*****
You've hiked through Snake Canyon once before while visiting your Uncle Howard at Red Creek Ranch, but you never noticed any cave entrance.  It looks as though a recent rock slide has uncovered it.

Though the late afternoon sun is striking the opening of the cave, the interior remains in total darkness.  You step inside a few feet, trying to get an idea of how big it is.  As your eyes become used to the dark, you see what looks like a tunnel ahead, dimly lit by some kind of phosphorescent material on its walls.  The tunnel walls are smooth, as if they were shaped by running water.  After twenty feet or so, the tunnel curves.  You wonder where it leads.  You venture in a bit further, but you feel nervous being alone in such a strange place.  You turn and hurry out.

A thunderstorm may be coming, judging by how dark it looks outside.  Suddenly you realize the sun has long since set, and the landscape is lit only by the pale light of the full moon.  You must have fallen asleep and woken up hours later.  But then you remember something even more strange.  Just last evening, the moon was only a slim crescent in the sky.

You wonder how long you've been in the cave.  You are not hungry.  You don't feel you have been sleeping.  you wonder whether to try to walk back home by moonlight or whether to wait for dawn, rather than risk losing your footing on the steep and rocky trail.

[If you decide to start back home, turn to page 4.]

As you start walking back toward the ranch, you notice the trail seems very different than you remember it, though of course moonlight can play tricks on your eyes.  But you suddenly realize you are not walking on the trail at all, but on what seems to be a dried-up river bed.  You hurry back to the cave entrance.  You look around you and realize the whole landscape has changed.  While you were in the cave, torrents of water have washed out the trail; yet there is not so much as a puddle left.  You shiver.  It is cold, much colder than it should be at this time of year.  You take a jacket out of your backpack and put it on, but you are still freezing.

At least the world about you seems brighter.  It's getting light in the east.  The sun will soon be up.  You look at your watch.  It has run down, though you wound it only a few hours ago.  Nothing seems to make sense anymore.

You know you should get back to the ranch as quickly as possible, yet somehow you feel the only way to change things back to the way there were is to re-enter the cave.

[If you continue toward the ranch, turn to page 8.]

As it gets lighter, you realize you can't be on the right track.  The canyon seems shallower than it was.  The river bed is strewn with boulders that were never there before.  The cold wind chills you to the bone; yet it's the middle of summer.  As you climb to higher ground to get a better view, you notice patches of snow.  From the top of a ridge you survey a barren plain, frozen lakes, and, in the distance, a massive range of snow-covered mountains.  You begin to realize you are not merely lost -- you are lost in time, and you have somehow been transported to an Ice Age that occurred many thousands of years ago.

You walk toward one of the cliffs that borders the canyon, seeking shelter from the wind, and notice an entrance to another cave.  You are tempted to go inside, but you feel you should keep moving in hopes of somehow reaching familiar country.

[If you continue on, turn to page 18.]

You continue on, following a trail leading up a steep incline.  You hear loud, trumpeting sounds from a nearby ravine -- the sounds of a large animal.  You climb over some rocks and find yourself looking down on one of the largest land mammals that ever lived -- the wooly mammoth.  Huge as the creature is, its size is exaggerated even more by is thick coat of wool.

You are cold, desperate, and tired.  From your rock ledge, only a few feet over the mammoth, you could drop down on its back, burrow into its warm wool, and ride where it takes you!

[If you continue on foot, turn to page 30.]

Riding on a mammoth might be fun if you were not cold and hungry and lost, but where would it take you?  You continue walking, your spirits singing.  Just as you feel ready to sit down and cry, you see an opening in the ground.  you crawl in on your hands and knees.  It might provide some warmth, and it might lead back to the Cave of Time.

You find yourself in a tunnel.  There are other tunnels branching off.  You feel sure now you are in the Cave of Time.  You are eager to take the next tunnel to the surface, but you want to travel a long way forward in time.  Maybe you should take a tunnel further on.

[If you take a tunnel further on, turn to page 92.]

You continue a long distance until you come to the next tunnel. From there it is only a short distance until you reach the surface. An amazing sight meets your eyes.

As far as you can see, the land looks like a beautiful park, with soft, feathery grass and towering trees. Here and there are clusters of multi-colored, dome-shaped buildings, connected by ramps, terraces and walkways. Some people dressed in simple khaki pants and shirts and tan sneakers walk up to you. They do not understand your language, nor you theirs. They look much like the people of your time except that they are unusually trim, muscular, and healthy looking, and they are a good deal smaller than your own people.

They take you inside a dome-shaped building and show you electronic equipment that looks like a computer. You notice a typewriter, so you sit and type a message.

The computer prints out a reply. It apparently has access to memory banks containing your language. You soon discover you are living in the year 3742.

[Turn to page 56.]

Through computer instruction you are able to learn the language, which you find is similar to English, so you are soon able to communicate with your hosts.

They are not at all surprised to hear that you arrive through the Cave of Time.

"You are not the first," the head of the household tells you, "but we have visitors from other times only once in a great while. When someone comes, we are always glad to learn about his life in another era, because here we have achieved a sort of paradise -- we do not work, and the world is at peace. It is a perfect society. That is why primitive epochs, such as yours, interest us so much."

[If you stay in "the perfect society," turn to page 57.]

Your hosts give you a fine bedroom with large windows overlooking the park on one side. On another wall is a beautiful painting of the California seacoast. When you push a button, the painting folds up to the ceiling, revealing a large screen. Your room contains a computer terminal that enables you to select any movie or other program you desire from over 10,000 possibilities. There are even films where you are the main character, and you can make choices as to what will happen next in the story. Then, if you don't like the way the plot is working out, you can go back to an earlier point and make different choices from then on.

On your terminal you can also play games and flash pages of books or magazines on the screen. You can live quite well without even getting out of bed.

Eventually you go exploring. You meet other people, but you find none of them very interesting, so you spend most of your time watching the greatest movies of all time. Gradually you settle into your new life. One thing disturbs you. No one has made any new movies in the last 300 years.

The End