I wrote this story just because I wanted to tell a time travel story. I did not really expect it to turn into a love story before the end, but those of you who know me and read me, probably expected this. Causality is a tricky wicket. Hope I did it justice. Enjoy!
Mira Estrella looked at the stars, as she had nearly every night since she was ten, but there wasn’t much to see. A snow squall had rolled in hours ago, clinging to the volcano with the tenacity of a boxer—out on his feet, still swinging.
At 5,200 meters, the Cayambe Pulsar Array shuddered under the storm’s grip—domes frosted, antennas quaking, the lens array’s hum dulled by wind screaming off the glacier above.
She tugged her parka tighter, breath clouding in the control room’s dim glow, and scowled at the monitors. PSR J2045+25 pulsed steady, as it had for millions of years—71 revolutions per second, 87 light-years out—but the squall smeared its signal into static.
“Latitud Cero,” she muttered, tracing a finger along the console’s edge. Zero latitude, sure, but tonight it was zero visibility. Technically, Cayambe’s peak sat one minute, thirty-one seconds north—about a mile off the equator—but close enough to claim one of the world’s highest perches along the line. Chimborazo loomed taller, a hair over 1° south, but Mira didn’t care for bragging rights. She’d picked this rock for its view of the sky, not its stats.
She glanced at the glacier, a jagged crown atop Cayambe, and wondered how much thicker it might’ve been in 1967 when Jocelyn Bell—a PhD student then—spotted the first pulsar under England’s soggy skies, far less ideal than Ecuador’s usual clarity.
She shoved the door shut, silencing the wind’s howl, and cranked the heater. Staying the night had been a gamble—her team was bunked in Quito for the weekend, safe at OAQ headquarters—but she’d weathered worse storms in the four years since the CPA opened. The control room was still chilly, her breath faintly visible, so she kept the parka on until the heater hit 18°C. Only then did she shrug it off, draping it over a chair.
The precipitation radar blinked: six more hours of this mess. Sleep would be a fight. She dragged her futon under the heat exchanger, letting warm air chase the chill from the cushions, then grabbed a double-layered fleece Denali blanket. Settling in, she wrote a letter on her laptop and then cracked open Murder on the Orient Express—Agatha Christie’s tangled whodunit a strange comfort against the night’s unraveling isolation.
A thump and a knock rattled the exterior door. Mira jolted up from the futon, heart slamming, and grabbed the nearest heavy object—a pipe wrench she’d used earlier to tweak a jammed vent. She crept to the console, flicking on the exterior monitor. No vehicle. Fresh footprints leading up the road to the observatory were already filling in. It was impossible.
She crept to the door, every step cautious. A visitor wasn’t just unexpected—it was absurd. She was atop a volcano in Ecuador, on a road buried by snow, in a blizzard, at ten p.m. If she’d been the lone human on Mars, a knock would’ve startled her less.
She cracked the door, wrench raised. Snow blasted in.
“Who’s there? Speak?”
A man stepped into the light, tall, covered in snow. He smiled, teeth chattering.
“Lost my way,” he rasped. “Theo. Time tourist, sort of.”
English. She was glad she was fluent. Mira’s grip tightened. “No one’s this dumb to be out in this storm. Who are you?"
His eyes—too sharp, too alive—cut through the dim. “Someone who knows your pulsar’s about to break everything.”
"My pulsar?"
"PSR J2045+25—look, I'd absolutely love to talk to you about it, but I'm cold. Do you mind?"
What do you do in this scenario? A strange man, who could not possibly even be there, was there anyway, and cold, and asking to come inside. She hesitated for a moment, door cracked, snow blowing into her sanctuary.
"Please, Mira?"
He knew her name!
"Who are you? Why do you know my name?"
"I already told you. I'm Theo," he said. "It's five below out here. It was a long walk. I'm cold. Can I please come in?"
She couldn't very well turn him away. He was ten kilometers from any other form of shelter. In a damned blizzard. What choice did she have?
She should have said no. She should've made him wait outside until she could verify he wasn't a hallucination. But she didn't.
She pushed the door open, stepping back cautiously, pipe wrench in hand.
Theo closed the door behind him, stamped snow from his boots, and removed a coat that was completely unsuitable for the conditions. He was drenched.
“Who are you? Why are you here?" she demanded. “Answer, or you’re staying by the door.”
"Name's Theo. I told you—”
She snatched his coat and he began unbuttoning his flannel shirt. “Not good enough. Let’s see some ID?”
He unbuttoned the wrist of his flannel shirt, pulled back the cloth and held out his left wrist, glancing upward at the superstructure and saw the heat exchanger.
She squinted at his wrist—blank sin, no mark—then back to his face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He stared at her and then there was a flicker of recognition. “Oh, you mean paper? Quaint. It’s subdermal. In my wrist. And, of course, you would have no way to scan it.”
He peeled off his flannel shirt and then paused. "Do you mind if I just stand under the heater a minute?”
She stepped back again, slapped her hand with the wrench and said, “Fine, but don’t touch anything.”
He untied his boots, kicked them off by the door, and removed his damp socks, leaving him in jeans and a wet tee shirt. He stepped under the heater, right in front of her futon. It seemed like an invasion into her sanctuary within a sanctuary.
He crossed his arms over his torso and began lifting the wet t-shirt.
"Ohh!" she said, trying to interrupt him. She held her hand out, "I.. um. Can you—"
She didn't finish the sentence. She only looked away (mostly) as he peeled the t-shirt off his torso, revealing a real man underneath.
My God, she thought. Maybe I wasn't reading Agatha Christie. Maybe I grabbed a romance novel, read it, fell asleep, and now I'm having a dream?
But when he reached for the button on his jeans, she'd had enough.
"Okay, okay! You can't just get naked in front of me."
"You don't have to look," he said.
It was a fair point, and so she didn't.
Soon, her workstation was strewn with his damp clothing, and he was sitting on her futon—her place to sleep—wrapped in her Denali blanket.
That meant it was going to smell like a man.
Mira had no experience in these matters. Her love had been for astronomy and only astronomy. She'd never had time for the kind of nonsense other girls got involved with at the university.
The whole scene was surreal—unreal. A naked man came to her out of a storm.
How the fuck does that even happen?
Mira backed into a desk at the rear of the control station, having unconsciously put a path of desks and equipment between her and the naked intruder. Where had her words gone? She wasn't speaking. Just watching him.
"Got anything hot to drink?" he asked. "Tea, perhaps?"
"Coffee," she said, pointing at a Keurig machine by her desk.
"Coffee? Real coffee? I guess I'd forgotten it still existed in 2025."
"What?" she asked dumbly. She blinked her eyes rapidly, trying to focus, letting her rational mind take control of the moment. "Excuse me? What the hell do you mean by that?"
"Well, you know, we don't have any more perfect knowledge of the world in 2025 than you do of the world in say 1750. You've got your history books. We've got ours, but they're necessarily inexact. It's just a best guess. How well do you really remember your grade school history books?"
"What are you even talking about?"
"Okay," he said, standing up, the Denali blanket partially opening.
She tried not to notice the chest hair. The muscle definition. The slight shimmer of damp skin catching the light like a damn romance cover. She failed, obviously—but she tried.
"Let's start over," he said. "I knew this would be a shock to you, so all I can do is repeat stuff, okay?"
"That might be helpful."
"Okay. I'm Theo. I'm from the future. The year 2247 to be precise. Now, at this point, you're probably wondering why I just came out and told you I'm from the future, probably because, being a scientist, you like to read science fiction from time to time. And you've probably read about time travel. And you've probably read about how the time traveler tries to hide shit from people around him so as not to change the timeline."
She stared at him.
"But," he continued, "the whole point of me being here is to change the timeline, and I don't have time to fuck around with playing coy. I'm from the future. I'm here to change what happens in the future so that you don't kill off half of humanity. Okay? I'm here to stop you from breaking the world."
“What do you mean by that?” She stepped to the console, tapping the pulsar screen—71 HZ, steady. “2247? Prove it.”
Instead of answering, he walked over the Keurig, looked it over, and turned back to her, his partially naked form making it hard for her to look back at him.
"How do you work this?"
Mira blinked. Twice.
“You’re here to stop me from killing half the planet,” she repeated, her voice flat. “And now you want a cup of coffee.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Well, yeah. I mean—unless the machine’s broken. Is it broken? That would suck.”
She stared at him for another long second, then walked over, still holding the wrench. She jabbed the power button with the kind of precision usually reserved for initiating satellite calibrations.
“You put the pod in there,” she said, “water goes there, mug goes there, and I still don’t believe a word you’re saying.”
“Fair,” he said, rubbing one arm with the other, shivering now that the adrenaline seemed to be wearing off. “But give me five minutes and a mug of dark roast, and I’ll explain how you and a neutron star accidentally turn the sky into a weapon.”
"I do have a laundry here," she said. "Maybe we could get your clothes washed and dried so you're not parading around my observatory in the buff?"
Theo gave her a sheepish grin, clutching the Denali blanket a little tighter.
“That would be amazing, actually. I wasn’t planning on hiking through a snowstorm when I got here.”
“Right,” Mira said, dryly. “You just sort of fell through time and landed on a volcano. Happens all the time.”
He shrugged. “Was aiming for Quito. Overshot.”
She sighed and pointed down the hall. “Door on the right. Washer-dryer combo. Detergent’s labeled. Don’t break anything.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, picking up his pile of soaked clothes. “I’ve broken enough timelines for one lifetime.”
Mira followed him with her eyes, still clutching the pipe wrench like a security blanket. She turned back to the Keurig, watching it chug and sputter like it might also need a moment to process everything.
She whispered to herself, “What the hell is happening.”
Behind her, the pulsar array hummed a steady rhythm.
71 beats a second.
Just like always.
Why did it feel like her heart was keeping the same pattern?
She considered the implications—or tried to. Lenses were her thing. She’d supervised their manufacture. Ensured every layer, every coating, was perfect. They helped her see clearly, peering into the deep dark with mathematical precision. It took planetary weather systems to interfere with them.
But here was a man whose perfectly sculpted feet were somehow fogging up her lens of practical and logical thinking.
He came back, still wrapped in the double-layered blanket. Why did his calves have to be so shapely?
“Laundry’s running,” he said, holding out the mug she’d left near the Keurig. “Hope you don’t mind, I made yours first.” He swapped pods and started the second one.
She took it without a word. It was hot, at least. Real. Her fingers curled around the ceramic like it might anchor her to this version of reality.
He settled—again—onto her futon. Her futon. Like it was his now. Like the world hadn’t shifted twenty degrees to the left the moment he’d knocked on her door.
“I keep staring at you like I’m about to figure out the illusion,” she said. “But you keep not disappearing.”
“That’s kind of the trick,” he replied, getting up to retrieve his own steaming cup before returning to the futon. He sat down and sipped carefully. Theo's eyes went wide and then he smiled. "That's coffee? Wow!"
"It's good, no?" she said.
"Well, if I'm successful, maybe it'll still exist in my timeline."
"What did you mind by 'That's kind of the trick'?"
“Sticking around.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Explain.”
He swirled the coffee like it might help him find the right words. Then:
“In a few hours, your array is going to pick up a secondary burst from PSR J2045+25. A twin pulse. It’s not natural. It’s not even astronomical.”
Her stomach went tight. “Interference?”
He shook his head. “No. A message.”
A beat passed.
"From whom?"
"Me. I think."
Mira lowered her mug slowly.
“You think? Either it’s your message, or it isn’t.”
Theo stared into his coffee like he expected it to answer for him.
“That’s the part that’s tricky. Temporal encoding leaves room for bleed. Contamination. I came back to stop a chain reaction, but now I’m starting to think… I might be part of it.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. She didn’t like any of this, really.
“You’re telling me a star is going to talk. In your voice. A signal you haven't even sent yet?"
He looked at her. Not with arrogance. Not even with certainty.
With something closer to fear.
“No. I’m telling you… I both have and haven't sent it. It's Shrodinger's cat, in pulsar form."
Mira narrowed her eyes. “You’re telling me a pulsar is both dead and alive until I observe it?”
Theo gave a one-shouldered shrug. “Not exactly. I’m saying you are. Or your decision is. The message exists in a quantum superposition—because you do. You haven’t started your energy collection, but the conditions already exist for you to do so. You might have started it tonight without this snowstorm.”
“That’s not—” she stopped. Her brain flipped through pages of equations like a Rolodex on fire. “Actually, that is true. I was going to start collecting energy from the pulsar tonight, although it might not be possible.”
“Welcome to the paradox,” he said gently. “You’re the observer. The only one who can collapse the waveform. And once you do…”
“What happens?”
He didn’t answer immediately. He just looked past her, toward the humming dome, where the pulsar’s data streamed quietly across the screen.
“When the waveform stabilizes,” he said finally, “half the world starts dying within the decade.”
"Half. The world?" she asked, breathlessly.
An alarm beeped from one of her consoles. She crossed over to a bank of computers and looked.
"Shit," she said.
"What?"
"The weather's doubled back. They're now calling for this storm to linger thirty-six more hours."
"So, we're snowed in," Theo said. "And you can't turn on your collector because there's no point. Which means I've got a day and a half—a little more counting nightfall— to convince you not to turn it on."
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.
Hi - I was on road trip today and because of your post about readers, I listened to all six episodes of this. I have always been interested in time travel. I have two observations for what - if anything - they might be worth. (Who am I? ) I was waiting for and hoping for a bit more temporal disphoria between the two characters. 200 years is huge to not have stumbled a bit more thru their interactions. My other observation is just a technical suggestion. I liked the rapid dialog, but I found that the constant “close quote'“ portions of the audio version prohibited me from really stepping into and experiencing the dialog. I could follow the dialog just fine and the occasional identifier tags served their purpose. For those who might be audio listeners I would suggest eliminating the quotation marks and simply using italics for the dialogue. I'm new at this, so if I'm wrong about how italics are handled on audio I apologize in advance. If I'm full of it, just delete this post. 😀