She steps out of the cave and into the sunlight, discreetly blowing half a day's worth of grit and dust from her nostrils. Europe. Archaeology. Neanderthals! An opportunity of a lifetime. Well worth the thousands of dollars of tuition, and the hundreds more accrued so far in living expenses, she tells herself. Right now, though, she finds herself struggling to believe it. Rocks and bones could yield a lot of information to those trained to find it, but today especially, it is what they aren't saying that preoccupies her thoughts. The intangibles, she calls them: culture, art, language and consciousness. Things that science cannot test, cannot prove.

She cranes her neck to loosen stiff muscles, and pauses to look back into the yawning recess, lit, for now, entirely by the slanting afternoon sunlight. She counts five human bodies scattered amongst the buckets and light poles, five Homo sapiens crouched and sprawled in their thin, dusty summer wear, clutching tiny trowels and clumsy clipboards as they slowly scrape the accumulated blanket of years from the heads and limbs of at least two other hominids of the variety Homo neanderthalensis. Or should it be Homo sapiens neanderthalensis? Ape and man, or man, all? They would not settle such a question here and now, and probably not ever. At least, not in this way.

They could explain how a Neanderthal hand would have crafted a projectile point, but no one would ever know what the Neanderthal mind thought about it, whether those hands crafted out of mere instinct, or also for art. So much of the natural world was recycled by erosion and time: plants, skins, wood, hair. So much so quickly reclaimed by the planet, leaving only the basest of bone and stone traces behind to hint at what had once been. What might have been. Man, or beast? Or some uneasy straddle of the two?

She strolls down the hill towards the water pump, carrying the empty water cooler and wonders why these things trouble her the way they do. Is it a function of being a social animal, and afraid of being alone in the world? Or is it simply that her mind still thrives best on absolutes? Regardless, it is bedeviling curiosity, which this superficial work of dirt removal is only exacerbating. She squints up at the vast, clear sky and the nascent philosopher in her wonders if it isn't a good thing, though, to have a few unanswered questions, a few mysteries to challenge the comfortable, old rules?

"You're all wrong, of course. Poor little humans, bravely facing the darkness with nothing but your little bit of science. It's charming. No, inspirational! But you're still wrong."

The man's voice is idiosyncratic, his words, mid-conversational and seemingly out of context. She stops. She knows that neither he, nor the dark blue portaloo he leans against, were there a moment ago. But from the look on his face, she'd swear he'd just been reading her mind. So she cocks an eyebrow and asks, "How do you know that?"

"Because I was here to see it. Or, rather, I will be," he answers, and her first impulse is to assume he is being sarcastic. And strange.

But she feels accomodating and tells him, considering the last time the cave was inhabited by anyone other than Cro Magnons was over 30,000 years ago, that he looks good for his age.

He appears smug, and perhaps mildly offended when he lets her know that he isn't a day older than 900. She laughs at the lie. So does he. "Would you like to see for yourself?" he asks, opening the door to the portaloo.

She doesn't understand what he means (and has he just invited her inside a portable toilet?). But from out of the door spills a strange, green-gold illumination, and she perceives a bit of contradictory vastness inside. Enough to keep her from retreating back to the cave from this loony. Enough to make her set down the cooler and peer in (and then wonder which of them is the loony, really?).

How is it possible? Did he build it, or find it? Is it even of this world? What's it for?

So many questions, but just one answer, and even that seems given reluctantly: "It travels through time."

And though she is standing in it, engulfed by this gloriously impossible thing, she scoffs. A time machine? After all, the existence of one random impossibility does not imply the existence of any other random impossibility, no more than flipping a coin once has any effect on the second toss.

"Fifteen minutes," he declares ominously, "and you'll have more proof than your little mind will know what to do with."

She takes it as a challenge. It's bait she can't refuse, and from his expression, it's clear he knows it, too.