Free Rewinder by Brett Battles

work and allows us to return to the very day we left.
    I will grow old very quickly this way, and I say as much to Marie.
    “It’ll be different after your training is done,” she tells me. “Once you’re officially a personal historian, when you push the HOME button, your real time in the past will equal the amount of time you’ve been gone. No unnecessary aging.” She thinks for a moment. “I should say that’s how it usually works. You may, on occasion, be asked to make an expedited trip and you’ll return right after you leave.”
    “Is there a reason why that happens?”
    She shrugs. “Whatever the reason, you’re not likely to be told.”
    “A rush for a client?”
    She hesitates. “That could be it.” Like on a few previous occasions, she seems to be holding something back. Whatever that might be, she continues to keep it to herself.
    By the time my training nears its end, I have visited nearly every year going back to 1900, and dozens of years earlier than that. On most trips going more than eighty years back, we use the automated function and do them in hops to reduce the side effects. Marie makes me take one long trip all the way back to 1645 so I’d understand why the hops are necessary. The pain is so intense I pass out moments after we arrive. When I come to, I make it clear to her it’s a lesson that does not need repeating.
    When I arrive for my very last day of training, I ask Marie, “So, who are we tracing today?
    “No one.”
    “No one? We’re not going anywhere?”
    “Did I say that? Pull out your Chaser, please.”
    As soon as I do, she pushes the GO button on her device and we wink out of 2014. In the now familiar gray mist of the journey, I can sense Marie’s companion. This is something that’s been building from trip to trip. It’s like that feeling that someone’s watching you but you’re never quite able to figure out who. Marie tells me the link will be even stronger with my own companion after I’ve worked with that person for a while. There are pairs of Rewinders and companions who are so compatible that they’re able to communicate through the link. I’m not sure if I want that or not.
    Our journey is apparently a long one, as we end up making five different stops before we settle on the bank of a river. Having unexpectedly—at least in my mind—arrived during daylight, my training immediately kicks in and I drop to the ground, my head moving back and forth as I scan the area to make sure we haven’t been spotted. But we’re completely alone.
    “Good response, though you could have probably dropped a second sooner,” Marie says.
    A half second at most, I think, but I’m not going to argue. I rub away my headache as I look out at the wide river. “Where are we?”
    “Spain. The Guadalquivir River.”
    That would explain the sweat on my brow. “What are we doing here?”
    “Is that the right question?”
    Of course it isn’t. “ When are we?”
    “The tenth of August, 1519.”
    The date is a familiar one. But with all the practical training we’ve been doing, I’m a bit rusty with my studying.
    “There,” she says, pointing upriver.
    The bow of a ship is just coming into view, and that’s when I remember. It was even a question on the very test that brought me to the institute’s attention.
    There are five ships total. I don’t remember the names of all of them. One, I believe, is the Victoria , another the Santiago . There is one whose name I do know for sure. The Trinidad , flagship of Ferdinand Magellan’s fleet. This is the day he sails to the coast where his journey around the world will begin, a trip Magellan will not finish. But both he and I are here at the start, separated only by the flowing river.
    When the ships finally sail out of sight, all I can say is, “They’re smaller than I pictured in my mind.”
    I look over at Marie to see if she’s heard me, but she seems lost in thought.
    When I open my mouth to ask if she’s all