My machine works. I input a time and I’m taken there, as the time is now, all abandoned set pieces where the actors have since moved on. Everything continues in the present because that’s where the people are. I came here, twenty years in the past, intending to change it—and of course the present by proxy. But I’m still bleeding out, carrying the present’s fatal wound, and now that I’m here I’m content observing the suspended state of my youth. Or maybe I just want to be. Eve

“That’s right, Daddy’s lost.” Arthur pushed Lori along in her stroller. “Lost.” He flapped his hands out to either side of his body as he emphasized the first consonant sound of the word “L-l-l-lost.” “Where are we?” he crowed, then tickled his daughter’s nose, repeating his query twice, each time speaking in a more elevated sing-song, “Where are we? Where are weeee?” The baby giggled and cooed. She answered with a long happy babble, even offering up a few rewarding “da

Debbie dropped her luggage on the floor of the little efficiency apartment allocated to her in the Bradbury habitat on Mars and sneezed. The sound bounced back and forth from one wall to another, increasing in annoyance with each bounce. The apartment seemed spotless at first, but when she looked at the furniture, walls, and floors more carefully, she saw that they were covered with a light but uniformly thin layer of pinkish dust, possibly causing the subtle scent of pero