The Time Traveler's Almanac

Now they were both looking around. She was having no apparent effect. The rug was not bleeding, the air tasted of nothing but air, and they both had their fingerprints. Once when she was younger and pregnant she’d made soap bubbles every time she blinked, which had distracted her from being younger and pregnant and thinking listlessly about marrying the father. Danny got worried and jogged her elbow: “Earth to Rosamund Tilly. How many fingers am I holding up?”

“You’re not holding up any fingers, you egg.”

The room blurred again. Right before her Danny-on-the-sofa unzipped and re-zipped back to where he’d been sitting, so fast that it was like he hadn’t moved at all. Lamplight caught all the worn patches on his suit. His expression was vague and somehow familiar—

“Well?” Danny said. “Did worlds collide?”

Even then she didn’t get frightened, she told herself. Three cheers for Dr. Tilly.

*   *   *

Time for a test. She was a doctor, after all, and though she was a doctor of Medieval Literature she still retained a duty to Science. She launched herself off the sofa like a shell firing and went to the clock, took down the time, wrote it on the back of a grocery bill – 8:14 – and put it on the coffee table. Dr. Tilly stood beside it like a guard, scrunching up her hands in her daffodil-coloured skirt and feeling ridiculous as the clock marched on to 8:15. Nothing happened.

Danny was leaning over to read. “8:14?”

Oh, well, what the hell. Dr. Tilly tensed up before she said, “Testing?”

*   *   *

Another big blur, another jerk of dislocation as she found herself back on the sofa, totally discombobulated. Once more Danny wore that pensive, waiting expression and she couldn’t even look at it as his mouth started to round out the words, as her grocery list sat next to the clock pristine and un-written-on. The clock read: 8:14.

“Well?” said Danny. “Did worlds collide?”

Time travel! The house had never mixed up time before. Dr. Tilly thought that she must have done something really rotten to have it drop something like this in her lap. She would have been excited if she hadn’t been so horrified: the house was probably destroying the space-time continuum right now and forming a thousand glittering paradoxes all because she hadn’t really cleaned the kitchen. Once she’d forgotten to weed the window boxes and the house had dissolved her feet right up to the ankle.

She knew three scientific things: 1. she was caught in a time loop, set off by 2. speaking, and 3. all of this was incredibly unscientific. So Dr. Tilly got her grocery bill again and scribbled on the back, worried that perhaps this too would send her careening back to the start:

CAUSED TIME LOOP, D

—but nothing happened. Whew.

Danny Number Six looked at her, then looked at the grocery list, then looked at her, and had the reaction that she’d guessed he had; he was completely delighted. He took his ballpoint pen out of his pocket and clicked it on and off, a sure sign of ecstasy in a stockbroker. “Are you sure?” She nodded again. “Good God. Why no verbal?”

Her writing was getting increasingly cramped. SPEAKING = SWITCH. SOUND???

“All right. Don’t worry, I’m a licensed professional,” he said, leaning forward and putting the laptop away. “A time loop means you’ve already gone back. How many iterations of the loop so far, Rose?” She raised her fingers. “Six? This is insane.”

Dr. Tilly wrote again: got to break it though, this is ridiculous!!

“This is beyond ridiculous. Did you forget to defrost the fridge again?”

Will experiment. You forget what happens each time I reset the loop. Judiciously she added a sad face, :(

“Let’s not go into the physics and assume you’re creating endless worlds in 14 Arden Lane with each new loop, it will give the chinchillas and I a logistics headache,” he said, leaning back and drumming his fingers on his knee. “Go ahead. What’s the worst that can happen? Goodbye from the future, you know – I as Future Daniel Tsai will cease to be.”

that is horrible do not put it that way!!

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Do what you have to do, Rosamund.”

“I will, I promise,” she said, and—

*   *   *

“Well?” said Danny Seven. “Did worlds collide?”

*   *   *