The Atlas Six (The Atlas, #1)(59)

Nothing, that is, until Libby sought him out.

It wasn’t clear at first that she’d been intentionally looking for him. He had assumed she merely stumbled on him in the painted room after dinner and would therefore hastily leave. It became apparent, however, that the stumbling was really just another side effect of her natural presence, and so he glanced up expectantly.

“I had a thought,” she said.

He waited.

“Well, Varona and I both had a thought. I mean, I thought of it,” Libby clarified hurriedly, “but I needed him to test it, and, well, I don’t know if you’re willing to hear it, but I noticed your drawing the other day and—not that I was prying, I just… oh god, sorry,” she said, mangling what might have been a blissful end to that sentence. “I didn’t mean t-Well, the thing is—”

“Spit it out, Rhodes,” said Tristan. He had just been on the verge of something, maybe. (Probably not, his brain reminded him. Wishful thinking.) “I haven’t got all day.”

“Right, well, alright.” Her cheeks burned furiously, but she came closer. “Can you… try something with me?”

He gave her a look intended to express that he would consider it, if—and only if—it meant she would get to it and leave him alone.

“Right,” she said, clearing her throat. “Watch this.”

She plucked a small rubber ball from her pocket and tossed it, letting it bounce three times before freezing it in place.

“Now watch while I reverse it,” she said.

It bounced three times backwards and landed snugly in her hand.

“Okay,” Tristan said. “And?”

“I have a theory,” Libby said, “that it looked different to you than it did to me. To me, I did the exact same thing forwards and backwards. I could have gone ten seconds back in time and noticed nothing different from before I threw the ball. But you,” she said, trailing off, and waited.

Tristan thought about it.

“Do it again,” he said, and her face immediately relaxed. Relief, he suspected, that he might have actually noticed something, or was at least giving her the opportunity to make him notice.

She tossed the ball again, letting it bounce three times, and froze it.

Then she summoned it back, same as before, and caught it in her hand.

“See something?” she said.

Yes. Not something he could explain, but there was some element out of place. A rapid motion around the ball, barely visible.

“What did you expect me to see?” he asked her.

“Heat,” she said, breath quickening. Clearly she was excited; childishly so. “The thing is,” bubbled from her lips, “according to everything I’ve read, it’s possible time is measurably no different from gravity. Things moving up and down? Gravity. Things moving backward and forward? Force, of course, depending on the dimension—but also, in some respect, time. If the clocks had been stopped, if nothing had changed, there would be no physical evidence that I hadn’t reversed time itself when I reversed the ball’s motion. The only real way you could know that we haven’t traveled in time—aside from trusting your understanding that we haven’t,” she provided as a caveat, gesturing around the room to her experiment, “is that heat was produced by the ball hitting the ground, and heat can’t be lost. Thermal energy bouncing the ball has to go somewhere, so as long as that hasn’t vanished, then we haven’t moved back in time.”

“Okay,” Tristan said slowly, “and?”

“And—”

She stopped.

“And… nothing,” she concluded, deflating a little. “I just thought—” She broke off again, faltering. “Well, if you can see heat, you could also see time, don’t you think?” she said, nudging her fringe aside. “If what you’re seeing is even more specific—electrons or something, or quanta itself—then the next step is to manipulate it. I’ve been thinking about it for ages,” she informed him, again becoming Studious Libby, who temporarily lost her anxious ticks. “With the illusions, with that medeian that I—”

She broke off on the word killed, clearing her throat.

“You told me what you saw,” she clarified, “and I used that information to change my surroundings. So, if you told me what you saw when it came to time—”

“You could use it. Change it.” Tristan chewed the thought for a moment. “Manipulate it?”

“I guess it depends on what you were seeing,” Libby said carefully, “but I think, if I’m right about what you can do, that if you could identify the physical structure of time, then yes. We could maneuver it somehow.” She was breathless with exhilaration; the thrill of a problem nearly solved.

“Though, if you’re busy,” she amended with a floundering blink, “we could always try it another t-”

“Rhodes, shut up,” said Tristan. “Come here.”

She was clearly so pleased that she didn’t bother opposing his tone, instead bounding over to sit beside him. He stopped her and rose to his feet, gesturing her into his chair.

“You sit,” he said. “I’ll stand behind you.”

She slid into his seat and nodded as he concentrated once again.

Whatever this particular magic was, when he focused it hard enough, things became grainy. When he did the equivalent of squinting, it was like the zooming of a microscopic lens. Things were blurrier at the edges, but he could see things, smaller and smaller. Layers upon layers, motion growing more rapid the closer he got.