“I’ve been losing staring contests with my sister since I was five,” I said to Ephrem. “Maybe four.” He rewarded me with a weak smile. No one spoke. My gaze drifted back to the bonsai tree.
Finally, mercifully, Ephrem cleared his throat.
“Listen,” he said. “No one’s broken any rules here. When Zoey spoke with you about the anomaly, Gaspery, it hadn’t been classified yet.”
Zoey looked at her tea.
“Of course,” Ephrem said, “that doesn’t mean you should be standing outside the Time Institute repeating the things she told you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Ephrem, can I ask, is it real?”
“What do you mean?”
“The things Zoey told me about seemed like a pattern, but, well, it was our mom’s thing,” I said. “Simulation hypothesis.”
“I remember her talking about it,” he said gently.
“I think that when you lose someone, it’s easy to see patterns that aren’t there.”
Ephrem nodded. “True. I don’t know if there’s anything there,” he said. “But I wasn’t close with your mother, which makes me a somewhat neutral party in this question, and I think there’s enough to make it worth investigating.”
“Can I help?” I asked.
“No,” Zoey muttered, barely audible.
“Zoey did tell me that you wanted to work here.” I noticed that Ephrem was very carefully not looking at Zoey.
“Yes,” I said, “I would.”
“Gaspery,” Zoey said.
“Why do you want to work here?” Ephrem asked.
“Because it’s interesting,” I said. “I’m more interested in this than—well, than anything I can remember, honestly. I hope that doesn’t make me seem desperate.”
“Not at all,” Ephrem said. “It just makes you sound interested. All of us are interested, or we wouldn’t be here. Do you know what we do here?”
“Not really,” I said.
“We safeguard the integrity of our time line,” he said. “We investigate anomalies.”
“Have there been others?”
“Usually it turns out to be nothing,” Ephrem said. “My first case at the Institute involved a doppelg?nger. According to our best facial-recognition software, the same woman appeared in photographs and video footage taken in 1925 and 2093. I was able to collect DNA and establish that they were two different women.”
“You said usually,” I said.
“On a few occasions,” Ephrem said, “we haven’t been able to make a determination one way or the other.” I could tell he was unsettled by this.
“Is there something you’re looking for?” I asked.
“There are several things we’re looking for.” He was quiet for a moment. “The aspect of our work that relates to the anomaly,” he said, “is a continuing investigation into whether we’re living in a simulation.”
“Do you think we are?”
“There’s a faction,” he said carefully, “myself among them, that believes time travel works better than it should.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that there are fewer loops than one might reasonably expect. I mean that sometimes we change the time line and then the time line seems to repair itself, in a way that doesn’t make sense to me. The course of history should be irrevocably altered every single time we travel back in the time line, but, well, it isn’t. Sometimes events seemingly change to accommodate the time traveler’s interference, so that a generation later it’s as if the traveler were never there.”
“None of which is proof of a simulation,” Zoey said quickly.
“Right. For obvious reasons,” Ephrem said, “it’s difficult to confirm.”
“But you could move a step closer to confirmation by identifying a glitch in the simulation,” I said.
“Yes, exactly.”
“Gaspery,” Zoey said, “I know it’s interesting, but it’s a troubling line of work.”
“Zoey and I have some disagreements regarding the Time Institute,” Ephrem said. “I think it’s fair to say that our experiences here have been different.”
“Yeah, that’s fair,” Zoey said flatly.
“But what I can tell you,” Ephrem said, “is that it’s an interesting place to work.”
“What I can tell you,” Zoey said, “is that Ephrem missed his recruitment goals this year, last year, and the year before.”