The Order of Things

CHAPTER 5: THE CROSSING

Dr Ashby appears where needed, not everywhere.

The corridor outside the experimental suite was lit only by the emergency strip along the floor. The main lights were off. The hum of the building felt louder than usual, as if the walls were listening.

Dr Ashby keyed in the override. The door slid open.

The core array was running at full power, its glow filling the room with a colour that didn’t belong to any known spectrum. Lena stood at the console, hands steady, eyes fixed on the readouts as if watching something only she could see.

“Lena,” Ashby said softly.

She didn’t turn, but spoke gently, “It’s ready.”

They stepped closer. The air was warm, metallic. Ozone clung to everything. “You should have waited.”

“I couldn’t. If I waited, I’d lose the nerve.”

The monitors told the truth: the sequence was already past the point where it could be safely aborted. The cascade had begun. The deck was already shuffling.

“You don’t have to do this,” Ashby said, and heard how thin it sounded even as they said it — the same thing they’d told a dozen students over the years, right before the ones who really meant it did it anyway.

She exhaled, a mixture of relief and resignation, “I do.”

The array brightened. The light folded in on itself, bending the air. It wasn’t white or blue or anything that belonged to the visible world. It was the colour of something that hadn’t been named yet.

Ashby reached toward the console.

“Don’t,” she finally looked at them, “You taught me to finish what I start.”

“I taught you a lot of things you shouldn’t have listened to.”

That almost got a laugh out of her — they saw it try to happen, saw her decide not to let it.

A tremor passed through the floor. Equipment racks rattled. Overhead fixtures flickered. The field was stabilising — or destabilising — they couldn’t tell. The numbers were meaningless now. Theory had reached the point where theory ended.

“Step back,” she pleaded.

They didn’t move. Twenty-six years they’d been doing this job, and they had never once managed to be the person who stopped a student from becoming a cautionary tale. They weren’t going to start tonight, either, whatever that said about them.

“Please.”

That word did it. Ashby stepped back.

Lena entered the field.

For a moment — a single, impossible moment — she was there and not there, her outline flickering like a reflection on disturbed water. The light wrapped around her. The air bent. Sound dropped away, replaced by a pressure felt in the bones more than the ears.

Then the light collapsed inward.

When Ashby’s vision cleared, the field was empty.

The monitors were blank. The hum of the building returned. The overhead lights steadied.

Ashby stood alone in the silence, already rehearsing what they’d tell the department in the morning, and already knowing none of it would be true.

CHAPTER 3: THE MENTOR

Lena noticed the cold the moment she stepped into Dr Ashby’s office — colder than the rest of the department, always. The shift in temperature, the faint hum of the old air-conditioning unit, the way the blinds were always half-closed even on bright days. It was a room designed for pragmatism, not comfort.

“Please sit,” Dr Ashby suggested, without looking up from the terminal.

Lena sat.

The silence stretched. Ashby finished typing, saved the file, and only then turned their attention fully to her. They had a way of looking at a student that made you feel like a dataset — not unkindly, just thoroughly.

“You’ve been running simulations outside your assigned hours.”

Lena kept her hands still in her lap. “Yes.”

“And you’ve been using equipment that isn’t allocated to your project.”

“Yes.”

“And you’ve been doing this without authorisation.”

She paused, “Yes.”

Dr Ashby leaned back in the chair. “Why?”

Lena opened her mouth, then closed it again. There was a true answer and there was an answer she could actually say out loud, and the gap between them felt enormous.

“Because I’m close.”

“Close to what?”

Lena swallowed, “A workable model.”

Ashby’s gaze sharpened. “A model of what?”

Lena didn’t answer.

Ashby stood, crossed to the whiteboard, and uncapped a marker. “Show me.”

Lena joined Dr Ashby. She drew the simplest version she could — the field geometry, the energy thresholds, the stabilisation curve. Not the whole thing. Not the part that mattered. Just enough to justify the hours she’d taken.

Dr Ashby watched her hand, not her face. That was the thing about Ashby — they always seemed to be reading the work instead of the person doing it, right up until the moment you realised they’d been reading both the whole time.

When she finished, they capped the marker and set it down with deliberate care.

“This is not a model,” Ashby noted, “This is an intention.”

Lena felt heat rise in her chest, “It’s more than that.”

“Not yet — ”

“It will be.”

Dr Ashby studied her for a long moment, then spoke softly, “You’re not sleeping.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.” Their voice didn’t rise, “You’re cutting corners and isolating yourself. I’ve watched three students do exactly this before you, and I buried one of them, metaphorically speaking. I’d rather not make it literally.”

Lena looked away. “I don’t have time.”

“Time,” Ashby observed, “is not the problem you think it is.”

Lena’s breath caught — just for a moment — but Dr Ashby didn’t seem to notice… or at least, pretended not to.

They returned to the desk. On the corner, half-obscured by a manila folder, sat a small brown prescription bottle with a white label. Lena’s eye passed over it and moved on. Whatever it was, it wasn’t her business, and she was grateful — right then — not to have to make it her business.

Dr Ashby folded their hands. “You need to slow down and document things properly. You need to involve someone else in your process and this work. Perhaps most of all, you need to stop treating this department as if it exists to facilitate your private ambitions.”

Lena felt the words like a door closing.

“I’m not trying to cause trouble,” she protested quietly.

“I know,” Ashby replied, “But intention doesn’t change consequence.”

Lena stood, “I’ll be more careful.”

Ashby nodded once, “Good.”

Lena reached the door before Dr Ashby spoke again.

“Lena.”

She turned.

“Whatever you think you’re chasing,” Ashby suggested softly, “make sure it’s something you can live with.”

Lena didn’t answer. She stepped into the corridor, letting the cold air of the office fall away behind her.

Dr Ashby sat back down at the terminal, and did not immediately start typing.

CHAPTER 6: ARRIVAL

The first thing Lena noticed was the light.

Not brightness — quality. It was softer here, diffused, as if the air itself held memory. She stood very still, waiting for the dizziness to pass. The floor beneath her feet was solid.

Nothing in the room suggested a time.

The room was familiar in the way a dream is familiar: shapes she recognised, distances she didn’t.

All around her was a solid world: a desk, a window,the faint hum of an old ventilation unit. The smell of coffee — not burnt, not factory formula, but the good kind, the kind that lived in a bottom drawer.

Someone was standing with their back to her.

Lena knew the outline before she knew the name. The tilt of the head. The way the shoulders moved when they breathed. The small, unconscious gesture of pushing a sleeve up the forearm.

Roman — utterly, obliviously alive.

Lena didn’t move. She didn’t speak. If this was a memory, or a vision, or the last flicker of a mind coming apart, she didn’t want to be the one who found out by breaking it.

Roman reached for a mug on the counter — the chipped one, the one Lena had told them a hundred times to throw out, and the one they’d kept out of what Lena had always suspected was pure stubbornness rather than sentiment. Roman lifted it, inhaled the steam, and made a small face at the first sip, the way they always did, every single time, as though hot coffee were a personal betrayal they kept forgiving.

Lena had forgotten that. The face. Somewhere in the months since, she’d kept the big things — the voice, the arguments, the whiteboard — and let the small stupid ones slip. It was the small one that undid her now.

Roman turned slightly, just enough that Lena could see the line of their jaw, the familiar concentration as they read something on the counter. Probably the same three words they always reread when they were stalling before starting work. Roman was, Lena thought, constitutionally incapable of just getting on with things.

She didn’t speak the name. She didn’t need to.

The moment echoed: Roman a few feet away and a lifetime away, both at once, doing something as unremarkable as drinking bad coffee badly, entirely unaware that anyone was watching, or that anyone ever would be again.

And then the light shifted, as if the world were inhaling.

Everything waited.

CHAPTER 4: THE ARGUMENT

Lena found Dr Ashby in the lab long after midnight, standing at the central bench with a stack of printouts spread like a fan. The overhead lights were off; only the desk lamp was on, casting a narrow circle of clarity in a room full of shadows.

“You’ve been running it,” Dr Ashby observed, without turning, “The full sequence.”

Lena closed the door behind her, “Yes.”

Dr Ashby lifted one of the pages. The numbers were unmistakable — the energy curve, the stabilisation window, the threshold Lena had sworn she wouldn’t cross without supervision.

“You promised me,” Dr Ashby protested firmly.

“I know.”

“You said you would wait.”

“I know.”

Dr Ashby set the page down, “Then why didn’t you?”

Lena stepped forward, “Because waiting won’t change anything.”

“It will change everything,” Dr Ashby answered sharply, “It will give you time to think… to test and verify. And to make sure you’re not about to destroy yourself.”

Lena’s jaw tightened, “I’m not destroying anything.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

Dr Ashby turned then — fully, completely — and Lena felt the force of their attention like a physical pressure.

“You’re grieving,” Dr Ashby sighed softly, “and grief makes people reckless.”

“This isn’t about grief…”

“It’s entirely about grief. I’ve read your notes, Lena. Every equation on that whiteboard has Roman’s handwriting underneath it. You’re not chasing a breakthrough. You’re chasing a conversation you didn’t get to finish.”

Lena flinched — the first honest reaction she’d given all night, “That’s not fair!”

“It’s not meant to be fair, it’s meant to be true.”

The room felt smaller. The hum of the equipment seemed louder. Lena could feel the pulse in her throat.

“I can’t stop,” she exclaimed,. “I’m too close.”

“Close to what?” Dr Ashby demanded, “A breakthrough? A collapse?”

Lena didn’t answer.

Dr Ashby stepped closer. “Lena, listen to me. You are brilliant and capable. But you are not invincible. And this—” They gestured to the printouts, “This is not a controlled experiment. This is a gamble.”

“It’s not a gamble,” Lena responded quietly, “It’s the only chance I have.”

Dr Ashby froze. Something crossed their face — quick, unguarded, gone before Lena could name it. It looked almost like envy, which made no sense, and which Lena decided she must have imagined.

“You’re talking like someone who has already decided,” they suggested.

“I have.”

Dr Ashby exhaled slowly, “Then there’s nothing I can say.”

Lena stepped back. “I didn’t come here for permission.”

“I know.”

“I came to tell you because—” She stopped. The words were too heavy to lift.

Dr Ashby waited.

“Because you deserved to know,” Lena finished.

A long silence settled between them — the kind that isn’t really about waiting for the other person to speak, but about neither of them being ready for the conversation to be over.

Dr Ashby nodded once. “If you’re going to do this, at least do it cleanly. Document everything. Run the diagnostics twice. And don’t pretend you’re ready when you’re not.”

Lena swallowed, “Thank you.”

Dr Ashby looked at her — really looked — and for a moment seemed to be deciding whether thirty years of caution had ever actually stopped anyone from doing anything, or whether it had only ever made the leaving harder to watch.

They didn’t say so.

“Go,” Dr Ashby instructed, “Before I change my mind.”

Lena turned and left the lab.

Dr Ashby stood alone in the circle of lamplight, the printouts still fanned across the bench like a hand of cards no one had wanted to deal.

CHAPTER 2: BEFORE

The experiment that eventually changed everything began, as most things do, with an argument about coffee.

Roman had strong opinions. The coffee in the department common room was, in Roman’s view, a form of institutional violence — thin, burnt at the edges, served in cups that retained heat with the enthusiasm of wet paper. Lena had learned to drink it anyway. Roman never did, and never let her forget that she did.

So they worked late, the two of them, with a French press Roman kept in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and a bag of Ethiopian single-origin that cost more than either of them could reasonably justify on a postgraduate stipend. This was their ritual. Papers spread across the bench. The hiss of the kettle. Roman reading upside-down over Lena’s shoulder without being asked, correcting her arithmetic in a tone that suggested this was a great personal sacrifice on their part.

“That’s not right,” Roman would say, tapping the page. They were never wrong about this, which Lena found less endearing in the moment than she did later.

They had been working on the temporal displacement model for seven months by then — seven months of equations that looped back on themselves, of diagrams that looked like something between a circuit board and a nervous breakdown. The university didn’t fund it. The department didn’t know it existed. It lived in the margins of other projects, scrawled in notebooks, taking up space that officially belonged to something more respectable.

“Nobody has to know yet,” Roman had observed, in the beginning, with the particular confidence of someone who had never once in their life asked permission for anything they actually wanted to do.

“We’ll know,” Lena replied, “That’s enough.”

She had believed this. She still did, mostly, though “mostly” was doing more work in that concept than she liked to admit.

The night she thought about later — the one she turned over and over in her mind repeatedly — was a Tuesday in November. She remembered the rain, and Roman standing at the whiteboard with a marker, drawing the diagram that would eventually become central to everything: a deck of cards, fanned out, then gathered, then shuffled.

“Time isn’t a river,” Roman theorised, “Everyone thinks it’s a river because that’s how we experience it. One thing, then the next thing, then the next. But that’s just the order we’re dealt the cards. The cards exist all at once. The sequence is an illusion.”

“That’s not a new idea,” Lena replied.

“No.” Roman turned from the board, and there it was — that look Lena had learned to recognise and, later, to miss more than almost anything else about them: complete, unguarded attention, the kind Roman only gave to ideas they hadn’t yet decided were safe to believe in. “But it’s a solvable one.”

Lena had known, in that moment, that they were going to build it. Whatever it took.

What she hadn’t known — what she was careful, even now, not to let herself think about for too long — was what it would end up costing to find out.

“Lena.”

Just her name. Said the way Roman said things that mattered — quietly, without preamble, as though the important things didn’t need volume, only your attention. She looked up from the page.

“We’ll need more coffee.”

She went to put the kettle on. It was, she would think much later, the last completely ordinary thing either of them ever asked of her.

CHAPTER 1: THE DECK

Lena switched on the recorder because writing felt too slow. The lab was empty at this hour, the building quiet in the way only universities become quiet — a silence made of concrete, old wiring, and the faint echo of other people’s work.

“This is a note for the record,” she announced, “Not for publication. Just for accuracy.”

She paused, listening to the soft click of the machine, and found herself irritated at how steady her own voice sounded. She’d expected it to shake.

“People talk about time as if it moves. As if it flows. As if it carries us with it. But that’s just a metaphor we inherited from rivers, and rivers are only one way of thinking about sequence.”

She reached for the deck of cards on the bench: a cheap pack from the campus bookstore, the kind with a glossy finish and a faint chemical smell, the kind Roman would have complained about for a full minute before admitting it was fine, actually, and using it anyway. She fanned the cards out on the metal surface.

“Here,” she thought aloud, “This is time.”

She tapped the cards lightly with her fingertips.

“All the moments exist. All at once. The order we experience them in is just the order we’re dealt. One card, then the next, then the next. Chronology is not a property of time; it’s a property of perception.”

She gathered the cards into a neat stack, and it occurred to her, not for the first time, that she was explaining this as much to herself as to whoever might eventually be listening.

“If you deal them in order, you get a life that makes sense. Cause, effect. Before, after. A story with a beginning and an end.”

She shuffled the deck once — a clean, practiced motion, the kind of thing your hands remember even when the rest of you is exhausted.

“But if you shuffle them, the story changes. The same cards. The same events. Just… rearranged.”

She set the deck down.

“The experiment isn’t about travelling through time. That’s the wrong verb. It’s about changing the order of the cards. Changing the sequence in which a life is dealt.”

She paused. The hum of the equipment filled the space, and for a moment Lena let herself think about how strange it was to be doing something this large in a room this small and ordinary — the same bench she’d spilled coffee on a dozen times, the same flickering fluorescent tube nobody had ever bothered to replace.

“If this works, someone reading this later will have already seen the results. They’ll have seen the cards out of order. They’ll have seen the consequences before the causes. They’ll have watched the ending before the beginning.”

She exhaled slowly, and let herself, just for a second, imagine who that someone might be, before deciding it was better not to.

“And if they’ve reached this point — this chapter — then they’ll understand what to do next.”

She closed the deck, squared the edges, and placed it beside the recorder.

“Start again,” she declared, “This time in order.”

She switched off the machine, and sat for a while longer in the dark before she let herself leave.

©2026 Geoff Allshorn. I show my respect for Elders past and present and acknowledge the Wurundjeri-Willam people, the Traditional Custodians of the Land on which this blog was prepared. Editorial assistance from Claude AI.