Free The Girl & the Machine by Beth Revis Page B

time: She was not a traveler, not like him. She had met him in high school, but when she had met him, he was 38 years old. He wasn’t a history professor, as he always supposed he would be, which was why he was spending so much money getting that degree. Instead, he was the world’s only time traveler. Not many people knew, but some did. Important people. He was wealthy. He was powerful.
    And he needed Heather’s help. In the future.
    “So, I came to your past, but I was in my future,” Franklin said slowly.
    “Yes,” Heather said. “I was in high school, it was just after my prom, and I was sincerely freaked out.” She laughed. “I’m not even sure how you knew it was me. I looked very different then.” She touched her dark hair pulled into a neat bun. “Anyway, you found me. You were really concerned about it all. We were both desperately worried that you were going to create a paradox, and it would ruin everything. I think that’s why you went so far back into my past. I was just old enough to understand what you were saying, but not old enough to make a difference.”
    “And now you are?”
    Heather checked the flight boards. Their flight was running ten minutes late, and the flight attendant at the desk was loudly confirming to a group of businessmen that the delay was really only ten minutes, and they would probably be able to make the time up in the air.
    “I am young,” Heather conceded. “Let’s just say that meeting you changed my life. I was always studious, but you gave me a purpose.”
    Franklin looked down at his ticket again. Massachusetts. Heather was about his age, but she was in a far more advanced program of study than just a general history degree like him. She was one of the top students at MIT. Heather was working directly with a famous theoretical engineer professor, and she had her own laboratory space.
    “So what did future-me tell you to do?” Franklin said.
    Heather averted her gaze. “I’m not supposed to tell you everything,” she said. “I know it’s difficult, but you’re going to have to trust me.”
    Franklin’s grip on his suitcase’s handle tightened. He didn’t like the unknown. He always wanted to know exactly what was occurring around him. There were times in the past when he spied on himself just to get a different perspective on what had happened at certain moments in his life. He looked around the crowd at the airport now, trying to see some future version of himself spying on this moment. One of the businessmen caught his eyes. A tall white man with short brown hair and dark hazel eyes. The exact same shade of eye color as he himself had. Franklin’s gaze intensified as he tried to figure out if this businessman was actually him, from the future, watching.
    The businessman looked away.
    Franklin pressed Heather for more details, but she refused to answer. “I’ll tell you more when I can show you what I have in the lab,” Heather said.
    Franklin tried to assess what this meant. After Heather had met the future version of himself after her prom, she had dedicated all of her time and energy in doing…something…for him. Or, rather, for his future self. Something that his future self needed. Something that, as Heather had said, changed the world.
    The flight attendants opened the gate and started the boarding process. The businessmen were among the first to push their way to the front of the first-class lane. The man with hazel eyes who Franklin thought might be himself glared at the woman with a small baby who neatly maneuvered her stroller around the clusters of businessman to the front of the line.
    Franklin barely paid any attention as he handed his pass over to the flight attendant and she scanned him in. He followed Heather like an automaton, blithely accepting the aisle seat she offered him as she slipped into the window seat.
    The thing was, this all felt…momentous. The fact that he had somehow figured out how to travel into the future, he had