“If you could go back in time, wouldn’t you? Isn’t there anything you would change?”
Shannon cursed, wiping the dirt off her hands onto her jeans. Next to her, Heath tinkered
with the machine anxiously. Sweat trickled down both their foreheads, the sun baking the forest
around them.
Wouldn’t you? That’s what Angela had asked her. Eyes critical, expression lofty. If you
could back in time, wouldn’t you?
Of course she would. At least, that’s what she said a week ago, squirming under Angela’s
intense glare and frustrated for once again failing to impress her mentor. Now, kneeling here
attempting to dig this God forsaken hunk of metal out of the ground with nothing but her
fingernails, nursing more than enough bruises, Shannon would have a very different answer.
It was stupid of her to think she could do this alone. Sure, it would have been amazing to
take a little trip to the past, grab an authentic piece of clothing from the Jamestown settlement or
a poster from the Women’s Right Movement. It would have been fantastic to show up back home,
safe and sound and hand the artifacts over to Angela. Maybe she’d finally get an eyebrow raise of
approval rather than criticism.
And how amazing would it have been to finally, finally have one over Jacob Martin. The
smug, brilliant white boy with the trust fund. The smug, brilliant white boy who consistently
remarks that there’s no room for women in a field like this (only when Angela isn’t around, of
course). The smug, brilliant white boy who notes that maybe Shannon should try for a different
field, so she doesn’t perpetuate Asian stereotypes. Jacob Martin, the smug, brilliant white boy who
has never stopped insisting that time travel is a joke.
“Damn it!” Heath roared, jumping to his feet and kicking the broken time machine in
irritation. “We’re never going to fix this. We can’t fix this.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Shannon, do you see where we are?” he spat, gesticulating to the woods around them.
“This is desolation. I’m amazed these trees are still alive, because humanity sure isn’t. There is no
one to help us, nowhere for us to go. This is worse than the day we got stuck in 1863!”
Yes, the civil war day journey had not gone well for either of them, but Heath in particular
was not in great shape after that one. The color of his skin had never been something that crossed
Shannon’s mind, really, but it had become a huge factor upon arriving there. And she knew if
things went wrong again she could be in a similar situation—America was not the best place for
people with Japanese heritage in the 1940s.
“Look, I get that it’s bad but we have managed to fix it every other time it’s crashed. We
just have to keep trying until it can get us home.”
“Just keep trying? Even with the faulty yearometer?” Heath opens a slot on the side of the
machine, pointing to the small display of numbers on the inside. Almost like a digital clock.
“Shannon, can you read that for me?”
“Heath, come on.”
“Read it for me. Please. Just read it.”
She sighs, rolling her eyes. “4052.”
“4052. The year 4052. Look around you, Shannon. Civilization is dead in 4052. Doesn’t
that freak you out? Like, why are we even trying?”
“What did you expect, that civilization was going to go on forever? The dinosaurs didn’t
last forever, so there’s no way we were going to. And honestly, none of that matters. We can fix
the yearometer, but first we need to get out of this wasteland.” The skin on the back of her necks
burns, grilling in the unrelenting sun. “Help me get this out, please. It’s the last piece.”
Letting out a disgruntled sigh, Heath drops onto the dirt next to her. They both scrape at
the remaining soil, finally managing to get a grip on the lip of the metal piece driven into the Earth.
Together, with heroic tugs, they pull it free.
Shannon brushes the remaining dirt away and hands it over to Heath, blowing some hair
out of her face. “There. Now let’s fix it.”
Heath adjusts to face the time machine again. Their little torture device. He huffs, replacing
the hunk of metal into its rightful and accepting the screwdriver from Shannon. “Why did we think
time travel was a good idea? Why did that idea come to us?”
Shannon shrugs. There really isn’t an answer, and God, shouldn’t she have known it would
end badly? Had she not read every article, seen every movie? Did she pay any attention to Back
the Future, Looper, The Butterfly Effect? Damn, what about that episode of Phineas and Ferb?
Messing with time is never a good idea. There’s a reason it’s frowned upon, less researched,
unstable. Both Shannon and Heath know that if they make it back home, they can never share what
they’ve seen or what they know.
“We’ll convince Angela to burn the blueprints,” Shannon says flatly.
Heath glances at her. He can tell from the tone in her voice that doing so would hurt.
“Science is such a dangerous balance.” He finishes securing the plate back on, leaning into the
machine and flicking on the power source. “Although you know your discoveries are corrupt, you
don’t want to destroy them because you spent so much time and effort on them.”
“And you’re finally right.” Shannon’s eyes are cold, a bitterness forming in the back of her
throat. So many years of being discounted, constantly second-guessed, never trusted to have the
right answers when she almost always does.
Heath frowns at her. “I’m sorry, Shannon. We’ll figure it out.”
“That’s all we do. Figure things out.”
There’s silence as Heath tries to find something to say, but there is nothing. Instead, he
places his hand on her back, patting her without a word and looking at the ground. Shannon doesn’t
shy away from the touch, but her expression doesn’t change.
Back to the days where Jacob Martin can laugh in her face. No chance to prove him wrong.
They both jump when the machine whirs in front of them, booting up. Heath sighs with
relief, hopping inside the pit and checking all the vitals. “Things seem to be okay, but the machine
is really taking a toll from all this crashing around. Let’s hope wherever we end up next is not
going to blow us sky high.”
Heath smiles up at Shannon, but she’s not listening. Her eyes are trained to the cloudless
sky above them. Her mind is elsewhere, lost in thought. She takes this look on a lot, but never
before has it looked so hopeless.
Normally, Heath loves this look, because Shannon is never more beautiful than when she’s
deep in thought. But right now it scares him. “Shan.”
Shannon blinks, refocusing on him. He holds out his hand. “Come on.”
She nods, not taking his hand but climbing into the pit with him. Each of them places their
soundproof headset over their ears, giving each other thumbs up as a signal that they’re ready.
Shannon flips the central switch as the doors to the pit grind shut, much slower now after so many
crash landings.
Time, space, and their own consciousness gets fuzzy as they zap into the temporal vortex,
uncertain of where they might end up next.
The machine rematerializes without a huge collision this time, making the time travelers
both relieved and uneasy. Heath removes his headset first, giving Shannon a nudge once his ears
pop and adjust to the pressure.
The doors take a painfully long time to slide open, and once they do Shannon and Heath
immediately step out into their new surroundings.
A lab office. Almost like the one they work in back home, only neater, cleaner. Sharper.
But to the weary traveler, it so closely resembles home that it almost is.
“Did we make it back?” Shannon asks in surprise, leaving her headset hanging around her
neck as she examines their new surroundings.
Heath pops open the yearometer panel, examining the glowing numbers. “2045. Of course
we’re 20 years off.”
Shannon continues to scrutinize the area. The time machine, appearing even more rundown
in the harsh lighting of the laboratory, sits squarely in the center of a circular platform. Its landing
is nearly perfect.
In fact, it is perfect.
“I don’t think this was random,” Shannon mutters, crossing her arms. Heath gives her a
skeptical look and she takes his arm, tugging him next to her. “Look at how the time machine
landed. That was practically steered into place, and you know we didn’t do that. We couldn’t do
that if we tried.”
Heath squints at the machine, before eyeing Shannon. “What then?”
“I don’t know. But it’s not our luck that we’re 20 years off.”
Suddenly, the doors behind them open with a hiss. As they both whip around, standing
tightly side-by-side, a well-dressed man enters and bows his head.
“Shannon and Heath. He has been expecting you.”
Shannon looks up at Heath, who gazes at her in confusion. Then he turns back to the man.
“Who?”
“If you’ll follow me,” the man begins, stepping back out the doors and into the hall.
Heath and Shannon face each other, leaning in close and speaking quietly.
“We need to get back in the machine and go.”
“I know, but what if it breaks? Then we’ll never get back. At least here it can be repaired.”
“And you want to follow that guy?”
“No, but—!”
The click of guns stops them short.
The man stands by the door again, a smile plastered on his face. On either side of him,
armored guards hold rifles in a ready position. “I really do think you’ll want to follow me. It would
be quite a shame if you didn’t.”
Tentatively, Shannon moves forward. They follow the young man out the doors, Heath
shooting a glare at the two men with guns who trail behind them.
After a long elevator ride, the small party arrives in front of the penthouse suite. The man
pokes his head into the room, says a few unintelligible words, and then steps back to allow Shannon
and Heath to enter.
“He is ready for you.”
Stepping in, the two absorb the giant, neatly arranged office space in front of them. Across
the back wall is a huge ceiling to floor window, overlooking the streets of Manhattan below. At
the desk, another man in a crisp suit stands looking out towards the horizon, only turning once
Shannon clears her throat.
The shock on Shannon and Heath’s faces is evident, eliciting a laugh from the new
gentleman. “I know, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? At least for me.” He steps around his desk and
examines his guests smugly. “20 years, at least.”
On his desk, a shiny gold name plate reads Jacob Martin.
“Why don’t you have a seat? I think you’ll find we have a lot to talk about, time travelers.”