They explained that every mission held the risk of what had happened to me, as alternate possible versions of past and future rippled through the continuum. Liam and I had left through one wormhole, from one possible version, and returned to another, a world recognizable yet significantly different. The version we’d come from, I learned, was rare in its squeamishness about changing history. How could anyone expect to travel to the past and not change it? This seemed a fair question, considering my experience. No one was rude enough to say it directly, but I sensed I’d come from an inferior version; a na?ve world, maybe.
“You might well want to be rectified,” Dr. Hernandez concluded. “Just based on what I’ve heard right now.” I must have looked as dismayed as I felt, for he smiled and said even more gently, which I had not thought possible: “It is safe; it changes nothing essential. The memories causing the trouble, only those, are excised, and replaced with better-conforming ones. Of course, it neutralizes all memory of the time travel mission, and everything connected to it: that’s the hinge. Some people like that, if their voyage into the past was traumatic; for others, it’s a deal-breaker.”
I supposed it made sense. If no one saw any problem in altering history—that is, collective memory—why should the individual’s memory matter either? “Must I decide at once?”
“In a few days you’ll have a proper session with your mnemosynist—” He gestured at Dr. Montana, who said:
“We’ll review your biography in detail. Based on the degree of variance, and your particulars, I make a recommendation. The decision is yours, but the process is irreversible, so it’s important to make a choice you are comfortable with. Rectification must be done within three months, because there starts to be a small but growing risk of complication.”
“Meaning what?”
“Memories of the time travel voyage begin to entrench, the old and the new versions to commingle. Later, rectification can be associated with mental disorder.”
A little silence followed this.
“We’ll let you rest now,” Dr. Montana said. “Unless you have more questions.”
“Just one.” I hesitated. Did I want to know? I did. “My mother promised to come and meet me at Return. When will I be able to see her?”
They glanced at each other, and their expressions confirmed my fears, even before Dr. Montana leaned forward and began: “Rachel. I am so sorry.”
AFTER A YEAR OF PRIVIES AND CHAMBER POTS, THE BATHROOM was amazing: the gleaming white surfaces, a magical toilet that flushed itself and then cleaned my ass with a spray of warm water, firm but gentle. In the shower, there was pressure you could dial up and down, and soaps and shampoos that smelled almost like things found in nature: lavender, mint, rosemary. I stood under the steaming water and sobbed, there by the rivers of Babylon, resting my head against the clean white tiles.
SHORT-TERM AMNESIA IS A POSSIBLE SIDE EFFECT; THOUGH I never experienced it on Arrival, my memories of the first days after Return were sloppy and vague. What I mostly remember of the debriefing in that big, windowless conference room is pressing my hot hands down onto the long table to cool them, fascinated that such a large piece of furniture was made of metal, as I answered question after question while trying not to think too hard. I told them everything, except what had happened between Liam and me. My engagement to Henry made everyone laugh and fall over themselves with questions.
My lunch with Eva Farmer I remember, but as dreams are remembered: vivid yet surreal. It was in a private dining room at the institute, one I’d never known about, with a view into a small garden I hadn’t known about either. An assistant sitting with us discreetly filmed our conversation with his wearable for possible use in a film they were making about her life. Eva Farmer, like the other time I’d met her, left the impression of an enormously intelligent person striving to act like a merely intelligent one; I had a sense of power held in reserve. She asked lots of penetrating questions: about Jane Austen and her family, particulars of daily life in 1815. She seemed interested in what working with Liam had been like; I got the sense that he was a bigger deal here than in the world we had come from, and I resolved to look him up when lunch was over. For the moment, I played along.
“There’s something I would like to ask you,” I finally summoned the courage to say over the empty espresso cups. My glance went involuntarily to the assistant, and Eva Farmer gave him a nod; he rose and left the table.
“Thank you,” I said, surprised.
“I owe you much more than that.” Eva Farmer smiled slightly and looked out at the garden, then back to me expectantly. “So.”
“Something about this I don’t understand.” She waited, her dark eyes inscrutable. “Do people actually remember the different versions?”
“Why would they? When they have always lived one version?”
“But when history changes behind you—”
“They adapt to it.”
“But how?” She went on looking at me with the same half smile, a little sad, I thought, but maybe that was just me. “Let’s say, you’re a Jane Austen scholar. Your entire body of work has focused on the six. Suddenly one day, there are seventeen additional books! By the person you’re supposedly a specialist in, and you haven’t even read them!” She made no reply. “Or are you telling me that everyone’s past also changes? So, in fact, our imaginary scholar has read them, in a past that’s now different—” I stopped. My head hurt.
“You’re thinking about this the wrong way,” Eva Farmer said. “The past is a collective fiction like anything else. Like fiat money, for example. It exists because we agree it does. It has no objective reality.”
“So you never wanted the Cassandra letters? You never wanted ‘The Watsons’?”
“Of course I did.” Her gaze was cool and level. “But perhaps they were just means to an end. As you were too, I suppose. I’m sorry it turned out this way for you.”
This made tears well up in my eyes, which I blinked back. “In my version, we had a conversation before I left,” I began. “We were in the sand room; I’d been on horseback. You mentioned a thing I’d said in my application essay, about repairing the world.” I stopped. “Even in that version, you wanted me to save her, didn’t you? You secretly wanted that all along.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Even though it was strictly forbidden to change history.” She nodded, and I went on, feeling I’d caught her in a lie: “But why am I even asking you this? In the version you live in, you’ve always wanted to, it was never forbidden. So my question should make no sense to you.” I paused; she looked amused. It was a look Jane had sometimes turned on me. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“‘Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure,’” she quoted, increasing my sense of Jane Austen déjà vu. “People, in general, do not remember what’s changed. They know, yet they don’t. It’s hard and it’s confusing; they don’t like it. But I am not people in general, as should be obvious. I invented the Prometheus Server. For all practical purposes, I invented time travel. I don’t have any trouble keeping the various versions in my head.”
“So you understand it all?”