The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

figure slowly went translucent. The space where he stood momentarily filled with a million tiny sparks and flashes, like a miniature fireworks display in the shape of a person, then gradually cleared to nothingness.
    “So that’s what it looks like to an observer,” she said when he was gone. “Quite a pretty effect, actually.”
    “Indeed it is,” Denes agreed.
    “So, Arty is on his way to Nuevo An… I mean, Los Angeles,” Aurora noted. “I wonder why Pan-Li didn’t bring us home directly after him.”
    “He probably just retrieved Arty to the transmission chamber and then sent him directly on to his own past before retrieving us. The sooner he starts his mission the better.”
    “Ah, of course. Yes. Well, we’ll be next, then.” She smiled at Denes. He nodded and smiled back.
    Minutes passed. Nothing happened. Aurora brushed imaginary dust from her tunic. Denes sat in Arty’s chair.
    More minutes, more nothing. Aurora was getting worried. “What do you suppose is wrong?” she asked.
    “Maybe nothing is wrong,” Denes replied calmly. “You know how meticulous Pan-Li is. He may be recalculating our return path, or synchronizing the relocator’s chronometers. Who knows?”
    “Perhaps he’s making us a fresh pot of tea,” she said nervously.
    “Perhaps.”
    They waited.
    Aurora had an idea. “What about an emergency return? If there’s a problem at their end, we could initiate the return sequence from here.” Before Denes could answer, she pressed a few buttons on her arm unit. “Oh, dear.”
    “What is it?” Denes checked his own readout. “Oh, I see. There’s no carrier signal.”
    “That means the temporal relocator is offline. They’re completely shut down. Without a carrier link, we can’t even force a return.” Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, no. What if Lokus has attacked our lab?”
    “Let’s not assume the worst, Aurora. If there were a serious equipment problem, I believe we would at least see a power spike or other anomaly on our displays, but there’s no indication of that. Pan-Li must have shut down quickly but deliberately, although I can’t imagine why.”
    “Yes, yes,” Aurora said. “I’m sure you’re right. Unless…”
    “What?”
    “Do you suppose Arty could have already taken some action that has affected us? In the future, I mean—our present.”
    “I shouldn’t think so,” Denes said. “You know, Lucinda theorizes that the rate at which time passes in a single timeline is constant, even if the timeline regenerates. If Pan-Li displaced Arty to a day before the Eli Event, as he calls it, then it would be a day before we observed any downstream effects of his actions, either here or in our present.”
    Aurora nodded. “Yes, and you know that Pan-Li disagrees with her hypothesis. According to him, we could start seeing changes the moment Arty leaves his own time. This 2034 we’re in now could already be a far cry from the one in our history banks. It could already be different from the one we landed in just hours ago. We would certainly never know it in any case, stuck here in this… closet.”
    “True enough. Are you open to an idea?”
    “Of course.”
    He indicated the far wall, where the other janitors’ coveralls hung. “It looks like there is plenty of spare, um, clothing. We could go out and try to be inconspicuous.” He smiled.
    “What if Pan-Li comes back online?”
    “He’ll find us through our arm units. He can bring us home from wherever we happen to be.”
    “All right. Maybe we could find someplace with historical documents, where we could figure out if anything here is different from our original 2034. Perhaps a broadcast station of some kind?”
    “Or a newspaper office?”
    “Or a library!” they said in unison.
    Denes smiled broadly. He rose, took two coveralls off their hooks, and looked at the embroidered name patches. “Do you want to be Leeann or Bob?”
    Aurora almost laughed. “I think it will look better if I’m Leeann when Pan-Li brings us—” Suddenly she went ashen. “Oh, no. Denes?”
    “Yes?”
    “What if Arty really has already changed our future to the extent that Pan-Li and Lucinda don’t even know we’re here? What if no one remembers us at home?” Her voice quavered. “What if—what if there is no home to go home to?”
    Denes zipped his coveralls and turned to face her. He wasn’t smiling any more. His eyes showed not just the gentle strength she had always admired, but a fierce