches which cut the lights. Having regained his composure, the first immediate thing that struck Eugene about his surroundings was that the room looked exactly as it had five years ago, if slightly neglected. He ran his finger over a dusty shelf and opened the door.

The rest of the apartment too was covered in a layer of dust. He crept through the halls cautiously, conscious of the devastating grief any interference could provoke, but his fears proved unwarranted because the building was entirely uninhabited. The rooms were empty. Several were littered with cardboard boxes or the odd personal item - a framed photograph, a cigarette carton, a pair of smashed headphones - but otherwise, everything had been hurriedly cleared out. Eugene dropped down onto the one remaining love seat, the one with a maroon damask pattern that Linda had pointed out at a thrift store. He buried his head in his hands, carelessly staining his sleeves with blood, and wondered if he had made a grave mistake by coming to the year 2018. Anything, everything could change in five years. Things could change in ways he never could have prepared himself for. Or, he reminded himself, raising his head, he could have moved in with Linda. He could have gotten into an argument with the landlord and left the place in shambles to spite him. Anything, Eugene reminded himself, and he rose with renewed composure to venture into the outside world.

The faint suspicion that still gripped the pit of his stomach, the insuppressible feeling that something was not right, was confirmed with Eugene's first step over the threshold of his apartment. The streets were dead. He felt distinctly like a ghost haunting the once lively town as he slowly and reluctantly made his way down the sidewalk leading from his apartment. As inanimate as it was, everything in sight seemed to scream go away. The overturned ambulance and the fire burning in the distance cried you are not welcome here, and Eugene felt their hostility grow with each step he took. Even the air nipped at his skin with a distinct sense of bitterness and the pavement weighed heavily underneath his feet. He suppressed the urge to call out for some sign of human life and continued on, carefully circumventing the puddles of blood. He thought of horror movies and post apocalyptic worlds. He passed a charred torso, his breath growing thin and labored in mounting panic, and did his best to ignore every fiber of his body insisting that he turn around, that he run back to the lavender room and to the year 2013.

Eugene had walked for just over ten minutes and was nearing the bridge leading out of town when he heard a faint moaning reverberate through the air. He paused and turned towards the source of the noise but saw nothing, until another pained groan rose from a pile of stained sheets posed under a fire escape. Throwing discretion to the wind, Eugene approached the shapeless lump until he realized that it was in fact a man. His skin was so heavily caked with dirt and blood that Eugene could not even tell the color of his skin underneath it, and his body was wrapped in several layers of blankets. His head was blistering and bald. Upon closer examination, Eugene realized that he was entirely hairless - devoid even of eyebrows and lashes.

"Hi…" Eugene offered hesitantly, kneeling down in front of the man, who was shaking violently under the blankets. "Are you…" He faltered and, looking at the man's tattered face, felt at a loss for words. "What…happened to you?"

The man's response may have been a chuckle, a cough or a pained sob. The blankets rose and fell erratically with each breath he took. "Wona da lucky ones," he spat.

"I'm not from here," Eugene said. "You have to - if you can, you have to tell me what happened. Where is everyone?"

"Dey's gone." He sat up against the wall with effort and coughed blood onto the pavement. "I'm in forda long haul. I'm goin' out widda town. I'as born here, I'm goin' out widda town."

Eugene stared at him, wide eyed. "Why did they leave?"

"I'm in forda long haul," the man repeated. "Ain't got nothin' for ya, son. Ain't got no meds. Woulda took 'em by now myself, dontcha think I woulda? Dey's ain't no good anyhow. Take my covers if ya wanem, ain't got nothin' else."

"I don't want anything from you." Eugene slowly stood back up. He took a step back, but felt bile rise in his stomach. He was paralyzed in place, his eyes glued to the dying lump of a man leaned against the wall. "Can I…help you?" he asked with little hope. It was only a pleasantry - he might as well have remarked upon the weather.

But, with great effort, the man extended a shaky and emancipated arm. Eugene realized that he was naked underneath the blankets. "Take me with you," he pleaded. "Cold's gonna eat me out'ere. You ain't sick. You got meds, dontcha? I don't need many. You got meds, son?"

Eugene took another measured step back. "I haven't got any medicine."

He didn't lower his arm and almost instinctively, Eugene took the man's calloused hand into his own and began to pull him upright. With the first tug, there was the sickening sound of tearing flesh and the man's arm was separated from his body, the bone pulled apart like tissue paper. Eugene stumbled backwards in shock, still clutching the disembodied arm, and its owner began screaming in horror. His scream was hoarse and enduring, and Eugene leapt to his feet, shaking the limb from his grip, and turned to run back the way he had come.

The dreary landscape passed him in a blur, but still he noticed now what had somehow eluded him before - rotting limbs, clumps of hair, dead cats and abandoned belongings. This is the future, these things seemed to remind him, but Eugene kept running until the taste of bile stung his throat and he braced himself against a wall. He doubled over but vomited up only specks of blood, having eaten little that day out of anticipation. His breath came in ragged sobs. Leaning against the wall, Eugene shoved his hands deep into his pockets but felt an unfamiliar emptiness. At first he was unsure why this bothered him, but after several moments of confusion he realized that the small velvet box was missing. He had never removed it from his pocket. In his panic, it could only have fallen out.

Other vagrants like the man were beginning to emerge from the shadows, each seemingly in worse condition than the last. Their eyes were sallow and sunken back into their skulls and if they were not entirely bald, they were missing large clumps of hair. Flaccid sleeves and mittens gave away their lack of limbs. Eugene watched in horror as they slowly advanced, but he was also conscious of the fact that these people seemed neither threatening nor capable of inflicting any harm on him. So he ignored them to the best of his ability and began to walk briskly back towards the edge of town, scanning the pavement for a glimmer of navy blue as the vagrants murmured about medicine and sickness. He spotted the box and, several feet away from it, the diamond encrusted ring, which he bent to pick up. Something gently encircled his ankle and Eugene lowered his eyes to see a legless torso gripping his lower half. The man moaned and pulled on Eugene's pant leg with surprising strength - this and the horrific sight of a disembodied torso caused Eugene's legs to give way, and he fell to the pavement into a puddle of blood. There was a shock of electric pain in his hand, which had been cut open in his attempt to catch himself as he fell. Eugene wiped his eyes and stood back up, too horrified even to process the situation. His only concern was the ring nestled safely in his pocket and his immediate return to the year 2013.

Eugene found the apartment exactly as he had left it. He locked the door and collapsed on the maroon love seat, now thoroughly soaked in blood. The thought came to him that he might encounter some problem going back, the room might not work properly both ways, that he might be trapped in this dystopian future. But the idea was too horrific to entertain so he pushed it out of his mind and rose shakily from the sofa. The remote was smashed to bits underneath the coffee table, so he cleared away a layer of dust from the television screen and turned it on manually. After flipping through several channels of static, he finally found a blurry newscast.

The reporter described climbing suicide and cannibalism rates and said that the last of schools and universities were shutting down. She described a new vaccine being developed in Japan which promised to eradicate the disease, but scientists were not optimistic. She discussed Europe's efforts to quarantine the infected and reported gravely that Hawaii, previously untouched, had recently reported a case of the virus. Eugene turned the television off. He had heard enough. He had seen enough.

Our thoroughly shaken protagonist locked himself in his apartment that weekend and did not leave. When the phone didn't stop ringing, he unplugged it, having resolved not to tell Linda a word of what he had encountered five years in the future. From the year 2013, what he had seen seemed like a distant dream, but he couldn't deny his blood stained clothes or the images of disembodied limbs burned into his mind. The knowledge of what lay ahead saddled him with a great deal of responsibility. There was no ignoring what he had encountered. If he went back to living life as he had before the lavender room, he would do so always knowing at the back of his mind that within five years, the world would turn to a dystopian, plague-ridden wasteland. But he didn't know where to begin in stopping the catastrophe himself, which left him with little choice but to seek help. So he bided his time until Monday.
Monday morning, Eugene went to campus several hours before his first class, partially in an attempt to avoid Linda. He found Burrell in the teacher's lounge, drinking black coffee alone in an armchair. She looked puzzled when he entered. "Eugene," she said, setting down the coffee mug. "What's wrong? Did something happen?"
He nodded solemnly and gazed around the room, which was occupied by several other professors engrossed in their work. "Can we go to your room?" he asked. "We need to talk privately."
Burrell settled in her desk as Eugene pulled a seat up beside it. He sat and pressed his palms against his temples, unsure of how to begin. She was watching him patiently. "We're f*ed," he finally said baldly.
"What happened?"
Eugene shook his head. "There's an outbreak, of some kind. I don't know. Like a plague, and it seems to cause, leprosy or something. The town was dead. Just vagrants, they looked like decomposing corpses, half delirious going on about meds. On the news, she said schools and businesses are all closed. The whole f*ing world is infected. My apartment had been cleared out. I can't…" he shook his head again and lowered it to his desk. "I don't know what to do. We have to stop it, somehow, I don't know how. I don't know what to do."
Burrell leaned back in her chair and exhaled deeply. "Five years, you're sure?"
"The news said December, 2018."
Several minutes passed in silence. "So you want my advice?" she said quietly. Eugene nodded wordlessly. "If this is really as serious as you make it out to be… My advice is to let it go. There's no pinpointing the origin of a virus that hasn't happened yet. You went into this knowing you might not like what you find, and I admit I didn't think, five years…" She hesitated, and her eyes reflected an unprecedented fatigue. "We haven't got long. Not nearly long enough to prevent it. I'm on the edge of death anyways. You, I'm sorry, you could have really been something great, Eugene, and I wish you didn't know what you know, and I wish I didn't, either. But now there's nothing we can do about it, except take advantage of the time there is left."
Eugene went back to his apartment with Burrell's advice echoing in his skull like the soundtrack to a funeral. Everything was cast in varying shades of gray, and the previously festive Christmas decorations now struck him as hopelessly optimistic. Everyone he passed on the street was probably expecting to retain full use of their limbs during the next decade or so. They were clueless. They were as good as walking corpses. Eugene called Linda to tell her that the room hadn't worked and that his father in Maryland had suffered a heart attack, so he had to fly back home immediately, and hung up before she could ask any questions.
Barely a week had elapsed before his symptoms began to manifest themselves. He ran a comb through his hair, and pulled it away to find the teeth threaded with thinning clumps. His fingernails broke off in the process of opening a water bottle. His teeth chipped on a piece of toast. After sleeping on his arm the wrong way, he found it irreversibly warped, the bone so brittle that it could not reassume its shape. It hung limply at his side as he entered a seedy pawn shop, and despite Eugene's ragged appearance, the owner asked him no questions as he passed him a .22 pistol.
He only felt resignation. There was even an immense relief that came with discovering himself to be infected. Eugene returned to his apartment to find Linda waiting on the front stoop, with a cigarette posed between her fingers. She took a drag as he approached and exhaled slowly, the smoke mingling with her breath in the unforgiving winter air. "You look like s***," she observed baldly.
"Well, I'm sick."
"How's your father?"
"Fine." Eugene stepped around her to enter the apartment, but she leapt to her feet and followed. "Linda, you don't want to be around me," he said coldly, pausing just outside of the lobby. "I'm contagious. Sorry, but it's best you just leave me alone for a while, okay?"
She faltered. "Is there something wrong?"
"Yes - I told you, I'm sick."
"Is it the lavender room?"
"That - the lavender room - no, it has nothing to do with this."
Their breath hung translucent in the air. Inside of his coat, Eugene could feel the weight of the pistol tucked underneath his belt.
Linda crossed her arms across her chest and pursed her lips. "Well, if you won't let me up," she said firmly, "Then at least come meet me at the diner. We've barely spoken in over a week, for Christ's sake."
He fixed his eyes on a flickering light in the distance, just over her shoulder. She wouldn't let up until he agreed. "Fine," he said. "Fine, if you want to talk, we'll go there right now. Come on." He began walking briskly and she hurried to follow.
The diner was a small establishment that the two often frequented after class. It was situated between a laundromat and community art gallery on the main street of town, and when they crossed the threshold, a small bell sounded to announce their entrance. One of Eugene's back teeth had come loose, and as they made their way to the same booth they always sat in, he discretely spat it into his hand and let it drop into his pocket. Linda was staring at him with intense concern, so he turned away self concisely and tugged his hat further down over his ears. "A coffee," he said to the beaming waitress, whose name was not Nicole. They waited in silence for several minutes and Eugene thought of the elderly couple at the restaurant.
When the coffee arrived, he began methodically dumping sugar packets and half-and-half into the steaming liquid as Linda watched with a mix of worry disgust, although she said nothing. He drank half the mug in one gulp even though it scorched his tongue. His girlfriend cleared her throat and leaned forward. "I'm worried about you," she announced.
The mug had left a damp ring on the table, which Eugene wiped away with his thumb without looking up. "Why's that?"
"Because I don't think you went to Maryland and you won't tell me what happened with the lavender room and you weren't at school today and you look like you're on the verge of death."
"We're always on the verge of death, Linda. It's the human condition."
She sat up a bit straighter, eyeing him wearily. "No, you don't even look like you're dying. You look like you're already dead. I'm talking to a f*ing corpse. I think you oughta go to the hospital, Eugene. I mean really, I think the radiation or something f*ed you up. I knew you shouldn't've gone so early. It wasn't ready yet. You weren't ready yet."
He shook his head dismissively and arranged his dead arm in a more natural position on his lap. "I'm sure I'll get over it soon enough," he assured her, but Linda only frowned into her scarf in response. Several minutes passed, and underneath the table, Eugene dug his fork deeper and deeper into the meat of his arm to distract himself from his wandering mind, from the crestfallen girl sitting across from him. "Do you want to hear what I saw?" he asked finally, to break the silence.
"Saw where?"
"Five years from now." He unintentionally broke the skin and quickly withdrew the fork as blood began to gather at the wound.
"You said it didn't work."
Eugene drew his working shoulder up in a dismissive shrug. "Well, do you want to hear what I saw, or not?"
"Christ. Of course I do."
The fabric of his sleeve wasn't doing much to stem the bleeding, but it wasn't painful, so he ignored the wound and carefully replaced the fork on his napkin. "Well," he said thoughtfully, watching over Linda's shoulder as the people merrily passed by the window behind her, "I got there, and for the most part everything was about the same." He paused to collect his thoughts. A woman passing by had stopped outside the window to look at her reflection and was adjusting the hemline of her skirt, oblivious to Eugene's stare. "It's only five years, after all. So I - went outside and walked around a little, and I got to around Catherine Street, you know, where the old grade school is, and - I spotted this cat sitting on a ledge. It was long haired, but its fur wasn't tangled and unkempt like a stray even though I couldn't see a collar, so, I don't know. But it had, it just had the smoothest coat, like satin. And even though it was December, it was still very sunny that day, and the cat was sitting in… such a way that the sun sort of reflected off his coat, and it was shimmering. He seemed like he knew it, too, the way he sat, I think it was a pretty f*ing arrogant cat. So I approached him, even though I know interfering is the worst thing you can do. But I just had this - really strong urge to pet him, to see if his fur was really as soft as it looked. And I raised my hand to stroke him but then some little girl ran up, saying that Molly was hers, and I couldn't even believe it when she picked him up and carried him off, considering the cat was about as big as she was. She gave me a dirty look like I wanted to steal the damn thing or something and ran off." He sank back into his seat with all the grief of the world weighing him down.
"And then?" Linda asked expectantly, after waiting for him to continue.
Eugene shrugged. "Then, I walked back to my place and went home."
She reflected for a moment, staring thoughtfully into her placemat. "It sounds like it was a she," she said conclusively, "If the cat's name was Molly."
"I don't know what its name was."
"You said it was Molly."
The steam had gradually stopped rising from his coffee, Eugene noticed, and he raised the mug to wipe away the liquid ring that had formed once again. The bell hanging from the diner's door emitted a soft ting and he stood abruptly, as if this were his cue to do so, and Linda didn't have time to object before he had shoved his chair back in position and turned to leave. "I have to do something," he announced vaguely, and after assuring her that he would be right back, he hurried off with one arm flopping at his side like an uncooked sausage. Linda watched his retreating back with mounting emptiness.
When Eugene shot himself in the head several minutes later, she felt a dull pang of sorrow inexplicably reverberate through her bones. She shuddered deeply and drew the recently deceased's half full coffee mug toward herself to warm her hands against. Remnants of his saliva still hovered near the surface of the liquid. Linda raised the mug to her lips and gazed around the diner, hoping half-heartedly that he might return, as he had promised, and maybe everything would be okay. When he didn't, she drank deeply from the mug and let the insidious warmth spread through her.