JANUARY 3RD, 1983 – 3:00 P.M.

The hotel was suddenly gone, and Luke was now in an open field, brittle dead grass at his feet, the sun shining over a line of trees concealing the horizon. Oliver stood to his right, and they both took a moment to look around. A long fence stood before a strip of houses across the way, while to their left was a group of larger buildings, similar to the one Luke was behind not long ago, with cracked pavement in front of them. The wind picked up for a moment, and Luke wrapped his arms around himself to block the bitter cold.

“Ah, we should probably get you a coat,” Oliver said frankly, glancing at Luke before turning and walking toward the pavement. “Not to mention the ash all over you.”

Luke sighed and looked around for another moment, fighting to keep a grip on his sanity before starting off after Oliver.

“So, uh,” he called after him, “who are you to me? Like, do I meet you eventually?”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Oliver replied. “We’re good friends.”

“Ah,” Luke said, finally catching up. Oliver did seem familiar with him, which felt rather odd coming from what he considered a total stranger. They arrived at the pavement, Luke following as Oliver took a left down the road behind the buildings. “So what are we doing?”

“We’re going to go talk to the CIA director, guy named Casey,” Oliver said succinctly. “But we have to do a few things first. These things take planning, so the first thing we need to do is steal a car.”

“We— what?”

“Well, actually, first we have to steal some clothes.” Oliver turned to him and grinned, a hint of mischief in his dark eyes. “Then we’ll get a car.”

Luke just looked exasperatedly at him.

“Okay, look,” Oliver said, stopping and turning to face him. “There’s a lot you want to ask, I know. And you’ve just been through a whole lot. We’re going to have a long discussion once we get a car. There’s nothing a nice long drive through the countryside can’t fix.”

“Alright, fine,” Luke said resignedly. “Just tell me what to do.”

Oliver watched him for another moment. “You’ll be alright,” he finally said dismissively before turning and walking further down the road. Luke just shook his head and followed.

They rounded the corner around a big building and came across a parking lot filled with older-style vehicles, mostly shiny and new. Luke hadn’t seen a more familiar past yet, watching all manners of new ’80s vehicles go by with mild curiosity. Eventually people started to appear, going in and out of the buildings mostly in groups, chattering loudly and carrying shopping bags full of clothes, their fashion and hairstyles clearly suiting the time they were from. It was so familiar, from what he had seen in movies and television, yet so foreign to actually be here in the flesh.

Oliver turned and entered one of the clothing stores, Luke still following closely. They were attracting a decent level of attention, Oliver in his dark bulky clothing and duffel bag, and Luke smeared with ash, but no one stopped them.

“A good thing to remember,” Oliver said under his breath as they entered the men’s section, “is that most people really don’t care what you’re up to. Sure, they’ll notice you’re wearing weird clothes, but no one ever bothers you. People just mind their own business.”

Luke just took in the information as Oliver stood aside and motioned with his arm.

“What?” Luke said, exasperated.

“Pick some clothes. Shirt, pants, and a coat. Whatever you want.”

Luke shrugged and walked down a few aisles, picking out some blank black articles of clothing and returning to Oliver.

“You’re sure we shouldn’t pay for these?” Luke said quietly.

“C’mon, Luke, you’re smart,” Oliver said, the wry smile returning. “We can’t use our future dollars to buy stuff in the past. Now let’s go to the changing room and put your clothes on, then just leave your old clothes and walk out. Happens all the time, the store will be fine. Make sure you rip the tags off.”

Luke felt stupid, but said nothing as they walked over to the changing stalls. Oliver stood outside as Luke changed, taking the opportunity to scrub the ash out of his hair and off his face with his old shirt.

He looked himself over in the mirror, surprised at how empty he appeared. His posture sagged, his expression featureless, his clothes now dark and blank. He closed his eyes and inhaled slowly, letting his mind rest for this brief moment before slinging the backpack with the time machine back over his shoulder.

“You look good,” Oliver said flatly as he returned from the stall. Luke was officially a thief, but at least he looked good. “Let’s get out of here.”

They walked together out of the store, past the various happy shoppers, the cold air unable to bite as hard through the thick black coat Luke had stolen. It was still surreal, passing so many unique people from decades earlier than he was used to.

They passed dozens of rows of cars and trucks before arriving at the end of the parking lot, far away from any other people, coming up to a small black car with a dent in its side just before the last row.

“This one will do,” Oliver said, reaching into his duffel bag and shuffling what sounded like dozens of items around.

A few moments passed and Luke felt nervous as he watched the people walk around in the distance, half-expecting someone to run up and yell for them to stop. Finally, Oliver pulled a small metal cylinder out, fumbling with it for a moment before putting it up to the car door’s keyhole.

With a loud whirring sound and a click, the door was unlocked, and Oliver pulled it open. “Neat, right?” he said, not a hint of guilt in his voice. Luke just looked at him blankly as he turned away, taking the driver’s seat and putting the device up to the keyhole for the ignition.

“Come on, get in,” Oliver said, motioning with one arm toward the passenger seat as the device whirred again. After a moment, there was another click, and the engine spurred to life. Oliver let go of the device and it stayed in place, and Luke finally rounded the car and took a seat.

“Just give me a minute to get to the highway, then we can talk,” Oliver said quietly, focusing on shifting the gear stick manually and maneuvering the car out of the parking lot, down a couple short roads, and finally accelerating onto the main highway. Luke just watched out the window and waited for the next thing to happen.

“So, we’re in West Virginia at the moment,” Oliver said as they got up to speed. “We just left the Meadowbrook Mall, and Langley is almost four hours away, depending on traffic. So we’ve got plenty of time to talk.”

Luke didn’t say anything, instead just looking from the side window to the front windshield to show he had heard.

Oliver sighed. “Alright, I get it. I was the same way when I first met you. Quiet, reserved, unsure. It sucks, no question. I’ve learned to find some fun in all of this, but really it just sucks. You leave your life behind, dragged into this against your will and you have to be as smart and careful as you can all the time or suffer for it.”

Luke just shook his head slowly.

“I know,” Oliver continued. “It’s worse for you, too. You’ve got a wife and a kid. I never had any family, ever. There wasn’t much of a life for me to leave behind.”

Luke continued staring ahead blankly. He noticed Oliver glance at him out of the corner of his eye.

“So, uh, you’re hungry, right?” he said awkwardly. “You never got to eat breakfast. Why don’t we stop somewhere and get you something to eat?”

“Are we going to steal that too?” Luke said quietly.

“Listen, man, it’s not that big of a deal.” Oliver sounded slightly annoyed. “You have no choice anymore. We don’t have any 1980’s money, but we’ve got time machines and this fancy tech from the future. We’re going to steal everything from now on. Everything. You want to try to save Evelyn, right? You gotta cooperate with me.”

Luke looked at him hard. “Do you think she can be saved?”

“Of course,” Oliver said. “You’re always going on about it. I think the next time I see future-you, we’re going to fake her death. We just had to do our whole friendship thing first.”

“Friendship thing? What are you talking about?”

“Luke, you are the smartest guy I have ever met. You have got to start applying yourself. You’re going through a lot, I get it, but come on.”

Luke was getting frustrated. “Alright, whatever,” he said. “Can you just explain it to me?”

“We’re in a sort of double time loop, you and I,” Oliver said. “I’m mentoring you right now, and soon, I’m going to send you to meet my younger self, and you’ll mentor me. Then, you’ll send me to mentor your younger self, which to you is happening right now. So we both sort of meet each other when the other is somewhat experienced, and train each other with these couple of easy missions. Weird, right?”

Luke thought for a moment, and decided it made sense. “Yeah,” he finally said. “That’s interesting. I guess I won’t be allowed to tell you the old code gesture, then?”

“Nope,” Oliver said. “Which, speaking of that whole thing, is something else you need to remember. The thing about time travel is that nothing is ever urgent until you’re literally doing it. You have endless time to plan things. It was naive to decide to save your child on a whim without any planning at all.”

“Yeah, I realize that,” Luke said, looking away again.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Oliver said sympathetically. “I can’t begin to understand what it’s like to lose a child. I don’t blame you guys for doing what you thought would get him back.”

Luke just shrugged. “Yeah, well anyway… you really think we can save Evelyn?”

“For sure,” Oliver said confidently. “What happened behind the house was pretty simple, so it should be easy to fake. Either we get a fake woman to disguise as Evelyn and have her killed by whoever shot her, or we use a blank and put a blood squib like in a movie behind her head. Then once you leave, we can time machine her out of there.”

“What happens if we mess it up?” Luke asked.

“How about, you tell me what you think would happen. Pop quiz, use that brain of yours.”

Luke furrowed his eyebrows as he thought for a moment. He was starting to feel a little better. Talking about Evelyn gave him some hope, which made it a little easier to swallow his situation. Oliver was friendly enough too, which helped to calm him.

What would happen if they faked her death incorrectly? It didn’t take long for Luke to decide it was a trick question; since the timeline was apparently unchangeable, he should know already if they succeeded or not. The outcome would be boolean; either they would succeed, or they would not do it at all.

He explained this to Oliver, who thought for a moment before looking doubtful.

“Mostly yes, but it’s a bit more complicated than that,” he said. “There’s lots of different stages in a fakeout, any of which could fail. That’s why we have to plan so meticulously; if everything is perfectly planned out, it can be perfectly executed, and we can save her.”

“If it’s perfectly planned, is it impossible to execute imperfectly?”

“Well, that’s actually a huge danger,” Oliver said. “Paradoxes are impossible, but if you do something wrong that causes the fakeout to become impossible, then the timeline could cause something exponentially more convoluted to occur to account for it.”

“It won’t just bend my will to make it work? Wouldn’t that be the simpler route? My future self told me the timeline always prefers the simplest way to resolve a paradox.”

“Eh, kind of. To me, it seems like the timeline always favors free will unless absolutely otherwise impossible. If you’re acting out something you watched yourself do, you can’t do anything else, but if you’re trying to intentionally cause something like a grandfather paradox, it’s entirely possible that you can actually kill him and, like, your grandmother was cheating on him the whole time, or he just survives the attack, or something. Honestly I’d argue that time tampering with free will is more complicated than doing its best to account for your actions naturally.”

“The timeline sure is picky, huh,” Luke said sarcastically, to which Oliver chuckled.

“Yeah, it sure is,” Oliver said. “Might as well just call it ‘God’ at this rate, with how we’ve anthropomorphized it. At least it seems consistent, but I haven’t tried a battle of wills against another traveler yet, so who knows.”

“What is that?” Luke was getting more and more curious.

“Well, sometimes, through sheer willpower, you can make something happen by intending to go back in time and do it. Like, if I really wanted to, I technically could make myself appear on this roadside and wave at us as we drove by, just by intending to go back in time and do it. Obviously I don’t do it, since we haven’t seen myself out there, but that’s something you can do with prep time. Intention is a powerful thing.”

“Oh, so wait,” Luke said, connecting the dots. “If two time travelers have opposite goals at an event they planned, and intend for opposite things, it’s up to the timeline to decide what should happen?”

“Yeah… I mean I don’t really know for sure, but my assumption is that the timeline either figures out how to allow for both things to happen, or prevents it entirely somehow. If it did just randomly choose someone to let win, that would be really lame, and I probably would just start calling it ‘God’ or ‘destiny’ or whatever.”

“Interesting,” Luke said. “Joseph actually implied something like this when I was in the future with him. He said the ‘paradox-cancel’ would favor him. I guess he meant that, since he exerted his will to have a future version of himself, and I hadn’t, time had just allowed him to win?”

“Sounds right to me,” Oliver said. “Interesting choice of terminology, maybe he was trying to confuse you. I guess he meant that, if you intended to do something paradoxical with the time machine in that situation, the timeline would cancel it in his favor, as evidenced by his duplicate standing there pointing the gun.”

Luke just shrugged. A few silent moments passed before he said, “Yeah, you know, I am hungry. Let’s stop somewhere.”

“Great,” Oliver said. “We just passed an ad for a breakfast place, actually, so I’ll find it at the next exit. Well, they’re probably closed now, but there could be more food nearby. You’re okay with stealing now?”

“Whatever,” Luke said, grinning a little bit. This new and confident friend of his was really helping him to feel more comfortable in this crazy situation he was forced into. It was a far cry from what it was like to interact with Joseph.

They pulled off the highway, past a few traffic lights, down some thin roads where the sun was now barely peeking between the bare branches before finally arriving at a small plaza. They were greeted by a few small restaurants and other businesses in front of a large parking lot.

Oliver found a parking spot far from the strip and stopped the car, removing the metal cylinder before stepping out together, either carrying their duffel bag and backpack.

“So what is that thing?” Luke asked as they started walking together toward a Chinese restaurant on the left side of the plaza.

“Oh, this thing just generates keys for legacy locks, like in cars and houses,” Oliver said, handing it to him. “Well, to people in 2100, they’re called legacy locks. Here they’re just locks.”

Luke grinned and looked down at the device, which was heavier than it looked. The cylinder was smooth and about as wide as his hand, and the top had a thin slit that looked like it was filled with dozens of wiry metal columns. He surmised that it would extend the metal outward in the shape of the desired key, and perhaps could bend in whatever direction to form the teeth. The motors inside this thing must be incredibly small, flexible, and resilient; it certainly could not have been built in the time that he was from. He supposed the technology might not even involve motors at all.

“Hold on,” Oliver said, fumbling through his bag again as they arrived at the front door. “I just remembered we can’t just steal food from a place where you pay first, duh. We need cash.” After a moment, he withdrew what looked like a red debit card, and started walking to the right, where Luke spotted an ATM standing outside a finance business.

“What’s that do?” Luke had forgotten all about being a thief. He was a mechanical engineer, and these devices were incredibly interesting to him.

“It’s for cracking old ATMs, new ones— well, new ones from the 2100s at least— have protections against AI-based hacks. You know what AI is, right?”

“Yeah?” Luke said quizzically. “Of course I do. I keep hearing it in the news, we’re supposed to be on the verge of making a good one.”

“Right right, you’re from 2025,” Oliver said. “I was actually born in 1968, so I’m still catching up on a lot of the computer stuff.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” Oliver said as they arrived at the machine. He inserted the card, and the screen whirred through the bank options before stopping at the dollar amount selection screen. He pushed the button indicating $100, and after a moment, five bills were dispensed.

“Yeah, so people in the future finally created competent AIs, and now they’re all over the most basic devices,” Oliver continued as he took the bills. “There’s one in that lock cracker for efficiently figuring out how to shape the key. This card has one for interacting with and exploiting older computers. Half the things in my bag here have onboard AIs.”

“Wow,” Luke said quietly, handing the lock cracker back to Oliver and following him to the front of the restaurant. “So do they not want to get free?”

Oliver stopped and looked at him. “What, the AI?” he said, clearly confused. “Why would it want that?”

“Isn’t AI, like, alive? Or conscious, or something?”

“I don’t know, I just stole the things,” Oliver said frankly, looking down at the little red card. “They’re just little computers, right?”

Luke just shrugged. “I guess so. Maybe if they’re simple enough it doesn’t matter?”

Oliver just gave him a funny look before finally turning and entering the store together.

After a few minutes, they emerged from the store, each carrying a paper bag full of savory food. They crossed the parking lot, entered the car, and before long, were back on the highway.

Some time passed in silence while they ate and drank. Luke really needed the energy, and after some beef lo mein, orange chicken, an egg roll, and a full bottle of water, he felt a lot better. Oliver hadn’t eaten much, he noticed, just having a single egg roll and leaving the rest of the food in the back seat.

“Man, I needed that,” he said, leaning back into his chair and stretching his arms. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” Oliver replied.

“So what’s the plan with this CIA director?” Luke asked after another few minutes went by. “You said he might know something about the Target?”

“Honestly, I doubt it,” Oliver said. “The people at the CIA are supposed to be super smart. I’d be surprised if we could learn about it just by kidnapping the easiest guy to kidnap.”

“You think he’d be easy to kidnap?” Luke asked.

“With a time machine, absolutely. We just have to figure out where he lives, then get in his house and time travel out with him. There’s obviously people protecting it and such, but since we never have to worry about a plan to get out, it’s really easy. Then just ask whatever we want and let him go, then time travel out of here again so there’s no repercussions.”

“Huh. Yeah, sounds easy enough.”

“Yep, which is also why I figured it’d be a good first mission for you,” Oliver said brightly. “I want you to do most of the planning, and to also get him out of his house.”

Luke gave him a worried look. “Are you sure?”

“Yep. We’ve got endless time for planning, remember? Come up with a plan. What do we do first?”

Luke furrowed his eyebrows and looked down for a moment. “I… guess we should find out where he lives first, right?”

Oliver glanced at him and raised his eyebrows.

“Do we not?” Luke said, confused.

“Yes, of course we do,” Oliver said, rolling his eyes. “I just want you to be confident about it. Make up a plan and I’ll tell you what might not work, okay?”

Luke shrugged. “Fine. How about this, we find out where he lives, then camp out somewhere nearby to learn when he gets home on a specific day. Then, we appear next to him as soon as he gets out of his car, grab him, and time travel away. Then, I guess, we just drop him back at the same spot when we’re done with him.”

Oliver nodded his head. “Sounds like a solid plan. Don’t even need to break into his house like I was saying. We’re gonna need specifics, though. Where should we take him to interrogate him? And how will we find out where he lives?”

“We could take him to the desert a long time ago,” Luke said. “The Sonoran Desert seemed pretty clear and safe in 1932, so we can pick a random date and place there and then. And I can just look him up on my phone.”

Oliver nodded again. They sat in silence for a few moments as Luke considered the details of the plan.

“So, uh, what did we need the car for?” Luke asked, suddenly struck by the thought.

Oliver laughed. “Oh, we didn’t need it at all, I just thought you needed the time to digest everything. And the food.”

Luke looked at him incredulously. “We stole someone’s car for no reason?”

“Not stolen,” Oliver said with a bigger grin. “This car has been sitting in the mall’s parking lot for about a month. Its owner must’ve died or something.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, man. I hid a camera to record the lot about a month prior, and shortly before coming and getting you I looked through the video to see if any cars hadn’t moved. This one’s been here since before the video started, so I figured its owner didn’t need it.”

Luke was baffled. “That’s a whole lot of effort, why?”

“I like long drives,” Oliver said with a shrug. “I haven’t needed to go on one in a while with this time travel business.”

“Sure, I guess,” Luke said, then was struck by another realization. “Wait, why did we come back to this time period at all? We’re just going to go to the future and use the Internet to look him up.”

Oliver just smiled. “If you’re ready, we can pull over and do just that.”

“Okay,” Luke said with a shrug, perplexed at his new friend.

The car pulled to the side of the road, decelerating and rumbling against the rougher edge of the pavement. Luke opened his door and stepped out onto the dry grass, picking up his backpack and feeling the wind blast him as various other vehicles flew by. It was dark now, the sides of the highway illuminated only by passing headlights.

“Well,” Oliver shouted as he walked around the car, “you should do the honors. When exactly do you want to go to?”

“I probably shouldn’t go too far into the future,” Luke said after a moment of thought. “I just need an Internet connection for my phone.”

Oliver gestured toward Luke’s backpack. “Lead the way, my friend.”

Luke removed the time machine, holding it in his hand, feeling nervous as he watched it glint with the passing vehicles. He withdrew his phone, finding the coordinates for his house written in his notes, and after a few moments of fiddling, Luke had the location and time entered.

“Um, first we’re going in the clearing behind my house a few days early,” Luke said. “When I have reception, I’ll look up where he lives.”

“Sounds good to me,” Oliver said, reaching out and grabbing Luke’s shoulder.

After a brief moment of hesitation, he pressed the button, and the time machine ticked downward.

JUNE 11TH, 2025 – 3:00 A.M.

The time travelers appeared in the clearing in the forest behind Luke’s house. Oliver was afraid for a moment that they had appeared here around when he would be placing the cameras; it would be really bad if Luke spotted him putting them down, because then he might get curious who Oliver would’ve seen shoot Evelyn. He might even suspect him of lying about how possible he thought saving Evelyn was. In truth, Luke appearing and tackling the unknown time traveler that shot her made the whole idea of faking her death dramatically more complicated, but of course he couldn’t tell him that. The poor man needed hope.

He peeked over Luke’s shoulder as he fiddled with his phone and time machine, and noticed that the time said 3:00 A.M., which was good. If it was the day before the house exploded, it was at least an hour before he appeared, and they wouldn’t be here very long. Luke did say a few days early, plural, so they should probably be fine either way.

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“Alright, it says he died of a brain tumor on May 6th, 1987, shortly after he retired that January,” Luke whispered, his voice barely heard among the soft rustling of the leaves. “He has a house in Roslyn, New York. I bet he retired because he’s not in great health, and so it’d be easy to catch him outside his home around February or so. Not too close to his death, though, so he isn’t bedridden. What do you think?”

“Yeah, sure,” Oliver whispered back. “Do you have the coordinates?”

After a moment of silence broken only by soft taps on his phone screen, Luke said, “Yeah, I just got them. Ready?”

Oliver put his hand on Luke’s shoulder in response, and after a moment, they were gone.

FEBRUARY 5TH, 1987 – 4:00 P.M.

Luke and Oliver appeared surrounded by trees and bushes, the sound of the loud crack mostly absorbed by the thick brush. The sun poked through the sparse branches and pine needles, just over a large white house in the distance, separated from them by a long field. Two abnormally wide pine trees stood in front of the house, in between which was a black front door and a pavement path leading around the side of the house and past where they stood, presumably out toward a main road.

“Get down,” Oliver whispered suddenly, pushing down on Luke’s shoulder. They quickly knelt down behind a big bush separating them from the house.

A moment passed and nothing happened, though Luke’s heart was hammering.

“What is it?” he said as quietly as he could, looking directly at Oliver.

“Well, the pops these machines make are loud,” Oliver whispered back. “If anyone heard it and looked this way, we wouldn’t want to be standing here like idiots.”

“Fair enough,” Luke said, peering between the leaves at the house. No one seemed to come or go, and there were no obvious guards visible, but he figured there’d be some level of security for a former CIA director that might be difficult to spot.

Oliver shifted back and sat, making himself comfortable in the dirt. “Well, this may take a while,” he said. “You should probably punch in your time and destination, just so we don’t have to think about it again.”

“What, in the middle of this lawn?”

“Um, in the desert.”

“Why?”

“Oh, you might not know,” Oliver said. “The time machine’s target time always flips to wherever you just came from. Lets you make a quick getaway usually, or in this case, come from the desert, grab the guy, and reappear in the desert without needing to fiddle with your machine in the guy’s front lawn for a minute and end up shot.”

“Wouldn’t I appear on top of myself right when I left?” Luke asked curiously. “I don’t want to fall six feet through the air, and neither does this sick old man.”

“Glad you’re thinking more, Luke,” Oliver said with a grin. “No, you wouldn’t, because the time machine has only minutely granularity, so it rounds up to the next minute. So whether you disappear at the 1st second or the 59th second of the current minute, you’ll always reappear the next minute.”

“Gotcha,” Luke said, nodding to himself. He withdrew his time machine, setting it down in the dirt and twisting at the dials. The screen zoomed way out, showing the entire world before Luke zoomed back into the southeastern region of the United States where the desert would be and closed in on a flat-looking square of orange. He picked a time in 1932, just like he had been taken to before, and finally decided he was ready.

“So I’m assuming,” Luke said, “that we’re going to see the guy outside this house, and then because I’m intending to do this, I’ll see myself appear, run up to him, and disappear with him?”

“Most likely,” Oliver said. “This is a simple enough situation so I’d be surprised if anything else happened.”

“Could something else happen?”

“You never know what the timeline might decide should be a paradox avoided, but in my limited experience, whatever you’re expecting is usually good enough.”

Luke nodded again, starting to feel slightly more comfortable with the new life that was pushed onto him. The rules made sense, and Oliver was helpful as ever. Evelyn could be saved, and Sebastian needed to be found, so he would learn and do everything necessary to achieve that goal. And for now, that meant cooperating with his new friend to build the skills he needed to be a proper time traveler.

Some time passed as they sat in the dirt, the cold wind occasionally blowing through and rustling the pine needles and branches. If there were guards, they weren’t anywhere to be seen, and they clearly had not spotted Luke or Oliver.

Luke closed his eyes, appreciating the moment of stillness and trying to allow more of the mountain of stress weighing down on his mind to fade away. He slipped his phone from his pocket, flipping over to the stopwatch and checking how much time had really gone by. Almost four hours.

He could only shake his head to himself, staring in disbelief at the timer as it ticked up one second at a time. It felt like so much longer than that, but only four hours ago he was cooking breakfast, enjoying a relaxing morning to himself. He wondered what happened at the house after he had been removed from it.

The front door opened, interrupting Luke’s thoughts. An old man with tall, wide glasses emerged, wearing a leisurely white shirt and tan pants, slowly walking out and gently closing the door behind him. It was definitely William Casey, Luke recognized him from the images he had found online. He stared hard, watching as the old man slowly walked down a path toward the right side of his house, feeling the intent within him, knowing surely what he should do.

Luke watched himself appear next to the old man with a crack that echoed off the trees, wearing his current black attire and bringing a mound of sand around his feet. He watched as the future Luke stood for a few seconds before hurriedly pressing at his time machine and grabbing the old man’s shoulder. The man cried out, his words indistinguishable from this distance, and after another three seconds, he, Luke, and half of the mound of sand vanished with another crack.

“What’s the time?” Oliver whispered quickly, gesturing towards Luke’s hand, still holding his phone.

“4:47 P.M.,” Luke said, his heart pounding.

“Alright, don’t forget it,” Oliver said. “It’s time to go.”

Luke nodded and picked up his time machine, resting his thumb on the red button and slipping his phone into his pocket. Oliver reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.

Another crack resounded from the front of the house, and they both turned to look. Luke had reappeared with the old man, who seemed to be soaked with sweat, a few feet over from where they had left. Another large pile of sand had come on the journey.

They watched together as the future Luke took a few steps back, quickly pushed his red button, and disappeared once more, the crack echoing over loud swears from the former director.

Luke raised his eyebrows and looked at Oliver, who looked pleasantly surprised. “Looks like everything goes well,” he said. “Now it’s really time to go.”

Luke pressed the red button, and just before they vanished, they heard the front door to the house open again, an angry shout echoing from inside.

MARCH 1ST, 1932 – 4:00 P.M.

Luke and Oliver appeared with a collection of brown pine needles in the Sonoran desert, the sun hanging low in the sky. Short bushes and tall cacti spread in every direction, distant hills partially obscuring the horizon and casting long shadows. The air was hot, but not nearly so aggressively as it was the last time Luke had been here.

“What was that?” Luke said, slightly worried about the commotion he had heard.

“No idea,” Oliver replied. “Doesn’t matter, honestly. You weren’t there anymore, so it’s not something we have to deal with.”

Luke shrugged, looking around for a moment to gain his bearings and let his heart stop beating so hard.

“So,” Oliver said after another moment, “this is a weak old guy, we don’t have to go crazy interrogating him. I don’t expect him to know anything, so we don’t have to press him too hard. He’s got serious health conditions so we shouldn’t keep him here too long either.”

“Okay, understood,” Luke said. “He didn’t seem too happy when I returned with him anyway.”

Oliver nodded. “You ready?”

The moment was here, and Luke’s heart was already pounding again. It was simple, and he knew exactly what would happen, and nothing could possibly go wrong. He knew the rules, he planned everything out, and he knew what he had seen.

None of this helped to calm him, though. He’d have to power through it and get it done.

“Sure, yeah,” he said shakily. Oliver raised his eyebrows but didn’t press.

Luke knelt down, pulling the time machine from his backpack and inputting the time and coordinates as it rested in the sand. The values had already helpfully reverted to show where he had come from, so it took only a minor adjustment to point at the front path where the old man had walked. When he adjusted the target time to the correct minute, he could actually see the representation of Casey on the path, an orange head and shoulders imposed over the flat orange pavement beneath him.

“Just press the red button as soon as you’ve grabbed him, just like you saw,” Oliver said reassuringly.

“Got it,” Luke said, and with a deep breath, activated the machine.

FEBRUARY 5TH, 1987 – 4:47 P.M.

Luke appeared on the front lawn, disoriented as ever by the sudden change in environment. He stood next to the house, near the two massive pine trees, a pile of sand around his feet, and right in front of him stood the old man, who slowly turned to look at him through the large lenses of his glasses.

They locked eyes for a moment, the former CIA director looking at him with a strange sort of contempt that caught Luke off-guard for a moment. A breath passed before he remembered the mission; he pushed the red button on his time machine, then reached forward and grabbed the old man’s shoulder with his other hand.

“Get off me!” Casey yelled, his voice deep and somewhat gruff. He reached up and grabbed at Luke’s arm, but the effort was wasted as the two vanished finally together.

MARCH 1ST, 1932 – 4:08 P.M.

Luke appeared exactly where he had left, the old man now with him, his white shirt still gripped tightly in his fist. He let him go and the man stumbled backward a few steps, putting some space between him and Oliver and blinking hard as he looked around wildly.

“Christ, time travelers?” he shouted angrily, a surprising level of composure in his voice as he seemed to notice the metal box in Luke’s hand. “How many of you are there?”

Luke looked at Oliver, who simply looked confused.

“Jesus, don’t you know I’m dying?” the man yelled again. “I’ve got too much on my plate for this.”

Luke and Oliver watched in silence as he brushed off his shirt and pants and ran a hand over his bald scalp. Casey looked back and forth between the two of them, crossing his arms and glaring furiously as sweat beaded on his forehead.

“Well?” he asked loudly. “What do you want from me?”

“Uh,” Oliver said, blinking hard and shaking his head briefly. “We wanted to ask what you know about a device related to time travel. Not a time machine, but something else. We know the CIA is hiding one.”

“You mean the Target?” he said patronizingly, to which Oliver seemed even more baffled. “That’s what you clowns call it, right? I have no idea what it is. You’re looking for Andrew Crawford, director of temporal affairs. His only job is to keep it safe from the likes of you.”

Oliver seemed completely taken aback. “Where can we find him? Is he at Langley?”

“What, don’t you know anything?” Casey spat. “The other guy was way better informed than you. Crawford was hired to protect the Target without any prior knowledge, and never went outside again. He organized the transfer of the Target to a salt mine in Ohio, and he’s still there now. That’s the last I know of it, and all I’m supposed to know so you can’t torture anything out of me.”

Oliver just looked stunned. “A salt mine in Ohio? Where?”

Luke was surprised to realize Oliver didn’t know this; he remembered his first future self telling him about it in this same desert.

“It’s along the border of Washington and Monroe county. It was purchased early in ’71 and transferred there from Langley later that year. I hear it was a lot of trouble to get it there, so maybe that’s your fault. Now take me home.”

“Right, okay,” Oliver said, clearly flustered, after a moment of thought. “Go ahead, Luke.”

Luke was slightly lost, but he did as he was told. He took a few steps forward, pushed the red button, and grabbed the former director’s shoulder, whose shirt was soaked through with sweat.

FEBRUARY 5TH, 1987 – 4:48 P.M.

Luke and William Casey appeared again in the old man’s front lawn, another large pile of sand around their feet.

“God, you left all this sand in my lawn too,” he shouted as Luke stepped back and pressed the red button on his time machine. “If another time traveler bothers me before I die—”

MARCH 1ST, 1932 – 4:14 P.M.

Luke was back in the desert. Oliver stood before him, still looking rather dumbstruck.

“So the Target was transferred to a salt mine,” Oliver said incredulously.

“Yeah, my future self actually told me about that,” Luke remarked.

“You didn’t think to mention that when you were recounting what happened there before?”

“I just assumed you knew,” Luke said, a little defensive. “How am I supposed to know what you don’t know?”

“I mean, it’s no big deal,” Oliver said gently. “I’m just a little surprised. I thought it was at the CIA headquarters this whole time. If they actually truck it across the country, and multiple time travelers know about it like he said, then…”

“Then what?”

“Then we need to do a lot more research, because something very important probably happens along that trip,” Oliver said, putting his hand on his forehead and looking out at the horizon. “This isn’t something we can do right now, we need to spend a lot of time learning about this path to the salt mine. I’m assuming once the Target’s buried underground, it’s going to be impossible to get to.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, security would obviously be really high, and the CIA is likely aware of the various attack vectors someone with future technology could employ. This Crawford guy apparently dedicated his life to protecting the stupid thing. I’m sure you can’t just invisibly walk down the mine like in an average security situation.”

Luke took the information in. “So, what do we do for now? That’s all you wanted to know, right?”

“Yeah, that’s some valuable info,” Oliver said. “Now we don’t do anything. I think we need to take a break.”

Luke furrowed his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“You gotta take breaks from time to time, right?” Oliver said in a funny way. “Go back to Evelyn, have some down time. It’s good to digest everything you’ve done and rest from time to time.”

Luke’s heart again surged at the mention of her name. It was weird to consider her dead and alive at the same time.

“Go,” Oliver said. “I’ll come visit you at the hotel the next morning. Spend the day and night and wind down, while I plan out the next mission.”

“Okay,” Luke said, watching as Oliver removed his own time machine and notepad from his duffel bag. Luke did similarly, removing his phone and finding the coordinates to the hotel in his notes program. He had disappeared at 6:19 A.M., so he decided to return a few minutes before he left, so that he could wait outside the door for his past self to leave and prevent Evelyn from waiting any time at all.

“Oliver,” Luke said after he finished inputting his destination. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For everything, I guess. For being friendly and helping me along. I really appreciate it.”

“Oh, it’s no problem, really,” Oliver said with a slight chuckle. “It’s the least I can do after what you’ve done for me. You’ll see soon enough.”

Luke smiled, pressed the red button, and was gone.

JUNE 14TH, 2025 – 6:19 A.M.

“I love you too,” Evelyn said, trying to hide her sadness, watching with a terrible fear in her stomach as her husband disappeared with the strange man.

She was alone again. The fear of the unknown pressed down on her, making her shiver in an otherwise warm room. It shouldn’t be long, right? Time travel meant he would want to come back again as soon as possible. But anyone could come through that door, perhaps even her killer, for all she knew. Maybe she was about to die after all, and some enemy time traveler knew this was the perfect time to take her, while Luke was away.

A knock at the door, and she whipped her head around to look. Not ten seconds had passed since Luke had disappeared, but her fears had filled her imagination. The last time this had happened, her husband had come through the door completely distraught, tears streaking through smeared ash all over his face. He had collapsed on the bed, sobbing while she tried to comfort him before he had gained the composure to explain to her what had actually happened, and then she was heartbroken as well.

Her heart raced as she stared for a few seconds before the door finally opened, and to her great relief, it was Luke after all. She couldn’t help herself; she walked over to him quickly as he closed the door and hugged him tightly.

“Hey, is everything okay?” he said gently, putting his arms around her as well. “It was only a few seconds for you, right? I waited to hear us leave before knocking.”

“Yeah, it was,” she said quietly. “I’m okay, it’s just a little scary, being left alone. How did it go, where’s Oliver?”

“It went well,” Luke said. “Hold on a sec, I’ll tell you all about it.”

Evelyn took a few steps back and nodded as Luke kicked his shoes off. He walked over to the bed and set the backpack down beside it, a metal clink resounding from it as it touched the ground. He emptied his pockets, setting his phone and wallet on the nightstand beside her phone before laying back on the bed.

“Come here,” he said, patting a spot on the bed next to him. It was only now that Evelyn noticed how exhausted he looked, as though he had done an extended work shift.

She closed the thick curtains in front of the windows before laying beside him and looking into his multicolored eyes, full of love despite being so tired. “How long has it been for you?”

“About four hours since I left,” he said with a yawn. “Not that long, but I’m already exhausted.”

“I see that,” she said, yawning with him. She was wide awake, in fact, as it hadn’t been very long for her since being at the house, but she didn’t want to make him feel bad. “Why don’t you tell me everything that happened, and then we can have a nap?”

Luke nodded and looked toward the ceiling, recounting the story in detail. Evelyn was amused by Oliver’s personality; she liked what she heard, and knew that Luke would become good friends with someone like him. She was reassured about his trustworthiness by the description of what he called their “friendship double loop” as well. These time travel concepts were admittedly intriguing, though they just as easily could be traumatizing.

She was also reassured by Oliver’s confidence that her life could be saved. Luke described how plainly he had said her death should be simple to fake, and it relieved her fear significantly. Oliver was someone with experience, who could be trusted, and she trusted how her husband spoke about him.

Luke closed his eyes towards the end of his retelling, his voice getting sleepier as he went on, before finally describing how he arrived at the hotel again.

They spoke together for a little while longer, taking comfort in each other’s presence. This was the first extended time they had spent together since everything began without being completely mentally broken, so they enjoyed it while they could, even as Luke nearly fell asleep.

But the conversation grew slower, and for a few seconds, neither spoke. Evelyn held his hand, listening as his breathing slowed further.

“Do you remember Maine?” she said quietly.

“Hmm?” Luke mumbled in response.

“When we went to Acadia, a few years back,” she continued. “I think that’s my favorite trip we’ve done. We should go back.”

Luke smiled and gave a tiny nod, shifting slightly toward her.

“I know the mountains aren’t as big as other places we’ve been,” she mused. “Maybe the trees aren’t as colorful. But it’s definitely the most peaceful. I think that would be really nice right now.”

“Let’s move there,” Luke whispered. “The time machine, let’s get a hotel there. In autumn.”

“I would love that,” she whispered back. “For now, though, you need to sleep. Good night, my love.”

“Mmm, good night.”

She kissed him on the cheek, and he smiled again.

Evelyn stared at the ceiling for about a half hour, trying to tame the bubbling emotions while her husband slept peacefully. Luke was a very deep sleeper, so this should be long enough.

She rolled out of bed, grabbed her phone from the nightstand, took one of the extra keycards, and slipped her shoes on. Luke hadn’t stirred at all, so she left the room, closing the door quietly.

Evelyn looked through her phone’s map as she navigated to the elevator, first finding a clothing store. Luke hadn’t thought to grab her a coat when he got the laundry, so her first plan was to not be freezing cold as she walked around outside. Her next plan, of course, was breakfast, as she never got to enjoy the bacon-spinach-egg-bagel she had woken up to the smell of, and now that she had calmed down, she was starving.

It was, unsurprisingly, fairly cold outside as she exited the hotel. Luckily the nearest clothing store was across the street, so she quickly made her way across, holding her arms around herself tightly and hurrying through the parking lot before arriving in the store.

She selected a nice winter coat for herself, one that was long enough to reach her knees, and more expensive than she normally would buy since money was no longer an object. It was satisfying to indulge after so much stress, too.

Oliver had no qualms stealing from large companies, but she could not bring herself to simply walk out with the coat on. She didn’t have her wallet, but she realized that at some point she had loaded her credit card information onto her phone, and so was able to complete the purchase for the cashier successfully.

The Alaskan air met her again as she left the building but no longer bit as it did before, stopped efficiently by her new thick coat. Bundled and warm, she started walking to her next destination, a fast food restaurant. It was a little further away, past the hotel again and a few streets back, but she no longer needed to hurry.

The sun was still low, as she knew it should be due to her geographical position. Beneath it were some small mountains covered in pine trees. The sky was clear and cloudless, the wind weak. It was really pleasant now that she had a coat; she only wished the air was a little more clear, as she could faintly smell the burnt gasoline from the cars going by on the highway.

After a few more minutes of walking, she entered the restaurant, the glass door jingling as it shut behind her. A short line of people was in front of the register, and she started to move toward them.

“Evelyn!”

She spun around wildly to find none other than Oliver sitting in the corner in front of a small table, duffel bag at his feet. He made a funny face and turned to peek at the people in line, making sure he hadn’t spoken too loudly before turning back to her and gesturing at the chair across from him, then performing the code gesture.

Evelyn was dumbstruck, staring at him in shock for a few moments as her mind tried to connect the dots. Luke must have told him she would be here at some point. She slowly walked over to him and sat down in front of him, loosely acting out the code gesture herself.

“Hey, don’t look so worried,” he said gently, studying her face. “Nothing’s wrong. I just wanted to get to know you, and I knew you’d be here now, so I figured, why not?”

She had nothing to say. She had said earlier to herself she would trust him, but seeing him again, he was still a total stranger, and a time traveler at that, so she was afraid.

Oliver watched her for another moment before glancing at the menu suspended over the kitchen. “Why don’t you get yourself some food, first?” he suggested. “Then we can talk.”

Evelyn just shrugged and stood up slowly. Oliver shifted and looked outside, propping his chin up on his hand. She turned away and got in line, struggling to focus on the menu as the people in front of her placed their orders. Her appetite was gone once again, but she would do as he said, if only to know why he was really here.

Of course, he could actually just want to get to know her, and probably did, but she could not shake the paranoia.

A few tense minutes went by and she returned to the table with a soggy bacon-egg-and-cheese muffin, a hashbrown, and a tall cup of water.

“Hi,” she said awkwardly as she sat in front of Oliver. The time traveler looked back at her, his expression very friendly despite her fears.

“So, how are you feeling?” he said kindly, keeping his voice low so the other diners wouldn’t hear. “What do you make of all of this so far?”

“Um,” she said, trying to relax and remind herself this was a friend. “Terrible, I guess. I’ve been afraid ever since I woke up today. Luke saw our… son for the first time in a few years, but he’s still further away than ever. And who knows what’s happening at our house.” She trailed off, taking a tiny bit of the hashbrown and putting it in her mouth.

“Fair enough,” Oliver said. “That’s about how I felt at first, too. As kind and gentle as Luke was, I was terrified the whole time and wished for nothing but to go back to normal. Now I’m happy with the way things are, but I guess my life was a lot different than the nice one you guys have.”

Evelyn just shrugged, unsure what to say.

“Luke is like that too,” he continued. “Very quiet when he’s uncomfortable, just letting me yammer on. I’m sorry for making you uncomfortable when you just wanted breakfast.”

“You’re fine,” she said unconvincingly as her appetite slowly returned. She told herself there was no harm in friendly conversation, and she didn’t want to come across as rude. Oliver had made time to try to help her feel better, after all. She could open up a little. “He was like that when I first started coming on to him when we were teenagers, actually. Always so talkative and friendly, but when he started to realize I had feelings for him, he got very quiet around me.”

“Really?” Oliver said, his face lighting up with a big smile. “Aww, that’s really cute. How’d you guys meet?”

“We grew up in the same orphanage,” she said frankly. “The other kids there were weird, we were the only normal ones.” It did feel good to talk about her and Luke, and she finally took a bite of her sandwich.

“Oh,” Oliver said. “That’s… a funny coincidence. We’re all orphans then, huh?”

She furrowed her eyebrows. “You are too?”

“Sure am,” he said. “My orphanage wasn’t nearly so nice. I, uh…” he trailed off for a moment, his expression turning very restrained. “I don’t want to talk about it, I guess.”

“It’s okay, I get it,” she said gently. “Let’s change the subject. When were you born?”

“Wow,” he said, the hidden pain easily concealed. “That’s a sharp question to ask a time traveler. I wish Luke picked it up so easily.”

Evelyn laughed. “Luke is smart, but he can be a slow learner sometimes.”

Oliver smiled back. “I was born in ’68. Twenty-five years old, relatively speaking.”

Evelyn nodded as she took another bite of her sandwich. “How did you end up with a time machine?”

“That, I don’t think I’m allowed to answer yet,” he said. “Luke needs to find out on his own, and I know you guys have a good relationship, so I shouldn’t risk letting you tell him about me first.”

“Fair enough,” Evelyn replied, taking a sip of her water.

“Do you know what happened to your parents?”

“Nope,” she said in between bites. “They dropped me off in a basket like some movie. Never found them, though I haven’t tried very hard.”

“Dang,” the time traveler said. “I never met my father. My mother died alone in childbirth. I haven’t tried to find him either, never figured he was worth finding.”

“Yeah, same here.”

They both paused for a moment as Evelyn finished her sandwich, the air hanging heavy between them.

“I guess we could find them with the time machines,” Evelyn finally said, picking up her hashbrown and taking a bite. “Would you want to do that?”

Oliver shrugged, then crossed his arms. “I don’t know. Maybe. I’ve thought about it, but there’s more important stuff to keep track of. Would you?”

“Maybe,” she said. “It was a really nice basket, they showed me a picture.”

Oliver smirked but didn’t reply, looking longingly out the window. Evelyn took another few bites of her hashbrown and washed the salt down with more water.

“I hate these fast food breakfasts,” she said after clearing her throat, trying to change the subject again. “I need Luke to make me that breakfast sandwich of his soon, because I cannot live off fast food in this hotel.”

“Agreed,” Oliver said. “I actually have a house where I cook myself food and relax, usually. I can’t do the hotel life like you guys have been doing.”

“‘Have been doing?’” she repeated. “Please don’t tell me we do this for too long.”

“I mean, every time I’ve visited so far has been at this hotel, but that’s not very many times, admittedly. Good catch on the grammar, again, that’s an important skill if you’re going to listen in on other time travelers.”

“What, will I be doing a lot of that?”

“Probably,” Oliver replied. “Luke’s got a smart wife, he’ll benefit a lot from keeping you in the loop through all this. I’m sure you could stay out if you’d prefer, though.”

Evelyn thought for a moment, looking down at the last bit of her hashbrown.

“That’s between you and him, though,” he said. “He might prefer you to stay at the hotel so he knows you’re safe. Or he might prefer you near him so he can keep an eye on you. Honestly it could go both ways, and it’s whatever you’re both most comfortable with. Don’t underestimate your own instincts, they go a long way on their own.”

“Thanks,” she said simply. That would definitely be something to discuss when the time came, and something for her to think about until then.

“Evelyn,” Oliver said, his voice suddenly very serious. He looked her straight in the eyes. “Have you ever met someone named Samuel, last name starts with ‘A’?”

Evelyn felt very worried, but she tried her best to remember if she had. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“Okay,” Oliver said. “I ask because that is the name of the guy that, uh, kills you. Or, the guy who your killer is disguised as. Or maybe even you survive, and he helps fake your death after all.”

She suddenly felt very hot, and her heart was racing again. Her stomach felt heavy, and the dense food wasn’t helping.

“Sorry to drop that on you,” he said sheepishly. “I just needed to be honest with you, since that’s what I’m really here to ask. That’s something you can’t tell Luke yet, he’ll find out during our next mission tomorrow. But yeah, I just learned that recently, and based on other things I’ve learned I needed to ask.”

Evelyn looked down, unsure what to say but feeling terribly nervous.

“I’m sorry, Evelyn,” Oliver said, putting his hands up defensively. “I’m really sorry to have stoked the coals too soon, I should’ve just let you enjoy your breakfast.”

“It’s okay,” she said quietly. “I can’t tell Luke, you said?”

“Definitely not,” Oliver said, looking guilty. “This is just a name, not an entire story, so it’s easier to not slip.”

Evelyn just shook her head.

“Hey,” he said gently. “I do think it’s likely we can fake it, though.”

“Do you?” she said sternly, looking at him directly.

Oliver made eye contact and didn’t look away. “I do, truly. I know how everything happens at the house. I don’t think it would even be particularly hard.”

“What would we have to do?”

“I… can’t really say,” Oliver said. “There’s a few things you and Luke are both required to do first. My next trip from here is actually to visit future-you and Luke specifically so we can plan it out, but I wanted to get to know you now, first.”

“Why couldn’t you just talk to me on your next trip then, why say all this now?” Evelyn asked, feeling rather confused.

“Well this was much more casual, right? I don’t know, experienced time travelers are so on-guard, I didn’t think future-you would be so receptive.”

“Wow, so you took advantage of me being naive to get me to open up to you?” she said sharply.

Oliver raised his eyebrows and sat back. “No,” he said incredulously. “I didn’t think of it like that at all, honest.”

Evelyn sighed. “It’s fine, whatever. I get it, I guess.”

“I’m sorry to come off that way,” he said again. “Man, this was a disaster. I was really enjoying our conversation and just wanted to get that out of the way.”

She just shrugged again. She had been enjoying it too. At least she knew she survived for a while, since Oliver said he was going to see her in her own future. She supposed there were things the timeline required him to say and do at certain points, and that she shouldn’t hold it against him, especially if it would result in saving her life.

“So, uh,” the time traveler said awkwardly, clearing his throat. “What do you and Luke do for work?”

The conversation managed to pick up again, and they talked for a while about various casual parts of their prior lives. Oliver was an electrician in his prior life and had no close friends or family besides Luke. He had been much more reserved and less talkative before becoming a time traveler as well, much to Evelyn’s amusement.

The sun lazily rose a little further, glinting off the windows and turning the sky a little more blue as the time passed. Oliver did not bring up the topic of her death again, and she was relieved to enjoy a complete casual conversation with him.

They reached a natural break and Evelyn glanced at her phone, which said the time was half past nine.

“I should probably get back to the hotel,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “I don’t know how long Luke will want to sleep for, but I wouldn’t want him to be scared if he wakes while I’m gone.”

“Understandable,” Oliver said with a nod, also leaning back. “It’s been a real pleasure talking to you, Evelyn. I’ll see you soon.”

“Yeah, you will,” she replied as she stood, pulling the sleeves of her coat. “It’ll be a while for me.”

“Well, you’ll see me tomorrow morning,” he said. “But that’s a younger version of me. So of course you can’t tell him about this conversation.”

“Of course, I mean I won’t see this you for a while.” She gestured at him broadly.

“Right, right.” Oliver smiled. “Goodbye, Evelyn.”

“Bye, Oliver.”