A whoosh of purple neon vapor into the glass cube, followed by a “klorrrrrp” sound like someone opening a soda can and burping at the same time-in exactly the way that might suggest they’d had enough soda already-and the coin was gone. You have the wisdom to use this technology properly, all of you.” “I chose your group with great care,” Madame Alberta. But what if this power to send things, and people, back and forth across history makes us the masters of reality? What if we can make the waves change direction, or turn back entirely? What then?” “About wanting to stand outside history and see the empires rising and falling from a great height, instead of being swept along by the waves. “I keep thinking about what you were saying before,” Lydia said to Malik, trying to distract herself. Once the coin was sitting on the floor of the cube, Madame Alberta walked back towards the main piece of equipment, which looked like a million vacuum cleaner hoses attached to a giant slow-cooker. The balsa-walled laundry room was so crammed with equipment, there was scarcely room for four people to hunch over together. Madame Alberta took the coin and placed it in the airtight glass cube-six by six by six, that they’d built where the washer/dryer were supposed to be. But now, she felt like a piece of herself-a piece she had fought for-was about to vanish, and she would need to have faith. After all they’d been through to make this happen, the stupid thing had to work. Lydia would have been nervous about the first test of the time machine in Madame Alberta’s musty dry laundry room in any case. It reappears in precisely the same place from which it disappears.” “This coin, we send a mere one minute into the future. “You will,” said Madame Alberta with a smile. “Just as long as I get it back,” she said, trying to keep the edge out of her voice.
Lydia handed over the coin, no longer shiny due to endless thumb-worrying. And they were about to break the bank of time forever, if this worked. After all, the coin had a unit of time on it, as if it came from a realm where time really was a denomination of currency. But then Lydia suggested her one-year sobriety coin, and it seemed too perfect to pass up. Nobody could decide what should be the first object to travel through time. Series: The Tales of Gorlen Vizenfirthe.Series: From the Lost Travelers’ Tour Guide.People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction!.