We waved to our new friends and walked across the road to the chain-link fence. We pushed open the gates and climbed aboard an electric crew cart designed for gravity-suit use. The old car park was covered in dead leaves and other detritus, and as we trundled toward the administrative buildings almost a mile away, the asphalt became older as the dilation gradient became more apparent. The closer we approached the source of the leaking flux, the older the surroundings became. In the two years since the abandonment of the facility, mature trees had grown up through the paving slabs. But the oddness of it all was that from an outside observer the facility had actually aged just two years—it was only as we walked closer did the aging occur. As we moved in, the trees grew and the building decayed, until by the time we reached the front entrance, the paint was mottled and cracked, the woodwork had rotted away, and the internal steel within the concrete had begun to rust, spall and fracture, leaving large areas where the concrete had fallen from the wall. As we stepped off the electric buggy, it almost corroded to dust beneath us.

“The building was only abandoned two years ago,” murmured Friday, sounding a lot like Jane Horrocks, one of the unavoidable consequences of the Tachytalk™ communication system. “It looks as if five decades have passed.”

We walked cautiously past a sign marked WARNING: STEEP T-GRADIENT, and the sun suddenly moved faster across the sky.

“I don’t get it,” said Friday. “Are we in the future now?”

“Yes and no,” I replied, once more reinforcing the strange duality of time. “If you equalize your suit,” I explained, pointing to the big red button marked PURGE on his chest, “you’ll stay at the out-suit time. If you walk back up the temporal gradient, we’ll stay on in-suit time. Watch this.”

I stopped, turned around and took a few paces back in the direction we had come. There was a shuddering in the suit, and my skin prickled as I walked up the gradient. I turned back to Friday and asked if he was okay.

He said he was, but I could see that his mouth wasn’t moving when he spoke. I was talking to him as he was now but seeing him as he would be in about thirty seconds. Conversely, he was hearing what I said now but seeing me as I had been half a minute ago. As I watched, he drew a picture on his slate and then showed it to me. It was of an elephant.

“Want to see a neat trick?” I asked.

“Go on, then.”

“Draw something on your slate.”

“Okay.”

I waited a few seconds. “It’s an elephant,” I said.

“Okay,” he said, “that was weird. How did you know?”