Chapter 1 The Encounter in the Time Rift

I've never believed in fairy tales. As a quantum physicist, I live in a world governed by equations and probabilities, not magic or miracles. Yet here I stand in my New York laboratory, staring at a woman who, by all scientific principles, shouldn't exist in my timeline.

It began on a Tuesday evening, after my third consecutive failure to stabilize the quantum field generator. The university had invested millions in my research on time-space anomalies, and all I had to show for it were inconsistent data patterns and a headache that had lasted three days straight.

"One more test," I muttered to myself, adjusting the parameters on my computer. The lab was quiet except for the hum of equipment and the occasional ping from my AI system, AIDA, which monitored fluctuations in the quantum field.

I initiated the sequence and watched the energy readings spike on my monitor. The lab lights flickered, and a faint blue glow emanated from the center of my testing chamber—a circular area enclosed by sensors and quantum stabilizers. This was new. I leaned forward, heart racing with scientific curiosity.

"AIDA, are you recording this?"

"Affirmative, Dr. Cavill. Detecting unusual energy signature."

The blue light pulsed, expanded, then imploded with a soft pop that shouldn't have been audible but somehow was. I blinked away the afterimage, and when my vision cleared, she was there.

A young woman in an elaborate Victorian dress stood in my testing chamber, looking as disoriented as I felt. Her dark hair was partially pinned up in an intricate style, with curls falling around a face that showed both confusion and fear. Her deep blue gown, with its tight bodice and full skirt, looked like something from a museum exhibition.

For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating from exhaustion. I rubbed my eyes, but she remained.

"Where am I?" she demanded, her British accent crisp and refined. "Who are you? What have you done to me?"

I approached slowly, hands raised to show I meant no harm. "I'm Dr. Ryan Cavill. You're in my laboratory in New York. I think there's been some kind of... accident."

Her eyes darted around the lab, taking in the computers, equipment, and the fluorescent lighting overhead. Then, with surprising speed, she reached into a small pocket in her dress and pulled out what appeared to be a silver letter opener, pointing it at me.

"Stay back!" she commanded, her voice surprisingly steady despite her obvious fear. "I demand you return me to Richmond Park immediately. My father is Lord Howard of Westcliff, and he will not take kindly to this abduction."

I stopped in my tracks, raising my eyebrows. "Look, I appreciate your dedication to... whatever historical reenactment you're part of, but this is a restricted laboratory. How did you get in here?"

She stepped forward, the letter opener now uncomfortably close to my throat. "Do not mock me, sir. I was walking by the lake at our country estate not five minutes ago. I demand to know how you brought me here and what sort of trickery this is."

I carefully pushed the letter opener away from my neck. "No trickery, just science that apparently went very wrong. What's your name?"

She hesitated, then lifted her chin with aristocratic pride. "Lady Aisling Howard, daughter of the Earl of Westcliff."

"Right. And what year do you think it is, Lady Howard?"

"It is 1895, of course. The year of Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee preparations."

I stared at her, looking for signs that she was joking. Her expression remained deadly serious. Either she was the most committed method actor I'd ever met, or... No, the alternative was impossible.

"AIDA, run a material analysis on our visitor's clothing," I said, still watching her carefully.

"What sort of devilry is that?" Aisling demanded, looking around for the source of AIDA's voice.

"Analysis complete," AIDA responded. "Fabric composition: silk, cotton, whale bone. Manufacturing techniques consistent with late 19th century production. Estimated date of origin: 1895, with 98.7% probability."

A chill ran down my spine. Modern replicas wouldn't trigger that kind of reading from AIDA's sophisticated analysis. But time travel? It violated everything I thought I knew about physics.

"That's impossible," I muttered.

"Your talking wall speaks truth," Aisling said, still clutching her letter opener. "Now will you kindly explain how I came to be in this place of strange lights and talking walls?"

I gestured to a chair. "Please, sit down. This is going to be difficult to explain."

She eyed the ergonomic office chair suspiciously before perching on its edge, back straight as a rod, her dress pooling around her.

"Miss Howard—"

"Lady Howard," she corrected sharply.

"Lady Howard," I amended, "I believe you may have... traveled through time. This is the year 2023."

She laughed, a crisp, practiced sound. "Do you take me for a fool, sir? Time travel is the stuff of Mr. Wells' fiction."

"H.G. Wells? 'The Time Machine'?" I asked.

"It was published just last year," she replied. "A fascinating but thoroughly implausible tale."

I grabbed my tablet and pulled up a news website, then cautiously handed it to her. "This is today's newspaper. Digital version."

She recoiled when the screen lit up but then leaned forward with cautious curiosity. Her eyes widened as she scrolled through the images, her composure cracking slightly.

"This is some form of moving photography? Like the cinematograph?"

"Much more advanced," I said. "Look at the date."

As she processed what she was seeing, her face paled. She stood abruptly, dropping the tablet onto the chair.

"This is madness. I was just at Richmond Park. Father was hosting a hunting party. I walked to the lake to avoid Lord Pembroke's tedious conversation about fox hunting, and then..." She frowned, struggling to remember. "There was a strange light on the water, like blue fire. I reached toward it and then..." She looked around my lab in growing horror. "Then I was here."

My scientific mind raced with possibilities. A quantum entanglement? A tear in space-time? I needed to research historical records immediately.

"AIDA, search historical records for Aisling Howard, daughter of the Earl of Westcliff, circa 1895."

"Searching... Found. Lady Aisling Howard, born 1875, daughter of Edward Howard, 9th Earl of Westcliff and Lady Margaret Howard. Last entry: presumed drowned at the family estate, Richmond Park, on April 12, 1895, at age 20."

The air in the lab seemed to freeze. Aisling's face drained of all color.

"What did it say?" she whispered.

I hesitated. "It says you... disappeared in 1895. The same day you say you saw the light on the lake."

"Disappeared?" She frowned. "Not... dead?"

I couldn't bring myself to tell her the truth. "The records are incomplete," I lied.

She sank back into the chair, her letter opener now forgotten in her limp hand. "So you're saying I've traveled more than a century into the future? That's... that's preposterous."

"A week ago, I would have agreed with you. But here you are, in my lab, wearing clothes that my AI confirms are authentic Victorian."

"I must return," she said suddenly, standing again with renewed determination. "My family will be worried. Father's health is poor; this shock could kill him."

The weight of the situation hit me. According to history, she never went back. She died—or rather, will die—in 1895. Was I witnessing a closed time loop? Or by her arrival here, has history already been altered?

"I'll help you," I promised, though I had no idea if it was even possible. "But first, I need to understand what happened. My experiment wasn't designed to transport people through time."

She looked at me with a mixture of doubt and desperate hope. "And how do I know you're not the one who brought me here intentionally? For all I know, you could be my kidnapper, using this elaborate tale to confuse me."

It was a fair question. "If I had the power to kidnap people through time, I'd be accepting a Nobel Prize right now, not standing in a basement lab at midnight with failed experiments and cold coffee."

For the first time, a hint of a smile touched her lips. "You speak like no gentleman I've ever met."

"That's because I'm not a Victorian gentleman. I'm a 21st-century scientist who's just had everything he knows about physics turned upside down."

She studied me for a moment, then nodded slightly. "Very well, Dr. Cavill. I shall provisionally accept your explanation until evidence proves otherwise. Now, how do you propose to send me home?"

I ran a hand through my hair, already knowing this would be the most challenging problem of my career. "First, I need to gather more data. And you need rest. It's the middle of the night, and time travel apparently isn't as instantaneous as science fiction would have us believe."

I offered her my apartment's guest room, expecting resistance to the impropriety of staying with a strange man. To my surprise, she accepted with remarkable composure.

"I suppose social conventions matter little when one has already broken the laws of time itself," she remarked dryly.

As we left the lab, I caught her staring at her own reflection in a glass cabinet, touching her face as if to confirm she was real. The weight of history—her history—hung between us. According to records, she would drown in a lake in 1895. Yet here she was, alive and breathing in 2023.

One thought kept circling in my mind: what happens to time when you remove someone from their moment of death? And more importantly, what happens when you try to send them back?