The Third Rule of Time Travel

by Philip Fracassi

Genres: Science Fiction; Hard Science Fiction; Time Travel

Synopsis

Rule One: Travel can only occur to a point within your lifetime.
Rule Two: You can only travel for ninety seconds.
Rule Three: You can only observe.
The rules cannot be broken.
 
In this riveting science fiction novel from acclaimed author Philip Fracassi, a scientist has unlocked the mysteries of time travel. This is not the story you think you know. And the rules are only the beginning.

Scientist Beth Darlow has discovered the unimaginable. She's built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time—to any point in the traveler's lifetime—and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it's not perfect: the traveler has no way to interact with the past. They can only observe.
 
After Beth's husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella—their only daughter—and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology.
 
Then the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp.
 
As her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future.

Release date: March 18, 2025

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 304

Sample

Beth wakes to her tablet’s alarm. A chorus of birds.

Five AM.

Time to run.

She groans, taps the screen to still the alarm, and throws her legs out from beneath the covers. The early morning air is brittle cold, chilling her skin, causing her bare arms to break out in goose bumps. Gray light seeps in through the window. The room hums with the shimmering sound of rainfall.

“Perfect,” she says with a tired sigh, not thrilled to be starting her day with ten miles in the rain, but she pushes herself off the bed and heads for the bathroom to brush her teeth.

Minutes later she’s sitting on a bench in the mudroom, her breathing measured and steady through her nose as she prepares her body, her mind. Wearing a rainproof windbreaker and workout leggings, she slips on her well-worn Asics, ties them tight.

Breathe in. Hold it. Breathe out.

She taps the face of her watch and a steady beat of music plays through her earbuds. She opens the front door of their home (the spacious, classic Craftsman being their lone big splurge when moving to the Pacific Northwest), steps onto the porch, and stretches her hamstrings, her calves. A few yards away, rain shatters the quiet street, slicks the crooked pavement of the sidewalk that waits down the steps and past a small wooden gate, aged white, like the rest of the picket fence lining her modest yard.

She lifts a wrist toward her mouth. “Start morning run,” she says. A timer lights up on the watch face. She nods, jogs quickly down the steps, through the gate. She makes a right on the sidewalk, not wanting to brave the street in the early dark, nor the streams of ankle-deep water already flowing down its sides. The heavy rain drenches her almost immediately.

Beth focuses on her breathing as the Asics slap the wet pavement. After a few moments, she picks up speed.

While she runs, her focus is on her breath, the steady beating of her heart, the pulse of the music pumping into her ears. She pushes away any thoughts of being cold, of being wet or tired. She does everything in her power not to think about the day ahead, or that brief visit to her past the day before, when she was forced to relive the most horrible ninety seconds of her life.

When she returns to the house, the rain has lightened to a drizzle; the emerging sun has brightened the dark gray sky to a less oppressive shade of pewter. She taps the face of her watch, pleased she managed to clock her run in at a reasonable time, despite the slick surfaces.

Marie Elena waits on the porch, standing beside the door, wearing a blue raincoat. A waterproof babushka, patterned with pink flowers, is pulled tight over her head. She clutches an oversize bag in her hands, smiles warmly at Beth as she climbs, sweating and winded, up the steps.

“You’re early,” Beth says, smiling through panted breaths.

“Robert had to be downtown this morning, so I dropped him off and came straight here. Besides, I knew you’d be up,” she says with a wink.

Beth nods and opens the door. “Yeah, you know… Well, come in out of the cold.”

Marie Elena—a spunky woman in her early seventies with three grown children of her own—has been their nanny, for all practical purposes, since the day of Isabella’s birth. Beth doubts she could have ever made it this far without the woman’s help, her strength. She was a stable force in Beth’s tumultuous life, had been so even prior to Colson’s death, when the pair of them worked insanely long hours at the lab, making full-time parenting an impossibility.

And then, when Beth found herself shockingly, tragically widowed a year ago, she knew there would be no way she could continue working at the pace she needed—the pace she required of herself—while also being a responsible, dependable parent, especially given the grief and depression that engulfed her world like an unforeseen eclipse in the months following her husband’s fatal accident.

“She’s still asleep,” Beth says, kicking off her shoes, “and I obviously need to shower, but there’s fresh coffee in the kitchen, and I picked up some muffins from Lenzi’s yesterday. Help yourself.”

Marie Elena nods and shoos Beth toward the bedroom. “Yes, Beth. I’m okay. You go. Go get ready for work.”

When Beth reenters the kitchen twenty minutes later, refreshed after the hot shower and the change into dry clothes, she feels a pang of disappointment at seeing her daughter already seated at the kitchen table, eagerly eating a bowl of oatmeal. Waking her daughter is one of her favorite parts of the day, and now it’s just another moment she’s missed, another memory snatched away by time, never to be returned.

Marie Elena, setting a glass of juice in front of the little girl, seems to read Beth’s mind. She shrugs. “Yes, look who’s up. She must have heard us talking. Came out of her room saying she was hungry.” Marie Elena smiles and strokes the girl’s hair.

Isabella, still in pink pajamas, her hair wild from sleep, twists around and sees her mother hovering at the kitchen entryway. “Mommy!” she yells brightly, holding out one hand, flapping her fingers open and shut in a come! come! gesture.

Beth dismisses her ill thoughts and goes to her daughter, takes her hand in both of her own, kisses each tiny finger. Her heart swells with a surge of love so strong she doesn’t know how she can possibly contain it. Releasing her daughter’s warm hand, she settles herself at the table to watch the little girl eat breakfast.

She ponders how Isabella is nestled in that wonderful age between four and five years, the time in a life when the soft baby parts are being stretched and honed—her cherubic face taking on more defined angles at the cheeks and chin, her limbs lengthening as she begins the unstoppable metamorphosis that will transform her from a lovely child into the beautiful young woman she would become.

Marie Elena sets a cup of coffee in front of Beth and joins them at the table, her own cup steaming. “You should eat as well,” she says earnestly. “Stay for a minute.”

Beth nods and sips her coffee before completing the rote back-and-forth the two women seem to have multiple times a week, if not daily. “I don’t have time. I’ll get something at work.”

Marie Elena tuts, shakes her head. “There’s always time, Beth,” she says. “It’s what you do with it that matters.”

Beth starts to reply when her daughter interrupts.

“Mom! We’re making butterflies at school today,” Isabella announces, her mussed, silky black hair cresting with a casual elegance down the side of her face, brushing her narrow shoulder, enhancing her wide, bright brown eyes. “I’ll bring one home for you.”

Beth stands, kisses her daughter on the head. “Please do, baby. Now, be good for Marie Elena. I’ll be home tonight for dinner and bath, okay?”

Isabella puts down her spoon. She slides her arms around her mother’s neck, kisses her loudly on the cheek, then whispers into her ear. Like a secret.

“I love you, Mommy.”

To the average passerby, the headquarters of Langan Corporation appears more like a Cold War–era military complex than a cutting-edge tech company with a market value over fifty billion dollars.

Atop a broad hill, reached only by helicopter or via a single winding road, nestled within a high-fenced perimeter monitored 24/7 by a military-grade security team (the parent company of which regularly competes for wartime mercenary duties), Langan Corp. is a single-story Brutalist-style concrete and glass structure. A square city block of impenetrable intelligence and hidden secrets.

Only those permitted inside—a group that includes some of the greatest scientific minds on the planet—realize that the building is not the single-story structure it appears to be, but a massive sunken compound traveling five stories down, each sublevel entrenched deeper and deeper into the earth.

As Beth guides her car to the top of the hill, she sighs heavily at the grim sight of her place of employment these last four years, the slate-gray sky a sodden backdrop to the dark concrete fortress, a utilitarian monument to knowledge that is brazenly ominous, colorless, cheerless.

And yet.

Inside that building, nearly a hundred feet belowground, resides her greatest achievement. Hers and Colson’s. And not just theirs alone…

What sits far beneath the surface has the potential to be one of the greatest achievements in human history.

A machine that could change everything.

And so, despite the drizzly day, the heavy gray atmosphere, and the grim setting, she never fails to feel a tingle of excitement as she drives nearer the security checkpoint and pulls her badge from her pocket, already thinking about the day to come: The data she’ll check and recheck after yesterday’s travel, the scrutinous unraveling of mysteries that lie within the complex configuration of algorithms, electricity, and steel. The quest to control a power not meant for human control—a power that lies beyond the science, beyond the machine and the screens of scrolling equations.

Something undefinable.

But she will define it. She will harness it. And then…

And then she’ll change the world.

Stepping through the glass front doors and into the dim lobby—diamond-polished concrete walls, floor, and sunken lighting giving it the feel of a white-collar prison—Beth shows her ID once again, this time to the burly no-nonsense guard positioned next to a full-body scanner, noting for the thousandth time the bulk of the sidearm the security personnel keep clipped to their waists beneath ubiquitous black sport coats.

Just past the security station is a thick smoked-glass wall with three entry points, and when the guard nods and buzzes her through, Beth walks to the entry at the far right, toward a door-size tinted panel that slides open to reveal a long hallway. Passing through the opening, Beth feels as if she’s entering a different building altogether. The walls are deep cherrywood from floor to ceiling, the carpeting plush, the color of dark chocolate. Ornately framed mid-twentieth-century paintings—primarily abstracts in hues of mustard yellow, crimson, burnt orange, and sea blues—hang along the walls, giving the place a vintage feel, a callback to a world she’s never known. Beth once heard the offices described as an old-school law firm by some of her older peers, but she doesn’t have a clue what that means. Regardless, she has no problem understanding the underlying ideology being presented:

Stodgy. Plain. Archaic.

Langan Corp., she knows, is anything but.

It’s still early, quiet. The doors lining the hallway are closed as she passes them by, making her way toward the lone elevator waiting at the far end of the corridor, an elevator that can be reached only from the ground floor, is wholly exclusive to her lab, and only goes down.

“Don’t fucking touch me!”

Beth spins, breath catching in her throat. Behind her a door bursts open and a man—a man she knows well—is pushed roughly from the office’s interior and into the hallway. Papers flutter from his hands, spill onto the floor. He wields a briefcase as if it were a weapon. A pair of armed security guards—their uniform black suits straining against the muscular, predatory frames all the guards here seem to have—follow him out, their faces stone, their eyes steel.

One of the guards casually pushes aside the hem of his sport coat, rests his hand on the butt of a deadly-looking firearm.

Beth takes a step toward the commotion, moving closer to the hostile trio of men less than ten feet away. “Jerry?”

The older man spins to look at her, his face ghastly pale, his white hair mussed, his suit frumpy and wrinkled. He stares at her with wild eyes. “Beth,” he says, his tone unreadable. “Can you believe this shit? They’re getting rid of me.”

Beth shakes her head, begins to take another step closer but stops when one of the guards—the one with the hand settled conspicuously upon his sidearm—gives her a warning glare. She halts mid-step. “I don’t understand. Jerry, what’s going on?”

The other guard, a tall older man who looks almost bored with the encounter, clamps a hand onto Jerry’s shoulder. Jerry jerks away, backs toward the lobby as the guards watch passively. “I said don’t fucking touch me!” Jerry snarls. Then his eyes look past the guards.

At Beth.

“This is because of you,” he says, pointing at her with a long, crooked finger. “Your ridiculous machine is sucking the rest of us dry. But don’t worry, Beth, you’ll be next! Just wait and see…”

Beth starts to reply when Jerry turns on his heel and walks briskly toward the lobby, briefcase clutched to his chest, loose papers floating to the carpet—almost comically—in his wake. The two guards follow closely, neither sparing a glance back.

She watches until the three men exit through the sliding glass door and disappear into the lobby. Jerry’s office stands open, pale light bleeding into the warm tones of the hallway, illuminating the forgotten scatter of papers left on the floor like dead leaves. She eyes the doorway for a moment, wondering how many others have lost their jobs, were told to not bother coming into work that morning.

Shaken, Beth turns and walks to the elevator.

When the elevator arrives, the doors slide silently open and she steps inside, glances toward the camera—a penny-size eye to the left of the doors—then waves her ID card in front of a black sensor. There’s a soft beep as a glaring red light next to the sensor turns green. The doors slide shut.

There are buttons for five floors on the elevator’s panel, all of them set vertically below the sensor and the ever-watching eye of the camera.

She presses the one at the very bottom, and the car descends.

Moments later the doors open into a cavernous space two stories in height. Every architectural surface—walls, floors, ceiling—is formed from glass, concrete, or steel. In the middle of the room, set into a recess and surrounded by a series of computer consoles, is a machine.

Made primarily of polished steel components, the machine appears, in many ways, similar to an ultramodernized hospital X-ray machine. At the center of the machine is a flat metal surface, or bed. Hovering above the bed is a bubble shape with a red-eyed proboscis—the laser—that points downward, aiming directly toward the head of the bed. A clear flow tube, banded along its length with steel rings, extends from the bubble-headed laser to a massive power generator the size of a small bus. Two steel half spheres, each three feet in diameter and set vertically, sit on either side of the steel bed, the protuberant sides facing the same area as the pointed laser, presumably where a person’s head might rest.

Across the room from the machine are a series of glass-walled rooms, two of which are offices, currently dark. The third is a break room, which contains a full kitchen, sofa, and dining table. Above the offices, running the entire length of one wall, is an observation balcony. Massive viewing screens, nearly invisible unless activated, hover from the ceiling on extended arms between the balcony and the main laboratory.

Seated at one of the consoles that surround the machine, wearing a pristine white lab coat over black slacks, button-down shirt, and tie, is a young man, eyes intent on the screen before him. As Beth approaches, he glances up, simultaneously concerned and mildly frustrated. “I thought you were taking the day off.”

“Good morning, Tariq. No. I have the debrief.”

Beth stops at one of the consoles, types in a command.

Tariq stands, folds his arms. “There’s still time. You could do it tomorrow.”

Beth raises her eyebrows, but her eyes stay on the screen in front of her as her fingers fly across the keys. “And come into work on a Saturday?”

Tariq scoffs. “Right, because that would be shocking. If memory serves, you and Colson were never great adherents to days of the week when it came to work.”

Beth ignores the reference to her late husband, studies the screen before her intently. “I see you’re already running diagnostics,” she says, moving on. “Anything abnormal?”

Tariq shakes his head and sits back down, knowing rebuke is a lost cause. “No. Nothing so far. Whatever you experienced yesterday was within the parameters of what we’ve seen before.” He pauses a moment, as if debating, then says, “There was one thing.”

Beth feels an acute thrill climb up her spine, the rush of adrenaline that comes when one scientist tells another, after years of experimentation: There is one thing that seemed different this time.

She lives for it.

“Go on.”

“You’ll see it yourself when you look at the data. It’s hard to miss. But there were a couple of seconds, right before the machine kicked in, where you had a significant spike.”

“Spike? Like adrenaline…?”

Tariq shakes his head, taps his temple. “No… this was cognitive. Your amygdala threw a little shit fit right before takeoff. I’ve seen similar stuff when doing dream research as an undergrad. The type of brain wave activity we’d see when someone was having, for example, a particularly bad nightmare.”

Beth thinks about it but doesn’t recall thinking anything particularly impactful prior to her travel the day before. In fact, she remembers being even more relaxed than usual. “Nothing comes to mind that could have caused it,” she says. “So if it happened, it certainly wasn’t conscious.”

Tariq shrugs, his slim shoulders barely lifting the stiff fabric of his pristine lab coat. “Still, it seems strange, doesn’t it?”

Beth starts toward the small kitchen. “I don’t think so. Why do you?”

Tariq stands once more, follows her toward the break room, where Beth opens the cabinet above the sink, grabs her favorite mug—the one screaming ALOHA! across the ceramic surface in bold, happy letters, a faded rainbow riding beneath it, the colors aged from use. The mug was her lone souvenir from a trip to Hawaii when she was a young girl. The last vacation she’d ever have with her family.

Tariq leans against the doorway. “You know what I mean, Beth. Where it dropped you. The arrival point. Come on, that had to be…” He shakes his head, searching for the right word. “Traumatic.”

Beth fills her mug with coffee, notes the digital clock on the microwave. “I’m fine. It was just bad luck. We both know that.” She sighs, dumps a spoonful of sweetener into the mug. “Look, I don’t need you to worry about me. I need you to focus on the data and the travel diagnostics. We need to find what drives these targeted arrival points, Tariq. It’s vital—”

Tariq holds up his hands. “I know, I know. I work here, too, remember?”

Beth nods. “Well, that’s what I need from you. I already have a shrink. Speaking of which, I gotta get settled. My debrief is at nine sharp. Will you have a report before I’m back?”

“Should be done soon, yeah. I’ll send the whole file over to you once I’ve added my notes.” Tariq takes a step closer, so they’re both enclosed within the walls of the break room. He lowers his voice. “Did you hear about Neural Prosthetics?”

Beth takes a sip of the hot coffee, relishes the rush of caffeine to her weary body, then shakes her head. “No, I hadn’t. But I just saw Jerry Wilson escorted out of the building by security. I figured it couldn’t be good. What’d he do? A little corporate espionage?”

“No, Beth. It’s not just Jerry is what I’m saying. It’s the whole damn division. They dissolved it.”

Beth lowers her cup, stunned. “What? The entire group? That’s, like… sixty people. They’re a huge part of Langan’s med line.”

Tariq shrugs, a sardonic smirk on his lips. “Gone, baby.”

“Why? That makes no sense.”

“Above my pay grade. That’s a Jim question. Still, makes one wonder—”

“Don’t worry, they’re not cutting our funding. Look, I gotta get going…” Beth turns back toward the counter to add more coffee to her mug, inadvertently hits the edge. The mug is knocked from her fingers and falls to the concrete floor, smashing into ceramic pieces, the spill of coffee a dark snowflake.

“Shit!”

Tariq drops to his knees, begins gathering pieces. “Hey, I got this. You go do what you need to do.”

Beth puts her hands over her face, tries to stem a sudden rush of emotion, her eyes burning—shockingly—with tears.

Get a grip, Beth.

“Goddamn it. I loved that stupid mug.”

Tariq looks up, worried. “Hey, you okay?”

Beth is momentarily confused by the concern in his eyes, then feels the wetness on her cheeks and realizes, despite her best efforts, that she is crying. She swipes angrily at her face. “I’m fine. Fuck.”

She storms out of the room, leaving her bemused assistant staring after her.

Beth enters her office; the cube lighting, triggered by her motion, brightens the space from within, revealing the only warm area of the entire lab. Oriental-style rugs cover the concrete floor. The oversize desk is dark . . .