Submitted for the September 2025 prompt: Terrestrial Settings

"Welcome to TimeShare Corp. How may we help you?"

 

"Hi, I'd like to plan a vacation," I told the temp agent.

 

"A temporal vacation, I assume. To when do you wish to travel?"

 

Temporal agents are so literal.

 

"I've always heard stories about my maternal great-grandmother. She played a role in the student demonstrations in Spain — you know, the overthrow of the Franco government. She's kind of a legend in my family. A hero. But nobody knows exactly what happened to her.

 

"Okay," said the temp agent, his fingers moving in the air, taking notes of our conversation. "So you'd like to travel to…"

 

He consulted a computer display that I couldn't see floating between us.

 

"…1968, is it? And exactly which date?"

 

"May first. Uno de Mayo," I said.

 

"Of course. And how long a visit?"

 

"The whole month," I responded.

 

He again focused through the display to give me a curious look. A moment later, he continued typing in air.

 

"We'll need a full DNA map of your great-grandmother."

 

"Will this do?" I asked, carefully handing him a lock of hair sealed in clear plastic. I'd found it in my mother's keepsake chest after she passed, neatly labeled "Ana Luisa."

 

The temp agent examined the hair sample with a jeweler's loupe and declared it suitable.

 

"Looks like there are some roots in there for nuclear DNA, and since we'll be tracing your matrilineage, the mitochondrial threads in the hair itself will be useful."

 

"Good," I said. "When can I go?"

 

"First, let's make sure you know how this works. A TimeShare isn't exactly time travel. You'll be sharing the consciousness of another person from another time, in this case, your great-grandmother. You'll be able to see, hear, and experience everything she did until the end of your stay. But you will have no free will of your own."

 

"I understand all that. It's the only way to avoid those nasty paradoxes I've read about in sci-fi stories."

 

"But this is not fiction. It's very real, and it can be… disconcerting."

 

"I'm ready," I assured him.

 

* * *

 

The first day of my TimeShare was filled with wonder. Ana Luisa and I lived in a one-bedroom flat in Madrid's Puerto del Sol. The plaza below was a beehive of activity. We could hear student groups chanting slogans and sirens wailing.

 

But we didn't get involved. We sat in the living room chair and re-read Cervantes until dark, then retired for the evening. The next day, it was the same routine.

 

By the third day, I was bored as hell. My whole life, I'd heard stories about my heroic great-grandmother. How she'd been deeply involved in the student protests that took down a dictator. How she'd probably died in one of those protests. I was beginning to doubt the veracity of those stories and to regret sharing Ana's boring life.

 

But then, we awoke on Cinco de Mayo. We immediately began to get ourselves ready to go out. We were more animated, more excited than at any other time so far. Today was the day we'd planned to meet our daughter for brunch. It was something we did every Sunday, and it was the highlight of our week.

We put on makeup, fixed our hair, and put on our best dress and shoes. As we exited the big carved wooden door of the building, we were immediately immersed in a crowd of people, moving and jostling in all directions at once. We walked toward the metro station in the center of Sol, but our path was guided more by the currents of the crowd than by our own intent. I could feel our stress level elevate as we clutched our purse and tried to see over the heads of the masses.

 

A commotion broke out just in front of us. Chants of "Una solución: revolución!" could be heard all around. Black-clad members of the Policia Nationale waded into the mob, swinging batons and cursing.

 

A searing pain in the back of our head caused the world to swirl around us. As we fell to the pavement, the policia swung his baton again and broke our left arm. If I had had the free will to do it, I would have stayed down there. I would have cowered and covered and hoped to hell the violence all around us would dissipate without further pain and injury.

 

But that's not what Ana Luisa did. She gritted her teeth and stood up. Limping and holding our arm, she shoved us through the angry Spaniards in the direction she thought the metro station would probably be. She was determined to get where we were going. Determined to see her daughter and granddaughter again. To ask mundane questions about their lives. Conversations that fulfilled her own life.

 

We stumbled down a stairway and emerged in the Metro station, but not the one we usually took. This one looked strange.

 

When we arrived at the platform, the lights were dim. Only a single bulb illuminated a small group of people standing patiently, waiting for the train to arrive. We approached an elderly man standing with a huge, tattered suitcase, gazing down at his own feet.

 

"Is this Metro Line 1?" we asked him. He slowly turned toward us and nodded once. Neither the old man nor any of the other passengers seemed to notice our injuries. So we all just stood there, stared toward the silent tracks and waited.

 

After a while, we heard the train approaching. The lights flickered on, but the waiting passengers still appeared gray and dusty against the gaity of the white and cobalt blue ceramic tiles decorating the fifty-year-old platform.

 

We tried to forget the pain and prepared to board the train with the others. We could feel a trickle of blood running down our collar, and our arm was mostly useless now.

 

The train's headlights threw sharp shadows against the corners of the station. But not the waiting passengers. The old man and his suitcase were gone, transparent in the harsh headlights.

 

We watched as the train failed to slow, passing by us at top speed. When it was gone, the lights flickered back off, and the waiting passengers, all of us, reappeared.

I spent the remainder of my TimeShare vacation standing in that ghost station, watching the trains come and go.