your power running until we return,” Dorothy explained, nodding at the solar panels they’d left behind.
“Good thinking, dear,” the woman said, too kindly. “And when do you expect to return?”
Dorothy opened her mouth to deliver the prepared line and then closed it again, staring at the woman’s face.
Emelda Higgens, she thought. The name had just popped into her head. She and Roman had spent the last few weeks preparing a list of the residents of this neighborhood so they’d know exactly who to hit. They had photographs and bios, but Dorothy couldn’t remember all of them.
But Emelda . . . Dorothy remembered her. Emelda was seventy-two years old. She was going to die in eight hours, as the initial shocks of the earthquake sent her home of twenty-five years tumbling down around her. She’d be found in the debris, curled around her tiny, white dog, which she’d inexplicably named Pumpkin.
Dorothy couldn’t breathe.
Roman’s hand was suddenly at her back. “We’ll be back bright and early tomorrow morning, Ms. Higgens,” he said. Something in his voice had changed. He cleared his throat. “Thank you for your time.”
Ms. Higgens smiled, vaguely, before turning around and shouting, “Pumpkin! Where are you at, boy?”
The door closed behind her.
Dorothy was already shaking her head as they hurried back up the street, where the delivery van was waiting. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what happened, I just thought of the earthquake and how all these people, how she—”
Dorothy fell abruptly silent as a screen door screeched open, and a little girl raced outside.
The girl was all knobby limbs and scabbed knees, black hair escaping from an already messy ponytail, cheeks rosy from the cold.
The girl cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, gearhead! Mom says that if you don’t come in now we’re feeding your dinner to the cat.”
“I’m finishing the tree house!” called a voice from the trees.
“Mom says the tree house isn’t a priority!”
A boy dropped from the tree a moment later and raced into the house after his sister.
Watching them, Dorothy felt her stomach turn over. She didn’t remember seeing a single children’s photograph or bio on any of their lists but, of course, there would be plenty of them living here. Had Roman left them off deliberately? Had he thought she’d lose her nerve when she realized who they were stealing from?
She’d been telling herself this theft wasn’t a big deal. The solar panels would’ve only been destroyed in the earthquake, after all. By taking them now, they were actually saving them, for the future.
But . . . couldn’t they have at least tried to save the people, too? Couldn’t they have discussed it?
“Come on,” Roman said, his voice altered. Dorothy glanced at him and saw that he was staring at the door of the house where the two kids had just disappeared, his gaze sharp. He cleared his throat, and looked away. “Next house.”
They gathered 240 solar panels by the end of the day, enough to power a ten-block radius. It was more power than New Seattle had seen in over four years. It was, by any measure one could name, a success.
But Dorothy didn’t feel successful. She watched Roman from the corner of her eye while they stacked the panels into neat rows at the back of the Black Crow.
A dozen questions rose up in her throat, all some variation of What happened to the children?
But she couldn’t ask that question because she knew the answer already. An earthquake was going to hit this city in less than eight hours. Every house in this neighborhood would be reduced to rubble. By this time tomorrow, the little girl with the braids and the boy building the tree house would most likely be dead.
Roman slammed the door to the cargo hold shut, his eyes shifting to the horizon. “We should head back,” he said. “Before . . .”
Dorothy nodded, following his gaze to the sky. The edges of this world had already turned orange and pink. It looked like the city was on fire and Dorothy had to remind herself that it wasn’t yet. But it would be.
“Right,” she said, and she climbed into the time machine after him.
LOG ENTRY—JUNE 27, 2074
05:49 HOURS
THE WORKSHOP
Now that we’ve determined that humanity has free will, and that the future is not predestined, I’d like to take a look at how far that free will extends. In other words, I want to know if my personal ability to make choices different from the choices I’ve