I… don’t know. Where I am. 

I feel heavy, dreamy, as if I’ve been asleep for days. I can’t quite focus my eyes.

Wasn’t I just walking, wandering from the base? 

I am jarred from my floaty, disoriented state by a hand on my bare shoulder—I know without looking that it’s John’s hand, and something in my brain brings everything into focus. I’m in our bed. Our room. Our house. Huba sleeps at my feet. 

I must be dreaming. I know this day.

“Good morning, beautiful.” John mumbles, pulling me into him. The urge to hold him close is overwhelming. 

This has to be a dream, but it feels so real. Weirdly real. 

 I’m not dreaming. I don’t know how I can tell, but I can. This is real. I am back here. Back then. I realize with an assuredness and my heart begins racing. 

I’m reliving one of the worst days of life. This is day zero. The day the world imploded.  And I’m going to lose you. Again. 

I turn and burrow into John’s chest, enthralled by the emotion of being here again. Of being with him again after so long. I don’t understand how it’s happening, but it is. We linger in bed as the morning sun sneaks through the curtains. I entwine my fingers with his, resistant to let go for even a moment. I know he’s going to soon suggest that we head down the street into the beautiful day for breakfast and coffee, and I’ll tell him no this time. I don’t want to go outside, I want to stay in this bed with him forever. 

If we don’t go out, it won’t happen. 

You know that’s not true. 

I try to relax into being with him, but a taught cord of anxiety pulls at the base of my skull; my inner knowing trembling with anticipation. I manage to delay us twenty minutes from when we got up the first time, but John literally pulls me out of bed, eager to eat and enjoy the delicious spring weather. My inner voice argues with itself.  

This day is your great failure. 

Your error. You did this. 

You broke the world. 

I swallow the thick lump of guilt clogging my throat as I choose different clothes. Maybe, somehow, it’s different this time. I tie a different bandana around Huba’s neck. John insists we go to the same cafe and eyes me suspiciously but playfully when I suggest the new place a few more blocks away. He reminds me that they’re not pet friendly. So, we’re going to the same cafe. 

My hands are shaking as I lock the door. Bile rises in my throat. 

“S’wrong?” John asks, taking my hand as we step off the porch. “You seem like, a million miles away.” 

I’m reliving the apocalypse. You’re going to die today. 

“Oh, I’m okay. Just distracted. I need to get back to the lab to make sure…” I pause, trialing off. How can I answer him with something real? But the weight of my words suddenly hits me. 

What if I’d spent more time in the lab? 

I turn my head to look at him. The blue-grey of his eyes is just as I’ve remembered them all this time. It’s comforting to know my mind saved him correctly. My eyes prickle with tears, and the urge to scream is almost overwhelming. We keep walking. 

The pet-friendly cafe is just as I think it should be, the same people and puppies going through the same motions they did the first time. John orders for us and I see food—actual, real food. I jump in to change my drink order. “No, actually I’ll have an Americano! Oh and, a chocolate croissant with the sandwich. Can I get extra bacon too?” . 

“Really? Gin, you don’t even like coffee….” he says, eyeing me as we slide along the counter and wait for our drinks and sandwiches. 

I do now. In a world of scarcity,  I genuinely enjoy the bitterness. 

“I’m just really tired, you know…” 

“A’ight.” he muses. We gather our items and I direct him to a different table than we sat at the first time we lived this day. John protests being sat in the shade instead of the morning sun, but I convince him there’s more room for Huba to lay here. I slowly savour every bite of my breakfast sandwich, letting the fatty bacon and sweet tomato jam linger on my tongue. I’ve missed food like this – food with flavour – desperately. 

I realize that now I’m buying time as I sip my coffee. It’s getting close now though. I consider that maybe if we do something different, just slightly different, John will survive the day. 

Does that even matter? Most of these people are going to die. Today. You can’t save anyone now, it’s too late. 

Main street is getting busy. My heart rate is rising and my breath feels jagged, constricted. My eyes dart around—I didn’t have a watch on this day. 

There’s a ringing in my ears now; I’m panicking. 

“John… something bad is about to happen.” I don’t even think before the words tumble out of my mouth.

“What? You overthinking work, still? It’s s’all gonna be okay.” 

Just as I open my mouth to protest, to explain more, the first tremor hits. 

John’s head snaps toward me, and he grabs my hand. Huba yelps in fear, and tries to run; I hold her lead tight. The first time, we thought it was a big truck. Maybe a construction crane. 

I know better. 

A deep-earth groan rattles my teeth as the ground shudders again beneath me. This is it.

I need to save him. Or maybe all of us. Maybe that’s why I’m here – so I can save all of us.

####

I come to with a start. Cool, damp air clings like a blanket against my soaked skin. My heart is racing. 

Where am I? Why am I wet? 

Lifting my head, my neck and back feel stiff. The echo of  the earth cracking open, my desperation to save John and Huba, to save everyone, the memories feel close enough to touch. I force myself to take deep breaths, slowing my pounding heartbeat.

I feel solid ground below me. 

WAS that a dream?  

Searching my memory, I recall walking, wandering further from the base than I ought to. I’d gotten frustrated by more inconclusive lab results, and left to trek out across the dusty, gritty, plain. And then… what? 

I sit up slowly. The tension of almost living through the end of the world again is still shaking in my bones. Blinking in the darkness, I look up.

About twenty feet above my head,I see a jagged hole that casts light down into the cavern and onto a pool of bright blue water.

That explains why I’m wet.

I eye the pond. The edges of its azure water ripple slightly, but the centre remains still, reflective of the stream of sunlight from above. I pull off my saturated boots and socks, hating how they feel. Standing up on my bare feet, I shake away some of the excess water saturating my clothes and step closer to the pond. 

The pool’s liquid isn’t regular water. It’s more viscous, and the colour is brighter than the bluest ocean. There’s a freshness to the air down here, even though it’s humid. 

“What are you?” I ask it. 

This is very fucking strange. 

I can still feel the agonizing scrape of John’s hand slipping out of mine as he plunged into a huge fissure that cracked open just a block from our home. I can hear the curdling screams of my neighbours as whole houses, cars, and people were thrown by the shaking of the earth before also be plunged into the cracks and fissures that tore open. I can smell the black smoke fires that erupted from spilling gas lines. 

Are you sure you weren’t just dreaming? You dreamed about this a lot at first. 

I eye the pond, my heart quickening again. My science-focused mind is racing, driven to test my hypothesis. I wasn’t dreaming. I went back in time. I’m sure of it. The physics of it are impossible, but the water is some sort of catalyst. I crouch and lightly examine the edge of the pond, tracking where the liquid practically glows – so much brighter than it ought to be given the limited light. 

I put my hand on my hips and feel something in my back pocket. 

I didn’t have anything in my pockets…

Pulling it out I look down at my hands and a strange sensation creeps over me. 

How do I have this? 

It’s Huba’s bandana. The one I chose to put on her the second time. The blue and green checkered fabric is faded and worn. 

It slipped off him when he bolted, I tried to hang on but all I grabbed was the bandana. 

I must have kept it? All this time. I don’t remember.  

“My actions… changed the future?” I whisper aloud. 

A soft plunk echoes from the center of the pond, followed by a ripple. I scan the shadows of the underground cave, searching for a draft or a falling pebble. Nothing.

“Why is this happening?”

Another ripple. 

Huh. Yup, really fucking strange. 

As I blinkingly stare into its depths, another knot starts in my chest. If the water is a doorway, I could see John and Huba again. I could warm them for real this time. 

You need to think bigger.

If I can travel to the day the world collapsed, maybe I can travel to other days, too. Other times. Crucial moments that could help me fend off or stop the planetary collapse. 

I stare at my reflection in the water.

You broke this. Fix it. 

I shake my head. It’s taken me years of sleepless nights to even start letting go of the guilt. To feel like the progress in the lab was good for something. The weight of it all is settling back in, and it does not feel good. Tears threaten to fall down my cheeks. I’ve always been the most emotional scientist I know. I know in my bones that my own carbon sequestering work contributed to what happened, but I’ve never been able to figure out exactly how. Or why. 

But now I can find out. 

“Can you… help me fix this?” the words echo in the cave. I can’t believe I’m talking to a pond. My reflection shimmies as it ripples again, ever so slightly. 

A desperate spark of hope flares up. If I can use this little pond to go back, maybe I can fill in the gaps, find out why it happened. Find a solution and bring the world back to where it was.Maybe even send that information back and stop it before everything goes to hell.

Without any real idea what I’m doing, I roll up my pants.I’m usually the person who can put puzzle pieces together with limited info, who can see the patterns where others don’t. But this, this feels different. I look at the pond warily. 

Do I just think of a date? A memory?

One step. The water hits my ankle. It’s cool and feels thick. I don’t stop. I walk deeper.

Think of a time. Grab a memory and hold it tight. 

I wade deeper. Further. 

And dip in with intention.

####

I blink my eyes open and shift my weight on the thin, hard cot that houses me at what is, in essence, a refugee camp. ‘Establishment centre’ is the formal, UN-sanctioned, title for this enclosed stadium space I called home for some time. The hundreds of bodies on cots around me seem to murmur as one. 

Okay. It worked. But how? Does it matter? 

Judging by the blue of the light easing through the windows high on the walls, I assume it’s 5:00, maybe 5:30 in the morning. My mind forgot how unsafe these early months had felt, but my body knew it well. I feel it holding the restlessness and fatigue from fitful sleeping, limited food, and constant anxiety.

I rouse myself and step out into the copper air of the yard.

As I make my way to the main exit, I see the medical team lifting a body onto a wheeled stretcher, and a figure slumped on the cot beside, shaking with emotion. I reach into my pocket and pull out a paper mask that I stretch over my nose and mouth. Tears spring to my eyes. My throat feels constricted as my mind races with all I know now that I didn’t know then. 

Every single section of the belachers, the entire concrete concourse—the entire stadium— is filled with triage cots. The air is thick as people breathe as one. This is all that’s left.

So. Many. People. Died. 

All the destruction and suffering—surely I can use whatever this leap through time is for good, though my inner voice is reluctant, scared. 

You can’t save everyone. How do you think you’re going to fix this? 

 Outside, the air smells like a tire fire at planetary scale. It’s crisp against my thin clothes—it’s September. Fall used to be my favorite season. Good memories of anything, never mind something like a season, are no longer a luxury afforded after humanity was decimated on That Day.  I remember the neighbourhood smelling like woodsmoke or a backyard barbecue, but now it all just smells like ash. The air tastes like pulverized concrete. 

The yard is surrounded by a motley fence, held together with twisted beams of wire, and wedged wood holding metal grates in place. Beyond the fence lies desolate land. Though far from any of the primary fissures and rifts, the land here is scarred by fire, swept by torrential rains, and then scarred again by fire. I can clearly see the memories I hold from this yard: children caked in dirt running and playing while the adults lingered on benches and around the perimeter speaking softly, staring into nothingness, crying.

At one of the picnic tables across the yard, I see a figure.

There she is. 

She’s why I came here. To this moment. She’s hunched over, writing with a pen in one hand and a flashlight in the other, giving herself just enough light while the shade of the sky above gradually lifts. My first time living this day I was reluctant to speak to her. Closed off. Avoidant. 

I stride over to her, hoping my forthrightness doesn’t change how things happen between us. 

“Hello,” she glances up at me. Her curls fall into her face and her blue eyes glint with the glow of the flashlight. Seeing her here again, a sad sense of nostalgia replaces my excitement. We’re going to go through so much together, though this day we were naive about what might be possible. 

How can we accelerate all of this? Maybe more info sooner. 

But don’t fuck it up. 

I don’t know the rules of this time travel; what if I change something and the consequences are negative? 

How could things be any worse? 

“Hi.” I finally speak in response, my body remembering the next steps. 

“I’m Ange,” she ventures, her voice soft and carrying that faint, proper English accent I now know so well. 

“I’m Virginia,” I reply, taking her outstretched hand. I’d been profoundly alone in those early months, yet deeply uninterested in making friends. I didn’t have the energy; I hadn’t even known the names of the couple on the cots next to mine. 

“How long have you been here?” Ange asks, her tone casual but probing, which I’d discover was  typical of her approach. Her face is full of genuine curiosity; a curiosity I’d first mistaken for skepticism. We’d seen something in each other immediately—a flicker of shared purpose in the bleakest of times, though the trust had developed slowly. 

“23 days.” I answered.

How did I remember that? 

“And, before that?”

This time, the words tumble out. I don’t miss a beat. 

“Well, I lived in Toronto.” I sprint through the memories, trying to get it all out quickly. “Got a refugee bus to Ottawa on day four. On day seven we walked to Malone in New York. Then Lake Placid, and I’m sure you know what happened there.” I blink back the memories of the Lake Placid uprising. 

Ange looks at me thoughtfully, absorbing my brief story. I have no idea how the physics of the glowing pool work. I don’t know if I have hours or minutes. Maybe it’s already pulling me back.

“I was in Boston,” she offers before I have the chance to query. “Well, Cambridge, actually. You know Boston people get mad when you say the wrong things.” She gives a slight laugh. I’m anxious for her to talk faster. 

“Day three a group of us drove over to Fort Devon. That was quite the road trip – were your roads all torn up? Car fires?” She continues without waiting for me to respond. “That was when the feds got on site and corralled us over to Westover Air Base. That was… maybe, around day thirty?” 

This is taking too long.

She goes on. “–That was good for a while, the Air Base was safe but it was so clear no one knew what they were doing. I told them I might be able to help, you know? I wanted to help. Then the whole thing imploded – the UN didn’t want so many civilians around weapons, which I did think was quite fair, really. So, I’ve been here for about a week as of now.” 

I only stayed with John for about an hour. Don’t waste this. 

“I see that you’re writing.” I gesture to the table. “Where did you get the materials?” 

“I’ve got all kinds of materials from the Air Base supplies. I’m a hydrogeologist, I was part of the Civil and Environmental Engineering team at MIT. I’ve just been trying to hypothesize what happened, you know? See if further collapse is inevitable or–” 

Ange trails off. The first time she told me this I was taken aback, my ego felt like she was bragging. I felt a deep sense of responsibility that I’d done jack shit with to this point. 

“I get it,” I jump in. “I’d love to be able to help restore some of what was lost.” 

Ange cocks her head. 

We have so much work to do. 

“Restore. That’s rather bold. I’ve really just been thinking about prevention of more, issues.” She says thoughtfully. “What is it that you do?”

“I’m a developmental biologist. I’ve been working on carbon sequestering.” I add quickly, my mounting anxiety pushing me to give her this info much sooner than I had the first time. 

“We made big progress on restoring degraded farm land and liquidizing carbon for deep storage before, well, That Day. And – I think I have knowledge about what got us here, and how we might get our planet back.” Ange’s eyes widen. 

Don’t waste this. 

“Wow. Well, I think they’re going to be setting up a research station. They won’t tell me where, but I’m expecting to be shipped there in a few days. Maybe a week. Your knowledge might be helpful there too.” Ange’s voice is pointed, sharp but with her lilting softness.

It took us three days to get to this point last time. 

I take a deep breath. “That would be amazing. I’d like to be included, to help. And, I’d like to get started as soon as possible – do you happen to have any spare writing materials?” I ask sweetly. Ange nods in her curt but warm way and digs into the bag beside her. She hands me a pencil and notebook. I intend to write out everything I can bring to mind about my previous work and team – I don’t want to show my hand too early by recording research notes that haven’t happened yet. 

I can’t believe I didn’t do this the first time. I was too busy feeling guilty.

“It really would be amazing to have a partner in this.” Ange smiles warmly at me. “Maybe together we can make a difference.”

She didn’t say that the first time. 

“I really think so.” I return the smile. 

Cracking open the notebooks, I write as fast as my hand can move, and as the sun’s rays struggle to light the heavy air I feel a shifting in my body, a pull unlike anything I’ve felt before. I realize I don’t get much time as anxiety grips me. 

I’m going back to the pond. This isn’t enough. 

####

I wake again with a start, back in the reality of the damp, empty cave.

No, no, no! I hadn’t finished writing!

“That wasn’t enough time. I need more to work with.” The pond remains still. I was back for maybe fourty-five minutes, an hour tops. My first trip felt longer. At least I started getting some of the information down. Maybe that had an impact. 

Frustrated, I raise a hand to the back of my neck. I realize my joints didn’t hurt the day I met Ange—oh to stay ten years younger. But now—now I have knowledge. My mind is spinning with all the possibilities, but frustrated with the limitations I seem to be up against. I sit up. 

When can I go that’ll have the most value? 

I rise to my tired feet and begin pacing the edge of the pond, shaking the dampness from my clothes. Reaching down to adjust my belt, my pants feel different. I stare down in disbelief at the denim-like fabric on my lower half. 

Cotton pants? We don’t have anything like that anymore.  

I’d been wearing stiff canvas pants when I’d left the base. UN issued, standard. There were no other clothes.  

I… I changed something. Huba’s bandana wasn’t a fluke. It really happened. 

The realization sinks in slowly. I scramble to where my wet shoes and socks sit. I roll a sock in my hands. It’s wool. We don’t have wool socks, either. We only have rough hemp socks that rubbed my feet raw for weeks when they were first distributed. 

I ACTIVELY CHANGED SOMETHING. 

“YES!” I leave indents in the soft soil from my celebratory jump. 

This is good sign. Whether saved or created, this is a positive that didn’t exist before. It feels like a good sign. A really good sign. I travelled through time and changed something for the better. For the first time in ten years, I have a surge of actual joy. I did something nobody else could. I still don’t know how this works, but I made a difference.

I look at the pond.

Wait. It’s smaller. 

The imprint of the water has shrunk. The small body of water is maybe thirty feet across, or at least it was. It’s more like twenty-six now? The shoreline noticeably moved. 

“Seriously, what are you?” 

This time I’m positive I see a small ripple in reply. “I don’t know what that means.” I step back from the edge, and begin pacing again.

“Have you, like, always been here?” Stillness. I circle to the other side of the pond. There’s no clues; it’s the same all around the circumference. In fact it would be dizzyingly uniform if my shoes and socks didn’t serve as a marker for where I had first woken up. 

“Is there some method or control for where I can go?” Stillness. I shake my head. “You’re not man-made, right? You’re, like, all natural?” A small ripple. 

Yes? 

Okay. Think. What are the options? 

I could leave and go back to the base, maybe tell Ange about the pond. That I saw her in the past. That I changed something. But will she believe me? She’ll think I’ve lost it. She’s driven by data and she’s already worried about me burning out. I think about the last conversation we had. She told me to rest, not spend every day in the lab. But how can I not? We’ve lost data recently due to decomposing soil samples. It has felt like answers are slipping through our fingers each time a specimen can’t be tested or an experiment fails. 

The pressure—both external and self inflicted—is heavy. It only took Ange a few weeks of us working together for her to realize both that my work may have been deeply connected to the implosion of the lithosphere, and that I carried immense guilt. Her logical, measured approach to both the lab and our relationship had helped to relieve me of some of that over the years. 

I don’t even know how to get out of here. 

I pause pacing and take a deep breath, really debating what’s next. The pond ripples a faint glow that reflects off the roof of the cave, drawing my attention back to it.

“I need more time when I go somewhere.” The water gurgles. I don’t know how I know, but that was a no. “Okay, well, I need to go to when I can get information quickly then.” 

Stillness. 

Maybe if I go forward I can get the answers we need, and take them back to before it was too late. If I can figure out when that is. 

“I want to go into the future. I need to get more info.” Light ripple. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

Exhaling shakily, I steel myself and without thinking too much about it, run forward back into the pond. 

####

My eyes ease open, my body slouched and achy. 

“You know, you should take a day off,” a voice behind me says. I’m in a hard chair in the middle of the lab. 

Okay. This may have worked. When are we? 

I look over my shoulder to see Ange. Her hair is longer, curls piled messily on top of her head. I touch my own – thick, long. And clean.

Huh.

 Ange’s face is older but healthy looking; I must be at least a decade into the future, but it’s hard to tell for sure. I’m relieved to see her.

My eyes fall on a section of the lab that I’ve never seen before. It’s almost like a greenhouse; plants emerge from vials, some in soil, others in water. Restoration. I feel a smile curl across my face. 

ANOTHER GOOD SIGN!

Calm down, a few plants is hardly saving the world. 

“I – I know,” I muse back to Ange, trying to sus out exactly when we are, unsure if it’s safe to ask this version of my long time lab partner, but eager to trust the pond. 

“Where are you at? We have to get this next set of tests done – it’s never been more critical that we get our data.” Ange nods without urgency, concentrating on the microscope in front of her without really hearing me. She was always the more focused of us, less akin to thinking many divergent thoughts at once, like me.  

I figure I need to play along as I sort out what to do here. 

I need enough info that I can take to the past and prevent the collapse. One. Goal. 

 Through dry lips, I take a sip of the cold tea-like drink on the table beside me, and rise to head to my usual lab station across from Ange’s. 

It looks like I’ve been working with a core sample from the recently returned AI rover, Huba. “Good boy,” I muse wistfully. Flipping through my notes it doesn’t seem like we’ve unlocked much that seems helpful, but the greenhouse room says otherwise. 

Maybe the greenhouse isn’t actually related to our work? 

Ange takes a deep breath behind me. “Gini,” she starts, and I turn to meet her gaze. ”I’m not sure you’ve been yourself lately. You seem more reserved, distracted, and tired. It’s worrying me. I know how busy and focused you are, but I would not want you to let something go on longer than it needs to because you’re not willing to rest, or see a doctor. Please.” Ange places her hands gently on my arm. Logical, measured, caring Ange. 

Welp. This isn’t going to be the right moment to tell her I’ve discovered time travel. 

“You’re right.” I sigh. “I’ve been feeling like something is off. Okay, I’ll go.” Ange pulls me into a tight hug, sloshing some of the slide solution out of the vial she’s holding. My connection with Ange is one of the only things that had made the chaos of this hellscape of a world manageable, and I’m so grateful to know our connection endures in this future. We know each other. I trust her. 

Fuck it. I’ve got to try. 

“Wait,” I start, pulling back from Ange. “There’s something I need to tell you. Ange, how many years has it been since That Day?” Ange eyes me wearily. 

“Twenty-two, Gin. Twenty-two.”

“Okay. Well, I’ve just come from ten years after.” I pause. Ange’s eyes widen. 

“What precisely are you talking about?”

“Just go with me on this,” and everything spills from my lips. 

The pond. 

Visiting the past. 

Coming here to the future. 

Needing to bring info back. As I talk I release the worry that I’m doing it wrong, only resolve to fix this. “And, I don’t know how long I’ll be here for. Or, at least this version of me.”

I finish talking, the loud beating of my heart filling the silence between Ange and I. She stares at me.

“And I changed something when I went back!” I tell her about the shock of finding Huba’s bandana, of the different clothing. 

“I can’t believe…” she’s shaking, tentative. “Okay,” she nods, then shakes her head, conflicted. “How would this even be possible? I don’t get it.” 

“To be honest Ange, neither do I.” I step closer and take her hands. “Please Ange. I don’t know what this last twelve years has been like, but those first ten, you got me through them. Just yesterday playing cards, we laughed till we cried over stupid stuff. That’s such a miracle in this hellscape. We’ve trusted each other with so much, and I need you to trust me on this. Please.” Tears threaten to spill down my cheeks as I lock eyes with Ange, searching for the trust and recognition I’m desperate for.

She nods, her steely eyes softening. “Okay Gin, okay. This makes no sense and for the record I kinda think you’ve lost it, but I’m willing to suspend my need for proof and just trust. Okay.”  She ventures. “Do you… do you know anything else? Did you see anyone else?” I shake my head. 

“No one that matters. I need all our info from the last ten years.” Ange nods and begins pulling files from shelves. 

“To be honest Gin, I don’t want to say we haven’t made any progress, but I don’t know what I can give you right now. We know lots more about what it wasn’t.” I begin flipping through notebooks. “We know it wasn’t the lightning like we thought at first. We know it wasn’t ocean chemistry. We’ve ruled out a lot of things, but haven’t actually figured out our why.”

“Are you kidding me? Another ten years and we don’t actually know anything?!” my heartbeat thrums loudly in my ears. I don’t want to take my anger out on Ange, but no results after another entire decade of testing? 

What a waste.

“Well, we know some things. We know the soil can be remineralized with mined basalt rock, so that we can actually grow a few things. We’ve been doing that for maybe six years?” Ange gestures at the greenhouse. “There’s even a cotton field and corn stalks. But, that doesn’t do anything to prevent further collapse. Or, well past collapse, I suppose.”

That. Is. Useless. 

“Is there anything else?!” I begin flipping pages more quickly now, my eyes scanning for anything that feels like something past me needed to know. Just as I reach a notebook section about carbon sequestering – where I think some answers might lie – I feel myself slipping again. 

The pool is pulling me back. I’m leaving. 

“Ange – “ I want to tell her how much she means to me. 

Do I ever tell her? 

####

As soon as I open my eyes, I’m enraged. 

“I CAN’T DO ANYTHING WITH THAT!” My voice echoes against the walls of the cave. The pond is still. “Why did you take me there?” My voice fading with a feeling of defeat as I sit up and notice again that the pond has shrunk in size. Frustration and fear swirl inside me. 

What are you doing? 

This is a finite resource, see? 

I examine my clothing – it’s all the same. My hair feels the same beneath worn palms. Nothing has changed. No progress, and less pond now. 

Surely I learned something there I can use.

“So we can grow corn. That’s cool. What the hell does that matter?” The pond seems to swell slightly in the middle. “Okay, you’re right. That’s good. That’s progress. But I can’t just tell past me we don’t save the world but we can grow corn twenty years after it collapses. That’s just…” I don’t know how to finish my sentence. 

The pond seems to give a small swell again in the middle. It occurs to me that all the things the lab ruled out only helped point in one direction. My greatest fear; it really was the carbon sequestering project I worked on that led to planetary disaster. 

Rising to my feet again, I’m bothered by my wet pants dragging on the muddy ground and I reach down to roll them up. Taking a few steps, the soft fabric falls back down, so I roll them more firmly. They fall back down. With a panicked sense of frustration I unbuckle them and pull them from my body. Kicking my feet to release the wet fabric from my legs I then crush them between my hands and with a roaring shout throw them into the pond. 

“WHY DID YOU BRING ME HERE?! I KNOW I BROKE IT!” My pants land without a splash or ripple. They sit just atop the water, and I watch with a mix of fear and curiosity as they smoothly float back to the edge where I am standing, gently arriving back at my feet like a canoe arriving on a beach. “What the fuck.”. 

The anger is futile. You know this. 

“Okay. I’m sorry.” The pond stays still. I sigh. “I’m just frustrated, okay? I need more info… I guess part of me hoped I’d learn that it wasn’t my fault. That is actually was the lightning, or the El Niño, or a volcano or something.I really want to fix things, to give us a chance at a better world. It feels like a tease being able to change these small things, but not doing anything that actually helps.”

A bigger ripple. 

“Can I go further into the future to get the info I need?” The water seems to hop, as if a fish jumped in it. “Okay. Thank you.” Now we’re getting somewhere. 

“I need info about the actual cause of That Day. Take me to when I can get that.”

I take a deep breath and jump over my pants, launching myself back in. 

####

My eyes sting against artificial lights as I ease them open. The sounds I hear are mechanical and metallic. Glancing down at my hands I’m both excited and horrified to see I’ve succeeded at moving into the future; thin skin mottled with age encases arthritic fingers. 

Well, at least I live to a good age. 

As my eyes adjust to the glaring lights, I look around at what seems like a hospital. There’s machinery I don’t recognize, but it’s decidedly medical. I pull myself up from the incipit bed and step toward a window. I can’t make out anything out the window through the darkness that lies outside, and it takes me a moment to realize my reflection is all I can see. 

Squinting, I try to make sense of what’s being reflected back to me. I raise a stiff hand to my face; there’s no fat padding my skin, it practically hangs from my jaw and sunken eye sockets. Gliding a hand across my skull confirms that I’m bald save for a few stray, thin hairs sprinkled where my thick locks used to be. Running my hands down the rest of my body, every joint is a sharp angle. My skin is so thin and dry that it seems like it might simply slough off my body. My pelvic bone juts out beneath a thin gown that stops at protruding knees.  

I’m so, so old. 

My head is foggy and slow, like I can’t get to my own thoughts quickly. I hear footsteps shuffle into the room behind me. I turn and see a figure I recognize only by her eyes – Ange. She doesn’t look as decrepit as I seem to, but she’s certainly aged two lifetimes. Her skin seems to barely encase her bones, and she’s stooped over, walking with the help of a cane. She immediately registers the fear in my eyes. 

“Hi,” she ventures, trying to place precisely what’s happening. “I’m so glad to see you again,” she asks gently with a knowing look. 

She sees what’s happening. Thank God. 

I take a deep breath. She’s been waiting for me to come back. 

“The last time I saw you was twenty-two years after day zero.” I tell her. Ange nods. 

“I thought so. I’m so relieved,” she whispers. “I didn’t think I was going to make it to see you again,” a cough racks her body. I can hear her lungs rattle. My skin crawls. My thoughts float.

Is this what being old feels like? 

“When are we,” I ask. 

“Now? It’s been fifty-three years since day zero.” I can hardly believe it. I’m almost ninety years old. 

No wonder you look like shit. 

I reach an aged hand to steady myself on a steel table. I take a deep breath and will my brain to work the way I need it to. 

“I can’t… think. But I need to know what you know,” I manage breathily. “Are we in a hospital?” A new sadness washes over Ange’s face. 

“I know, I know. This is just our living quarters, Gin. There are not many of us left.” Ange pauses to catch her breath, and sits on the edge of my bed. “It’s been bad these last few years,” she continues. “But, I knew I needed to keep you alive long enough to come back. I never stopped believing that you’d get back here, that I could be ready to give you everything we had. I never stopped thinking that we’d actually save the world.” 

I’m amazed at this version of Ange, at her unwavering belief. Marvel at how strong she’s been. “I worked beside another version of you for so many years, but I knew I’d see this one again one day, too.” Her eyes are filled with tears now. I’m having a hard time holding on to what she’s saying. I sit next to her.

“When I saw you at twenty-two years I thought things seemed good. You had plants…” Ange nods.  

“It was good for a while. But everything… the carbon release continued to change the atmosphere, making it worse. Thin air made it hard for all of us to breathe. We tried to fix and seal the fissures, but there just isn’t enough labour left on the planet to do enough for it to matter.” My whole body feels shaky hearing this. “Enough about that though. We probably don’t have much time,” Ange reminds me. I shake my head. 

“I’ve been waiting for this.” she says, quickly, quietly. “We finally figured it out. It was the soil all along. It was the carbon sequestering, like you always had thought. I’m sorry we wasted so much time.” Ange looks down. I’ve never seen her feel guilty. That has been my role. 

 She dives into the results of our testing, what we missed in the past. Too much carbon had been sequestered and not allowed to vent as part of the project I worked on. We thought we were burying it deep enough. That compressing the gasses into liquid would be more stable, but we missed how it would move. It seeped into ancient fault lines, slowly expanding previously stable spaces. Without venting the pressure only built. 

We thought we were doing the right thing – keeping it all in. Less carbon, less impact. It had felt perfect. 

Tears begin to fall down my cheeks as Ange tells me how we finally saw the microscopic hydro-fracturing in our samples that clicked everything into place. How we recreated the fractures with an engineered machine. How core samples from a new fissure showed us carbon fluid that acted like grease along fault lines. I’m relieved. And in agony. 

“It was my fault,” I interrupt Ange. 

“No.” She takes my hand. “Well I mean, yes. Your program pioneered the liquidization of the carbon, but you thought you were doing the right thing. You couldn’t have known what would happen, or how the sequestering sites were already jeopardized from fracking. We think some of the data in the environmental reports your project was based on was falsified – we’ve talked about it a lot over the years. There was also no way of knowing that the brackish water was so much more acidic than the old reports saw.” Ange squeezes my hand and turns toward me. 

“That’s what you need to know. The info you need to take back.” My head is swimming. “You have to let it vent. The sites are jeopardized.” Ange’s lungs tremble with a coughing fit. 

“I’ll just shut the project down.” It seems like the only way. I can just go back and…. what? Delete all the files? Kill the team? 

“No!” Ange is sharp, holding in a cough. “We – you and I – don’t think that will work. The carbon sequestering has to happen to temper climate change, but it needs to be done differently.” She stands up, slowly opening a drawer beside my bed. 

“We’ve been working on this for years. It’d never be finished, but I think it’s enough.” She hands me a notebook. “I don’t think you can carry this back, so you have to remember as much as you can.” I ease the notebook open. Each page includes bullet points, notes, and diagrams. “We laid it out in what we thought was the clearest way. Try to memorize it. All.” I look up at Ange, blinking. My old brain isn’t sharp and I don’t feel confident that I’ll be able to remember all of this. “Read it out loud to me. It will help.” Seeing my skepticism, she adds “You’re not practiced at being old yet. I am.” She jokes, her eyes crinkling as she smiles. 

I begin reading each bullet point aloud to Ange, willing the info to stick. I’m so tired that I need to break and rest my eyes every few pages. Our time has felt long and I’m sure I’m going to be taken back to the pond any moment. I don’t rest long. 

With a few dozen pages still left in the book, I begin to feel myself being pulled away. It’s slower this time, and I stop reading and look at Ange. She nods knowingly. She’s so wise. 

“You got this.” She leans in to gently kiss my forehead. “You’re going to save us.” 

####

I’m practically on my feet before I’m awake. Heart pounding. Lungs aching. My body feels electric everywhere. But I feel strong. Back beside the pond.

God damn it feels good to be young again. 

I’m missing some critical info. 

The pond is so much smaller now. Maybe only 4 feet across. I feel sick. It’s slipping away. This pond’s water is a finite resource, and I just burned through it. 

“Do I have enough for one more trip??” No answer. No room left for error or chance. I swallow hard. 

Did I waste this? 

“FUUUUCK!” my rage echoes against the cave corners. 

I force myself to breathe deep and ground my bare feet into the earth below me, calming my nervous system and bringing my racing heart rate down. 

“No,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “No, no, no. Please. Please let me fix this…” 

Surely I have just enough to work with. 

Breathe. 

Breathe. 

Breathe. 

“I’m so sorry.” I kneel down at the edge of what’s left of the pond. The water is still. “I know I broke it. I broke you.” I’m talking now to the earth itself. 

“We were not nice to you. We only took without giving back. Injecting you with that liquified carbon to save ourselves. We didn’t realize there isn’t an us without you. I’m so sorry. Can I please… can I fix it? I promise I won’t let you down.” Tears stream down my face as I gently place my hand at the shoreline. What little water that’s left in the pond gently creeps over my hand. It feels heavy, as if it’s squeezing my hand. I serenity washes over me; I’m being given the chance to fix what I helped break. The water shimmers and recedes back; I stand up and pace again. 

“Okay you beautiful, creepy, goddess. How are we going to do this?”

If I have this one chance to go back, who am I going to trust with the info? 

You. You can trust you. 

I stop in my tracks. Of course. I can trust myself with this.  

“Okay.” I turn to face the pond, smoothing my clothes and hair as if that somehow will help. “We need to be right on the money with this. I need a night when I was alone in the lab, running numbers and organizing comms in the early stages after launch. Early enough to change course, but not so early that the info won’t make sense.” Small ripple. My confidence feels false given how much still feels unknown, but I’m as certain as I can. 

“Take me to then. Take me to the right moment to save us all.” 

####

I wake but don’t open my eyes. My heart is pounding. 

Did I make it? Is this right? 

I bring my hands to my head. My hair is thick, long, and tied back in a messy ponytail. Good sign. My hips ache, like they did when I spent sixteen hours a day curled in my desk chair. That’s good too. And no one is talking to me yet, sounds like I’m alone. 

Easing my eyes open, I’m in my office, attached to the lab. Adrenaline surges through me. 

I made it! 

“Thank you.” 

There isn’t much time. Let’s go. 

My fingers hover over my keyboard. One steadying breath, and I begin typing. Somewhere between a lesson and a report, I spill all the info out, covering page after page of notes and data points, praying I’ve rehearsed it all correctly. 

“You’ll be proud of me Ange.” A wave of sadness washes over me as I realize that if this works, if I save the planet, Ange and I will never meet. 

Stay focused. 

I type and type and type. Fueled by adrenaline, it doesn’t take me long to record everything that was in the notebook pages I read. When I’m confident I’ve got everything down, I hit save. Then I hit save again and put the file in another place. Then I hit print and the pages begin emerging from the printer behind me. 

Are you going to believe you?

I need to be sure. 

I push my keyboard aside, and open the bottom drawer, where I know there’s a plethora of empty notebooks. Cracking one open I grab a pen and begin to scrawl a note to myself. I’ll know my own hand writing. I include details that only I will know. I need to be sure that when I snap back the current version of me will understand and trust what she sees. 

My hand aches and cramps, but I get down all of the details that I can. Miraculously, my recital and Ange worked. I record everything I need to say, and am still present. I look up and take a deep breath in. Looking to the shelf to my left, my own eyes along with John’s and Huba’s gaze back at me from a picture frame – a BBQ at Cherry Beach. The memory of it feels so distant. 

What’s going to happen now? 

I place the pencil down, waiting to be drawn back to the pond. My head is heavy with fatigue, and I close my eyes for a moment. 

Okay. This is it. Back I go.

I startle at a noise – I’m still in my office, and someone else is in here. As I look left and right, the door behind me eases open and I spin my chair to look. 

Holy shit. 

It’s John. An electric prickle of emotion slides across my entire body. He’s never come to see me at work. 

This is different. This is… changed. 

“What are you doing here?” I can’t hide how happy I am to see him. 

“I figured you’d be hungry.” He pulls a bag of my favorite Lebanese takeout from behind his back and sets it on my desk. “You’ve been working so hard lately on, you know, all your world saving stuff. Thought you might need a break.” He leans down and kisses me on the forehead, echoing my last moments with Ange. 

Looking up I meet his eyes, and words fail me. His irises catch the light, reflecting bright blue like the pond. All I can do is nod.