Ateela started her day like she had started many others. She woke and exited her sleep pod, picked out an outfit from her clothing pod, and then headed to the food pod (food storage) to grab a food pod (actual food, but in pod form). Satiated by the perfectly spherical sustenance, Ateela stepped out into her dorm room ready to face the day. She said goodbye to all of her roommates, and they studiously ignored her and tried to hide their embarrassment at her “retro” jumpsuit.

The pod and jumpsuit aesthetic had fallen out of favor around 2082, when hologram technology had started making living spaces and clothing infinitely customizable. Ateela liked the feeling of actual fabric, and pods were just delightfully round. People had tried to tell her she could make holographic pods, but she preferred the real deal.

Ignoring the judgment of her comrades, Ateela headed out. The Einstein-Odinson campus buzzed with the resonant pulsing of hover engines as students raced from building to building. The island expansion back in 2101 had made it much harder for the average student to get from class to class on foot. Ateela still made the sprint every time, though. She liked to do things old school. She took a little extra time to enjoy the feeling of grass and dirt beneath her feet as she made her way to the dining hall and sat down at a particular table.

“Good morning, Captain Drake,” she said, her voice ringing with a barely restrained song of joy.

“I am not a captain,” Daveed Drake scolded. “But good morning.”

Daveed scrolled through a tablet to take in some assignment information. This loop business had cost him a great deal of time he could’ve spent doing schoolwork. He was already behind from last year, and now that it was just him and Ateela, he was gearing up to fall even further behind.

“What do you think we’re in for today, Daveed? Spacial distortion? Will reality collapse around us and our atoms rearrange into sugar molecules? Maybe the Marine Biology department will strike again?”

In spite of being only a few weeks in, Ateela had taken to the looper lifestyle with a frankly worrying degree of enthusiasm. She’d absorbed all of the few stories Daveed had been willing to share and then gone poring through records to try and identify more. She now knew much more about looping than Daveed ever had or ever would, yet she still considered him the ‘captain’ of their two-person team, for some reason.

“If I could guess, I wouldn’t be here,” Daveed said.

“Well yeah, I guess. It can still be fun, though.”

Daveed looked up from his data-pad to glance at her. She was staring at him again, in that strange way that made her look like a squirrel, with an oddly pointed, wide-eyed glare framed by fuzzy curls. Daveed rolled his eyes.

“I don’t know, maybe there’ll be robot ninja’s,” Daveed said.

“You said there were robot ninja’s last year, that’s not a real guess,” Ateela complained.

“And you blamed the Marine Biology department, that’s a repeat too.”

“I was vaguer than you!”

The attempted argument was interrupted by a glint of metal sailing through the air and clattering into their table with a loud thud. It had barely rolled to a halt when Ateela jumped on the table, fists raised.

“Get down, Daveed, the robot ninja’s are throwing shurikens!”

“Ateela, good lord, get down from there,” Daveed said, tugging on the leg of her jumpsuit. “It’s not a robot ninja.”

“How do you know?” Ateela asked, keeping her suspicious eyes on the ceiling, in any shadows where a robot ninja might hide.

“Because they use laser shurikens, Ateela, not metal,” Daveed said. Ateela sat down while Daveed retrieved the object. “Besides, this isn’t even a shuriken. It’s...what is this?”

“Daveed, that’s a belt buckle,” Ateela said. Bereft of a belt to buckle, it did look a bit odd, but it was not unrecognizable. Though the image of a weeping eagle clutching an American flag engraved into the metal made it a bit difficult to parse, Ateela did admit.

“What is a ‘belt buckle’?”

“Gosh, those holoclothes are really doing a number on you guys. You know how you have a holostrand that wraps around your waist and then projects the image and feeling of actual clothes?”

“Yes.”

“A belt is kind of like that, except it’s just the strip of material. No projection. You have to tighten it manually. It’s to help hold up loose regular clothing.”

“Wait, it comes loose?” Daveed said, staring aghast at Ateela’s tangible jumpsuit. “That could fall off of you?”

“No. Not that you’d care if it did,” Ateela mumbled. “Let me see that belt buckle. I’ve got some retro-Americana blue jeans that it’d go great with.”

Daveed tried to hand over the belt buckle. For a moment, both of them touched it at once, and the world around them went white. Once everything came into focus again, they were surrounded by oddly shaped tables, a shocking absence of chrome and sleek white surfaces, and people wearing clothing that looked distressingly similar to some of Ateela’s outfits.

It took a moment for either of them to wrap their heads around what had happened. Daveed’s jaw dropped in abject horror while Ateela cracked a smile so wide she nearly broke her face in two. She restrained a squeal of delight and moved as close to Daveed as was physically possible to whisper in his ear.

“Daveed, we’re in the past!” The high-pitched squeak in her voice made it clearly she was absolutely head over heels with delight.

“This must be delightful for you,” Daveed said, struggling not to bite his tongue. “But we should get out of sight and get prepared.”

Enough teleportation and invisibility mishaps happened on campus that people didn’t question the appearance of two oddly-dressed strangers, but Daveed was too neurotic to rely on that. He dragged Ateela out of sight and started scrambling to adjust his holostrand to project period-appropriate clothing.

“We’ll have to somehow find you a new outfit as well,” Daveed said. “You missed the jumpsuit era, apparently.”

“Yep. Just looking around, I’d guess we’re somewhere in the first half of the twenty-first century,” Ateela said. She couldn’t be any more specific, as the t-shirt and jeans look had stuck around for several decades, only coming to an end with the great Jorts Revolution of 2062. None of the denim she saw now was cut tantalizingly high on the thigh, so they had to be somewhere before that cultural milestone.

“Anything else you can tell me about what era we’re in?”

For the first time, Daveed was genuinely glad to have Ateela at his side. She was likely the only person on campus who bothered to maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of the past era they were now stuck in.

“I do not,” Ateela said. Daveed nearly finished letting his hopes get dashed before Ateela continued speaking, and he hastily un-dashed his hopes. “But I know who can! We need to find the loopers of this year and ask them for help!”

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Ateela posed as if in triumph. Daveed waited for her to say it was a joke. She didn’t.

“Ateela, you can’t be serious. We need to get in and out without interacting with anyone, and preferably anything. Any disruption to the timeline could be disastrous.”

“Oh yeah yeah, that’s what everyone says,” Ateela scoffed. “And then they make a flippant comment that leads to the invention of the reuben sandwich or accidentally sleep with their own grandma and become their own grandfather-”

“That doesn’t happen.”

“Yeah, that one was on an old tv show, sue me,” Ateela said. “The point is this kind of stuff has happened before. According to the old looper records, time travel generally happens once or twice a year!”

“Really?”

“Yeah! For a guy who likes studying so much, you sure don’t do your research. It’s pretty much standard protocol for a time-displaced looper to seek out the loopers of whatever time period they’re in.”

“Oh. But where would we find them? Is there an agreed-upon meeting point?”

“Yeah, our agreed-upon meeting point,” Ateela said. “We’ve been using the same breakfast table for years, dude.”

Ateela stepped out of cover and headed for the dining hall. While her jumpsuit stood out a lot more than Daveed’s synthetic modern outfit, he ended up attracting the lion’s share of the attention. The confidence counted for more than the outfit, in this case, as Daveed looked nervous and out of place in contrast with Ateela’s comfortable confidence. They managed to avoid getting questioned until they made it to the lunchroom.

“Okay, how do we start this, is there a code word to indicate we’re from the future, or some kind of hand signal?”

“Nah, we just say hi,” Ateela said. “It’ll be easy, we just go around here and-”

Ateela took one step into the dining hall’s main room, and then immediately went into reverse, slammed her back against the wall, and clutched a hand to her heart.

“What? What happened? What’s over there?”

At no point did Daveed make any effort to look for himself, and in fact, he backed away a few steps. Ateela took a few deep breaths to still her beating heart, and her expression of shock faded away, revealing a nervous, yet still sincere, smile.

“Sorry, I got too excited.”

That, more than her initial reaction, worried Daveed. He had seen Ateela get what he considered to be “too excited” over particularly colorful sprinkles on ice cream. Anything that got her this amped up had to be very complicated. Ateela saw his concerned curiosity and finally broke the suspense.

“It’s Vell Harlan!”

“Ve-” Daveed nearly shouted the name before Ateela clamped a hand over his mouth, silencing him. After a few seconds of back-and forth glaring, Ateela removed her hand. Daveed peeked around the corner. Sitting at a primitive dining table, in exactly the same spot as their usual meeting place, was Vell Harlan, and several other loopers of the past.

“Holy shit, it is him,” Daveed said. He ducked back around the corner and pressed his back against the wall as well.

“Holy shit is right,” Ateela said. “Do you think we could get a picture? I mean-”

“No! Behave yourself,” Daveed commanded. “We can’t give him any hint about what happens, or we could irreversibly damage the timeline!”

“Oh, come on, what’d I just say about the reuben sandwiches and becoming your own grandpa, Daveed?”

“That might apply in literally any other situation,” Daveed scolded. “But that’s fucking Vell Harlan! We can’t interfere with anything! The slightest change to his personal timeline could disrupt the entirety of human civilization as we know it!”

Daveed glanced around the corner again. The cornerstone figure of modern scientific history was currently trying to get some dry syrup off his thumb. It took him a while.

“And we appear to be here before his big moment,” Daveed observed. “We cannot do anything that might affect his behavior or knowledge leading up to the question.”

“Or what if we do,” Ateela said. “Time is a flat circle, maybe we’re the ones responsible for what happened! Maybe we’re sent here to warn him, or-”

“Absolutely not,” Daveed scolded. “We can’t risk interfering. There’s too much at stake.”

“You’re probably right,” Ateela sighed. She didn’t actually think he was right, but she had realized that even if she helped change history, she’d never be able to tell anyone except other loopers anyway, so what was the point?

With her hopes of becoming historically relevant dashed, Ateela refocused on Vell and company. After successfully removing the syrup from his thumb, Vell had returned his focus to his waffles and conversation.

“Alright, I see Lee and Harley, so it can’t be fourth year. There’s no Leanne, and I do see Hawke, so it has to be his second or third year. There’s no sign of Samson, but he could just not be there...I could also tell if I saw Kimekomi, but I don’t see her.”

“I don’t see me either,” said Kim. The two time-displaced looper’s turned as one to shriek at her. Not needing to breath made Kim especially sneaky. She gave their two guests a little time to scream before shushing them.

“Call me Kim,” she insisted. “Also, tell me who you are and why do you know so much about my friends?”

“Hi, I’m Ateela, and this is Daveed,” Ateela said. Daveed put a palm to his face as she threw out their real names with no hesitation. “We’re loopers from the future! We time traveled here.”

“Okay, cool,” Kim said, without blinking. “Come sit down.”

Kim led the way, and Daveed and Ateela followed. They pulled up spare seats at the table, drawing concerned glances from the crew already seated.

“Kim, who’re your new friends?” Lee asked.

“Hi, I’m Ateela, and this is Daveed,” Ateela said. Even though it had happened before, Daveed put a palm to his face as she threw out their real names with no hesitation. He unpalmed his face as the others made their introductions, and Kim explained the origins of their new guests.

“They’re from the future,” Kim said.

“Oh, neat,” Vell said. “It’s nice to be on the other end of this.”

“The other end? Did you go to the future?” Ateela squawked. “Did you go to our time? Did you meet me? Are we best friends?”

“Uh, no,” Vell said. “I mean I got sent to the past once, like you guys are in your past. The looper I met threatened to kill me with a sword, though, so I would say your guys trip is, you know, going much better.”

“Day’s not over yet, Harlan,” Harley said.

“On the subject of the day being over, I think we should get back to our own time period,” Daveed said.

“What’s the rush? We should stay here, get to know our predecessors, bask in the wisdom of the ages,” Ateela said. She grabbed Hawke by the shoulders and pulled him uncomfortably close to her. “Hey, do you ever wonder if it actually takes us way more than one try to prevent the daily apocalypse, and we just don’t remember all the failed ‘second’ loops?”

“Well I didn’t before,” Hawke whimpered. He sure did now, though. Ateela had just gifted him roughly ninety-eight new forms of anxiety.

“The rush, dear, is that time will collapse on itself if the anomaly is not closed quickly enough,” Lee said. “Unlike the loop’s we’re caught in, these incidents of time travel are unstable.”

“Oh, yeah,” Ateela said. “Stupid imminent collapse of reality.”

“We should have plenty of time to talk while we track the source of the time anomaly,” Lee said. She turned to her contemporary teammates. “I think that one of us should serve as a guide for our guests-”

“I want to go with Vell,” Ateela said. She released Hawke from her grip and all but instantly zipped to Vell’s side to latch on to him instead. He didn’t seem to object, so Lee moved on.

“Right then, Daveed, would you like to accompany her, or…?”

“I’d rather travel with you, if you don’t mind,” Daveed said. “Keep the leadership together. Establish a simple chain of command. Organization, you know?”

“A sensible policy,” Lee said, nodding in agreement.

“Now, what exactly caused this anomaly?”

Involuntary time travel was almost always the result of an object being displaced through time and space. While the object had returned to it’s proper time, it had yet to return to it’s proper space, and the time travelers it had dragged along with it would not be able to return to their home until it had.

“I got it right here. It’s this cool vintage belt buckle!” Ateela said. She held up the buckle in question, letting everyone bask in the magnificence of the eagle clutching the flag. “Stylish, right?”

Lee glanced at Daveed, who shook his head.

“Uh...no,” Vell said. “It’s a bit tacky, actually.”

Ateela lowered the belt buckle, her beaming smile fading as she did so.

“Kind of looks like Vell’s thing, though,” Harley suggested. “It’s got the same sort of yeehaw energy.”

“It’s not mine,” he insisted. “And my dad hasn’t sent me anything either.”

“Then we must assume it belongs to another cowboy-esque figure,” Lee said.

“Like that Professor Irving guy,” Harley said.

“Ernest Ervine,” Lee corrected. “And that fellow from the paintball game.”

“Oh yeah! Do you still have the paintball game in the future?”

“Of course!”

“Ateela! Stop telling them things about the future!”

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I’m just really excited. I’ve always loved this time period! It’s really ‘yeet’, am I right?”

Not for the first, or the last, time today, Ateela got stared at silently.

“No, dear, that is not what that means.”

“Oh.”

“Let’s just get this over with and get home,” Daveed insisted. “Let’s start with this Ervine person, since you actually know his name.”

“Perhaps you and I can investigate him while Vell and Ateela pursue Mr. Storm,” Lee suggested. “While Harley, Kim, and Hawke can split up to examine other possibilities, in case our assumptions are incorrect.”

“That’s what I meant,” Daveed said, a little too quickly. “Yes. Good plan. I agree.”

Nobody said anything, so Daveed told himself that his charade had worked. It had not.