Adeline gripped Charlie’s hands and reached a finger over to press the button on the recall ring. Elliott was already unzipping the body bag as the room disappeared.
SEVENTY-NINE
Charlie was given his own bungalow by the sea. In those first few weeks, he kept to himself, but Adeline knew from her conversations with Elliott that the time had been difficult. Hana went to see him daily and did everything she could—medically—to help with the withdrawal symptoms. But the true fight was in his own mind.
He got worse for a time, and then, slowly, he got better.
In a way, that was the island’s ultimate power: it used time to heal.
Elliott and his wife, Claire, lived next door to Charlie, and while they gave him his space, they were also there for him, waiting, hoping that they would become a family again.
Adeline watched as her father and Nora grew closer than they ever had been in Palo Alto or Absolom City. They shared a bungalow with a small garden behind it. They home-schooled Ryan for now, until a proper school could be established.
Adeline’s brother had taken up surfing and spent most days exploring the island.
It was the transformation in Hiro that surprised her the most. For the first time since Adeline had known him, Hiro was happy. Like Charlie, it seemed that time on the island was chasing his demons away. It seemed that his addiction had finally released him.
One morning, Adeline was sitting in Hiro’s office, sipping coffee, when she said, “How accurate are your Absolom arrival calculations?”
The physicist snorted. “Can’t believe you’d even ask me that.”
“Can you hit a moving target?”
Hiro squinted. “Of course. The Earth is a moving target.”
Adeline cocked her head, confused.
“Our planet is constantly moving through space,” Hiro said. “If you go back in time even a fraction of a second, Earth is not where it was when you left.”
Adeline had never even considered that. She pressed on. “What about if we’re trying to arrive on an airplane—in mid-flight?”
“Are you serious? You want to do an Absolom rescue on a moving airplane?”
“I’m serious.”
“Cool.”
“Is it doable?”
“Sure. We’d have to get the flight plan.”
“It won’t help much. We know this flight got off course before it was shot down. We don’t know exactly where it happened—only that the Soviets downed it somewhere around the Strait of Tartary, between the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk.” Adeline held up a finger. “Complicating matters is that we don’t know the exact time it went down either.”
Hiro stood and paced. “What we need is a probe. An Absolom probe. A small device loaded with cameras in all directions. We send it to the past, somewhere in the sky, it takes pictures, and it automatically recalls itself after a fraction of a second. We can use the photos to pinpoint the exact location of the plane.”
Adeline could tell he was excited about the idea. “You love this, don’t you?”
Hiro nodded. “I do. I love the math of it. Building things. And the risk of departures and recall.” He looked up. “Not that there is any risk. I work it all out before you depart. But…”
“I know what you mean. It’s a little like gambling in that way.”
“It is,” Hiro said slowly. “But I don’t miss gambling. Maybe I traded one obsession for another.”
“Maybe you traded an unhealthy obsession for a healthy one. I think that’s how it goes sometimes.”
*
Two months later, thanks to Hiro’s Absolom probe, Hana and Adeline went back to 1983 and rescued Hana’s father.
EIGHTY
In the Tesseract review room, Adeline sat at one of the stations, scrolling through photos. The one on the screen was from the Imperial War Museums in the UK. It was dated September 14, 1940—a week after the Nazi bombing campaign known as the Blitz began.
The photo was from London, of a town house where a family was standing on the front stoop with two visitors in front of them: Elliott and Charlie.
Adeline used the aging algorithm to estimate Elliott’s and Charlie’s age in the photo. The software predicted that they were approximately six months older than they were now. It would probably be their first mission to the past. That made sense to Adeline. Charlie would likely be ready then.
She added the picture and departure date to the schedule of upcoming missions.
The next photo Tesseract had tagged was from an archive in the United States. As Adeline studied it, she realized it wasn’t a photo but a black-and-white drawing that wasn’t dated.