Page 10 of Alone With You in the Ether

“What?”

“Well, time. But Eternalism suggests we could return to the same place in spacetime,” he said, neither patiently nor impatiently. He must have been asked the same question in the past, though he didn’t appear to care much what she thought of his answer and probably hadn’t before, either. “People disagree, but from a purely theoretical standpoint, there’s some viability to the concept. Not that you could ever move faster than time,” he told her, or the air around her, “that’s out. You’d be shredded to pieces. But wormholes, that sort of thing, that’s plausible for argument’s sake. The most common theory suggests that a continuous trajectory of light cones, if there is one, would be circular, but that’s highly unlikely. Perfect circles do not exist in nature. Hexagons, on the other hand, appear quite frequently.”

He tore his gaze away from the opposite wall, dragging his attention to her.

“Bees,” he said.

“Bees?” Regan echoed doubtfully.

“Yes, bees,” he said. “Hexagons. Time.”

He didn’tsoundinsane, but he didn’t not, either.

“You think bees know the secret to time travel?” she asked him.

He seemed to find that highly unreasonable, possibly even offensive. “Of course not. Their brains aren’t designed to wonder. A useless evolution,” he muttered to himself, “but here we are.”

He closed his notebook, rising abruptly to his feet.

“If you don’t go by Charlotte, what do people call you?” he asked her.

“Guess,” she said.

“Charlie. Chuck.”

“Do I look like a Chuck?”

“More a Chuck than a Charlotte.” He didn’t seem to be teasing her, though she couldn’t decide if that made it better or worse.

“What’s your name?” she countered, and then, thinking better of it, “No, wait. Let me guess.”

He shrugged. “Go for it.”

“Ernest. Hector. No, I bet it’s something totally normal, like David,” she said, feeling vaguely combative, “and you hate it, don’t you?”

“I don’t hate it,” he said. And then, “What’s your last name?”

She hadn’t intended to answer any personal questions, but as of the last two minutes he had established a talent for catching her off guard. “Regan.”

“Ah.” He snapped his fingers. “That’s it. That’s your name.”

“Are you naming me?”

“No, but that’s the name you use,” he said. “The way you use it, it’s very comfortable. You can see the variables fitting together.”

“You can?”

“Yes,” he said, and it wasn’t a boast. He said it the same way he might have recounted how he’d had the flu once, and in a similar way, she believed him. “I’m sure other people can.”

“Tell me your name, then,” she said.

“Rinaldo,” he replied.

She narrowed her eyes.

“That’s not it,” she said, and his mouth twitched a little.

“No,” he agreed. “I go by Aldo.”

---