Prologue

Thursday, December 18, 2014, 9:24 p.m. A thin-lined oval appeared in the air. A moment later, Rebecca Bows stepped into her sister’s bedroom. Grimacing, she bent low and gripped her belly, a hand on her knee for support; she breathed through her open mouth. She had forgotten the associated nausea of time travel.

Across the hall, an identical oval hovered in the air of her 16-year-old-self’s bedroom. Soon, another Rebecca Bows would step through into 2014. Rebecca flinched as Youngest-Rebecca yelped in surprise, having just confronted her twin from the future. Iris had arrived. The shit had begun.

Despite little fear of discovery, Rebecca tip-toed to Maude’s closet and quietly opened the door. Inside were clothes and other belongings left behind when Maudie left for school in the fall. It was still fall, Rebecca reminded herself, for another 3 days. Removing the iPhone from her back pocket, she activated the flashlight.

The aluminum case containing Maude’s ice skates should be in the back of the closet, on the right-hand side. Rebecca remembered seeing the case there on numerous occasions, mostly snooping in her sister’s bedroom after she left. The case wasn’t there. “What the fuck?” she muttered. “Where is it?”

The case was anodized aluminum, a throwback to the mid-80s, when mom’s sister had skated semiprofessionally. Aunt Kellie had gifted the case to Maude before moving to Wisconsin in 2006. Maude was 11 years old then, and a developing figure skater. She hadn’t skated since graduation, Rebecca knew; too much else to do, Maudie had said. In 2014, Maude was 19 years old.

Rebecca needed that case. An empty space indicated where the case should be; someone had removed it. Had Maude taken it back to Morgantown after her last visit at Thanksgiving? Rebecca couldn’t remember; it was just too damned long ago.

Hearing Iris open her bedroom door and head downstairs, Rebecca began a thorough search of Maude’s closet, lifting aside boxes on the two shelves, sliding aside dresses and long coats that might conceal a case on the floor. No aluminum case, not in Maude’s closet, anyway. “Where is it?” she whispered angrily.

Iris returned to her bedroom across the hall, and Rebecca heard the two arguing. Soon a 3rd voice would enter the fray—Iris’s ‘twin sister’—and the escalating argument would draw the attention--and the ire--of Mom. Rebecca hadn’t seen her mother in 20 years. She was only 3 years younger than Mom right now, she realized. She had a daughter older than Maudie.

Rebecca jammed both fists against her forehead and fought overwhelming despair. “No,” she moaned, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears. She hadn’t wanted this, had known stepping back to 2014 would reopen wounds suffered half a lifetime ago. The desperate fear and isolation of her stranding in 3089. The desperate longing for family and friends, school—McDonald’s—the companionship of teens her own age ... Gunther.

“Fuck!” she sobbed. “Why did I come back here?”

Furious, she dropped to her knees and looked beneath Maudie’s bed. She discovered carefully arranged plastic storage containers and cardboard boxes, but no silver aluminum case. Maudie the neat freak. The space beneath Youngest-Rebecca’s bed deserved Superfund classification.

Rebecca searched beneath Maude’s desk and vanity table, behind her dresser, inside her entertainment center, and then returned to the closet for another scouring as the cross-hall bedlam increased.

“Rebecca!” Mom pounded the door across the hall. “Why is your door locked, young lady? Who have you got in there with you? One day off restriction, and already you’re screwing around. Open this door! Right now!”

Rebecca turned to stare at Maude’s bedroom door. Five seconds from now, her younger self would tumble through the gate backwards, shoved by her slightly older self, while Twin Sister stood by in dismay. Injury on top of insult; the beginning of a bitter end, she thought.

The case was not here. Maude had taken it back to Morgantown after Thanksgiving, or Mom had moved it somewhere else. Either way, she had to leave; it was unproven that Mom had not opened Maudie’s door while upstairs tonight, but you couldn’t be sure. And she must be gone before 10:08 p.m. to avoid causing the retro-fracture herself. Frustrated, she crossed to the oval and stepped through. The time was 9:58 p.m.

Thursday, June 3, 3109, 12:35 p.m. “The case isn’t there!” she fumed. Was anything near at hand on the floor, she’d have kicked it across The Hall of the Gate.

Siri replied blithely: “You retrieved it at some point, Rebecca. It’s here. It bears your sister’s name—”

Rebecca shot a glance at the storage locker where Maudie’s case sat alone on the floor.

“—and that of your Aunt Kellie. Perhaps December 18th is too late a date. Perhaps—”

“No!” she exploded. “I am not returning to an earlier date! We agreed that’s what triggered the fracture in the first place!”

Siri pointed out: “We don’t know if that’s true. We only know that it happened. And that it originally repaired itself. Your presence here is proof of that.”

“No!” Rebecca shouted again. “Bullshit!”

20 years ago, Procurement had postulated that a reality fracture ended all life on Earth. Rebecca had somehow survived the first incident occurring at 9:24 p.m. on the 12th of December 2014. She’d been with Gunther Tripp at a party, nearly naked and poised to lose her virginity in an upstairs bedroom of a girl’s house she didn’t even know. The fracture erased everyone but her. 10 minutes later it inexplicably repaired itself and everyone carried on partying, to no one’s awareness but hers. The returned partygoers resumed existence exactly as and where they would be at 9:24 p.m. if the fracture never happened. She’d repositioned to the bedroom with Gunther above her on the bed, a fact that had always mystified her.