The deadly creature stepped forward, nostrils flared, sniffing the air.
Sam set his wrist on his knee, held the dial with his thumb, and shoved the pin home.
The light on the dial turned golden again.
The Chindesaurus opened its mouth and screamed.
Sam turned the dial, from off to on, and the Triassic disappeared.
PART III
ALL OUR FORGOTTEN TOMORROWS
FORTY-FOUR
Adeline didn’t know what she would see on the other side of Absolom, but she expected to feel her feet on the ground.
They weren’t.
She emerged in the air, the earth rushing up toward her. She slammed into the green grass face-first.
Her head swam. Vision blurred.
She heard voices but couldn’t make out what was being said. A set of hands gripped her shoulders and began turning her, but a woman’s voice called out, “Don’t move her! She might have a concussion.”
A man said, “Did she wreck her bike?”
The woman again: “I don’t know. I didn’t see it.”
The hands released her, and Adeline rolled onto her back. The sun was unimaginably bright. She squinted, letting her eyes adjust.
“I’m okay,” she muttered.
She didn’t feel okay, but she also didn’t want to draw attention to herself. She didn’t know where or when she was. If they took her to a hospital, it would likely cause issues for her—uncomfortable questions such as, Hey, you seem to be from the future. Or the past.
Her first order of business was figuring out exactly when she was.
When her vision came into focus, Adeline saw a woman leaning over her. She looked to be in her early forties. Her hair was in a ponytail, and she wore a t-shirt with Barack Obama’s face on it and the word HOPE written below.
Adeline turned, taking in the scene. Pedestrians were everywhere. So were bikes. Most of the crowd was about her age: late teens, early twenties. She recognized this place. In fact, she knew it well: it was the campus of Stanford University. Specifically, she was in one of the grass sections of Lomita Mall. The Stanford machine shop was to her left, the mathematics building on her right.
A young man Adeline’s age offered her a hand. Behind him, another man was pacing, holding a Palm Treo smartphone, tapping it with the silver stylus, the call on speakerphone.
“I’m telling you, the J. P. Morgan offer is a lowball. It’s highway robbery. Bear Stearns is worth at least ten dollars a share—probably far more. I’m buying it hand over fist, Greg.”
Adeline got to her feet, chest heaving.
“You sure you’re all right?” the woman asked.
Over her shoulder, someone was talking on the phone. “Look, they’re basically tied, and Hilary has control of the party machinery. She’s gonna win. Plus, the Jeremiah Wright stuff will sink him.”
“I’m fine,” Adeline mumbled.
She wandered out of the small crowd, ignoring the whispers behind her.
Up ahead was a wide pedestrian and bicycle mall that ran across the front of the Stanford Campus.
Adeline stared at the street sign for a long moment. It read Serra Mall.
In her time, it had been renamed Jane Stanford Way after a review of campus historical names.
Adeline walked down the mall and turned and stared at building 420, which housed the university’s psychology department. In the middle of the tan stone fa?ade were green letters that read Jordan Hall. Beside the sign was a white marble statue of Louis Agassiz, Jordan’s mentor. He was perched on the second floor, looking down.
In Adeline’s time, both the statue and the name on the building had been removed because of complaints about the two men’s connection to the eugenics movement.
But this clearly wasn’t Adeline’s time.
She marched into the building, almost holding her breath as she wandered the corridors. Finally, she found the lecture hall for PSYCH 20N: How Beliefs Create Reality.
The door was open, and the rows were filling with undergraduate students.
Adeline stepped inside and stared, eyes wide.
At the front of the room, the instructor was stacking papers, which she handed to someone sitting in the front row. “Could you please pass those around?”
When the woman looked up at her, Adeline blinked rapidly, a deer in the headlights. She thought the professor was going to say something, but she merely nodded as she smiled.
Adeline staggered over to a desk and slipped behind it.
At the long table, the professor tapped the keyboard on her laptop, and a slide appeared on the screen behind her.
“We’ve been talking about how our beliefs and expectations shape our perception of reality. For the next few lectures, we’re going to explore an equally powerful force: our stress levels and physical and mental health. As you’ll see, how we feel has a huge impact on how we perceive the world around us.”