White Paint

“Security clearance?” The desk attendant asked flatly without looking up from his computer screen.

Harriet cleared her throat.

He looked up and his face formed into that sympathetic smile that Harriet despised, the one everyone gave her lately. For a moment, she could have sworn the sickly sweet stench of decaying lilies filled the room. Maybe it had started to cling to her clothes.

“Oh, good morning, Dr. Grant! I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you on the schedule for today.” He said brightly.

Harriet tried to smile back, but what came out was more of a grimace. “Good morning. Yes, something came up last minute. I hate to be a bother, but is there any way you could squeeze me in today? It’s time-sensitive.”

“Of course. Let me see what I can do.” His fingers took off in a flurry of keys. “Okay, it looks like you’re in luck. Dr. Harmon’s project got pushed back so we’re actually free all day. How many hours should I put you down for?”

“I might as well take the whole day then, if that’s okay. I don’t know how long this will take.”

He nodded. After another bout of typing, he reached under the desk and pressed a large green button. The stainless steel door behind him clicked, and he waved Harriet through. She thanked him and walked through the heavy door, slamming it behind her so that the intricate lock system would re-engage.

On autopilot, she walked into the command room and stood in front of the screen that took up the entire back wall. She waved to activate the motion sensor, and the dark screen lit up and flashed the words “Welcome, Dr. Grant. How can I assist you today?”. Even after ten years, Harriet still felt a twinge of almost maternal pride every time she looked at it, or thought about everything it was capable of. She wasn’t a household name, or even particularly well-regarded by her peers—there were only about twenty people living who knew what she had achieved—but Harriet and her team had done what should have been impossible, what all but a few still believed to be impossible.

Today, however, that pride was overshadowed by what Harriet had taken to calling the pit. The pit had opened up inside her two months ago, and it swallowed every feeling she started to have before she could even react. Her life’s work, the inexhaustible curiosity that kept her up at night, the thrilling sense of possibility that made every weekend spent in the lab worthwhile, that wonderfully surreal feeling she got when the laws that held the universe together bent to her will, everything that used to matter to her…none of it was any match for the pit.

For example, she should have been shaking with nerves right now. She was about to attempt something entirely unauthorized, something that could get her security clearance stripped for life. And sure, they had all taken risks before—they had slipped in and out of almost every historical event of the last 100 years. But they had never purposefully interacted with anything or anyone. The thread between the past and the present was still too tenuous. And preventing two people from meeting, preventing the countless events and sub-events that had flowed from that meeting in thousands of rivulets…Harriet should have at least had serious doubts.

But, if she could have peeled herself open, she would have found no doubts. Only that swirling, gnawing emptiness that ate her from the inside out. If she waited much longer, she’d be a black hole where a person had once stood.

So Harriet reached into her bag and pulled out a pair of large, thick-rimmed glasses and a disposable face mask, then pushed back her short graying hair and put both on. She tapped the screen once, and the welcome message disappeared. In its place appeared fields for date, time, location, and sub-location. Without a second thought, she typed:

Date: August 12, 1993

Time: 20:37 CET

Location: Hamburg International Airport

Sub-location: Baggage Claim, Carousel 2

The screen faded to black. “Tap to proceed,” it read in white letters. She tapped, and the machinery behind the screen came alive with a metallic whirring. After about thirty seconds, a slot opened up in the wall beside the screen. A tray holding a small steel box slid out of the slot, and Harriet reached down to retrieve it. She opened the box to reveal two buttons, one green, one red. With a blank expression, she pressed the green button and stood painstakingly still as the walls seemed to close around her.

***

Harriet blinked, her eyes struggling to acclimate to the bustling airport’s harsh fluorescent lighting. She should have been accustomed to traveling after almost ten years, but her system still needed a minute to adjust after catapulting into a different decade (and continent). Discreetly, she shut the steel box she still held and slipped it into her bag as she took in her new surroundings. It wasn’t a terribly interesting locale—baggage claim hadn’t changed much in thirty years, and all airports looked more or less the same regardless of country.

An incoming flight from Vienna had just landed, and a few dozen people milled around the carousel as they waited for their luggage to come down. If Harriet didn’t pay attention, she could almost convince herself that she hadn’t traveled back at all, but there were hints if she looked a little closer. She didn’t know much about fashion, but she did know that it would be unusual to see this much flannel and distressed denim in 2023. And the cellphones were a dead giveaway—several people held those clunky, virtually indestructible Nokia phones that she still remembered well. 

Without attracting any attention, Harriet positioned herself as close as she could to the luggage chute. She used her peripheral vision to locate the young woman with long black hair haphazardly piled up in an orange plastic clip and beat-up Doc Martens on her feet. The young woman took no notice of Harriet, and her unfocused, glassy expression suggested that her thoughts were lightyears away. Harriet felt a twinge of something she couldn’t identify in her chest. Guilt, maybe? She quickly averted her eyes.

A few yards to Harriet’s other side stood a man, maybe thirty years old. His hair and beard were long and unkempt, and, though he was over six feet tall, the comically large camera bag slung over his shoulder overwhelmed his skinny frame. This time, Harriet didn’t look away fast enough—her brain shouted at her to do it, but her eyes wouldn’t be moved. After a few seconds, the man’s warm hazel eyes met hers, a confused expression on his weather-worn face, and still Harriet did not look away. Her legs began to wobble and her lips parted as though she might say something, but she held his gaze in silence for what felt like a full minute.

 At that moment, a blaring alarm started to sound, warning travelers that the luggage chute was about to turn on. Somehow relieved and reluctant all at once, Harriet turned her eyes to the carousel, and the man did the same. She remembered exactly what she was looking for: a blue nylon suitcase with well-worn wheels and a little piece of ribbon tied to the handle (for easy identification). She watched the first few suitcases come down with her arms outstretched, ready to spring. A quick glance to the left told Harriet that the young woman in the Doc Martens was still not paying attention even now that the luggage was incoming. 

After a seemingly infinite number of multicolored suitcases, the blue suitcase in question landed on the carousel. Harriet quickly grabbed it and pulled it onto the floor. Readjusting her mask and glasses to obscure as much of her face as possible, she slowly and conspicuously wheeled the suitcase towards the young woman. Harriet had almost managed to pass her completely and was beginning to formulate a new plan when the young woman finally turned around and stopped her. 

“Excuse me! Or, um, Entschuldigung! Dieser…suitcase…ist mein?” The young woman stammered.

Harriet smiled but avoided direct eye contact. She feigned looking down at the suitcase in surprise. “Oh my God, this isn’t mine! I’m so sorry, hun. All these suitcases look the same to me.”

The young woman reached for the suitcase. “Oh, you speak English! Thank God, my German is just awful. And don’t worry about it, I didn’t think you were stealing or anything.”

Harriet glanced back at the carousel and saw that the man with the camera bag was still waiting for his luggage. She’d have to keep talking. The young woman moved to walk around Harriet, and Harriet slightly angled her body to block her.

“Well, good, I’m glad!” Harriet chattered, “I’m just a disaster in airports. Always losing my bearings!”

The young woman smiled politely. “Oh, me too. Really, it was no problem. Good luck finding your luggage!” She started to walk away, and Harriet fell into step beside her.

“So, you’re American, too! What were you doing in Germany?” Harriet asked brightly.

“Oh, I was at a…physics conference in Austria. I’m in grad school. Listen, sorry, I have a connecting flight and I’m already cutting it close, so I should run. I hope you have a safe trip!” The younger woman rushed off before Harriet could catch up.

Harriet turned back towards the luggage carousel, and her eyes softened as she watched the man with the camera bag grab a blue nylon suitcase with well-worn wheels and a little piece of twine tied to the handle (for easy identification). A lump formed in her throat as he wheeled it away in the opposite direction of the young woman. 

Part of her wanted to run after him, to lead him back to that idealistic young woman with the whole world in front of her, to put their story back in motion. She’d need him to anchor her in the real world, to remind her that, even though “time is a flat circle” and all that, her life was happening now. Who else would infuse her sterile, academic world with warmth and color?

For a moment, clarity hit Harriet like lightning—every story had a tragic ending as long as people were involved, people with their stupid, inevitable impermanence. But transient things were still worth having, weren’t they? Wasn’t that what made them worth having in the first place? Only finite things could ever be precious—maybe that was why time fascinated her so much.

She felt the truth of all this on some essential level, but the moment ended as soon as it began. A last-minute epiphany was no match for everything that had brought her here. The man walked through the double doors that led to the rest of the airport, and Harriet’s feet never left the ground.

As soon as he was out of sight, she felt something like a knife turn in her gut. She eased herself down onto a nearby bench and bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood, hoping that real, physical pain would crowd out the churning black waves that threatened to tear through her chest. Though she usually felt the pit as something inside her, suddenly she found herself looking up from the bottom of it, sitting alone in the silent, crushing darkness. She didn’t know if she was crying, or if her face was just wet. She didn’t know if the kindly old man who had stopped in front of her was trying to speak to her, or if his lips were just moving. All she knew was that she had to get up to get out.

So she stood up from the bench, ears ringing and stomach reeling, and stumbled over to the nearest bathroom. She shut herself into a stall and took the steel box out of her bag. Before she could form a single thought, she opened it and pressed the red button, and the walls seemed to close around her.

***

“Welcome back, Dr. Lee,” The command room screen read.

Harriet wobbled on her feet. She’d first started traveling fifteen years ago, and she was rarely this disoriented upon return. Her head felt like it was packed with cotton, and everything in the room seemed slightly out of place. She put a hand to her face and was surprised to find it wet. Her heart rate sped up, and she took deep, full-body breaths to slow it down. It had just been a rough journey. Although, when she really thought about it, she couldn’t remember where she’d gone. Her memories only went back as far as that morning, and she couldn’t find any indication of why she’d come into the command room right when she got to the lab.

She tapped into the screen and opened up the travel history folder. The last trip listed was over a week ago. She’d forgotten trips before, but it was a little strange that the machine didn’t remember it. Still, she’d probably only changed something minor by accident. Otherwise she wouldn’t still be standing (relatively) intact in this same command room. This was a risk that came with the territory, they all knew that. And, anyways, whatever had happened, no one would know either way, not even her. There really wasn’t any point in dwelling on it.

Harriet squared her shoulders and used her full body to open the command room’s heavy steel door. She kept a carefully neutral expression on her face as she walked up to the desk attendant, who all but cowered from her. This was a good sign—how much could she really have changed the present if the support staff was still scared of her?

“Have you finished for the day, Dr. Lee?” He asked timidly.

“Yes, lock up for the night.” Harriet said brusquely, already striding past the desk.

She drove home in silence, taking no notice of the summer sunset that tinted the evening sky with rich pinks and oranges. When she got back to her studio apartment, she popped a frozen meal into the microwave, and ate the gluey mashed potatoes and rubbery chicken in front of the TV. At exactly 9:00, she brushed her teeth, took a sleeping pill, and went to bed. She set her alarm so she could get to the lab before sunrise and waited for the heavy blanket of medicated sleep to fall over her.

It didn’t, though. At 1:00, she was still wide awake and staring at the ceiling, awash with feelings she couldn’t begin to understand. Anxiety from today’s strange trip would’ve made sense, but that wasn’t it. Instead, Harriet had the eerie sense that something she couldn’t even put into words was missing. She’d never shared her bed with anyone, but somehow it felt empty with just her in it. Everything in her life was accounted for, but some absence lurked just under the surface. And a part of her that wasn’t part of her at all ached like a phantom limb.

Randomly, her thoughts turned to the rundown apartment she’d lived in during grad school. One of those slumlord-owned properties that every student fell victim to at some point. Instead of actually fixing the imperfections left by previous tenants, her landlord had covered everything from nail holes to exposed drywall with a thick layer of chalky white paint. From a distance, the walls looked fine enough. Upon inspection, though, she could just make out the shapes of everything her landlord had tried to conceal.

She’d never have been able to peel back all that paint without destroying the walls. But the impossibility of getting at whatever was underneath had bothered Harriet the whole time she’d lived there.