Traces of June by Rebecca Dengate

Author:Rebecca Dengate [Dengate, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rebecca Dengate

“Are you ready?” Blythe asked June as she entered the travel room. Blythe’s lip was still swollen, but her eyes were clear.

“No,” June said. The MRI was making chirp-THUMP noises as it calibrated.

Blythe laughed, even though June had been answering truthfully, not joking. June kept her elbows tight by her sides. She felt a dribble of sweat leak out of her armpit.

It smelled like plastic, but without the disinfectant odour she associated with hospitals. That morning when she came in, she fancied there was smoke inside, but she probably imagined it, or perhaps it was just the smell of Old Parliament House. A fire had been set by protesters in 2022, destroying the front entrance and leaving soot on every surface on the main level, and June often caught a faint whiff of smoke under the old-building smell.

She pictured herself in the MRI, trapped and flailing at the walls as the noise of the magnets assaulted her, and she shuddered. Everything seemed to be happening too fast, and she couldn’t breathe properly.

She took the earplugs Blythe offered her and put them in with trembling fingers, then sat on the flatbed, far too hot in her puffer jacket, yet shivering. It would be colder where she was going. On the ceiling behind the MRI was a wide titanium—presumably non-magnetic—pipe that fed into the ceiling. June wondered if it were part of the time machine, before remembering that MRIs had to have a cryogen discharge vent for when the cryogens had to be discharged.

This is stupid.

Through the glass, Elijah watched her from behind the control desk. Phoenix came in and looked over the array of machinery in the corner. He said something to Elijah about tritium levels; June couldn’t hear him properly with the earplugs in. The sound of his voice was comforting, though.

Her jacket rustled as she lay down, holding a squishy air-bulb attached to a tube in one hand that could abort the trip. The downlight above the bed was blinding, so she shut her eyes. I’m in control, she told herself firmly. She was trembling quite badly now, and she wondered whether that would affect the MRI.

The ceiling slid smoothly past as the flatbed rolled into the scanner, headfirst, then continuing down her body. Something about the sensation made June aware of the wheels beneath her that were feeding the bed in. An orange power cord hung from the ceiling above her, cable-tied to an aluminium chain, terminating in a power point. A printed sticky label on it read “Power Available.”

The MRI clanked, then emitted loud morse-signal tones. Louder and louder, a throbbing hum. It’s impossible, time travel isn’t real. I don’t have to do this. Stop now? No, keep going. She should have asked whether it was going to hurt—

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