Two Sleeps and a Return

The Door into Summer

Dan's two long sleeps frame his journey from an involuntary arrival in 2000 to a deliberate return, reunion, and chosen life in the future.

increasing

Bearing strength in each event

decreasing

A Forced Departure A Forced Departure from "The Door into Summer". A Forced Departure An unwanted journey Belle and Miles deliver Dan, under drugged suggestion, to Consolidated Sanctuary.

A Forced Departure from "The Door into Summer". A Forced Departure An unwanted journey Belle and Miles deliver Dan, under drugged suggestion, to Consolidated Sanctuary.

A Forced Departure An unwanted journey Belle and Miles deliver Dan, under drugged suggestion, to Consolidated Sanctuary. He believes Pete is safe with Ricky, a false memory planted to make him compliant and keep him from resisting the procedure. Loss disguised as sleep Dan experiences the process through confused, disturbing dreams. The cold sleep that was supposed to be a voluntary escape becomes the mechanism by which he is cut off from his own era.

A New Century A New Century from "The Door into Summer". A New Century Reorientation Dan wakes at Sawtelle, learns that thirty years have passed, and discovers that his investments are gone.

A New Century from "The Door into Summer". A New Century Reorientation Dan wakes at Sawtelle, learns that thirty years have passed, and discovers that his investments are gone.

A New Century Reorientation Dan wakes at Sawtelle, learns that thirty years have passed, and discovers that his investments are gone. Modern appliances and language astonish him, but the loss of his old life weighs more heavily than the technological change. A first foothold He finds work, studies engineering, and cautiously enters the new economy. Survival becomes a bridge between the person he was in 1970 and the engineer he hopes to become again.

The Temporal Opportunity The Temporal Opportunity from "The Door into Summer". The Temporal Opportunity An improbable method Chuck Freudenberg tells Dan about Hubert Twitchell's temporal displacement experiments.

The Temporal Opportunity from "The Door into Summer". The Temporal Opportunity An improbable method Chuck Freudenberg tells Dan about Hubert Twitchell's temporal displacement experiments.

The Temporal Opportunity An improbable method Chuck Freudenberg tells Dan about Hubert Twitchell's temporal displacement experiments. The process is uncalibrated, dangerous, and incapable of guaranteeing direction, but it offers a chance to investigate the past directly. A risk with a purpose Dan decides the uncertainties are worth confronting because his unresolved history concerns Pete, Ricky, and his own inventions. The choice is not a retreat into the past but an attempt to repair the choices that have shaped his present.

The Second Sleep The Second Sleep from "The Door into Summer". The Second Sleep Preparation for return In 1970, Dan builds a future for himself and Ricky, recovers Pete, and secures the resources needed to repeat the Long…

The Second Sleep from "The Door into Summer". The Second Sleep Preparation for return In 1970, Dan builds a future for himself and Ricky, recovers Pete, and secures the resources needed to repeat the Long…

The Second Sleep Preparation for return In 1970, Dan builds a future for himself and Ricky, recovers Pete, and secures the resources needed to repeat the Long Sleep. He sets an exact awakening date and insists that Pete be included. A chosen passage This time Dan enters the sanctuary willingly and sober. The contrast with his first sleep is decisive: the same technology now carries a promise he has made freely rather than an order imposed on him.

The Reunion Date The Reunion Date from "The Door into Summer". The Reunion Date Waiting for Ricky Dan reaches Riverside and learns that Ricky instructed the sanctuary not to wake her until he arrived.

The Reunion Date from "The Door into Summer". The Reunion Date Waiting for Ricky Dan reaches Riverside and learns that Ricky instructed the sanctuary not to wake her until he arrived.

The Reunion Date Waiting for Ricky Dan reaches Riverside and learns that Ricky instructed the sanctuary not to wake her until he arrived. His promise has survived the decades as an actionable plan, not merely a memory. A shared beginning Ricky wakes, recognizes Dan and Pete, and leaves with them. They marry at Yuma and start a life together, completing a journey in which time travel and cold sleep have been made to serve a relationship rather than erase it.

4 December 1970

13 December 2000

Spring 2001, after the patent investigation

2 to 4 December 1970

1 May 2001