All is yellow
an excerpt

How long he had been under, he did not know. All he knew is that when 'zero' hit back in 2025 (or whatever the exact year had been), he felt like he was ripped apart at the seams. Painless was a word that had nothing to do with the process. Whether it was a dream or reality, he wasn't sure, but for a split-second he was outside of time. And this time he was conscious. His eyes were open and for the time it would take light to travel from the sun to the earth, he saw what was outside of time. He had sort of expected (if one could speak of expecting anything when dealing with an abstract notion like this) a vast nothingness - the phrase 'outside of time, outside of space' sprung to mind, as well as Rod Serling's voice saying the immortal Twilight Zone words 'the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition'. But in that tiny moment, he saw that the Realm of No-Time was not darkness, was not empty. It was beauty. He saw a white that seemed to blend and dispel into all colours of the rainbow (and a fair few he had never seen before). His ears were filled with an angelic choir of voices. He even seemed to feel his mother's presence near him, reaching out for him. In that blink of an eye, he knew true happiness the likes of which are not found on earth. In his twilight years, the autumn of his life, when he would take to sitting outside in a chair in the retirement home, looking at the trees casting their reflection on the lake with swans perpetually swimming, he would often think that he was in the entranceway to Heaven. Not the metaphoric kind, but the real Pearly Gates kind. Everything seemed to fit with the kind of stories people would tell after a near-death experience. But for now he was not really concerned with that yet. For now he was just trying to swim back up, back from the deep (sleep? coma? anaesthesia?) he had been in.

What brought him back in the end were the words 'his pulse is slowing'. He recognised the voice. It belonged to the woman who had warned him of his imminent return. He slowly opened his eyes. The woman was out of his sight. He saw that he was in a hospital room. 'Probably not a real hospital,' he thought. And he was right. He did not know it, but he was only fifteen miles from where, a few decades from now, Nuevo Los Angeles would be.
"Ah, he's awake." A voice said. It was the man who had left the tape-recorded message for him, back when he had just woken up in destroyed LA. Michael moved his neck right. It belonged, like he had thought then, to a large man with a long grey handlebar moustache. "Michael," he said jovially, as if they had known each other for years. "Welcome back," he paused. "Can you speak?"
Michael tried. He found that indeed, he could speak with relative ease.
"Good," the man said, "glad to see you're still in one piece. How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been run over by a hundred purple dinosaurs.”
The man laughed. “But otherwise okay, then. Can I get you anything?”
Michael asked for something to drink and when he got it, the doctor (he had introduced himself as Dr. Messing) told Michael he would be left alone for a few hours. “You could use some rest. But when you’re done resting, we would like to ask you some questions.”
Michael agreed and as soon as the people had left, he picked up the paper on the nightstand. “Death toll Iraq rises,” it said. “Yup, definitely back in good ol’ ‘08” he said to himself.

He rested for a few hours, not bothering to read the rest of the paper (‘how much can the news change in eleven days?’). Most of the time was spent thinking about Gabe. Where was he now? Back in the future, Michael guessed. At zero, Michael had probably just poofed and now Gabe was alone again. Did he cry at the failure of his plan? Probably. Would he move on and find a new life for himself? Definitely. Gabe was a survivor and Michael did not doubt he would overcome this.
Michael had just fallen asleep when Dr. Messing came back in, ungracefully. "Ah, I see you were sleeping. Sorry. Well, since you're up... we'd like to run a few tests." The battery of nurses then took his pulse, his blood pressure (not to mention some of his blood), his reflexes and all kinds of other measurements. When they were done, the doctor shooed them away.
"Now, Michael. I know you've just gotten back and you must still be disoriented," Michael wasn't in the least, "but you must understand: you're the first time traveller and we are just too curious. Would you mind telling us what happened to you, if it's not too much trouble?" A greedy glint was in the man's eye. An unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Michael thought. He didn't mind telling. He was still tired, but he wanted to tell, to spill the beans. He felt he needed to now that it was still fresh in his mind. He wanted to begin at the beginning: him under a large billboard. "Well, I..." he started before the doctor interrupted him. "Ah, wait a second." he said while fumbling around in his pockets. "Where is that thing.... ah, here it is!" He took out a tape recorder. "For prosperity," he said as he hit the 'record' button. "Go on,"
"Okay," Michael began. This would be the hardest story of his life and he would need to tell it right. He would need to be convincing. "Listen carefully. It's a long story and it's an important one, perhaps the most important story anyone has had to tell since the dawning of time. It may save millions of people." He took a deep breath to clear his mind, and began.

"I woke up under a giant billboard..."