Chapter 5: A Glimpse of the Future

Number 075 waited quietly while I pulled myself together before telling me about her second mission. She sounded professional but not unkind, like a counselor who’d seen too much.

She needed me to take her to the library to look at this world’s history and geography.

"With space-time travel advancing, we’ve discovered Earth’s timeline has been disrupted again and again. We think more people—maybe a lot more—have been trafficked into other times. We need to check the records."

As empress, I could bring anyone into the library. It was the only real privilege my prison offered.

We met no resistance. Guards bowed and stepped aside, never questioning the strange woman at my side.

Number 075 pulled out an optical computer—sleek, almost alien, but she handled it like it was just another phone.

I stared, amazed by how fast technology had changed while I was gone.

For the first time in years, I had someone who understood McDonald’s jokes, who knew what Netflix was. The words tumbled out of me:

"It’s wild how fast things changed. When I got pulled here, smartphones were just getting big. My thirteenth birthday gift was my first iPhone. Now we’ve got optical computers?"

I thought of my old desk mate, the one who’d loaned me a trashy vampire novel the night I vanished. "I still haven’t returned that book. Seventeen years of late fees would buy out the whole store. I wonder how she’s doing now. Married? Kids? Did she ever wonder what happened to me? If that book’s still around, I want to buy her a copy. She’d probably chew me out for keeping it this long."

She always traded me her Goldfish crackers at lunch, but only if I promised to do her algebra homework. She’d been my best friend since we were toddlers—sharp-tongued, book-obsessed, always sneaking novels into her math textbook. She said she’d become an author someday and dedicate her first book to me.

I wondered if she ever did. If somewhere on Earth, there was a book with my name in it—a sign that someone still remembered me.

A bittersweet smile tugged at my lips as I got lost in the memory. I didn’t notice the strange look on Number 075’s face—something like recognition, or sorrow, or a secret too heavy to share.

I opened my mouth to ask what she was thinking, but the words stuck. For the first time in years, I was almost afraid to know the answer.