He got worse for a time, and then, slowly, he got better.
In a way, that was the island’s ultimate power: it used time to heal.
Elliott and his wife, Claire, lived next door to Charlie, and while they gave him his space, they were also there for him, waiting, hoping that they would become a family again.
Adeline watched as her father and Nora grew closer than they ever had been in Palo Alto or Absolom City. They shared a bungalow with a small garden behind it. They home-schooled Ryan for now, until a proper school could be established.
Adeline’s brother had taken up surfing and spent most days exploring the island.
It was the transformation in Hiro that surprised her the most. For the first time since Adeline had known him, Hiro was happy. Like Charlie, it seemed that time on the island was chasing his demons away. It seemed that his addiction had finally released him.
One morning, Adeline was sitting in Hiro’s office, sipping coffee, when she said, “How accurate are your Absolom arrival calculations?”
The physicist snorted. “Can’t believe you’d even ask me that.”
“Can you hit a moving target?”
Hiro squinted. “Of course. The Earth is a moving target.”
Adeline cocked her head, confused.
“Our planet is constantly moving through space,” Hiro said. “If you go back in time even a fraction of a second, Earth is not where it was when you left.”
Adeline had never even considered that. She pressed on. “What about if we’re trying to arrive on an airplane—in mid-flight?”
“Are you serious? You want to do an Absolom rescue on a moving airplane?”
“I’m serious.”
“Cool.”
“Is it doable?”
“Sure. We’d have to get the flight plan.”
“It won’t help much. We know this flight got off course before it was shot down. We don’t know exactly where it happened—only that the Soviets downed it somewhere around the Strait of Tartary, between the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk.” Adeline held up a finger. “Complicating matters is that we don’t know the exact time it went down either.”
Hiro stood and paced. “What we need is a probe. An Absolom probe. A small device loaded with cameras in all directions. We send it to the past, somewhere in the sky, it takes pictures, and it automatically recalls itself after a fraction of a second. We can use the photos to pinpoint the exact location of the plane.”
Adeline could tell he was excited about the idea. “You love this, don’t you?”
Hiro nodded. “I do. I love the math of it. Building things. And the risk of departures and recall.” He looked up. “Not that there is any risk. I work it all out before you depart. But…”
“I know what you mean. It’s a little like gambling in that way.”
“It is,” Hiro said slowly. “But I don’t miss gambling. Maybe I traded one obsession for another.”
“Maybe you traded an unhealthy obsession for a healthy one. I think that’s how it goes sometimes.”
*
Two months later, thanks to Hiro’s Absolom probe, Hana and Adeline went back to 1983 and rescued Hana’s father.
EIGHTY
In the Tesseract review room, Adeline sat at one of the stations, scrolling through photos. The one on the screen was from the Imperial War Museums in the UK. It was dated September 14, 1940—a week after the Nazi bombing campaign known as the Blitz began.
The photo was from London, of a town house where a family was standing on the front stoop with two visitors in front of them: Elliott and Charlie.
Adeline used the aging algorithm to estimate Elliott’s and Charlie’s age in the photo. The software predicted that they were approximately six months older than they were now. It would probably be their first mission to the past. That made sense to Adeline. Charlie would likely be ready then.
She added the picture and departure date to the schedule of upcoming missions.
The next photo Tesseract had tagged was from an archive in the United States. As Adeline studied it, she realized it wasn’t a photo but a black-and-white drawing that wasn’t dated.
It was, however, beautifully done, clearly by a talented artist. It depicted a frontier family sitting around a fire in front of a covered wagon. The family’s three children were holding what looked like marbles in their hands. Adeline sat to the left of the children, her father on the right, both smiling. The father of the family was whittling a stick of wood with a small knife.
Adeline opened the accompanying files and found a picture of a journal entry that was apparently below the drawing (she could see the lines and shadings of it at the top of the writing).
Fellow travelers came to call today, a man and his daughter, bearing fresh-baked bread and a cured ham. By some miracle, they also gave the children marbles to play with. I wish they had conveyed them privately to Oliver and myself, for we would have saved them as gifts for Christmas.
At dinner, they recounted that, like us, they were in search of a better life for their family and had come out here to seek it. Try as I might, I couldn’t place their accents, and they were a tad circumspect about divulging their roots. But I suppose that’s fine. Smart even. You never know what grudges strangers might be carrying around and what scores they’re looking to settle. Out here, holding your tongue about yourself might help you live longer.
Adeline studied the drawing and journal entry. There was no date. Or location. That was a problem.
There were two more files associated with the group. One was a map with a line drawn across present-day Colorado, southern Idaho, northern Nevada, and ending in northern California. Adeline recognized it as the California Trail from the nineteenth century, the dirt road traveled by hundreds of thousands of settlers going west to the gold rush in California.
The trail had a series of numbers along it, and the second file was a scan of a notebook with the corresponding numbers. Adeline quickly read them, focusing on number 49:
Nov 14, 1852: Came across what we thought was a wrecked wagon. Suspected it was an Indian trap at first. Would have kept moving along if not for the smell of the bodies. Oxen dead too. Too long dead to butcher. Unfortunate.
The wagon was cracked like a ship on the rocks. Best guess is a windstorm got them. I didn’t think that was real common in these parts, but there it was. Maggie yelled at me to pass them by, insisting they likely got the cholera. But I buried them. Kept the mother’s journal in case any of their kin come asking about them. The kids had marbles. I know I should’ve buried the toys with them, but I slipped them in my pocket to give to Mary and Luke at Christmas. Ain’t proud of it. Guess that’s why I confessed it here. Likely all the kids will get this year unless we make a strike early.
And with that, Adeline had what she needed: location and date. In her mind, she began putting the mission together. They would approach the family—with gifts—share a meal and invite them back to their camp. At a safe distance, perhaps on a nearby ridge, they’d watch the windstorm destroy the wagon, then give the family recall rings and bring them back to Absolom Island, where they would find exactly what they were going west for: a better life for their family in an unsettled frontier.
*
Adeline spent the afternoon sewing the outfits she and her father would wear. The hum of the sewing machine always made her think of her mother and her teaching her the craft. Sarah Anderson would forever stay in the past, but in so many ways, she was here with them too.
*
Two weeks later, Adeline and her father were walking along the California Trail in northern Nevada in November of 1852.