- She wakes up, her feet hurt, and she's generally a mess.
- As sci-fi journeys to exciting, distant places go, this one lacks space critters. Instead we've got highways and blisters.
- She asks Luciente to come through and help her out.
- Luciente is good at being woodsy, because they are woodsy in the future. So she helps Connie identify things she can eat.
- And while we're chewing on chewable things, Connie remembers her past, and how she'd been proud of herself at community college.
- She'd gotten lower grades because she didn't have a typewriter, so she got a boy in her classes, Chuck, to let her use his typewriter if she typed his paper.
- He also got her pregnant, and then she dropped out and married Martín.
- She'd been ashamed of herself and Martín made her feel like she was worth something.
- She asks Luciente if Dawn can come with her to keep her company. She's worried that she'll be harmed, but Connie wheedles and Luciente gives in.
- Dawn shows up and Luciente takes her to see the cars going by on the highway. Dawn pops back to the future.
- Luciente finds Connie water and things to eat.
- She also talks to Connie about money in the future, where everybody has enough and they only use credits for luxuries.
- Luciente makes a poultice for Connie's blistered feet.
- Connie half-dreams that she's in the future, watching a birth from the tubes. She thinks she sees Sojourner receiving as mother a baby named Selma.
- She stops dreaming and starts walking.
- She gets to a town and walks through a factory district. She remembers working herself and not being able to see her daughter because she was working so much. Welfare was even worse, and then she'd been arrested, and that was even worse than worse.
- She's still a mess; but she has a little money from Dolly and she pays for breakfast.
- She goes to the ticket counter where a guy is reading a dirty book. She gets a ticket for a 12:30 bus to New York, after which she figures she'll be safe.
- But the guy with the dirty book turns her in, and the police take her and she ends up back in the hospital.
- That's the end of the adventure. There's one more in the book; it ends even worse. (Don't say we didn't warn you.)