‘What’s this got to do with me?’
‘I hope you’ll consider joining us. The reasons for your earlier dismissal would no longer count against you. And an outpost in the Indian Ocean would be strategically valuable.’
‘No,’ Odette said without hesitation.
‘Understood. But, Odette, you and I – we swim in the same cut, do we not? When you were a little girl in Mahé – yes, I remember our meeting – you said you wanted to be a detective. Here’s your opportunity.’ Elspeth stood, and sank her hands into her coat pockets. She glanced at the wall of clippings. ‘I’m not over-fond of Grace’s art. Too post-modern for my taste.’
She walked away without farewell.
Odette was in no rush to leave. Maman would be at home, with questions Odette didn’t know how to answer yet. She could linger a while. The last installation stood close to the exit. A black, cubic hut, reminiscent of a miniature time machine. She walked into it and a video screen was playing in the darkness. The woman on the screen was Fay. Fay before she was jaded. A luminous Fay. Was she being interviewed? She was sitting alone in a chair. Then she spoke.
Whenever I visit my father, the trees in his garden are young again, and so is he. I will never take that for granted.
The screen cut to black. Odette had missed the start of the story. She would wait for the story to begin again.
We hope you enjoyed this book.
Appendix I: Glossary
Appendix II: Time Travel Conclave’s Battery of Psychometric Tests
Acknowledgements
About Kate Mascarenhas
An Invitation from the Publisher
APPENDIX 1:
Glossary
Closed timelike curve (CTC): A path of spacetime that loops back to its starting point. CTCs are associated with a breakdown in causality, because causality demands that any event is preceded by its cause.
Completion: To live an incident you’ve already read or heard about.
Consistency principle: This principle states that the probability of any action or occurrence that would cause a paradox is zero.
Common chronology: The sequence of events experienced by non-time travellers.
Echoing: Returning to an incident you’ve already experienced.
Emus: People who don’t time travel, and thus pass through time in a single direction. Emus are unable to walk backwards.
Exotic material: A technical term for the material used to build scaffolding in wormholes. Time-travelling adulterers also use the term lewdly, to refer to conquests in far-off decades.
Forecasting: Intercourse with one’s future self.
Green-me: A time traveller’s younger self.
Legacy fuck: Intercourse with one’s past self.
Liebestod: A trip to see a lover for the last time before one’s death. The term is Germanic in origin, with liebe translating to love and tod to death. In a non-time travelling context, it is more usually applied to the final music in Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde, from 1859.
Me-timing: Ongoing infidelity committed with a past or future self. This is largely tolerated among time travellers but regarded as emotionally unhealthy.
One-way travellers: See Emus.
Palmist: A time traveller who uses her knowledge of a person’s future to manipulate them into sex. Technically this is illegal under time travel law, as it violates consent. Over a three century period there have been eighty-seven prosecutions, fifty per cent of which reached guilty verdicts. However, anecdotal reports suggest that the incidence of the crime is higher than the prosecution number.
Personal chronology: The sequence of events experienced by an individual time traveller, which will differ from common chronology, and may differ from the personal chronologies of other time travellers.
Plodders: People who don’t time travel, and who must therefore experience events at the pace of common chronology, rather than a pace of their own choosing.
Quantum tunnelling: Detection from the opposing side of a barrier, in the field of quantum mechanics. Also a slang term for intercourse.
Silver-me: A time traveller’s older self.
Swim in the same cut: People whose personal chronologies match well, because they belong to the same team. A ‘cut’ is a term for a canal, typical of West Midlands dialects.
Tipler cylinder: Early plans for time travel machines proposed a long cylinder spinning around on its longitudinal axis. The rotation would twist spacetime, rendering CTCs traversable, and permitting time travel into the past. As the design could not accommodate travel into the future it was eventually abandoned. However, the term has persisted as anatomical slang, because early diagrams of tipler cylinders suggested they would be phallic in appearance.
Topology change: Manipulations of time and fields which allow time machines to function.
Wenches: Freshly recruited time travellers. Historically wench has been used in a number of British dialects to refer variously to a young girl, a servant, or a sex worker. These nuances of meaning may be revealing of how time travellers perceive their newest team members. The adoption of a feminine term may partially reflect the high representation of women among the Conclave’s staff; however time travellers apply the name to male as well as female entrants to the profession.
Zeitigzorn: Feeling angry with someone for things they won’t do wrong for years. The word is German in origin, with zeitig translatable as early and zorn as anger. Zeitigzorn is particularly common during the early stages of a time traveller’s career. The converse is under-reacting to objectionable behaviour, because the time traveller has known it is coming for decades.
APPENDIX 2:
Time Travel Conclave’s Battery of Psychometric Tests
Selected Questions
Death Anxiety Scale for Time Travellers (DASTT) Indicate your agreement using the following scale:
1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree
i
I worry about my physical health being poor before my death
1 2 3 4 5
ii
I worry about my mental health being poor before my death
1 2 3 4 5
iii
I worry about what happens after death
1 2 3 4 5
iv
I don’t mind being forgotten after my last time travel trip
1 2 3 4 5
v
I don’t mind being gone for ever after my last time travel trip
1 2 3 4 5
vi
The thought of dying makes me feel alone
1 2 3 4 5
vii
The thought of dying makes me feel out of control
1 2 3 4 5
viii
The thought of dying makes me sad
1 2 3 4 5
ix
Discussing aspects of my death with my older selves does not disturb me
1 2 3 4 5
x
Discussing aspects of my death with other time travellers does not disturb me
1 2 3 4 5
xi
Discussing aspects of my death with ordinary people does not disturb me
1 2 3 4 5
xii
I’m not afraid of dying of cancer
1 2 3 4 5
xiii
I’m not afraid of dying from heart disease
1 2 3 4 5
xiv
I’m not afraid of dying from stroke
1 2 3 4 5
xv
I avoid reminders of the known way I am going to die
1 2 3 4 5
xvi
I hate not knowing what will happen after death
1 2 3 4 5
xvii
I hate not knowing what death will feel like
1 2 3 4 5
xviii
I hate not knowing what the world is like after the curtain call
1 2 3 4 5
xix
I think of death as something that affects my older selves, not me
1 2 3 4 5
xx
I think of death as something that affects me, not other people
1 2 3 4 5
xxi
I think of death as something that is very remote
1 2 3 4 5
xxii
Other people’s deaths are abstract to me
1 2 3 4 5
xxiii
Other people’s deaths are funny to me
1 2 3 4 5
xxiv
Other people’s deaths feel temporary to me
1 2 3 4 5
xxv
Death will be a reunion with loved ones after my last time travel trip
1 2 3 4 5
xxvi
Death will be oblivion
1 2 3 4 5
xxvii
Death will be a reckoning for the life I’ve lived
1 2 3 4 5