5

The farm was owned and run by an older couple, Clara and Mariam. They were in their late eighties and had been here all their lives. They were pleased to have a well-paying boarder, they told me that first night, over a dinner of quiche and the freshest salad I’d tasted in decades, and they would ask me no questions. They respected privacy above all.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Your sister left us some identity paperwork for you,” Clara said. “Birth certificate and such. Shall we call you by the name on the paperwork?”

“Call me Gaspery,” I said. “Please.”

“Well, Gaspery,” Clara said, “should you ever have need of your documents, it’s all in that blue cabinet by the hallway door.”

I didn’t leave the farm at all those first few years, but I feared that eventually I’d have to. When Mariam fell ill, Clara drove her to the hospital, but who would drive Clara? They were nearing ninety. My first case at the Institute involved a doppelgänger, Ephrem had told me once, in another, unfathomable life. According to our best facial-recognition software, the same woman appeared in photographs and video footage taken in 1925 and 2093. Whenever I imagined leaving the farm, I imagined surveillance cameras picking up my face and setting off alarms through the centuries, a Time Institute agent arriving to investigate, a cascade of horrors. I spoke with Clara, who made discreet inquiries with a neighbor, who had a friend with useful contacts, and a short time later I was lying on my back on the farmhouse kitchen table, undergoing laser facial resculpting and iris recoloring.

When the sedation wore off and I sat up, the surgeon was gone.

“Whiskey?” Mariam asked.

“Please,” I said.

“You look completely different,” Clara said. She passed me a mirror, and I gasped.

I did look completely different. But I recognized my face.