The two trucks managed to exit the wormhole without damaging the vehicles any further, or even bothering the passengers sitting on air mattresses. Professor Arturo and Rembrandt Brown smiled at each other, shaking hands as the others laughed.
"Congratulations, Mr. Brown," Arturo smiled, "I do believe that's the first slide wherein we both avoided being the cushion for others."
"I can live with this, Professor," the singer laughed, "It beats our usual landings."
The group looked around, noting the lack of extra land that would indicate a Sunnydale, but also the fact that the highway they were about to drive on seemed to have experienced recent flood damage, as did the vegetation and coastline in general.
"What do you think Professor?" Quinn asked the older man as the two vehicles drew up to each other, "It looks like a really big storm came through here a while ago."
"Indeed, Mr. Mallory, but since the ground is clearly dry and this is a major highway I wonder why road crews haven't cleared the debris, and we aren't seeing any traffic."
"Hey, Professor," Rembrandt interjected into the conversation, "We're not picking up any radio stations, and the cell phones aren't connecting."
"Well, then, I propose we drive slowly in the direction of Los Angeles," the older man suggested, "What's the next place on the highway?"
"Ventura or Oxnard depending on how the roads and towns in this Earth are set up," Quinn commented, Alexander nodding along, "And we only have about twenty minutes of daylight left so we better get going."
"Indeed, and take it slow, just in case whatever happened here also washed away a section of road. Let's not find ourselves in the ocean."
Twenty-five minutes later, they'd managed to drive around to the other side of the highway, into what would have been on-coming traffic if even a single vehicle moved. In two places, the highway had been washed away as predicted, but a side road heading inland took them into the ruins of what used to be the older part of Ventura, only a few lights up in the hills and this main street showing up. As they left the highway, they pulled into an abandoned and gutted convenience store to discuss their options.
"Well this old newspaper shows up as April 14th, 1993," Rembrandt said, "And it talks about a large comet that's supposed to just miss the Earth."
"Well, it wasn't Shoemaker-Levy, as even a smaller piece would have just vaporized the atmosphere," Willow offered, "But I guess it didn't miss after all?"
"No, Red," Rembrandt continued, "It was called something Hammer…"
"Don't worry about the name, Mr. Brown," the Professor interrupted, "Our first priority is to see if these people are non-hostile. Now how much time is on the timer?"
"Since we wanted to start jumping in the mornings from now on," Quinn noted, "Another thirty-five and a half hours."
"Why don't we just park in back of a store and camp," Dawn asked, "We can approach the locals in the morning when it'd be less threatening."
"Hmm, better yet," Wade replied, "Why don't we stay inside after pulling the trucks around, give us a little more shelter in case it rains or something."
"An excellent idea, Miss Wells, and we'll have Joyce and Alexander do a reconnaissance while we set things up for the night," Arturo suggested, "And as we ate before leaving, perhaps this close to the inhabitants we should forego a fire or lights as long as we can."
As hoped the night passed uneventfully, and the quick reconnaissance had revealed that the underpasses had been blockaded with cars and such as to impede easy passage, but that the next one down, Cedar, seemed to have a gate of sorts. After downing juice and some power bars, the group decided that Alexander, Joyce and Doyle should act as initial contacts, taking a walkie-talkie with them to stay in contact. An hour after sunrise, they approached the gate on foot and with backpacks on, Xander using his Sentinel-enhanced hearing to detect two humans drinking coffee and complaining about sentry duty, one commenting it'd been two years since any bandits or pirates had raided.
"Hello the Gate!" Alexander called out, then again a moment later as the two sentries stuck their heads carefully over the top, stunned anyone was there.
"Yeah?" one of them called back, "What do you want?"
"A group of us have just come down the coast," Alexander gestured toward the Northwest, "And are passing through, and when we saw your town lights last night, we thought we'd let you know it so no one would cause trouble."
"Just headin' down the old highway?" one of them asked, "What brings you to the area?"
"Normally we trade, but a landslide dumped our cargo into the ocean a ways back," Doyle chipped in, "We have a rendezvous to meet even if we can't really profit from it any more. Do you have anyone who'd 'ave knowledge of the situation further down the coast?"
"Not much to say in general, just the usual looters and a few communities starting up again, but things open up in about another hour. If you come back then, you'll only be asked to openly display personal weapons and keep stored away anything else so it's not easily reached. Breach of this and you'll end up arrested or worse."
"So come back in an hour and we're good?" Alexander asked, "Thank you, we might just be back instead of continuing on."
They'd walked into town half an hour before, and found all but the diner and a neighborhood grocery closed. A few vehicles, mainly trucks, seemed to be moving around, people and cargo filling them so as not to waste fuel. The town otherwise seemed to be operating at a combination of normal 1990s technology and a lot of earlier stop-gap measures designed to avoid heavy expenditure of crucial parts and fuel. They walked up to a man opening up an electronics/repair store to ask a few questions.
"Excuse me, sir," Doyle asked the balding fortyish man, "We're new around here. Would ya mind us askin a few questions?"
"Sure, go ahead," the man responded, taking in the three people, "I don't get too many people in this early."
"Well, this is going to sound strange," Doyle responded as they followed him into what appeared to be a cross between a new and used store, though a couple years out of date, "But we're been travelin' the worlds and aren't too sure about things such as exchange rates and the like, and what actually happened to California since, uh, you know…"
"Since the Hammer? You must have come from quite a way if you're that out of touch," the electronics man replied, "But after the tidal waves flooded over Los Angeles and over toward the desert, and the Cannibal Army went crazy and cleared out most of the scavengers and hangers-on, folks that'd hidden out in the hills or as far as Nevada and Arizona started trickling back when the Government reestablished itself and got the nuke plants back on line. Only about a fifth of the population managed to avoid the Troubles and eventually move back, but since most of the opportunists and gangs stayed behind, they were taken care of either by the Hammer or when the Cannibals were wiped out up in the middle of the state."
"So what's the medium of exchange?" Alexander asked.
"Oh, it's leveled out at about an even hundred times as much of the old money in coins, or the new money they've started to circulate at the hundred to one ratio to convert back to a papered economy," the man offered, "So where've you been that you're so out of touch, Mister…"
"Harris, Alexander Harris," the young man replied, "And this is Doyle and Joyce, and the fact is we're involved with an old project and got sealed in until finally clearing our way through. We had a big opening upwards for sun for the hydroponics, but no way to get out."
"I'm Marc Kizok, by the way," the store owner replied, shaking there hands, "And things have settled down so we're back to about the nineteen fifties without the Cold War, no entertainment industry, and no chemical industry to speak of, but the country's still managed to hold itself together in spite of some folks thinking otherwise, Canada's part of us, and so is the northern two-thirds of Mexico. The Russians and Chinese finally stopped killing each other off, most of the world is dead or reduced back to small villages since the waves were pretty widespread. I think the Turks made a comeback in the middle east, taking over and mixing together the survivors and weapons from the Indus to the middle of Libya…not that much is there anymore. Some of our navy actually survived, including most of the submarine fleet, and we've pretty much drawn a line from middle of Libya to the Adriatic and over to the Baltic States. We made a deal with the Swiss, Austrians, Bavarians and Czechs, and they're now four States. A couple nukes took the fight out of the Serbs, and everybody calmed down. The survivors are digging out over there, and we ferried over about a hundred thousand of our own folks to mix things up and start raising food like crazy. It's about it."
"So has the food situation worked itself out?" Joyce asked, "And what about medicine?"
"We're hanging on well enough," Kizok replied, "The survivors of the wave-swept areas have been given ten-year salvage rights and credits before everybody else moves in, and this has gotten them to really concentrate on the important things. And since most of our elderly population went quickly after the Hammer, we're stretching it out some. So if you have anything in your…bunker you want to trade, I'll give you a very good price, and in exchange for first chance, I won't short you on the trade to the new currency."
"So there is still a central government, but the economy is struggling and the population's about half what it was?" Alexander emphasized to be sure of things, "Is there any real…hope?"
"Sure, believe it or not we're launching rockets and shuttles again starting next month, to try and relocate our efforts into space to produce food and solar-electric at as close to a geometric rate as possible. That's why you'll find a flat ten-percent tax on all transactions, to cover it. If it catches on I'll be called up to move to Colorado Springs or Denver, I was Aerospace before the Hammer."
"Well thank you, Mr. Kizok, we appreciate your time, but what would the exchange rate on gold or silver be?"
"An ounce of coined gold would get you about five hundred in new dollars per ounce, silver about ten, and half that in jewelry or other forms, minus maybe a five percent conversion fee."
"Well, would you be willing to convert an ounce of gold, then?"
After a quick cup of coffee and breakfast at the diner, and finding no one looking at them suspiciously, the rest of the group was called into town and joined them around nine that morning. The groups synchronized its story, and they found an innkeeper friend of Mr. Kizok's willing to let out rooms for the rest of the day and a promised five in the morning wake-up call.
For a few hours, the main concentration of effort was general rest and finding out as much as they could about the recent history of this world, the date of November 18th, 1997, more to the liking of both groups.
Author's Note, this is taking place four and a half years after Lucifer's Hammer, which I also disclaim any interest.
With local money in hand, they stimulated the local economy, buying food items and even a few local books and newspapers produced since the world-wide devastation, hoping that maybe the SGC or someone else might be interested in making friendly contact with this world in the future.
The girls strolled and shopped, the men loaded a few handcrafted items into the truck; Joyce chatted up the men that produced the items in hopes they were in the trade back home also.
The next morning, having made arrangements to leave before daybreak with the sentries, the two trucks headed down an alley and opened a portal into the next world.