The floorboards of the kitchen felt unnaturally solid beneath Robert's feet, each grain of wood a stark, hyper-realistic detail in a world that had to be a dream. Yet, the splintering texture against his socks, the faint smell of beeswax and baking bread, the concerned crease on Eleanor's brow—it was all too vivid, too consistent to be a hallucination.
"Sir? Please," Eleanor insisted, her voice gentle but firm. She pulled out a sturdy wooden chair from the table. "Sit. You look like you're about to fall over."
Mechanically, Robert obeyed. His legs, feeling like overstretched rubber bands, gave way, and he slumped into the chair. The wood was hard and unyielding. This was no simulation. This was… real.
Eleanor bustled over to a porcelain sink with a single, cold-water tap and filled a glass. The sound of the water hitting the glass was deafening in the silence. She placed it in front of him. His hand trembled as he reached for it. The glass was cool and heavy. He took a sip. The water was clean, tasteless, and utterly mundane, which made the situation even more bizarre.
"My husband, Arthur, found you last night," Eleanor continued, watching him closely as she wiped her hands on her apron. "Out front on the porch, just lying there. We thought you were a drunk, to be honest, but you're not dressed like any drunkard I've ever seen." Her eyes flickered over his t-shirt and jeans with open curiosity. "And you don't smell of drink. Where did you come from? What's your name?"
"Robert," he managed to choke out, his voice a hoarse whisper. "Robert Vale." He said the name like a ward, a charm that might snap everything back to normal.
"Vale?" Eleanor's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Well, I'll be. That's a coincidence. The family that built this house, oh, sixty years ago, were named Vale. Moved out to the West Coast before we bought it. No relation, I assume?"
The information hit Robert like a physical blow. This was his house. The foundation, the walls, the very bones of it were the same. But the life inside it, the history, had been completely erased and rewritten. He was sitting in his own kitchen, a ghost in his own home.
"No," he stammered. "No relation."
He needed air. He needed to see. The newspaper date screamed in his mind: *1935*.
"Ma'am… Eleanor," he said, forcing a politeness he didn't feel. "Thank you for your kindness. I… I must have taken a bad turn. I need to… to get my bearings. May I step outside for a moment?"
"Of course, dear," she said, her kindness a torturous comfort. "But don't you wander off too far. You're still pale."
Robert nodded, pushing himself up from the table. His legs felt a little steadier, fueled by a surge of adrenaline and sheer, unadulterated panic. He walked through the living room—where a bulky, fabric-covered radio console stood in the place of his entertainment center—and reached the front door. It was the same solid oak door he'd passed through a thousand times, but the brass knob was worn in a different pattern.
He turned it and stepped out onto the porch.
The world that met his eyes was a punch to the gut.
The air was different. It was cleaner, sharper, carrying the scent of freshly cut grass, damp earth, and the faint, sweet smell of coal smoke from a distant chimney. The sounds were alien. There was no constant, low hum of distant freeways, no drone of aircraft in the sky. Instead, he heard the chirping of sparrows, the rustle of leaves in a large oak tree that, in his time, was a stunted remnant, and the distinct clip-clop of horse hooves on pavement.
He walked to the edge of the porch, his hand gripping the white-painted railing—a railing he himself had helped his father repaint a decade ago. The street was both familiar and a historical replica. The asphalt was there, but it was rougher, patchier. Parked along the curb were not the sleek, silent cars of his memory, but hunched, high-bodied automobiles with sweeping fenders, large headlights like insect eyes, and running boards. A black Model A Ford chugged past, its engine puttering noisily, the driver tipping his hat to a woman walking her dog.
The houses across the street were mostly the same structures he knew, but they looked newer, their paint fresher, their gardens more meticulously kept, without the satellite dishes or solar panels that would one day dot their roofs. Wires for telegraphs and early telephones stretched between wooden poles, creating a sparse web against the blue sky.
Ninety years.
The thought was no longer an abstract concept. It was the rust on the mailbox. It was the style of the woman's cloche hat down the street. It was the sheer, deafening quiet, broken only by the sounds of life, not industry.
His eyes scanned the horizon. No skyscrapers. No contrails. The city skyline in the distance was low, dominated by a few art deco spires he recognized from old history books. His mind, trained for engineering and physics, began to calculate the terrifying implications. The Second World War was four years away. The Great Depression was still gripping the nation. The technological gap between what he knew and what this world possessed was a chasm wider than the Atlantic.
He thought of his machine, the "Chronos Anomaly." Was it still in the basement? Had it transported him physically, or was this some form of projection? A desperate, wild hope flared in his chest. If the machine was here, perhaps he could reverse the process. Perhaps he could go back.
He turned abruptly and re-entered the house, his heart hammering against his ribs. Eleanor was kneading dough on the kitchen counter, humming that same unfamiliar tune.
"Eleanor," he said, trying to keep his voice level. "Your basement… may I see it? I think… I think I dropped something last night." It was a weak excuse, but it was all he had.
She looked up, her expression one of mild confusion. "The basement? It's just a root cellar, Mr. Vale. Damp and full of preserves and Arthur's old tools. There's nothing down there of yours, I'm sure."
"Please," he insisted, a note of desperation creeping into his voice. "I just need to look. It will only take a moment."
She studied him for a long moment, her kind eyes now tinged with a hint of wariness. He was a stranger, acting strangely. But her inherent decency won out. "Alright then. The door is just there, past the pantry. Mind the third step; it creaks."
Robert didn't wait for further permission. He strode to the door she indicated—the same door that in his time led to his lab. He yanked it open, expecting to see the steep staircase descending into his world of wires and steel.
Instead, he was met with a short, crumbling set of stone steps leading down into a dank, earthy-smelling darkness. He fumbled for a pull-cord and a single, bare bulb flickered on, casting a weak, yellow light.
The basement was small, low-ceilinged, and packed with shelves holding jars of pickled vegetables, sacks of potatoes, and cobweb-covered tools. In one corner was a coal chute. In the other, a rust-flecked furnace. There was no tangle of copper coils. No humming capacitor. No crystalline core. No machine.
The "Chronos Anomaly" was gone. Vanished. As if it had never existed.
The last flicker of hope died in Robert's chest, extinguished by the cold, damp reality of the root cellar. He wasn't a time traveler with a machine. He was a castaway. A man out of time, stranded in an era he had only ever read about, his only ticket home evaporated into the same paradox that had brought him here.
He climbed back up the stairs, his body heavy with a defeat more profound than any he had felt in front of Professor Albright. Eleanor was waiting, her dough forgotten.
"Find what you were looking for?" she asked softly.
Robert looked at her, at this kind woman living in his house nearly a century before he was born. A terrifying loneliness, vast and absolute, engulfed him.
"No," he whispered, the word tasting like ash. "No, I don't think I'll ever find it again."