The Future of Another Timeline

by Annalee Newitz

  It felt like I’d passed into another reality where rules no longer existed. My sandals slapped the sidewalk in a satisfying rhythm and I could hear distant splashes and shouts from the pool. A group of middle school kids yelped and shoved each other in the water. It was the same thing I would have done the summer I was twelve, waiting through the long weeks that divided my elementary school kid self from what I was certain would be my completely grown-up middle school self. I had been such a conformist back then. I filed my nails into perfect parabolas and wore tiny bathing suits, and squeezed lemon juice onto my head in the hot sun to bring out the blond streaks in my hair. I wore pearls with my preppy blouses and was absolutely convinced that if I could lose five pounds, I would finally be pretty. But then Lizzy and I discovered punk rock.

  The girls in the pool were squealing and despite the distance I could see that they’d all used the same cherry red nail polish on their fingers and toes. I used to share nail polish with Lizzy too. My nostalgia sublimed into generalized melancholy as a train howled by outside the neighborhood boundary wall. It occurred to me that this might be the last time I’d have a chance to walk by the train tracks before I went to college and became an actual adult.

  I turned my back on the pool and scaled the wall, curling my bare toes into the crumbling stucco footholds before launching myself over the top. I hit the dusty ground with a shock that traveled up my legs to my lungs. I could still see the diminishing train in the distance. It was one of those freighters full of endless rectangular cars that might contain anything: produce, animals, toxic chemicals, stowaways. There wouldn’t be another train for a long time, so I crunched over the rock bed beneath the tracks and sat down on a thick, sun-warmed rail. Idly, I wondered where the rocks came from, and turned one over in my hands, studying reddish streaks on slate gray. Probably basalt, a volcanic rock packed with minerals that oxidized into a pinkish rust. I tossed it back among its rough-cut brethren. Some volcano spewed hot, gelatinous blobs millions of years ago, and humans eventually brought the results to this anonymous stretch of railroad track in Irvine, Alta California.

  The clatter of footsteps brought me out of my reverie, and I looked up to see Lizzy walking on the tracks toward me. She stopped about twenty yards away, Walkman clutched in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Of course she was here. It was where we always went. She exhaled a long plume of smoke and waved tentatively.

  My heart was vibrating so hard it was like I was standing next to an amp during a drum solo. Were my teeth chattering? I bit down hard and stood up. More than anything, I wanted to talk to Lizzy—the old Lizzy, before the murders, when we identified rocks and swapped mixtapes. It had been months since I’d seen her, and longer since we’d said more than hi in the halls. I was about to leave Irvine forever. Maybe we could talk this one time. Maybe everything could be normal again—not normal like in my dad’s house, but truly normal, like in a Judy Blume book about how it’s really hard to go through puberty but we survive it and then everything’s fine.

  I raised my hand and waved back. Lizzy pulled her headphones down until they circled her neck and we walked awkwardly toward each other over the solidified remains of a great eruption.

  “Hey.” She fiddled with the headphone jack, not meeting my eyes.

  “What’s up?” I tried to sound casual.

  “Taking a walk. Listening to Grape Ape.” She snuck a glance at me.

  “That’s cool.”

  We continued in this vein for a while, balancing on the rail, talking about summer vacation and college plans. We had both gotten into the dorms at UCLA, but different ones. There was a chemistry class that we both had to take first quarter, and we debated whether it would be easy or hard.

  At some point the conversation stopped feeling strange and started to feel the way it used to. There was nobody else who wanted to talk to me about science, and I missed it.

  “You seem really good.” Lizzy screwed up her face as she said it, like she wasn’t sure.

  I thought about my parents, no doubt seething at home, planning how they would punish me. “Yeah, I’m good. Is everything okay with you?”

  Lizzy looked down, hair falling into her face. “I mean, yeah. I miss you. I wish we could hang out again. I know you’re still mad and stuff.”

  “I’m not mad. I’m like…” I tried to put it into words. “I feel like we did something evil.”

  “What?” Lizzy let out a laugh. “Those guys were evil. We did the world a favor.”

  “You can’t just kill people. It doesn’t change anything. It’s like how you can’t go back in time and kill Hitler or whatever, because he’s replaced by Bitler or Zitler. Another person takes his place and World War II happens anyway. Like we learned in geology about time travel.”

  “Well, when we killed those guys they went away permanently. They can’t fucking molest other girls.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, because it was true.

  Lizzy continued, her cheeks flushed. “I don’t get why you are so upset. I mean, I was there when you had that abortion. Why should that be illegal? Guys like those shitty assholes we killed made it illegal. Because they want us to be helpless and scared of them.”

  “I can’t believe you are making that comparison. Murder is wrong, Lizzy.”

  “Oh yeah? Is rape wrong? Is it wrong to take naked pictures of girls for a ‘look book’? Who is stopping those guys? The cops don’t care. We have to do it.”

  “No, we don’t!” I yelled it right into her face, and felt my arms flailing in the air like random punctuation marks.

  “Heather was raped right in front of you, Beth!” Lizzy’s voice rose in fury. “How can you ignore reality and act like nothing is wrong?”

  I remembered my father’s hand on my arm and my mother’s silence. This was too much. I whirled around and started back along the tracks. “Fuck you!” I yelled over my shoulder, meaning it and not meaning it at the same time.

  “Beth! I’m sorry!” Lizzy ran up to me from behind, sobs jagged between her words. “I know I’m fucked up but I promise I’m not going to kill anyone else. I miss you so much. Can’t we act like none of this shit ever happened and … I dunno … go to a show or something?”

  I turned around and looked at her, my best friend since elementary school, her face torn up by something I felt too. Without thinking, I grabbed her hard in a hug. We sobbed on each other’s shoulders and it felt sweet but also poisonous, like drinking blackberry liqueur to get wasted. But what the hell was I supposed to do? Go home to my parents? At least Lizzy wasn’t pretending to be something she wasn’t. Plus, it was true that she’d stopped killing people. I hoped.

  “I’m so sorry, Beth. So sorry. Please don’t be mad at me anymore.” Lizzy was mumbling wetly into my shirt and I still couldn’t say anything. Finally I let go of our hug because my nose was running and it was getting gross.

  “I’m not mad. I really want to believe that you won’t do it again, but I still don’t totally trust you. Do you understand?” I untied the flannel shirt from around my waist and wiped my face with it.

  She kicked the rubble listlessly. “Yeah, I get it. But do you get … my side of this? Do you understand how bad those men are?”

  I put my damp hands on her skinny upper arms, now covered in goosebumps. “Yes. I really do. But we don’t need to kill anyone.”

  She nodded, her mouth quirking into a wicked grin. “Maybe we could go smash the shit out of some dudes in the mosh pit.”

  I had to smile back. “That sounds like a plan.”

  “I have the car. Wanna go now?” She hooked her thumb vaguely in the direction of the place where the tracks crossed Culver Drive. I paused, considering. I didn’t want to go home. We could go out tonight, and see how it went.

  “Sure. Let’s get a paper and see who’s playing.”

  “Yes!” Lizzy jumped up and down and hugged me again. Then she turned serious as we started walking toward Culver, balancing on the rail
s. “You really are my best friend, Beth. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “Yeah.” Even as I said it, skepticism was sharp in my gut. Maybe she meant it, but Lizzy was also using her decider powers on me. She knew what I wanted to hear.

  For the first time in my life, I wished I could use a Machine. I wanted to skip over everything in my life between this moment and the day I would become a real geologist, studying deep time. Of course that’s not how the Machines work, but that didn’t stop me from fantasizing about it.

  TWENTY-TWO

  C.L.

  Excerpted from data logs compiled during the summer 2022 field season, retrieved from the Subalterns’ Archive Cave in 2024. A formal version of these logs was included as appendix A in C.L. Khojaeva, “Vacillations in Raqmu Time Machine Performance Are Anthropogenic,” Nature, vol. 624 (2023).

  FORMAL RESEARCH PROPOSAL

  In this research project, I’ll be attempting to measure a possible perturbation in the Machines caused by human interference. Specifically, I’ll investigate the connection between the rock interface and the wormhole.

  There have been multiple reports, from Gilani, Berman, Callahan, Gupta, and others, of anomalous activity in the Machines, including travelers arriving wet, contaminated with cyanobacteria, diatoms, small invertebrates, and sediment dating back to the Ordovician period or possibly earlier. Lopez et al.’s survey of historical records shows similar but rare occurrences dating back to our earliest written sources five thousand years ago. My hypothesis is that the recent unusual activity may be linked to human-caused disruptions in the connection between the wormhole and interface.

  Sumner and Zhang suggest that we can analyze the strength of the connection between the interface and the wormhole by measuring various kinds of exotic matter emissions. Here I’ll be taking readings of photonic matter emitted at the instant of wormhole opening. Sumner and Zhang provide data on typical emissions levels from an open wormhole, and that will be my baseline. Photonic matter has the additional advantage of being easily detected by sensors in the instruments I’ll have on my body.

  By sampling photonic matter emissions over a 500 million–year period using the Raqmu Machine, I will determine whether there are weaker and stronger connections when the wormhole opens. I will also speculate about what causes these vacillations.

  In terms of methods, I’m capturing one random sample during each 200,000-year segment.

  FIELD NOTES

  Brendan Chow is going to be my tech for most of this research, sending me back for each sample and handling readings at Raqmu. I’ve trained myself to tap out the standard return-to-present sequence as described in Hanniford and elsewhere.

  …

  We are starting from the present and are working our way backward. My first sample comes from 670. No unusual readings above or below standard levels.

  …

  I have had my first experience of unusual activity, 85 million years ago (mya). Exact dates noted in samples. I returned to the present wet, contaminated with diatoms from the early Ordovician period, 480 mya. That’s right—these are organisms from roughly 400 million years earlier than my travel destination in the Cretaceous. Photonic matter emissions fluctuated, dropping far below standard levels. I believe this is a sign of a weak connection, and possibly a dropped connection. On return, Chow and I ran a quick analysis. We found the fluctuations significantly similar to ones at Flin Flon during similar unusual activity.

  …

  I had my first look at the more complete interface, in the late Silurian, 420 mya on the megacontinent of Gondwana in the southern hemisphere. It’s awe-inspiring to see the interface before it was eroded down to a flat rock surface. In this period, the still-unexplained rock ring is visible, its two curved halves floating over the exact perimeter of the wormhole’s circular opening, almost like safety barriers. The fluid canopy is already eroded away. I expect to see more of the ring and canopy as I travel back farther.

  …

  Another strong fluctuation in photonic matter sampled in the early Hirnantian stage of the Ordovician, roughly 446 mya. Here the canopy is only slightly eroded; I can see streaks of sky through the rippling fluid dome that hovers above the ring. In this era, the ring is very robust, much thicker than in the Silurian. There are unusual markings on the ring’s surface, noted in digital images. I know of no other data from this period that show these markings. They appear to be scoring, or cut marks. Sampling reveals trace metals, possibly from whatever made the cut marks. They appear too regular to be natural. Could it be that a traveler is trying to change the interface?

  …

  During the early Ordovician, 480 mya, the interface is completely underwater. This is another awe-inspiring moment, to see an interface functioning in the ocean environment where it may have been forged or somehow come into being (see Ba et al. for a concise summary of the debate over forging vs. spontaneous emergence). This Machine, and likely all the others, was originally located under the Earth’s early seas.

  Luckily, the coastal oceans here are shallow. When I emerged, I immediately popped to the surface and treaded water over the canopy, which feels like a warm, soft barrier about a meter above the ring. Here the ring is flat on top, like a console. There are still visible interface controls on it, glowing like buttons on a gamer’s keyboard. The floor is also covered in illuminated “buttons.” Their light reminds me of high-quality white LEDs, easily visible underwater. To return, I controlled the interface without tapping! It was very exciting. I pressed the pattern into the floor buttons with my fingers while holding my breath, which was extremely difficult.

  Readings here were normal.

  …

  Data gathering is nearing completion, and we have a preliminary hypothesis to guide our analysis. We’ve observed the photonic matter emissions shifting dramatically when the wormhole connects, briefly, to an unprogrammed time. We speculate, based on the material and organisms coming through with travelers, that this time is likely during the early Ordovician, perhaps 480 or 470 mya. The Flin Flon Machine’s wormhole also appears to have connected with Raqmu during the Ordovician. In addition, Varma has reported organisms of Ordovician provenance at Timbuktu (personal correspondence). I believe that when the connection between the wormhole and the interface weakens, the connection “drops,” resetting to its earliest location. For Raqmu, that location would be the Ordovician ocean.

  This is outside the scope of our research, but it is interesting to consider these findings in light of Anders’s claim that Raqmu is some kind of master control device for the older Machines. Maybe Raqmu’s interface can tap the other wormholes, or control them from afar.

  …

  This requires more research and analysis, and I will be applying for an extension on my field season to investigate further. Based on the cut marks I found, I believe travelers may be engaging in sabotage (wittingly or unwittingly) that is affecting Machine performance throughout the timeline. Also, if Anders is right that the Raqmu Machine is a control device, there may be mechanisms here that will affect the four other Machines, too.

  Chow and I agree that I should travel back to the Hirnantian, the latest stage of the Ordovician, to investigate those fluctuations and scoring marks in more detail.

  TWENTY-THREE

  TESS

  Raqmu, Ottoman-occupied territory (1893 C.E.) … Nabataean Kingdom (13 B.C.E.)

  Our first morning in nineteenth-century Raqmu was full of warm light. Soph and I shared a bunk, curling together, and her hair had come loose to tickle my nose. I disengaged from her soft form gently, trying not to wake her. Today began our search for the right bureaucrats to get us a slot on the Machine.

  Before anything else, however, I wanted news from America. The mail service at Raqmu was so reliable that we already had a stack of letters and telegrams waiting for us in the post office. I returned to our rooms with a thick envelope from Aseel that turned out to contain newspaper articles as well as pages of her tidy scrip
t. We read everything over a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs and sesame bread. Aseel wrote that Soph had been convicted of obscenity, a federal crime. Authorities were hunting for her, but only half-heartedly: Comstock insisted she had drowned herself rather than face imprisonment. He clearly wanted to add her to the list of other immoral women he’d driven to suicide. “It is not a question of sympathy, or lack of sympathy for this poor woman,” he told the Tribune. “But it is a question of preventing the youth of this great country from being debauched in mind, body, and soul. I do not know of any obscene book that contains matters more dangerous to the young, than the matters this woman has published.”

  Soph let the papers slide from her fingers and stared into space. “I guess this is what the afterlife feels like.”

  “No.” Morehshin smacked her hand on the table. “This is what it feels like to survive.”

  “Well, then I’m going to write Aseel and let her know that I haven’t yet pierced the veil. I don’t suppose there’s a way for me to write once we arrive in the past.” She looked hopefully at me.

  “Not really. I mean, you could leave something in one of the archive caves, but frankly there’s no guarantee it will stay there. There have been a lot of purges over the millennia.”

  “What about the subalterns’ cave? The one Morehshin talked about?”

  Morehshin shrugged. “I looked on the way in, but it’s not here. Must have been dug later.”

  “All right, then.” Soph sounded depressed as she rooted through her satchel for paper.