Roman and I have taken several trips into the future, but, to be honest, I’ve found them mostly fruitless. Unlike the past, the future doesn’t appear to be fixed. It changes every time I visit. Sometimes the changes are slight, while, other times, they’re monumental.

Of course, I, like everyone, have often wondered how my own actions might change the course of the future. But Nikola pushed me to consider this on a deeper level. He was intrigued about my journeys, asking about specific experimentation I might have done to study my own personal ability to effect change.

He got a strange, puzzled look on his face when I admitted that I hadn’t pursued that line of study very far. It really got me thinking about how I might design a series of experiments to delve deeper into these questions. My mind is on fire.

More soon.

10

Ash

NOVEMBER 6, 2077, NEW SEATTLE

There was a door in the old schoolhouse that they never opened. It was just past the kitchen, across the hall from the Professor’s office. It wasn’t so much what the door led to but what it contained.

Boxes, all carefully taped shut and labeled Natasha.

Natasha Walker had been Zora’s mother. A historian, she’d provided the team with period-specific costumes and quizzed them on historical trivia whenever they’d traveled back in time. She also made the world’s best grilled cheese sandwiches and had a weakness for twentieth-century British rock singers (she used to play David Bowie on repeat). But she’d died in the mega-quake, and now all that was left of her were these dusty old boxes.

Most days, Ash pretended the door and the boxes inside didn’t exist. But, today, he and Zora stopped in front of it, preparing.

“You sure you’re okay?” Ash asked.

Zora rolled her eyes, but Ash knew this was a front. The muscles in her shoulders had tensed. If she’d been anyone else, he would’ve done the comforting thing—hand on her shoulder, tight squeeze—but she was Zora, so he just reached past her and opened the door so she wouldn’t have to do it herself.

She released a low exhale, almost a sigh. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Ash squinted into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. The closet had an overhead light once, but they didn’t have enough solar panels to keep it working, and the bulb was broken, and, anyway, the boxes were stacked all the way to the ceiling, so it’s not like the light would’ve done them any good. They’d been packed in tight, angled and arranged to fill every spare bit of space.

Natasha, 1920s cocktail dresses, read the label on one. Another said, India, 500 to 600 BCE.

“That’s from when we picked up Chandra, remember?” Ash said, nodding at the box.

Zora didn’t say anything. Ash glanced over in time to see her flick a hand across her cheek, blinking.

He looked away. It seemed wrong to watch her cry.

“I didn’t think it would feel like this,” Zora said. “To see her things . . .”