sentences:  Mark then discovers that, despite his misconceptions earlier, this world is a ruined Earth, sometime in the future.Meagan's brother gives Mark a shard of a Coca-Cola bottle and the Merkon (leader of The Tsook) reveals the events between Mark's time and this future, also revealing that he too was sent there by the beam of light.Sometime in the near future, a strange, highly contagious form of the Ebola virus wipes out most of the human race.