Threading the needle

I hear my office door open — a millisecond of sound — and look up for the thousandth time. But instead of the suspiciously motionless door I have come to expect, I see a softly closing one, and a small young man standing before it.

I have caught the time criminal during office hours on Tuesday 18 October 2037, at — I immediately check both watches and take notes — 2.47 p.m. University Stitch Time, 9.06 a.m. Pacific Standard.

“You,” I say, breathlessly, leaping to my feet.

“Me,” he replies. He navigates past stacks of stray textbooks to sit in the swivel chair opposite my desk. He spins a little, leaning into the chair’s left side and intuitively avoiding the squeal on its right. He’s so calm I find myself lowering back down to my own seat, feeling self-conscious about my dramatics.

I remind myself that I’m not the one on trial.

The stranger eyes the Newton’s cradle jockeying for space on my desk. He lifts the end ball and releases it, setting the tiny silver spheres clacking. I note his bright eyes and medium-large nose. He could be any of my 101 students, except he isn’t.

“How did you catch me?” he says, turning those curious eyes to me.

“It all started with the front door in the time lab,” I reply, more than ready for this moment.

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“The door,” he repeats.

“Oh, yes. I’d hear it open incredibly quickly. Then I’d look up, and it’d be closed.”

“Mysterious,” he says. “So you figured …”

“So I called maintenance,” I correct. “Who checked and oiled the hinges, then fiddled with other doors in the wing to see if the opening sound was transferring somehow, or if the force of a different door shutting was rattling this one. No luck there. So then I locked it.”

“And then?”

“It started happening to the back door instead.”

The young man smiles.

“I thought perhaps it was a strange effect of our condensed time progression here at the school,” I say, “but none of my colleagues had experienced such a thing within University Stitch Time. Then it started happening in my lecture halls once my whole class was seated. And in this very office.”

I point to my Newton’s cradle, still clacking away. “And this would start. And then suddenly stop.”

“Fascinating.”

He’s mocking me, so I assume a more authoritative posture, clasping my hands together and resting my forearms on the desk. “Someone smart enough to build a stitch that intersects the school’s must realize the stakes here. And trespassing on school property as an unenrolled student —”

“What makes you think I’m not enrolled?” he challenges.

I consider him. “Are you?”

He spins a little more in his chair before replying. “No.”

“So, then. I could turn you in right now.”

His sparse eyebrows raise. “But aren’t you curious? About my stitch?”

“Oh, more than curious,” I say. I’m forgetting to play it cool; I can’t help it now. “I’ve been discussing it with my postgrad students as a hypothetical. I’m toying with an embroidery metaphor. On our side of things, what we see of you — or don’t see at all, really — is a blip. A neat hint of a moment. But on your end —”

“It’s all stretch and tangle,” he finishes.

I blink at him.

He stares back, the tiniest hint of pride quirking his completely unfamiliar features.

Finally, I say, “How long have you been taking my classes?”

He shrugs. “About two years, give or take.”

“But I’ve only been here one year.”

“I know,” he says. “Stretch and tangle, right?”

“I … see,” I say slowly, like I’m thoughtful, not baffled and lying. I suspected some twists of time on his side of things, but he’s suggesting loops, knots, dropped needles, pulled threads — all hidden behind the fabric.

I take a deep breath. “Most students are quite satisfied with the ability to enter UST and complete an 8-hour school day within 8-minutes of real-world time. And yet you took it that much further. Why?”

He shrugs. “You’re not gonna invite the dean in here and ask me that in front of her? Or call the police or something?”

I sigh. “I’m not going to turn you in.”

“So why try to find me?”

“Because you have so much potential,” I confess. “So much that maybe you should be teaching my 101 class. But really, I wanted to give you this.”

I hand him the postgrad Time Scholar application, still warm from the printer. “It’s a full ride,” I say. I think of the school’s concept of time, all taut and tidy: as two-dimensional as the fourth dimension could be. “Maybe you don’t need us. But we might need you.”

He looks at the papers, and for a moment I think he’s going to take them. But he doesn’t.

Then he smiles. “Sometimes you say it differently. I like this take. And,” he says, shifting in his seat to grab something from his back pocket, “you finally convinced me, last time.”

He slides a bundle of paper across the desk to me. I open it to find a finished scholarship application under his name, Elio Figueroa, complete with a stack of extensive diagrams and notes.

“Our next stitch really goes places,” Elio says, beaming as he reaches out to stop the cradle. “You’re gonna love it.”