This is not your father's time travel. There's no machine, there is no dial. There's no telling where or when you'll go. The only thing that can change is you. It will make you what it needs to make you, to fit you in, to make it work. And when you come back - if you come back - it won't be the same you at all. You're messing with the nature of things, and the nature of things does not like to be messed with. Welcome to a puzzle, a riddle of change and addiction. Welcome to the time zone.
Excerpt:
Damn, she says, he was right there. he was probably right there on the platform.
She had been running through an underground hallway, she went through a doorway and here she was , right back in her own time. and she was pissed. He was right there, she said, he was right there with me!
Cammie was in a living room, suddenly. It was nowhere she had ever been before. Somehow she had come through the dark hallway basement of the Castle, headed straight towards a large, open door, passed through it, and here she was. She had made a turn, and this room had blood red carpets and hardwood walls. It felt like a bar of some sort, a bar she had been in once before, maybe a long long time ago. it was called the red something - she didn't know what.
Around a long sturdy oak table several people sat. She didn't see how many, but they were not surprised by her sudden and dramatic entrance. They even seemed to understand what she was saying about Zeke.
Okay people, Ronson said, we're in new territory now. unmapped but not unknown. it's time travel.
this is the thing. you can move in time, but every time you turn around, time is trying to pull you back to now; your own time is like a rubber band attached to you - wherever you can't be seen, a doorway, an underground hallway, time is trying to push you right back out to where you came from. even if you don't want to come back, it'll push you out.
And don't worry about the big things. big things like history you can't change, but little things can, and your life is one of those little things. you can die there and you turn up like an unexplained death back here. I've seen it happen before. back there you're stabbed with a sword in a duel. here you're hit by a bus. you just came out of nowhere, the driver says, and you did. time pushed you in front of that bus. you weren't there, and then you were. because you died, you had to die. get it? time makes a reason.
Cammie says, now we have to go back there and get him. he's still there. he doesn't know what's going on. he just got pulled in by accident, she continued. i was going back and he just came with me. we got separated, just for a second, and i lost him.
That's another thing, Ronson continued. once you're on that path, every place is a time. you turn around, you don't know where or when you'll be. you lose contact with your partner - physical contact i mean, then you lose contact, period. it's amazing Zeke was even in the same time as you Cammie. He could have been anytime, anyplace, once you let go.