Skyline Read Free Page B

at
seeming random until it slowed to a stop. The sun rested to the east.
    Morning.
    A
woman in a crisp suit walked by, a paper-wrapped bagel in hand. A bicyclist
sped past, dodging through traffic. No one noticed the three people who had
suddenly appeared.
    “Where?”
Bill tried.
    Monroe
followed with, “How?”
    But
Charlotte shook her head. “Those aren’t the right questions.” She couldn’t help
her growing grin. “You mean when .”
    “What?”
Bill and Monroe said together.
    Instead
of answering, Charlotte lifted her hand, up from the streets, past her
astrolabe, past the nearby buildings, through a crack, to two identical
skyscrapers in the distance.
    The
World Trade Center standing tall before New York’s skyline was marred for the first
time.

 
     
    CHAPTER TWO

ANACHRONISM
     
     
September 10, 2001
     
    For
a long minute, two, three, the men were silent. Charlotte looked on, her heart
swelling. Monroe’s eyes wouldn’t stop moving. Bill’s jaw slowly fell lower and
lower. Her plan was working.
    “This
… This …” Bill sputtered.
    “What
is this?” Monroe asked again. “Like, a hologram? A projection?”
    “Nope.”
Charlotte strode away from them, toward the building that would one day,
twenty-two years from now, be Suni’s bar. “We’re here.”
    “And
here is … ?” Bill said.
    Monroe
squinted at her. His voice shuddered as he asked, “Time travel?”
    Charlotte’s
grin grew, and she nodded.
    Monroe
exhaled a breath of surprise. She’d never seen him speechless, but as his grin
grew, she could tell that moment was over. “The astrolabe can fucking time
travel ?” He slugged her. “And you didn’t fucking tell me?” He threw another
punch, but this time Charlotte dodged, grabbed his fist. Held it and stared
into his glimmering eyes. “This is fucking incredible , Char!”
    “T-time
travel?” Bill’s eyes widened, but he couldn’t tear them from the World Trade
Center in the distance.
    Leanor
had been right to let him come along. The only people who would appreciate the
device more than the technicians who’d created it stood before her: a historian
and a sci-fi geek.
    Had
Leanor told Monroe to invite Bill? Behind Charlotte’s back?
    Charlotte
blinked the thought away.
    But
Leanor hadn’t been surprised by his presence.
    “We
shouldn’t be here,” Bill said, at last turning his head and body away from the
identical towers. “Time travel, the butterfly effect, every moment here is like
a ticking time bomb.”
    Monroe
stretched his lips into a wide smile, every one of his perfect teeth visible.
“Time bomb, I like that.”
    “I’m serious ,” Bill said. He reached a hand out to the astrolabe, dark now
but still in Charlotte’s hand. “Haven’t either of you heard of the Heisenberg
Uncertainty Principle? Take us back.”
    Charlotte
set the astrolabe into her leather purse. “It’ll be fine, Bill. We’ve come back
hundreds of times, bought items, exchanged cash, even interrupted George
Washington on his way through town.”
    “No,
no.” Bill shook his head. “That’s Novikov’s Self-Consistency Principle. But
it’s bullshit, Charlotte. Bullshit.”
    Monroe’s
eyes flicked from Bill to Charlotte.
    She
and Leanor had traveled so much, but Charlotte had never heard of either of
these people. “But Bill,” she said, “we really have come back hundreds of
times.”
    Bill
bit his lip. His gaze turned to the streets: a kid wearing headphones and a
thick iPod, a woman running in a velour jogging suit, a pair of boys with
bleached-blond hair running to school together, massive backpacks on their
backs. The more people that passed, the more Bill’s green eyes glittered.
    At
Bill’s silence, Monroe asked his question for a third time. “But how ,
Char? How is this even possible? I thought it was just a—well, I guess not
normal—astrolabe.”
    “I
thought so too,” Charlotte said. “I implemented GPS, historical stars, touch
sensitive glass. Leanor