22. June 7, 2202 Boston, Massachusetts
Lucy activates the trans-temporal chamber with her palm. The display flashes to life, and she swipes through to the coordinates. “Let’s see, today you’ll be visiting…” Her brow furrows.
Oliver fidgets with the quarter in his jacket pocket. “It’s the first modern ballet performance in history.”
“I see,” Lucy says, in a way that means she doesn’t see at all.
His stomach twists. Is this going to be worth waiting six years for? Is he?
Lucy’s hand hovers over the confirmation button. “Are you sure? I could substitute a preapproved destination for you. Mozart in Vienna is a client favorite.”
But Beatrix won’t be in Vienna, and she hasn’t waited six years for him to blow her off for Mozart. Besides, he wants to see the first ballet. He wants to see it with her. “I’m sure.”
“Suit yourself.” Lucy confirms the coordinates with a tap on the screen. “Give me ten minutes to run the safety protocols while you change, and we’ll be ready to go.”
Oliver leaves Lucy to adjust her screen full of readings.
He weaves his way through a dozen other travel stations—some occupied by technicians and travelers, some empty—and scans his palm on a glass panel next to a steel door.
It slides open, and he steps into an elevator.
There aren’t any buttons to select. There’s only one destination: The Vault.
The first time Lucy mentioned it, Oliver thought it sounded like the villain’s lair from a bad heist movie.
Officially, it is General Outfitting and Accessories.
The Vault is a nickname from Aevum’s early days at MIT.
Back then, it was a lecture hall that had been converted to house racks of garments in a somewhat climate-controlled environment.
The nickname stems from the tight security the school used to deter the theater department.
Because the outfits aren’t costumes. The Vault is a priceless archive of clothes from across time and across the world, each piece carefully cataloged and meticulously maintained.
In the time it takes the elevator to reach the floor below, three outfits approved for Oliver’s excursion have been loaded into the 3D display, courtesy of Lucy.
A full-size projected hologram of each rotates on a raised platform at the center of the bright white room, waiting for him to make his choice.
He feels ridiculous, standing in a room cooled to precisely 70 degrees Fahrenheit, trying to decide which eighteenth-century finery he should wear to meet a woman he hasn’t seen in five days or six years, depending on who you ask.
Is this a bad idea? It feels like a bad idea.
A signal for an incoming call lights the band on Oliver’s wrist: Theo Rhodes. He almost picks up this time.
A message pops up: Call me. Please.
He lets it disappear into the graveyard of his unread messages. It joins at least a dozen from Luke and Zoe—mostly from Zoe. Not that Luke cares any less than she does. He can just sense—since they were kids—when Oliver needs space.
He sighs. It’s not like he knows what to say to any of them anyway.
Oliver selects an outfit, and something in the wall clunks and grinds. Long lines of black garment bags whizz along tracks, across the ceiling, and down into the room. A bag stops in front of him, swaying with the momentum of its journey.
He takes it to a dressing room and changes out of his T-shirt and jeans.
When he’s done, he slips his quarter into his waistcoat pocket—he is wearing a waistcoat now—and shoves his own clothes into a locker with his sneakers and wristband and glasses.
Aevum has given him contacts for the trip, since his glasses aren’t period appropriate.
He takes the elevator up to the lab. Lucy has his travel chamber primed and ready.
“All set?” she asks from behind her display.
Oliver steps into the chamber and the door slides shut behind him. He sways on his feet, the rotating grid of glass and metal suddenly disorienting. He steadies himself against the curved wall.
A vibrant green light washes over him, and he squeezes his eyes shut against the brightness.
It scans him from head to toe, cataloging his vital signs, checking for a DNA profile match and testing his recall chip.
He takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.
The scan completes and the chamber thrums to life.
His ears pop as the pressure changes. The sounds of the lab turn dull and distant.
Oliver still isn’t used to the many odd sensations of time travel.
The jagged energy that prickles like a thousand needles against his skin before a jump and the feeling of being squeezed tight and pulled apart all at once as he passes through time are unpleasant enough, but the most unsettling part is the smell.
Oliver didn’t realize time had a scent until his test jump.
A hop, really—an hour into the past at the lab, and a return to his present—to set the travel limit within his recall chip.
As Lucy later explained, he could travel to any time before that test-jump moment—within Aevum’s established rules as stipulated in his contract—but not after.
She also wanted him to get a feel for the process before she sent him careening back to the first Elizabethan era.
He thought the hardest part would be not losing his lunch, but when he returned to the lab, the scent lingering in the chamber brought tears to his eyes.
Fake cinnamon and the powdery floral perfume his mother wore for dance recitals and hospital galas and date nights with his father.
It smelled like home, or, at least, what home used to be.
He thought it would fade when he opened the chamber, but he couldn’t escape it. It clung to him like bad cologne.
As best as Aevum could tell, the scents belong to memories associated with a then and now, a before and after, a changing of the seasons.
It is different for everyone. To Lucy, the travelers smell like bonfire smoke and an afternoon storm in a pine wood.
“Like summer at the lake with my cousins,” she once said wistfully.
She has assured Oliver he will get used to it. He hasn’t.
A low vibration hums against Oliver’s skin, and Lucy gives him a thumbs-up through the glass.
The hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand on end.
He grits his teeth as the vibration turns into a pressure that fills the chamber.
He braces himself for that scent, and in a blinding flash of light, the lab vanishes.