“God. This is unreal. Who are these people?”
“This building was once a luxury hotel,” David explained. “What you’re seeing now is the opening night gala. This all happened about six years ago, give or take.”
“And you just plucked it right out of the past.”
David jerked a humble shrug. “It takes some effort. But it gets easier each time. Come on.”
He moved to the dance floor and held out his hand. Mia eyed him cynically.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Sure am.”
“You want us to dance with ghosts.”
His expression turned somber. “You’ve been dancing with ghosts all day, Mia. It’s been clear to everyone.”
She crossed her arms and looked down at her feet, speaking in a tiny, broken voice. “It’s my birthday.”
David nodded in grim understanding. “I’m sorry. I know that must hurt. If I had the power to bring your family back, even for one night, I would. You’ll just have to settle for me and these people.”
With a sly grin, he raised his beckoning hand. “Come on. If we’re going to dwell in the past, let’s do it in style.”
She slowly joined him on the dance floor, fighting a daft grin. “This is the strangest thing I’ve ever done.”
“These are strange times, Miafarisi. Might as well embrace it.”
He took her hands in his and together they danced—the boy with an eye in the past and the girl with a foot in the future. They twirled to the music in their sweatpants and socks, six years late to the party.
—
The next morning at breakfast, Hannah sniffed her slice of honeydew, then gave it to Zack to freshen up. Amanda dropped her fork and retrieved it with a long white protrusion that sprang from her palm like a frog’s tongue. Mia declared that she was tired of movies and wanted to see some live lumivision programs for a change. The others agreed. They’d demand that Quint unblock the channels sometime after the morning’s big presentation.
“What’s the official topic of this thing, anyway?” Amanda inquired.
David responded through a mouthful of apple. “I asked Quint that very question.”
“And?”
“He just said, ‘Temporis.’”
Hannah cast a befuddled look around the table. “Does anyone here know what that is?”
She received nothing but shrugs and head shakes in reply.
“Well, this should be interesting.”
At 9 A.M., Czerny popped his head into the bistro and asked his guests if they were ready. They were. In quiet harmony, the Silvers cleared their plates from the table, and then moved on.
ELEVEN
Sterling Quint came to work at 7 A.M., looking more dapper than ever in his double-breasted Benaduce suit, Vanya silk tie, and four-hundred-dollar pocket square. His wrists were garnished with eighteen-karat-gold cuff links that were molded in the elaborate pattern of watchworks, the closest thing he had to a lucky charm. He’d first worn them ten years ago at a grand convention hall in Havana, where he stood before two thousand of his fellow temporal physicists and assured them in his most regal baritone that Earth was not an only child.
“We are surrounded by infinite kin,” he’d declared. “Siblings and half siblings. Distant cousins. Even twins. These parallel realities share our physical space, lying just outside our perceptions. I believe that one day we’ll be able to access them, like so many frequencies on a radio.”
Quint was not the first scientist to present that notion, but he did offer a mathematical description of his multiverse in action, a theoretical equation that unified two competing ideas about the nature of time and purported to explain most if not all of the paradoxes involved with temporal manipulation.
Though his Radio Worlds Theory was untestable and could neither be proved nor disproved, it went on to dominate the university chalkboards and make him a global star of the physics field . . . for a time. Eventually his scientific peers, no better than teenage girls with their fickle tastes and fad worship, discarded his theory for a newer and shinier rival.
Now Quint could only grin at the thunderous uproar he’d create at the next temporal physicists’ conference. The looks on their pasty white faces when he unveiled the scientific find of the century.
The meeting room was large enough to seat a hundred, but only six folding chairs had been set in front of the dais. Most of Quint’s employees stood along the walls. Another few scurried onstage, rushing to prepare the mechanical devices that Quint would soon demonstrate for his guests.
Shortly after nine, Czerny arrived with five Silvers in tow. They approached their seats in a slow single file, their curious gazes fixed on the many strange contraptions up front. Hannah cast a baffled glance at a young and lanky post-grad who was dressed from head to foot in a blue rubber suit.
“What’s with the deep-sea diver?”
“It’s not a diving suit,” Quint told her. “You’ll see what it does.”