The tense shifts are intentional, and go with the scenes we're seeing.
They're *supposed* to shift, with the visuals, in order to bring us into the
present from the future, at which point this story is being introduced.

BTW, does anyone know if the GEnie/Internet relay is down or something?
Usually there's 50 or so messages a day in my mailbox here from the Internet
relay, and the last 2 days or so there's been nada.

jms