Book excerpt: Jason Bond is a regular guy, working two jobs and trying to get his life back on track after caring for and losing his mother and two of his sisters to illness in a short few years. Working in retail during the day and as a security guard at night, Jason was trying to work his way to finally achieving his long-held dream: returning to college and getting his degree.But on a night at his security job, while a major snowstorm bore down upon the southern foothills of North Carolina, Jason Bond was suddenly pulled five hundred years into the future and into a world very different from his own.Gone was the small Southern towns of Forest City, Spindale and Rutherfordton, replaced by a massive sprawling metropolis known as Rutherford City, running over both North and South Carolina and home to over a billion humans and aliens.