She handed Wes her tablet, displaying pictures, and he asked, “What’s all this?”

           “Ten famous inventions that came along between 2100 and 2800. I could tell you what they all do, but…” she chuckled, “I wanna see your reactions.”

           As Wes flipped through a collection of strange machines and instruments, Colin leaned over and mumbled, “What the heck does that do? Is that thing floating?”

           “She’s gotta be messing with us,” Arthur said. “This is just weird modern art.”

           “How would you even advertise some of these things?” Wes questioned. “I guess it’d help to know what they did. Speaking of, where are the ads, Nyra? Not complaining; I’m just not used to seeing a big sci-fi city without bright flashing holo-capitalism.”

           “We still have advertising,” Nyra assured them. “It’s just that we stopped paying any attention, so habits and interests barely changed. Now they’re turned off… except for one weekend each month, when cities light up with beckoning products and services. Some people really look forward to finding the best new attention-grabbers.”

           “So… the same old shallow superficial junk is still around…” Laurie grumbled.

           “Well, sure, if you see it that way. But society has made other advances since—”

           “Hold on, Nyra,” Warren cut her off, speaking for pretty much the first time that dinner. “Lor, you’re still going on about this stuff when we’re sixteen. All you do is tell us about whatever injustice you’ve found out about that week, that we can’t do anything about because we’re only a bunch of kids, and it bums us out. You used to be fun.”

           Laurie looked both indignant and ashamed, but then Nyra spoke for her, “Now, wait a sec. I want to hear what’s on her mind. Every generation has its troubles.”

           Warren scoffed, but Laurie pushed through and rambled, “I just… don’t get how people my age determine what’s important. We know about all of the problems, but then most of us don’t do anything that might help. Robots and AI might take away our jobs by the time we’re adults, we have lockdown drills each month, animals are disappearing, the weather will get scary, and climate change is going to start wars… But it’s okay, because celebrities will keep telling us what to buy, and let’s just get all our fake news from social media. So, you know what, Warren? I’m sorry for being a killjoy, but when some stupid, mostly ironic comment I made had thousands of more likes than anything else I ever posted, it kind of made me realize that the things we ‘like’ matter the least.”

           “Wow, Laurie…” Jace murmured. “You’ve been keeping that inside a while…”

           “It can all drive you crazy, can’t it?” Nyra replied calmly with a warm smile. “But guess what? People have always thought they were living in the end times. Even now, in an era where we can see centuries and things seem stable in the present, we find things to worry about. My advice is to be a touch selfish—and bring your friends into your little hedonistic circle, as well. It’s good to be conscious of modern issues and use them to guide your morals, but letting stressors control a life you’re meant to enjoy just makes you miserable. Look out at our city, Ms. Skyler. Despite everything, we made it.”

           Laurie sunk into her seat. “But I… I just want to make a difference, so badly…”

           “Being someone who ‘changes the world,’ or just trying to dig out your ‘place in history’ is a lot of pressure to put on someone.” Nyra took her final bite as dinner began to wind down. “One day, you’ll wake up and realize how many people you do matter to.”

           “She’s made for a pretty good replacement therapist during my stay,” Millie said.

           “I also picked up some of these perspectives from Dr. Corathine,” Nyra added.

           “Still…” Millie crossed her arms and glared down at her plate’s crumbs. “I don’t think I’ll ever let go of the cruel joke the time horizon pulled on me. When I was a kid and the guys told me, I was kind of relieved. But after all the years thinking about it…”

           “What… are we talking about, Millie?” Colin asked after he ordered a dessert.

           Millie looked at her younger self, now anxious, and answered, “The beginning of accessible time was in 1990 when I first heard about it. Since it’s always moving, now it’s in 1992. I have few memories of my mom, and she’s sick in most of them. I kept hoping that being here, maybe I’d help find a way to get through the barrier. So I could see her again. No one needs to say ‘sorry’ or feel bad for me… I’ve heard it more than enough.”

           Nyra said nothing, because she had no doubt talked to Millie many times about this, but she did reach over and quietly give her friend’s hand a squeeze.

           “… What about you, Malcolm?” Wes asked him after failing to come up with anything to say to Millie. “Don’t you want to return to the 90s and see your grandson?”

           “Of course,” he said emphatically. “But I’m not quite done with what I want to do and see here, and I’ll lose my memories if I go back. I’m about sixty percent health monitoring implants now, so I’ll head home if… you know, my time’s running out.”

           “Speaking of going back…” Colin, devouring some sort of cookie-pie drizzled with honey, mumbled between bites. “Are we… leaving once Jared comes back down?”

           “If you’re ready to,” Nyra said. “We’ll take care of the other Millie. We’re pretty good at our jobs; she’s no mastermind time criminal. Just slippery and sneaky.”

           Arthur remarked, “Never pictured the playground spy becoming a time-traveling-multiverse-surfing person of interest… Good luck. By the way, any cute or annoying nicknames they give you guys? Being something of a fed myself, I’ve heard them all.”

           “Today’s government doesn’t work the same way you’re used to, Arty, but we’re the TMB. So, Thumbs, obviously. I had this one perp that—hold on, I got a call…” Her pupils lit up, and she must’ve been able to talk internally, as she said nothing for a solid minute. Once her eyes returned to normal, she reported, “Something went down on the station. André Corathine and Charlie Pippin are in custody, with some… strange device. They’re asking us to help with the situation. You guys… feel like taking a trip to orbit?”

           Nearly everyone stared wide-eyed at Nyra with mouths agape. The silence lasted for a very long five seconds, until Colin’s dessert fork clattered onto his plate.

           “Come on, everyone, hurry along,” Nyra rushed the group into the city’s space port and past the security checkpoint. “If anyone wants to stay behind and miss out on what’ll probably be a once in a lifetime thing for you guys, I totally get it. But there are just enough seats left on the next shuttle. If we miss it, it’s ninety minutes till the next.”

           “We’re going to space… We’re seriously going to space…” Laurie, like several of the others, had to repeat to make it real. “Don’t we need training? And we just ate!”

           “That’s not a problem,” Nyra said, flashing her badge to the security personnel. “It’s a smooth ride. Another benefit of grav-tech. There will still be rockets, though.”

           “We don’t even have time to think about it, do we?” Wes said, as they boarded a vacuum-tube Hyperloop-style train. “Wait, don’t we at least need, you know, suits?”

           “Why? We’re not going on a spacewalk. And the shuttles seal in a split-second if there’s a leak. Heck, you’re going to have gravity the entire time. It’s all menial, really.”

           Once he was strapped into a seat, Wes added, “Maybe for you. But for us, this is like… reading a book that suddenly goes from being a slice of life story to hard sci-fi.”

           “No fiction in this science,” Millie remarked. “It’s just like a King Arcade ride.”

           The train took off at hundreds of miles an hour down a long transparent tunnel that covered the span of the large tarmac and ended at an extremely tall structure that resembled a radio tower, which went straight up and vanished in the clouds. The group had seen it at a distance all day, but up close it was something else. Flashing red strobe lights trailed upward along one side; the other was covered by a dull crimson glow.

           “What is that, exactly?” Colin, staring upward through the glass, wondered.

           “A mass driver, nearly two miles tall,” Malcolm answered. “It’ll propel us up to about 70,000 feet, and then the rockets kick in. Unlike Nyra, I’ll never grow bored of it.”

           With the train slowing down already, Nyra said with a grin, “The city’s dubbed the driver tower The Red Demon, out of reverence for our first amusement park.”

           “First…?” Arthur replied.

           “Mr. Teller, your dad may be happy to hear that we have three theme parks now.”

           “Seriously? Agh, we should’ve gone to one of them today,” Laurie grumbled.

           “No thanks,” Mill replied with a bit of a gagging expression.

           “Same,” Warren said. “I’m good. Is going to space not a big enough thrill, Lor?”

           The train came to a stop, and the doors opened to a shuttle loading bay.

           “Keep moving, we don’t want to make everyone else miss the window,” Nyra pressed them on as the bay’s service techs also made keep-it-moving gestures.

           “Oh, wow…” Laurie, looking at the waiting shuttle under a clear sky, murmured.

           The flying wing spacecraft was hoisted on a hydraulic platform that looked like it could be angled upward to line up the big bird with the tower. Not getting much time to study the design, the group stepped through the open hatch and into a cabin not very dissimilar from a 21^st century passenger jet, with several long rows of seats. There were about fifty other passengers—most of them occupied with their various devices—and the empty spots were scattered among them. Malcolm was content with the seat by an emergency exit door, while Nyra, Wes, the older Millie, and Jace and Laurie were able to score the only five seats next to each other. The doors were closed seconds later, and the captain wasted no time in making what must’ve been typical announcements.

           “No windows?” Laurie whispered and buckled in. “I wanted the full experience…”

           “Wait just a second,” Nyra said.

           The captain finished the brief safety spiel, and as the platform began to audibly adjust—the onboard gravity was already active and kept everything pulled to the floor—a sweeping video screen opened up across the ceiling, crystal clear enough to make it feel like the passengers were outside. Not that the usual passengers really cared.

           With a schedule to keep, the shuttle slingshot into the sky with great acceleration that turned the tower’s lights into a single streak of red. Even so, the grav-tech kept the cabin so completely tranquil that the fliers were pretty much watching a movie instead of being shaken violently or getting pressed into their seats. A minute or so after clearing the tower, the rockets ignited to carry the spacebound the rest of the way into low orbit. The mighty fusion candles finally produced a ship-wide tremor, albeit a minor one.

           “So, Wes,” Nyra struck up a casual conversation, “when I started investigating you, I looked up the games you made and found them in the archives.”

           Understandably unable to take his eyes off the projection of brightening stars, he replied, “Uh. Wow. Impressive data retention. Are they really good enough to warrant centuries of preservation? Or do people just never let any form of art disappear…?”

           “It’s okay, be modest. We save everything. We still make pixel games, too. I loved them… But—and I shouldn’t say this—your upcoming games feel like they lost their spark.”

           “Hm? Really?” Now he looked over the kids at her, three seats away. “I mean… obviously I haven’t made them yet, but that’s not surprising. Inspiration eludes me.”

           “Uh-huh,” she replied flatly. “And today hasn’t stimulated your creative side.”

           “This is all amazing, of course. But there are enough sci-fi titles already. Though… slice of life sci-fi could be interesting. Or, maybe… there are few RPGs in the genre…”

           “Wes, look,” Laurie said, and he turned his attention back to the screen to see the large, approaching space station, its gold radiators extending for miles. “It’s big.”

           “So… no space elevators?” Wes wondered as he stared on in further awe.

           Nyra yawned. “They’d have to connect to something in geosynchronous orbit; we haven’t needed to put something that far out yet. Maybe one day, for a bigger fleet.”

           “I wish I could stay here…” Laurie said wistfully with pensive eyes.

           “It is tempting to try,” Millie replied. “But even if you really wanted to… and I still don’t think I do, there’s something of a visitor ‘visa.’ Eventually, they’ll make us return to our own era, to be a part of history again. I have maybe a month left.”

           “Well, that sucks…” She glanced at Jace. “But I guess I’d miss home eventually.”

           The entire flight lasted less than twenty minutes, and it didn’t take long to catch up to the TMB space station and pull into one of its many docking bays. The others left the shuttle to start their work shifts as agents or other staff, while the ‘day pass’ guests were led by Nyra over to a door away from the main air lock entrance. No sooner had the shuttle arrived than it began to fill up with those from a previous shift.

           “Ms. Fernandez, welcome back,” an older, bearded man in a uniform that put Chief Hawthorn’s to shame greeted Nyra with a handshake. “And Mr. Corathine. So… this lot is what we’re abuzz about. I’m Director Kestin. Welcome aboard my station.”

           “It’s, um, quite impressive,” Colin replied. “I feel like I’m in Star Trek.”

           “A purveyor of the classics, I see. But I suppose that goes for all of you, Nyra included. I do enjoy meeting people from the past, but I’m afraid we’re a bit pressed for time. Her report mentioned that you were once friends with a Charlie Pippin?”

           “A long time ago, yes…” Wes said. “And Nyra said he’s with André?”

           “Yes.” The director looked at Malcolm. “But… it’s odd, Professor. Even though we caught them using illegal time-tech, your grandson claims to be from… another world.”

           Malcolm was too perplexed for words, so Millie huffed out, “He’s her André.”