Erasing Time Read Online Free PDF

of the scientists who’d brought her here, but he was a part of the future, and that was enough to make her resent him.
    It wasn’t logical or fair, but there it was.
    Echo didn’t notice her silence. He gazed at her like she was a fascinating painting.
    Sheridan took a moment to study him back. Despite the blue hair, he was handsome in a DC Comics sort of way. He had a sort of Superman look to him: square jaw, straight nose, rugged shoulders. But there was also a seriousness about Echo, a depth to his blue eyes that couldn’t have been captured in comic book form.
    “Do you have any questions?” he asked. “Taylor couldn’t ask them fast enough.”
    Before the medic had given Sheridan the shot, Echo had told her, “I’ll do what I can to protect you.” Had he meant he’d make sure the medic didn’t hurt her? Or maybe he meant the scientists. Did she need protecting from anyone else? Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to ask him; not while the resentment was still thick inside her. Instead, she focused on his sleek blue hair. “When did people start color coordinating their hair with their outfits?”
    “Fashion changes quickly. But not everyone alters their hair color. Some people keep their born shade.”
    She reached over and touched the glossy blue moon on Echo’s cheek. She expected some of the blue to come off on her fingers. It didn’t. It felt exactly like normal skin.
    She ran her finger over it again. “Is this a tattoo?”
    “A skin dye. It stays on until we use a retracting agent to remove it.”
    She dropped her hand from his face, suddenly embarrassed to have touched him. “Do women do that to their hair too—dye it, shape it—and paint colors on their faces?”
    Echo laughed, and she was somehow surprised that it sounded exactly like a laugh from her time period: warm, deep, and completely human. “Would you expect women to have more moderation? The sex that wore corsets and girdles and plucked their eyebrows out?”
    “A simple yes would have done.”
    “Oh.” He was still smiling. “Then, yes.” He motioned to the door. “We can go find some women here at the Scicenter if you want to see them.”
    Seridan shook her head and sighed. What fashion guru had decided that using your face for a coloring book looked good?
    When she didn’t speak, Echo said, “If you don’t have any more questions, then I have one for you.” He leaned back in his chair, surveying her again. “In your century, what was it like to be an identical twin?”
    It was ironic that his first question was one she’d been asked frequently in her own time period. “It’s hard to tell, because I’ve never been anything else.”
    Her answer brought another smile to his lips. “I should have asked the question differently. I used to say the same thing to people.”
    Sheridan straightened. “You’re an identical twin?”
    “I was,” he said. He opened his mouth to say more but didn’t. Instead, he swallowed and looked away.
    She knew then that his twin had died. Probably recently. She knew because if Taylor had died, she would have felt the same pain she saw flash through his eyes.
    She leaned toward him. “I’m sorry.” It wasn’t a hollow phrase, thrown between them to ward off the awkwardness of silence. She felt it—felt a connection to him through their losses. His twin, her family. Her resentment for him thinned and vanished.
    He nodded but didn’t elaborate about his brother. “What I meant to ask was how the rest of your society treated you.”
    She could have gone on and on about that but knew Echo would understand the longhand for what she said in shorthand. “Growing up, we got lots of attention, which would have been nice except that people also treated us like we were one-half of the same person. Like, in third grade Taylor made some girls angry, and so they got mad at me too by default.
    “Sometimes it was hard to share everything. And we’re still constantly compared. Taylor’s