Rod Walker

Rod Walker is a teenage boy who has elected to take a strenuous survival course normally offered only in college. Rod enjoys the class, but he did not pay as close of a attention as he should have to some of the advice offered by the instructor and does not realize this until the final exam has begun. The final exam consists of walking these students through a tunnel, or gate, that opens onto a world that they know nothing about. The students are then expected to survive alone or in pairs for four to ten days.

On the day the final exam is announced, Rod learns that his father is terminally ill and is planning to have himself and his wife frozen until a cure can be found for his illness. Rather than stay home and spend a last few days with his parents, Rod and...