Seo and Jack raced back into Oliver, Seo attired in ratty jeans and a T-shirt, Jack in his usual military greatcoat.
"Not that year!" Seo said, racing to the console and adjusting the controls. She yanked down a lever. "Let's try next year!"
Oliver sprung into life, tumbling through the vortex.
"You know, we only looked in one dorm, at one event," Jack offered. "We could have missed her."
"Missed her?" Seo shook her head. "They're dropping a piano from the roof of Baker House, Jack! Where and when else would you be at MIT?"
Jack gave her a sidelong glance. "Uh…"
The ship fell silent, as it landed.
"There! Baker House, MIT, one year later — 1973!" Seo said, rushing out the door. "Come on, Jack! We have to find Jenny!"
Jack sighed, following her. "I think you just wanna see the piano drop."
They went to 1973.
Then 1974.
Then 75.
And on, and on, and on, and on.
Still… no Jenny. No trace she'd ever been to any of those years.
"We know she's somewhere around MIT, right around the time of year when they drop that piano," Seo muttered. "One of these years has to be right!"
Jack nodded, slowly.
These sisters really needed to get a better way to track each other down.
"If we just go through all of them…" Seo began, setting the controls to Baker House, 1981.
"You know," Jack cut in, "these are MIT students at these events. If we go to every single MIT piano drop, wearing the same clothes and looking the same age, they're going to notice. And they're going to figure it out."
"So we'll change clothes!" Seo said, racing back to her room. "We have to find Jenny! It's important."
They changed clothes, for 1981.
And for 1982.
All the way until 1995… but still…
No Jenny.
"Not seen anyone like that named Jenny," an MIT student told Seo, after she'd given him a description. "Is she a time traveler, too?"
Seo jumped. "What?"
"Come on, you've gotta tell us how your time machine works," said another student, barging in on the conversation. "We've got all kinds of theories."
Seo turned on her heels, grabbed Jack by his shirtsleeve and dragged him away from his latest attempt to flirt with the professors, and raced away from Baker House.
Only just managed to lose the pursuing students, before heading back to Oliver. At which point, Seo slammed the doors, breathing hard.
"Good time to stop?" Jack proposed.
Seo stared at him. "And miss Jenny?!" She raced back to the central console. "No! We'll just skip ahead fifty years. By then, everyone will have forgotten. We'll be anonymous, again. And we can check the records to see if Jenny's shown up."
So they went to the Annual Piano Drop of 2052. And then the one in 2102. And the one in 2152.
Sure enough, people seemed to have forgotten that Seo and Jack were time travelers.
But still… no Jenny.
And it was a little more effort than before — Seo and Jack having not only to slip away from Baker House to check records, but also… before even emerging from Oliver… to race through the ship, trying to dress correctly for whatever the next piano drop would bring. Always stepping outside and double-checking the dress code, to make sure they were wearing something that would blend in.
Turned out, over the 21st and 22nd centuries, the Piano Drop was elevated from a bunch of students chucking a piano off the top of Baker House, to a formal event and dinner on the roof of that same house, where speeches were made, a piano revealed, a concert played upon the instrument…
And then it was thrown off the roof.
"This glass piano was built especially for this 180th MIT Piano Drop," announced the Professor who had designed it. He quickly rattled off a scientific explanation for how he and his grad students had gotten the resonances to actually work, to allow the piano to sound like a normal piano. "And, of course, because of these properties," the Professor concluded, heading over to the piano, "each key will sound slightly sharper or flatter, depending on how you press it." He demonstrated for the crowd.
The piano lit up in an array of different colors, growing more red as the tone went gradually sharper, and more blue as the notes went gradually flatter.
The crowd applauded.
"We did the colors," one of the grad students whispered to Seo, leaning over. "Impressive, huh? No electronics involved — it's all built into the properties of the glass, using resonance to bring out the different natural hues."
"Impressive," Seo said.
"Yeah," the grad student replied. Then, with a smirk, "Bet it's not as impressive as what you guys saw last piano drop, though. Huh?"
Seo did a double-take. "What?"
"You know. Fifty years in the future." The grad student shrugged. "That's gotta beat out this one."
Seo didn't know what to say. "I… I… don't…"
A second student came over, a cocktail in his hand. "No, of course she doesn't," he butted in. "The last one she went to was fifty years in the past, not the future."
"I'd better go," Seo said, spinning on her heels and racing away.
"No, wait!" shouted the grad students. "Are you going forwards in time, or backwards? We wanna know who won the bet!"
Seo dragged Jack back to Oliver, as they frantically tried to evade curious MIT students who had already found it, and were trying to analyze it.
They took off.
"No more piano drops?" Jack asked.
"No more piano drops," Seo agreed. "We'll find Jenny another way."
Problem was… while Seo and Jack were both agreed… Oliver wasn't.
And, ultimately, it was Oliver who was in control.
When Seo tried to direct Oliver to a random spot in space and time, to explore — Oliver overrode the controls. Eager to continue to run through MIT history! He materialized right on the roof of Baker House, 2202.
When Seo and Jack emerged, everyone was expecting them.
And applauding.
"As usual, it looks like our time travelers have decided to join us — just like they do every fifty years," announced the female Professor, who was currently giving the speech about the piano she and her research team had designed. She looked directly at Seo and Jack. "I'm sure you'll be flattered to know that practically every student from Course 140T is here, today, specifically for you."
Turned out, the students from Course 140T were the ones studying temporal theory.
A department partially inspired by Seo and Jack, themselves.
Seo's face went bright red.
But it was too late to go back to Oliver, now. Not when they were being mobbed by students trying to figure out how everything worked, and trying to take readings and measurements.
"Oh, there are lots of different theories about who you are," one of the students explained to Seo. "But I think the students are pretty clear on it. You're us, from the future. You invented time travel, and thought… why not pull the all-time best prank in MIT history?"
Seo forced a smile on her face, and gave a nervous laugh. "Was it that obvious?"
"Obvious? It's great!" shouted another student. "Totally what I would do, if I discovered time travel! Go back and screw with everyone's heads by putting yourself into all the MIT piano drops!"
"With the time machine that looks like a Pablo Picaso painting," said a third student, examining the mess of colors and shapes that represented Seo's ultimate failure to fix the chameleon circuit. "What's it supposed to be?"
"Uh…" said Seo.
When Seo and Jack returned to Oliver, they were a little more rattled. A little more shaken. And even more determined not to see any more MIT piano drops.
They fiddled with Oliver. Tried to force it to go somewhere different.
Anywhere except Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the 280th annual piano drop.
"I thought you could control the flow of energy," Jack said, "and override the coordinates to make sure this ship went wherever you wanted."
Seo gritted her teeth. "So did I," she muttered. Yanking a lever, irritated. "But it looks like, now that Oliver's grown up, he's found a way to override my override."
Jack chuckled, patting Oliver. "Mischievous little kid."
"Mischievous little time machine!" Seo retorted, smashing the console with the heel of her shoe. "And naughty!" She leaned down, so her face was directly above the console. "You hear that, Oliver!" she shouted. "I said you were naughty! And I stand by it. Now stop taking us to Massachusetts!"
With much persuasion, Oliver moved them to another planet. Seo breathing a sigh of relief, when she realized she'd finally managed to convince her ship to stop taking them to MIT piano drops.
Seo and Jack emerged.
To discover themselves face-to-face with the top of a high-rise building, a piano, a string orchestra, and a bunch of students and professors in formal dress.
Turned out… MIT had moved the Piano Drop to one of its extension campuses.
Off-world. On a planet everyone just called "Planet 3."
"It made sense," one of the students explained to Seo. "After all, the Piano Drop is basically an annual competition, in the material sciences department, to determine who can build a functional piano out of the most ridiculous materials available — but one which will still smash to bits when you throw it off a building. Why keep it on Earth, when all the material science departments are here?"
"That wasn't how the Piano Drop started out in 1972," Seo said.
The student shrugged. "Times change."
That much was obvious from the student population, which seemed to be currently composed of a mix of humans and aliens. And from the obvious resentment between the students in Materials Sciences and Engineering, and the students in Spacio-Temporal Engineering.
"Basically, we want to send the piano through a wormhole," said one of the Spacio-Temporal Engineering majors. "Or several wormholes. We're pretty sure if we send it through the right quantum gateway, we temporarily phase the piano — for part of its fall — into a universe in which the piano both exists and doesn't exist, simultaneously. Then, put it through another wormhole, to undo the effect, and allow it to change back to smash when it hits the ground." The student crossed her arms. "But the jerks in Material Sciences won't let us. Because this is 'their thing'."
"If you come back next year, you'll see — this'll all come to a head," said another student. "Make no mistake about that."
Perhaps Oliver had overheard this.
Or perhaps TARDISes just knew these kinds of things, automatically.
But Oliver skipped them ahead a year, to exactly the same spot. Where Seo and Jack discovered that the Annual MIT Piano Drop had been suspended, as the students from one department kept sabotaging anything prepared by the students from the other department.
Seo and Jack did what they could to put things right.
They were half expecting Jenny to show up and help them out. After all… they knew she had to be around here, at some point — and this was just the kind of thing that'd get her attention!
But still.
No Jenny.
And when Seo and Jack showed up, next, at the 380th Piano Drop, they found a piano made from running water, with a special substance laced into the water molecules to make the piano actually look and play like a piano. The piano's water supply was renewed by a constant stream of water from a dimensional anomaly incorporated into the material built into the core of the piano, itself. It didn't sound quite like pianos from the 21st century, anymore.
But it did play.
And, when they threw it off the building, it went through a wormhole that would change its physical properties so that the piano was now made of wood, just in time for it to smash on the ground.
"Looks like we didn't find Jenny," Jack said, as they walked back into Oliver, "but we did help the MIT extension campus to learn to work together."
"Let's see if Oliver can take a lesson from them," Seo proposed, "and show that kind of compromise with us." She raced to the central console, trying — once more — to make the ship stop going to MIT.
Oliver groaned into life.
And slid into the vortex. Seo's face turning into a delighted grin, as Oliver slipped past the year 2352, and further into the future. Looked like Oliver had finally gotten over his fixation with MIT.
"Next stop," Seo announced, "anywhere except Baker House!"
Which was when Oliver suddenly went crazy.
Throwing Seo and Jack to the floor, as it bucked. The controls sparked and fizzled. The ship slammed himself against the edges of the vortex, making every system go haywire, and making the ship cry out as if in pain. Seo tried to calm her ship down, but found herself instead being thrown to the floor once more — as the ship slammed into an emergency crash landing.
Seo coughed.
Got up from the ground, looked out the window. They were positioned between two brick walls, nothing exciting there. She checked the flickering display on the console, to find out where and when they were.
"Oh, you're kidding!" Seo said. Pointing to it. "Baker House?! Again?!"
"Guess this ship of yours really likes destroying pianos," Jack replied, also coughing, trying to dust off his jacket. He peered at the display, just before it flickered off, for good. "Can't get a fix on the time coordinates, though, looks like. But I'm guessing it's a lot more in the future than the 33rd century."
Seo sighed. Then turned around, and pushed her way out the doors.
"Better see what Annual Piano Drop this is," she said, as she emerged outside. "After a ride like that, I could do with…"
She trailed off.
Jack stepped out, behind her. "Could do with a drink?" he guessed. "Funny, that's exactly what I was going to—"
Then Jack stopped.
Frozen, as the two stared out at the landscape, around them. The ruins of Baker House, and the ruins of a city. Buildings crumbling before their eyes, as if all this had been abandoned for a very long time.
Rats scuttled along the road.
And the only sound was that of the empty wind.
"I think… we missed the Piano Drop," Seo said, in a whisper.
Jack's eyes lingered in the distance. "Looks like whatever happened, here," he muttered, "dropping pianos is the least of their worries."