We return to the lobby and as we step off the elevator, another electric spark jolts my brain. Then three dinosaurs roughly the size of chickens run across our path, their black claws clacking on the unforgiving floor.
They look like baby velociraptors. One of them stops and looks up at me, tilting its head. I turn to Nik, who is surveying the lobby, and clearly does not see any dinosaurs. When I look back, they’re gone.
No sense in playing coy. “I have a party trick too,” I tell him. “At some point later I’m going to make three dinosaurs appear.”
“That’s a weird trick.”
“You work with what you got.” We head toward the security office. “Danbridge told you I was Unstuck.”
“He did,” Nik says.
“What do you think about that?”
He shrugs. “I know it’s rare. And I’ve heard it sucks.” He pauses, considering whether he should ask the question I know he wants to ask. And then he does. “What is it like?”
“You remember the idiot’s guide to time travel from the academy,” I tell him. “Time conforms to the block universe model—everything that has happened or will ever happen already exists in a three-dimensional cube. We perceive events as linear because we travel through the cube on a straight line.”
“Arrow of time,” Nik says.
“Arrow of time. So when you’re Unstuck, your arrow gets a little less straight. It zigs and zags, putting you in contact with past and future moments. It feels a bit like déjà vu. You see something that you feel like you’ve seen before. Then it’s gone. The flashes only last for a couple of seconds. Sometimes up to a minute. It’s not so bad. You get used to it.”
“And you’re only on the first stage.”
“That’s correct,” I tell him, incorrectly.
You also get used to stage two, eventually, though it’s a lot less fun. And a lot more confusing. Because the zigs and zags get more severe, and your perception jumps entirely into past moments. You’ll be going about your day and—bam!—suddenly you’re wandering around the halls of your high school, or on a bad date that still haunts you, or filing papers in the office where you worked ten years ago. It’s hard to distinguish those slips from reality, and it’s easy to get lost in them. When you snap out, no matter how long you were under, time hasn’t really passed in the present. To anyone watching, it looks like you zoned out for a second.
Sometimes your brain jumps into future moments too, but those are harder to remember once you come out of them. It’s like waking from a dream, the memory dissolving the more you think about it. Because it’s not really a memory since it hasn’t happened yet.
After that it’s not long before you hit stage three. Your perception of time gets so out of whack that your brain fries. And there’s not much you can do except stay away from the timestream, pop your Retronim, and wait for it to happen.
Nik asks, “Do you think it’s safe for you to be here?”
“Are you asking because you care, or because Danbridge brought it up?”
He doesn’t reply, which is answer enough.
A voice from behind us. “January.”
We both turn to the source. Brandon the porter. A goofy Black kid whose uniform, as always, is a little rumpled, one tail of his shirt untucked. He’s got one earbud in, pumping music so loud I can hear the tinny thump of it. He’s unwrapping one of the little candies he uses to combat what I figure is a near-constant state of dry mouth, popping one between his lips as he shoves the small square of wax paper into his pocket. He does a bad job and it falls to the floor, so he stoops to pick it up.
“What’s up?” I ask.
He comes up alongside me and eyes Nik. I do a quick intro and the two of them shake. Then Brandon asks, “Is it true?”
“Is what true?”
“That we’re all going to be out of jobs soon?”
“Who told you that?”
“Just the word going around.”
I’ve heard that rumor too. Whoever wins at the summit tomorrow is obliged to play nice with the TEA, but the hotel and its staff don’t get the same deference. Brandon nods to Nik. “So, uh, are you taking over?”
“I’m just here to help,” Nik says, eyes narrowing, picking up on the nervous vibe.
“Don’t get too worried,” I tell Brandon. “No matter what happens, these assholes are still going to need people to change their diapers and tuck them in at night.”
His eyes narrow, like he wants to say something, but then he shakes his head. “Well listen, lots of folks coming in today. I have to go.”
Brandon hustles toward Atwood and Nik waits until he’s out of earshot before asking, “Drugs?”
“Dude has never not been high. But he’s good at his job. That a problem?”
“Nope,” Nik says, and I believe him. It makes up for his “hippie lunatic” comment earlier.
I hold my watch up to swipe into the security office and tell Ruby, “Make sure you update Nik’s clearances, okay?”
Ruby beeps. “Already done.”
“Good dog.”
“That is belittling and inappropriate.”
We step into the office and I give Nik a quick tour—the video feeds, the computer equipment, and the hologram table in the middle, where I pull up a 3-D schematic of the hotel. The main building looks like a bucket, wider at the top and narrowing slightly as it reaches the bottom. The two wings sprout from the sides, curving slightly away from the center in opposite directions, like if they continued all the way around they would create an infinity symbol. I push and pull the image with my hands, rotating and zooming, as we run through the basics of the floor plan.
Once Nik has the hang of the table I let him play with the model to get a feel for the space. He zooms in on a superluxury suite and is examining the layout. I turn to Ruby and snap my fingers.
“Put word out to whoever is here already. Lovelace in one hour. I want to start meeting the chuckleheads we’re going to be dealing with. Then pull a list of guests who have traveled to or will travel to…which era had velociraptors?”
“Late Cretaceous.”
“Do that. And keep a close eye on the camera feeds.”
“Done,” it says. “One trip yesterday and another scheduled for tomorrow. I’ll check the itineraries and look for anything suspicious.”
I’m going to have to interview all those guests with tickets for the Late Cretaceous. Which is nice because I didn’t have enough to do. I leave Nik to his study time and head into the lobby, walk past a long line of people, which is being jostled out of shape by porters dragging large pieces of shrink-wrapped furniture toward the Butler wing. It never ceases to amaze me that people will show up with their own furniture for stays that never last more than a few nights. It must be nice to have money.
I make my way to the elevator bank of Atwood. An older white couple is waiting to get on: a man with silver hair and a silk navy blazer, and a woman who looks like she covered herself in glue and took a dive into a room full of pearls. I look down at my torn jeans and white T-shirt and battered red blazer. I don’t look like staff. I don’t look like I belong here at all. I’m pretty sure they cannot see me. I may as well be a ghost.