Then an official led over a 123-year-old man, the only known individual who had lived alongside the immigrants, and who had insisted on seeing the ambassador. “So many things happened after you left. So many things!” The old man brought out two bowls from the ambassador’s time and filled them to the brim with alcohol. “My parents were migrants. They left me this when I was three to drink with them when they were thawed out. But now I won’t see them. And I’m the last person from your time you’ll see.”

After they had drunk, the ambassador looked into the man’s dry eyes, and just as she was wondering why the people of this era seemed not to cry, the old man began to shed tears. He knelt down and clasped the ambassador’s hands.

“Take care, ma’am. ‘West of Yang Pass, there are no more old friends!’”2

Before the ambassador felt the supercooled freezing of the liquid helium, her husband suddenly appeared in her fragmented consciousness. Hua stood on a fallen leaf in autumn, and then the leaf turned black, and then a tombstone appeared. Was it his?

THE TREK

Outside of perception, the sun swept through the sky like a shooting star, and time slipped past in the outside world.

… 120 years … 130 years … 150 years … 180 years … 200 years … 250 years … 300 years … 350 years … 400 years … 500 years … 620 years.

STOP 2: THE LOBBY AGE

“Why did you wait so long to wake me up?” the ambassador asked, looking in surprise at the atomic clock.

“The advance team has mobilized five times at century intervals and even spent a decade awake in one age, but we didn’t wake you because immigration was never possible. You yourself set that rule,” the advance-team captain said. He was noticeably older than at their last meeting, the ambassador realized.

“More war?”

“No. War is over forever. And although the environment continued to deteriorate over the first three centuries, it began to rebound two hundred years ago. The last two ages refused immigrants, but this one has agreed to accept them. The ultimate decision is up to you and the commission.”

There was no one in the freezer lobby. When the giant door rumbled open, the captain whispered to the ambassador, “The changes are far greater than you imagine. Prepare yourself.”

When the ambassador took her first step into the new age, a note sounded, haunting, like some ancient wind chime. Deep within the crystalline ground beneath her feet she saw the play of light and shadows. The crystal looked rigid, but it was as soft as carpet underfoot, and every step produced that wind-chime tone and sent concentric halos of color expanding from the point of contact, like ripples on still water. The ground was a crystalline plane as far as the eye could see.