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“But my talent’s switching minds, not,” Ralph said, “Not reviving the dead…”

He shuddered a bit at the thought.  John shook his head.  “You go to them before they die.  And you’ll swap out their minds with a blank one.”

“A blank one?”

“Well, not that you’ll be carrying blank minds around… that would be all kinds of ethical trouble… but you’ve said it’s easier to do visualizing it that way instead of trying to trade something for nothing.”

“How long have you known me?”

“About sixty years.”

“You don’t look that old,” Ralph said.  But really, once you knew, you kind of could—the gentle wrinkles around the eyes were, though not pronounced enough to convey a sense of age, were still a little too deep for a young man—once you knew, you couldn’t see the hints of gray around his temples as the signs of a stressful work life any longer—once you knew, he was clearly an old man, but not frail like I’d expect in a man who just admitted to being maybe 75—even once you knew, you could still not guess him any more than a very healthy fifty.

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“The doors—” the man started, confused for a moment. The doors were indeed of the push-to-open kind.

“I guess I should start here, then,” he said. “This is the Halkiadakis Institute, of course, I’m John, in this place we… well, everyone coming from the past comes through here. So it has to be kept traditional, so people aren’t disoriented.” He started walking again. “So different areas for different arrivals—this is the Modern area, and I work in the Medieval and sometimes the Primitive—”

“Wouldn’t time travelers be ready for new and strange futures?” Ralph said.

“Oh, we’re not here for time travelers,” John said. “I mean, I said everyone coming from the past, I mean everyone. That’s our mission here, our number one obligation.”

“What is?”

“To salvage everyone from the past. To have made death meaningless. To give everyone, every person who ever lived, another life free of death and hardship.”

“But—everyone does die—or did, back then, anyway—isn’t the past, the timeline, supposed to be immutable?”

“It is—and that’s where you come in, Ralph. Your talent makes this whole operation possible.”

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The distant future, when I found myself looking at it, didn’t look all that unusual, which worried me a bit. It was an empty room we found ourselves in—and reminded me something of a hospital—dingy white walls, scuffed linoleum tile, and a long mirror along one wall.

Okay, obviously an interrogation room, then? But there was no table or anything—there ought to have been a table, with a bright light over it, and the good cop would be standing in the corner, conflicted, while the bad cop would lean over the table, snarling, yelling—

“Ralph!”

A short, dark-haired human in a lab coat greeted Ralph warmly, starting with a handshake and ending with a full-on embrace.

“I hear it’s supposed to be your first day today,” he said. “Ah hey, sir,” he said, noticing me.

“It’s such an honor to be the one to orient you,” he said, returning his attention to Ralph and apparently trying to ignore me. “Come on, come on,” he said, leading him out the door.

I followed along. The hallway would not have looked out of place in a 20th-century office building. Maybe the future hadn’t changed as much as they’d thought it would?

Of course Ralph asked the question before I could bring myself to. “Hey,” he said, “Hey, what’s up with this future? The doors don’t even dilate!”