CHAPTER ONE: April 14, 2133

I fiddle with the tiny knob on the side of my personal visual device glasses, bumping the history lecture recording to 150% speed. The holographic image of Professor Child’s face on the glass before me speaks more quickly, twitching in a way that might be humorous if I weren’t so intent on finishing up as quickly as possible. The sooner I complete this class, the sooner I can disconnect from the school network and head home.

As Professor Child prattles on about Tsar Nicholas II and his diplomatic relationship with his uncle, Emperor Wilhelm II, I pull my traveling case from under the dorm room bed and begin throwing things haphazardly into it, not even bothering to use the air compression function to flatten out the contents.

“Heading home, Cass?” My roommate Kenzi leans against the doorframe, craning her neck to see over my shoulder, and for a moment, her face is superimposed against Professor Child’s, creating an odd amalgamation of the two in my vision. I pause my PVD glasses and pull them off my face.

“Just for the weekend.”

“You’re going to miss the rally,” she says.

I hold my favorite “Save the Pigeons” t-shirt up to my face and wrinkle my nose. The self-wash material must need to be re-ionized again. Maybe I can talk Mum into taking care of that this weekend. I toss it in the traveling case and sigh.

“The Students for Political Change Club is just going to have to get along without me,” I say. “My parents have been trying to persuade me to come home for weeks now. They’ve never made such a big deal out of my birthday before; I’m beginning to think they’ve got some surprise planned or something.”

“Maybe they’re finally going to let you ditch that ancient tech,” Kenzi says, nodding toward my PVD glasses. “Get you an implant like the rest of the 22nd century.”

I turn the glasses over in my hands. I suppose that could be the surprise. Dodge had already been a legal adult when implants were approved for public use, so they hadn’t been able to object to him getting one. But being nearly a decade younger than my older brother has its disadvantages, and one of those is that Dad and Mum have always been particularly overprotective of me.

Despite scoring high marks through secondary school, it’d taken me months to persuade them to let me enroll into tertiary school rather than a trade program, and even then, they’d insisted on having a say in my course of studies: mostly early 20th century history, rather than the political sciences I’d wanted to pursue. Try as I might, I could never figure out why, and any questions I posed, no matter how diplomatic, were always met with peculiar glances and feeble topic-changes.

“After tomorrow you could get the implants installed yourself, you know,” Kenzi says, slapping the side of the fluffy foam-seat in the center of the room until it transforms from a footstool to an armchair and then to a futon.

“What?”

She flops down on the now-futon. “You’ll be a legal adult. Honestly, Cass, before I met you, I thought my parents were old-fashioned. Yours, though, are completely stuck in the past.”

“Yeah…” I mutter. I place the PVD glasses on my face, frowning at the smudges and burnt-out pixels. Kenzi’s right. Isn’t this what becoming an adult is all about? Setting aside your parents’ ideals and sensibilities and deciding what’s important to you? And as for me, I’m not interested in the past, in events that happened hundreds of years ago—things that can’t be changed. I want to focus on the here and now, on what I can do to make the world I live in a better place.

Instead of flipping Professor Child’s lecture back on, I use my PVD glasses to access the school’s course offerings. The inquiry screen blinks before me, and I clear my throat and annunciate, “I’d like to alter my courses for the summer semester.”

***

My body is still buzzing with the excitement of my new direction when I step off the airtrain and up to the apartment where I’d lived the first seventeen years of my life. It’s a tall building with partitions jutting out like a zipper’s teeth, on which are green areas and patios. The flat sides facing east and west are black with solar panel shades on each enormous window, and a stream of crystalline water flows from the top, through a series of lily-lined gutters, and into a small pond beside the front door, where a six-foot fountain flows unceasingly.

I lean over the railing, casting a glance down at my reflection, then shake out all the crumbs that have gathered in my pockets during my trip. Koi flick their orange and red tails, fighting over the bits of shortbread cookie I bought at the airtrain vending machines.

“Cass?”

I spin just in time to catch a glimpse of a familiar, smiling face before my brother wraps his arms around me and lifts me off my feet.

“Dodge!”

“Happy birthday, little sister,” he says, setting me back on the ground. “How’s it feel to be a woman of the world? Well, almost.”

My lips creep up in a smile as I think about my new course schedule. “Better than I expected. How’s life in the travel industry?”

“Booming as usual,” he says, which is more than I usually get out of him about his work. From past snippets of conversation, I’ve gathered that he arranges expensive, high-end vacations for wealthy people who want singular experiences. No noisy theme parks or crowded cruises for them; they want bungee jumping into volcanoes or spending their holiday in low-earth orbit or something equally extravagant and ridiculous. Or so I assume. Dodge rarely talks about it, which doesn’t seem to bother anyone but me.

“Dodge!” Dad says as he opens the door to the apartment. “Been anywhere interesting lately?”

“Ah, and the birthday girl’s here,” Mum says. Though she offers me a bright smile, her eyes are rimmed with puffy redness, as if she’s been crying.

“You okay? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing,” she says, brushing it off with a wave of the hand. “Come in, come in, everyone.”

“Is… everyone here?” Dodge asks, glancing around the living room with its clean, curved lines and nature scenes projected onto the backs of the solar window shades, which are pulled all the way down to block the afternoon glare.

“Everyone?” I ask. “Who else are we expecting?”

Dad and Mum exchange one of their cryptic glances, and, much to my dismay, Dodge joins them.

“What’s going on here? Are you expecting company?” Everyone seems too somber for a surprise party, but what else could explain the expectation of more guests?

“Just an old friend,” Dad says, disappearing into the kitchen. “Anyone want something to drink?”

“You invited an old friend to my birthday celebration?” Something in my stomach churns. This isn’t about a surprise party, and I suspect it’s not about an implant, either.

“Maybe you should tell her before he gets here,” Dodge says quietly.

“No,” Mom says firmly. “We’re going to have a nice family dinner, and after that we can discuss… everything else.”

“Everything else?” I ask. “What does that mean? You’re acting like someone’s died.”

Dad reemerges from the kitchen with a glass of sparkling cider, looking distinctively guilty. He’s terrible at keeping secrets. “No one’s died, Cass. We just have… something important we need to tell you. A family secret, you might say.”

I take the glass he offers. A family secret? The more I think about it, the more curious I am. Maybe I can finally find out the answers to all those questions that always evoke such odd looks. Questions like, “Why don’t Dad and Mum talk about their childhoods as much as other parents do?” “Why don’t we ever have any relatives come to visit?” and “Why are they so obsessed with the past?”

“In that case,” I say, putting on a brave face, “let’s eat. I have some news for you all as well.”

Dad orders Punch-In from the local Italian restaurant’s electronic menu, and it arrives in the delivery slot ten minutes later, piping hot and ready for consumption. We sit around the table where we’ve shared so much together, and I try to ignore the peculiar sense of finality to the meal. Of course things will change after this; I’m an adult now. They’re just getting sentimental about their final meal with their “little girl,” before she becomes a real adult.

The meal is unusually quiet, at least for us, punctuated only by strained small talk revolving around the latest reports from the space exploratory program, Mum’s acrobatics class at the rec center, and the weather, of all things. When was the last time we’d had to resort to talking about the weather?

When the security system pings that someone’s waiting outside, I’m so ready to escape the tension that I leap from my chair. “I’ll get it.”

“Let me,” Dodge says, his hand on my shoulder. “You eat your cake.”

Dad and Mum have both set their forks down and are looking at their plates as if the chocolate frosting has suddenly gone bad.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?” I ask as soon as Dodge is out of sight.

Dad sighs. “We’ve had eighteen years to prepare for this, and I’m still not sure where to start.”

“Maybe tell me who this old friend is who’s so important to you that you’d invite him to my birthday party.” I push my cake away and cross my arms.

“He’s a scientist.”

With the expressions of sorrow on my parents’ faces, I quash the flicker of hope that this has something to do with getting an implant after all.

“I met him many years ago,” Dad continues, “before I met your mum. He asked me to help him with something and… I don’t know how to do this. Juliette?”

Mum reaches over and squeezes his hand. “Cass, there’s something you should know about your father and me. See, we weren’t born in the 22nd century.”

I study them, trying to read their expressions. “I don’t understand. Is this a joke?”

“I was born in the year 1984,” Dad says, “and I met your mum when I was traveling in the 19th century.”

“When you were traveling in the 19th century?” I push away from the table, my appetite suddenly gone.

“1893, to be precise. I was sent there to protect a young woman who’d grow up to be the great-great-grandmother of someone I once worked with, someone who was very important in… well, in how my life turned out. That young woman was your mum.”

I shake my head, but still, the room feels like it’s closing in on me. This is ridiculous. Did they really think I’d believe this? But why lie?

“Sure. So you’re from the 20th century,” I say, anger making my voice tight as I spring to my feet, “and Mum’s from the 19th. Mind telling me how you ended up here, then? In 2133?”

“Isn’t it obvious, my dear?” A stout, rotund man with spectacles and shock-white hair stands in the doorway beside my brother. “They’re time travelers.”