Redshift

Berlin, Germany - April 17, 2076 CE

Reinhardt sat staring at the device. Nothing had really made sense today, and it was supposed to be a normal day.

But what he’d seen today had been anything but normal. First, the dead American Indian that had just appeared in the back of one of his trucks. Then, this strange device.

As he tried to figure out exactly what it did, he tapped the Return button, thinking it might do something.

And it certainly did something.

He had his logistics company set up off Sigismunds Straße in an effort to keep it outside the major downtown areas of Berlin, but still close enough that he wasn’t wasting resources getting his trucks into the districts where he had deliveries. So when he heard the faint click come from the device and suddenly found himself lying in marshy soil—with his chair, desk, and everything gone, replaced by an open area scattered with trees, reeds, and wet, muddy ground—he started hyperventilating.

The device in his hands flickered for a brief second, a red triangle with a battery symbol flashing before returning to its normal display. Now, 4/17/2076 CE glowed above the Return button.

He looked around and could see houses in the distance, thin columns of smoke rising from their chimneys. There was a path leading toward the small village area a few feet away, the wheel ruts of carts visible in the soft soil.

And then it clicked. He was still inside his office—or at least where his office would someday be. He was standing in a field, eight hundred years in the past. That was how the American Indian had appeared in his truck. He hadn’t broken in—he’d traveled through time and landed there.

But why in Germany? Perhaps it was something to do with the power fluctuation he saw after he arrived. Maybe the Indian wasn’t in Germany when he first traveled, but ended up here because the device glitched when it lost power.

“Or maybe this whole thing is just a hallucination…” he mumbled in German.

“Bistû vorloren, fremde man?”

The kind-looking farmer had somehow managed to sneak up on Reinhardt and was now standing on the path, staring at him with a gentle smile. Perhaps sneaked wasn’t fair—Reinhardt hadn’t really been paying attention to his surroundings. But now he had to do something, and based on having no idea what the man had just said, he knew talking was not the answer.

But more importantly, hallucinations don’t speak like people speak— and this man did.

A quick wave, a purposely chosen goofy grin, and he took off running toward the reeds. Ducking behind them, he looked down at the device and whispered a quiet prayer that when he hit Return, he’d end up back in his office.

The sudden appearance of asphalt and the blare of a car horn shattered that hope. As the aged Renault swerved around him, he jumped back and scrambled onto the sidewalk. He was near his yard at least, but there would be no explaining how he’d gotten outside unseen.

I have a time machine, he thought. I’ll just go back to this morning, sneak in before anyone arrives, and travel back to now.

So he pulled out the device, plugged in the date and time, and clicked the button labeled Travel.

Nothing happened. A text box appeared on the screen instead:

“Grady said never travel to your own past — might blow up the universe.”

What did that mean? Who was this Grady person? And why couldn’t it work like every other time machine in movies and books? No matter. He’d just walk in and hope that his presence wasn’t questioned.

The first thing he had to do once back in his office was figure out how to recharge this thing. If he was going to have a time machine, it needed to be reliable enough not to land him in some random century.

Delete

New York City, NY - April 22, 2057 CE

“Are you sure you want to go?” James asked for the fifth time since they’d gotten back from the meeting.

“Absolutely! It’s the 1980s!” Grady exclaimed like a kid on Christmas. “I know I’m a jinx most of the time, but this time it’s going to be fine. While you guys do your thing, I can go to the movies and see Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, Gremlins, and The Karate Kid all in one go!”

“I guess a movie theater would be the safest place for you,” James said, chuckling.

Celeste came in with her bag, looking like she’d walked off the set of Full House. She wore an oversized mint-green sweater and thrift-store mom jeans—more worn than acid-washed, but close enough. The jeans were meant to sit high-waisted, but since Celeste rarely wore pants, let alone jeans, they hung low on her hips, making them look uncomfortable. Her hair was teased out and reeked of Aqua Net.

“Look at you, Aunt Becky,” Grady laughed. “That’s a very… loud outfit.”

“What?” Celeste looked genuinely confused. “I looked up 1980s fashion style and this is what the computer showed. Is this not good?”

She looked over at James, who was trying not to laugh. His outfit was close to his usual wear—jeans with a black t-shirt under a well-worn jean jacket. He’d replaced his modern shoes with a pair of classic low-top Converse All-Stars.

He walked over, smiling. “You look amazing—much prettier than Aunt Becky.”

“I don’t even know who that is,” she said, pouting. “I thought I had it this time.”

“Oh, you nailed it,” Grady said quickly, realizing his joke might’ve landed wrong since she didn’t get the reference. This kind of fashion was as foreign to Celeste’s 1906 sensibilities as anything could be. “You’ve got the whole ‘let’s dress like Grandma did’ vibe that people think is fun. It’s popular enough it’s drowned out what people actually wore.”

He nodded toward James. “Men’s fashion is easier—it’s always safe to fall back on jeans and a jacket. Women’s fashion keeps changing because that’s where the money is.”

“At least you didn’t do the makeup,” James said, laughing as he led her toward the bedroom.

“I tried. It made me look like a lady of the night, so I washed it off,” she said matter-of-factly.

A few minutes later, the sweater was gone, replaced by one of James’s v-neck shirts. Since it was a bit big on her, he’d shown her how to tuck it neatly without ballooning. The high-waisted jeans were pulled up where they belonged—still not her favorite, but at least wearable. James had also helped her with her makeup to look “normal” without slipping into what she called “prostitute styling.” She’d struggled with lipstick back in 1940s England while tracking the Epsilon Book, so he suggested she try lip gloss instead—same effect, but softer, more her.

Grady clapped as she stepped back into the room. “Much more like Mallory than Stephanie.”

“Thank you… I think,” she said, smiling uncertainly.

“It’s a compliment,” James whispered. “Different TV show—from when my grandpa was a kid. Mallory Keaton was real 80s fashion; Stephanie Tanner was all exaggeration.”

“I’ve made him watch all those shows.” Grady said laughing as he finished his packing.

“Don’t remind me.” James laughed. “Even my grandpa said they were cheesy.”

There was a touch of sadness as James referenced his grandfather. It had only been a few months and while he was smiling more at these kinds of memories, Josh’s passing was still a healing wound. His grandmother had sold the house, refusing to live there without Josh. She’s somehow made sure a family with children were the buyers; James felt it better not to know how she pulled that off knowing that his grandfather would have been happy.

As they began their drive to the airport, James ran through the plan again, laying it out as if it were set in stone—but leaving room for changes, a trait that drove his grandmother crazy in both him and his grandfather.

“So, we get to Chicago and sneak away to travel to the 80s,” he said, navigating New York traffic toward JFK. “We get over to the University of Chicago, find the atmospheric lab…”

“Drop me off at the multiplex!” Grady said from the back seat, still giddy like a kid.

“How is it you’ve never done this on your own?” James asked, glancing at him in the rearview mirror.

“Who says I haven’t?” Grady grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “How else would I know those movies were all playing at the same time?”

James shook his head, still smiling. “Anyway—Celeste and I head to the atmospheric lab, grab the data from the Prometheus satellite before its battery shorts and destroys everything, then we pick up Grady from the movies and head home.”

“Why do these always sound easier until we actually get there?” Celeste asked jokingly.

“Man plans, God laughs,” Grady chimed in. “What if you’re done before I finish the last movie?”

James and Celeste exchanged a look. It still felt odd playing parent to the oldest member of their group, but they both knew this kind of thing made Grady happiest. He wasn’t born fifty years too late because he was an old soul—just because he loved the culture of his grandfather’s youth.

Celeste gave a tiny nod and tilted her head slightly.

“Then we’ll introduce Celeste to whichever movie you’re in,” James said, letting out an exaggerated sigh, as if he were granting some huge favor. The truth was, they were both looking forward to a slower pace for once. The chaos of the Cahokia job—and everything that happened in Tammeenoka—had taught them that patience and planning usually worked better than speed and instinct.

“Radical, dude!” Grady said, pumping his fist.

Delete

Reinhardt

Berlin Brandenburg Airport, Berlin - April 19, 2076 CE

Reinhardt Ziegler was boarding the supersonic airliner bound for . He’d figured out playing with the time machine that it would take you most anywhere in time you wanted, but it couldn’t take you anywhere in space. It had allowed him to put a bullet into Hitler’s head in the Fuhrer Bunker, denying him the chance to die by poison, but allowing him to safely live out that time traveler’s fantasy. He’d researched the dangers of time travel and fell down the rabbit hole of paradoxes, continuity loops and every other pitfall of time travel. He now understood why this Grady had locked out the most of the early 2000’s; he reasoned that this was just before his birth and traveling there would be too much temptation to not change things. Those considerations and limitations would make his next idea very difficult to pull of from Germany, and so he decided that he would just go there now and travel back once in Turkey.

Finding Leon Trotsky before the KGB did would be the bigger challenge. While Trotsky’s movements were well known over 100 years after his death, it was also well known that he was fairly well protected in these early days.

The trick would be to get to him in spite of the protection and beat the NKVD without leading them right to him.

Reinhardt was a socialist at heart. The generations of trauma hadn’t chilled that streak with he and his family always being a reliable vote for Die Linke or Partei für Soziale Gleichheit (The Socialist Equality Party), depending on how the winds were blowing in Berlin. And so there was a generational awe for Leon Trotsky that, with this time travel device, he could experience first hand.

But on the other hand, Trotsky represented the one thing that had held his family back: Bolshevism. He abandoned the Mensheviks for the Bolsheviks, he supported Lenin and he was exiled for going against the Party later claiming to push true Bolshevism. Bolshevism is what ultimately got his

Either way, meeting Trotsky would be monumental and, Reinhardt hoped, an event to change history.