It’s not Abe, I tell myself. Not Abe. Ariel. And I have to focus.
“He couldn’t make it. I came in his place. From San Francisco.” My voice is wavering.
“Hart, you said?” Ariel’s voice is skeptical. I’m being naive if I thought such a weak, poorly thought-out cover story was going to fly. “Ah yes, we’ve spoken before, have we not?”
I choke back my shock. What’s Ariel playing at? Either there really is a Miss Hart he’s actually spoken to somewhere at the Kershul Group—whatever that is—or he knows something’s up. It has to be the latter. After all, how many teenage representatives are hired by huge funding groups? I’m dead in the water.
“We have.” I extend my hand. “But I’m short on time today. Can you show me what you’re working on?”
“Oh, did Jack not give you the designs I sent?” Ariel starts rifling through a stack of papers on a nearby table.
“No,” I say.
“Where did I put those?” Ariel wonders out loud. Mona comes to his side and helps him look, then pulls out a plain brown expansion folder.
“Is this it?” she asks in a tone that says she already knows it is.
Ariel takes it from her. “Thank you, Mona,” he says without looking at her. Her face falls just the slightest bit, and I know they’re not a couple yet. He barely even sees her. “You can leave us.” Her expression goes still.
Ariel’s already flipping through the papers in the file as Mona walks out. He doesn’t say good-bye or even turn to watch her go. I hurt for her. I feel like I’m being shunned by Abe. And I know I’m not supposed to interfere with the past or alter things, especially for my own personal gain, but what does it matter? If I fail, no one is ever going to see me again.
“She’s very pretty,” I tell Ariel.
“Huh?” Ariel grabs several pieces of paper and pulls them out of the folder, then looks at the door. “Who, Mona? Yes, I suppose. Here”—he shoves the papers at me—“these are the final designs for this beauty.” He taps the machine he was tinkering with when I first got here, the machine with the two discs and the copper wiring.
I look down at the designs. There’s a picture of the machine, then arrows labeling all the parts on the first page. I flip to the second page and am hit with page after page of complicated mathematical calculations. I have no idea what any of it means, and I don’t see anything that talks about a genetic link. Does this machine even have anything to do with the Annum watches? I glance at the clock on the wall. An hour has passed since I arrived in 1962. That means almost three hours have elapsed in the present. This is not good.
I flip the papers closed. “Walk me through it.”
Ariel nods and heads over to the machine. He spins the discs on either side of it. “This is just the prototype, of course. The actual device is larger. Much larger.” He chuckles like he just made a joke, and I give a weak smile. “When it’s turned on, these discs start spinning faster than the speed of light.” He points to the copper wire in between the discs. “And this tunnels exotic matter, which creates a wormhole between the two points. I’ve figured out a way to load the wormhole into a small, everyday object that would allow time travel.”
Ariel switches off the machine and turns to me.
“We’re limiting it,” he tells me. “We’re loading the genetic makeup of seven men, hand-picked because of their strength, acumen, physical prowess, and intellectual capacity. The time travel devices will only work for those seven men.”
“Why?” I ask.
“This is an experiment. The fewer people who can travel through time, the better.” He drops his voice. “It’s never a good thing to go messing with time unnecessarily. Time is a powerful and dangerous tool.”
A chill races up my back.
“I have folks at the Department of Defense interested in this project,” Ariel continues. “They’re the ones who’ve asked us to limit it.”
“Have they given you money?”
“No,” Ariel says. “Not yet. They promise they will if the prototype is to their liking, but until that day, I need the help of the Kershul Group.”
Yeah, Kershul Group, whatever. “And what if someday you want to expand it past those seven individuals? How do you do that?”
“Well, their children would be able to time travel, obviously—”
“I’m talking broader than that,” I interrupt.
Ariel takes the papers from me and flips open to the fifth page. He points to a calculation. “That’s this. A later addition to the machine down the line. It’s only in the design phase. The machine was specifically designed to reflect only the genetic makeup of the chosen seven. Adding another person would require complicated and expensive changes to the design. We’re not there yet. We don’t have the funding.”
I ignore the push about funding because, oh my God, this is my solution. I don’t have to ask Ariel to scrap the genetic thing and let anyone time travel. I just have to make sure he doesn’t ever change the machine to add other travelers. This is even better. This way I’ll never be recruited into Annum Guard in the first place. I’ll leave 1962 and go back to Peel. Go back to Abe.
Or will I be stuck in 1962 forever? If I’m suddenly incapable of projecting, how am I going to get back?
I look at Ariel. I know this man. I love this man. He doesn’t know me yet, but he’s going to come to love me just like a granddaughter. Maybe I should trust him with my secret. Tell him that I’ve come from the future and beg him to help me.
Or do I trust Alpha? He says he really wants to help me, and part of me wants to believe him. Ariel or Alpha? Ariel or Alpha? Who’s to say I can really trust this Ariel from the past? I don’t know him. People change so much over the years. Maybe young Ariel is greedy and ambitious and out to prove his name no matter what. That’s so different from the generous, caring, genuine Ariel I know; but it’s definitely possible.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life locked in an eight-by-ten cell with a small, slatted window. Or maybe no window at all.
I decide to trust Alpha. To complete the mission he gave me.
“I’ll give you the funding on one condition,” I say.
Ariel’s eyebrows pop up. “What’s that?”
“Change the design. Get rid of the genetic link. Make it so that anyone with one of your watches can time travel.”
Ariel blinks. Then he scowls. “I never said anything about a watch.”
My heart skips a beat. “I—uh—” I flip through the papers Ariel gave me while my heart beats wildly. “Um—” I flip past a page of calculations, another page of calculations. Oh, please please please let there be a visual in here somewhere. “I mean—” And then I gasp. “Here!”
I shove the page in Ariel’s face. It’s a drawing of the machine, and in the bottom left corner there’s a rendering of a watch. I’m not religious, but thank-you to anyone or anything that might be looking out for me right now.
“Ah,” Ariel says. “Of course. You’ve seen this before.” But there’s something funny in his tone. I’m blowing this big-time.
“So you’ll get rid of the genetic link then?”
“What?” Ariel shakes his head. “No.”
I blow out a breath from my lips. “No?”
“No,” he repeats. “The DOD wants the genetic limitations. It’s always been my intention to partner with them on this, to let them use the power of Chronometric Augmentation—that’s what I’ve been calling it—to improve our lives. I’m unwilling to risk this machine falling into the wrong hands.”