“Makes sense to me,” Berenice said. “Those were transitional phases, heavily revised. The spooky part is that I can’t find any records of these guys coming through the Machines in ’92. It’s possible they had a cover story, though. Or they came through in the past and reached ’92 by living in real time.”
“I bet they were in real time,” Shweta replied.
“Or they made up a legit reason to be here, the same way we would if we were doing edits.”
We debated for a few minutes, and then C.L. broke in. “I know we have a lot to discuss, but I wanted to say that I’m so glad you’re here, Berenice. I can’t imagine the Daughters without you.”
“It’s true.” Anita’s voice was rough with emotion.
“You are the best, Berenice.” Enid embraced her partner fiercely.
C.L. brought out some cupcakes they’d made with representations of atoms printed on the icing and we took a moment to celebrate a world with our friend in it.
At last I got around to describing my experience falling out of the wormhole, and C.L.’s eyes widened with excitement. They unsuccessfully tried to wipe a streak of blue buttercream off their cheek before jumping in. “Okay, this is going to sound weird, but it almost sounds like you were in an archive cave.”
All of us stared at them. They were referring to the as-yet-unexplained phenomenon that drew geoscientists from all over the world to Raqmu in Jordan. There were hundreds of these caves, dug into the soft sandstone of the city’s canyon walls. Somehow, they could prevent written documents from changing with the timeline. Raqmu was home to records of all the times we’d forgotten throughout history—some cut into stone and hide, others in densely printed books and digital storage. Now that I thought about it, C.L. was right that the place I visited looked a lot like some of the smaller archive caves, especially the ones devoted to minority history.
C.L. continued to muse. “What if the Comstockers really are sabotaging the Machines and this is the first sign?”
I nodded eagerly—this confirmed what I’d been thinking.
C.L. met my eyes and spoke again. “Maybe the Machine took you briefly to Raqmu? As you know, I’ve been studying the Machine at Raqmu, and I’ve found—”
Abruptly, the door to our conference room banged open. A woman stood there, her short black hair mashed up on one side like she’d been sleeping on it. Her skin was dark brown, and her eyes bright blue; she wore a vibrant Hawaiian shirt over a gray technical jumper. Before she spoke, I knew she was a traveler.
She settled heavily into the last remaining chair, looking at each of us in turn. “Daughters of Harriet. I’m Morehshin.” Her accent was unfamiliar but easily understood. “I have come from the future. I will give anything, even my life, to help you.” She withdrew something small from her sleeve and set it on the table. It was almost impossible to look at, but with great effort I perceived what seemed to be a spherical globe of water throbbing and rolling slowly on the fake wood grain. Had she brought this thing with her from the future, despite all the limitations we thought we understood about how the mechanism worked?
We all started asking questions at once.
“Where is your mark?”
“What is that thing? Is that a weapon?”
“When are you from?”
“What past do you remember?”
She drummed a military rhythm on the table with her fingers, and the jumper parted over her traveler’s tattoo. “As you can see, I’m from exactly 512 years in your future. I came because my… colleagues and I believe that this era is the last common ancestor of our timeline and one that is strongly divergent.”
“What do you mean, ‘strongly divergent’?” I asked. I had never met a traveler who made these kinds of claims. Usually we talked about editing, not diverging.
“I didn’t come to change a few laws in the United States, or study the price of meat. This is something bigger. I had to come a long way back to make it happen.”
Our conversation about Raqmu and the archive caves was completely forgotten. I’d met future travelers when they gave lectures sponsored by the geoscience department, of course. But none had ever come to find the Daughters of Harriet specifically. If what Morehshin said was true, people still knew about our working group half a millennium from now. A hot, unfamiliar sensation of optimism spread through my ribcage. We had made a difference. Things would get better. Wading through the garbage can of history had actually been worth it.
Morehshin spoke again. “Obviously I’m not going to tell you about the past that I remember. It’s irrelevant anyway, since nothing I remember has happened yet.”
“What’s that?” Shweta pointed at the unidentifiable blob on the table, roving slowly.
“Evidence that I am serious. One thing I will tell you is that there’s a lot you don’t understand yet about the Machines. We can pull certain objects through with us—more than garb. And people. We can travel together, up to five at a time.”
C.L. was excited. “I thought that was one of the hard limits on the interfaces—no simultaneous travel. To stop people from bringing an army through, or maybe to prevent mass temporal abandonment when things get tough.”
Morehshin shrugged. “Your ignorance is not my problem. I’m here because of the edit war. The one you first described in your writing, Anita. In the subalterns’ cave.”
We all looked at Anita, whose face was morphing from disgruntlement to shock. “What… no. I haven’t left anything in a cave.”
“Somebody named Anita from the Daughters of Harriet left a detailed history of the edit war, starting with the Comstockers. Is that you?”
“No… it’s not me. At least, it’s not me now.”
Morehshin sucked in her breath at Anita’s implication. Exposing the future was a major violation, and apparently the taboo still held in this traveler’s present. Nobody was sure what to say next.
I broke the silence. “I’ve been tracking the Comstockers. What can you tell us about this divergence?”
“Nothing. Obviously. I’ve already been foolish with my words. But… we need to kill Anthony Comstock.” She pointed at the blob on the table. So it was some kind of weapon.
“You’re about a century too late for that.” I folded my arms.
Next to me, Anita looked like she’d eaten hot coals. Her voice came out in the clipped phonemes she used for arguing with old, tenured white men at academic conferences. “In addition, evidence suggests that killing and saving individual lives doesn’t affect the timeline. The Great Man theory has been disproven. Only social movements and collective action can change history.”
Now Morehshin looked frustrated. When she spoke, her unidentifiable accent thickened. “You take your sterile pleasure in hell, don’t you?” I got the feeling that she’d translated directly from some nasty future curse. “You know nothing about travel. You haven’t cracked layer one of the Machine interfaces. We have centuries of data demonstrating that we can change the timeline by targeting key individuals.”
Anita glanced at Berenice, and I knew what she was thinking. This traveler could be lying or wrong. Or she could be right. It was true that that we barely understood how history worked. Theories of timeline change went in and out of style; every geoscience student read about the many hypotheses that had been adopted and discarded, only to be adopted again with seemingly more nuance. Clearly the geoscientists of Morehshin’s time were in a Great Man phase. At least her sophisticated Machine techs hadn’t managed to deposit her in the right period. We still had a chance to stop her from killing anyone, and possibly making things worse when a more profoundly devious bastard rose up to take Comstock’s place.