“Should I take off my dress, Doctor?” said Ms. Connor.
“That won’t be necessary,” muttered Dr. Pascal absentmindedly as he fiddled with dials and knobs on the chair upon which she sat. “This is only a test.”
Both Ms. Connor and Dr. Pascal wore small goggles over their eyes which shielded them from the bright lights glowing and flashing around them.
Through the dark violet glasses, she could see the doctor in the UV and heat spectra. She could not see much of the doctor himself because of the lab coat he wore, but she could see his heat radiating in his face, his eyes, his dexterous fingers. Through the warm glow, his hair looked disheveled, lovely, and thick, accentuated by the chiseled side-burns cut at an angle.
“Is something wrong with the machine?” she asked him.
“Just a little glitch,” he said.
“I’m not going to end up in the dinosaur era, am I?”
He laughed. She loved the sound of it, like a deep sonorous bell.
“Have you ever done it?” she said, leaning to get a better look of him.
“Travel to the past?” He stopped fiddling and looked pensive. “Once, I went back a decade ago…” Then he fell silent.
Under normal circumstances, she would’ve thought nothing of his stoic demeanor. But with the aid of the goggles, she could see the rush of blood to his face, the UV lines accentuating a sadness and pain in his eyes.
Her reverie was broken by a hiss of steam and sharp vibration under her seat. She gasped.
“Sorry about that,” the doctor said turning some dials and pressing buttons.
“Are you sure you don’t need me to take off my dress?”
The doctor paused.
“Now that I think of it,” he said, “perhaps the metal in your corset is interfering with the instruments.”
She sat up straight in the chair, then turning away from him, she grabbed the auburn locks of her hair and raised them to reveal the clasps of her dress, neatly spaced along the sinuous line of her back.
“I need your assistance,” she whispered.
Dr. Pascal put his tool aside and reached for her dress. That’s when he heard a swooshing sound, then ZAP!
She was gone.
“Oh… my…”
He raced to the tubular monitors and turned them on. There she was. On monitor 23. In the middle of a strange city of glass. It couldn’t be. The navigation panel indicated that this was the Trappist-1 system, over 40 light years from Earth- 10 million years ago.
On the monitor, she looked around confused. Then she noticed her new outfit. Her new body. The semblance to her old self was there, but clearly she was a new species. Similar to those around her.
Dr. Pascal removed his goggles and fixed his gaze on the monitor.
“Good luck, Ms. Connor. Wherever and whenever you are.”
