In her own stateroom, Adeline slipped beneath one of the mosaic quilts. She couldn’t remember her life ever feeling so complete. But as full as it was, she was still missing one piece. A very important one.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
The sound and motion of the waves on the ship’s hull slowly rocked Adeline to sleep. A knock on her stateroom door woke her from the nap.
When she opened it, she found Ryan standing in the narrow passage. “We’re here.”
On the deck, Adeline stood beside Hana, Ryan, Hiro, and Elliott and his wife, Claire. The shoreline of Absolom Island was barely visible on the horizon.
Adeline raised a pair of binoculars to her eyes and quickly found the dock where her father and Nora were standing, waiting as the sun set behind them. His arm was around her, and they were both smiling, staring at the ship coming in. They looked happy, happier than she had ever seen her father.
*
A container ship arrived a few days later. Onboard was the Absolom Two device, the Syntran components for a lab, and the Tesseract server array.
When the containers had been offloaded and moved to the Absolom Rescue Center, the ship left, and the team began setting up the equipment. The facility had everything else they would need, including a sewing room where they could make time-period specific outfits （and 3D-print the other items they needed）， a hospital, and a reorientation center for those rescued from the past.
While the pieces were coming together to rescue people from the past, there was still one challenge: identifying who to rescue. After all, the past couldn’t be changed. Like the tuning bars in Death Valley, Adeline and her team could only go back in time if they were certain that they already had. She needed proof to be sure.
Before she left Absolom City, Adeline had made a deal to identify those people. In the Absolom agreement with nations around the world, she had received two very important things. The first was formal diplomatic recognition of Absolom Island. The second was a data-sharing agreement that granted her access to vast government archives of photos and videos—records never seen by the public.
As soon as Tesseract was set up in the Rescue Center, the government data would begin streaming in. From here on, the program would search the photos and videos of disasters, wars, famines, and other devastating events for evidence that Adeline and her team had been there. Those photos were the outline of their future missions.
*
The night they finished setting up the Absolom Rescue Center, Adeline walked along one of the island’s gravel paths to the bungalows overlooking the sea, warm wind blowing through her hair, a carton with dinner in her hands.
At the house on the end, she knocked on the door, but didn’t wait to go inside. Constance was often too tired to answer.
Inside, the home was decorated with all the things Constance had brought from Palo Alto and Absolom City—everything except the room with all the photos of her past. Her secret. That was gone now.
That was perhaps what Adeline liked most about the island: there were no more secrets here. The bedroom Constance hid from the world was gone. So was Elliott’s room in the basement where he searched for clues that he had rescued Charlie. And Hiro’s tunnel in Las Vegas where he hid his addiction from the world.
They had left their secrets behind.
As Adeline walked through the home, calling Constance’s name, she realized that Absolom Island had lost its first resident.
*
They buried Constance the next day. It was a simple grave by the sea, on the south side of the island, where the sun would always shine on it.
The island’s entire population was there: Adeline, Ryan, Sam, Nora, Elliott, Claire, Hiro, and Hana.
The final line of Elliott’s eulogy was: “Absolom has lost its first citizen today. And tonight, we’ll add our first.”
SEVENTY-EIGHT
I? n the Absolom Rescue Center, Adeline studied the machine. It was almost exactly like the Absolom Two prototype from the lab in Nevada, with one exception: the chamber was larger.
The original Absolom machine was built for one-way trips. For one person. This machine was built for more. More people. And trips both ways.
One of the biggest challenges in operating an Absolom device on the island was the power required. There simply wasn’t enough room for a solar field large enough to gather what Absolom needed. Luckily, the island’s electrical infrastructure had been built with future growth in mind. Thanks to a combination of tidal turbines, a geothermal plant, and a small solar array, they could generate the power the machine needed.
Or so they thought. Tonight’s departure would be the first test.