Olive clenched her hands together and nodded.
“Okay, so,” he said, “this is kind of a question about destiny, I guess?” Olive noticed that he was sweating. “Barring some kind of unforeseen catastrophe, assuming that our technology continues to advance, we’ll probably have time travel in the next century. If a time traveler appeared before you and told you to drop everything and go home immediately, would you do it?”
“How would I know they were a time traveler?”
The door was opening, and Olive’s publicist was coming in.
“Well, let’s say there was something about the person that couldn’t be reconciled.”
“For example.”
Gaspery leaned forward, speaking softly and quickly. “Well, for example, suppose this person were an adult,” he said. “Now suppose this person, this adult in his thirties, had a name you’d made up for a book that you only published five years ago.”
“How’s it going in here?” Aretta asked.
“Great,” Gaspery said. “Your timing’s perfect.”
“You could’ve changed your name,” Olive said.
“I could have.” He held her gaze. “But I didn’t.” His tone brightened as he rose. “Olive, thanks so much for your time. Especially that last question. I know fun questions are the worst.”
“Olive, you look tired,” Aretta said. “You doing okay?”
“Just tired,” Olive said, parroting the explanation.
“But you’re going home right after this, aren’t you?” Gaspery said smoothly. “Straight from here to the airship terminal, right? Well, anyway, goodbye, thank you!”
“No, she has another— Oh,” Aretta said, “yes, goodbye!” Gaspery was gone. “He’s a little odd, isn’t he?”
“A little,” Olive said.
“What was that about going home? You have another three days on Earth.”
“Something’s come up.”
She frowned. “But—”
But Olive had never been more certain of anything. She’d never been warned more clearly in her life. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I know this causes problems for everyone, but I need to go to the airship terminal. I’m going home on the next flight.”
“What?”
“Aretta,” Olive said, “you should go home to your family.”
* * *
—
It’s shocking to wake up in one world and find yourself in another by nightfall, but the situation isn’t actually all that unusual. You wake up married, then your spouse dies over the course of the day; you wake in peacetime and by noon your country is at war; you wake in ignorance and by evening it’s clear that a pandemic is already here. You wake on a book tour with several days left to go, and by evening you’re racing toward home, your suitcase abandoned in a hotel room.
Olive called her husband from the car. It was a self-driven car, for which she was grateful; there was no driver to hear her and wonder if she’d lost her mind, which was something she was wondering herself. “Dion,” she said, “I’m going to ask you to do something that’s going to sound kind of extreme.”
“Okay,” he said.
“We need to pull Sylvie out of school.”
“Like, not bring her in tomorrow? I have to work.”
“Could you go and pick her up now?”
“Olive, what’s this about?”
Outside the window, the Philadelphia suburbs were a blur of apartment towers. You can have an excellent marriage and still be unable to tell your spouse absolutely everything. “It’s about this new virus,” Olive said. “I met someone at the hotel with some inside knowledge.”
“What kind of inside knowledge?”
“It’s bad, Dion, it’s spreading out of control.”
“In the colonies too?”
“How many flights are there every day between Earth and the moon?”
He drew in his breath. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’ll go get her.”
“Thank you. I’m on my way home.”
“What? I know it’s serious if you’re cutting a book tour short.”
“It’s serious, Dion, it seems like it’s really serious,” and Olive realized she was beginning to cry.
“Don’t cry,” he said softly. “Don’t cry. I’m heading to the school now. I’ll bring her home.”
* * *