She’s My Cousin
by Silvia Hines
part 1
“You should be the one to go,” my brother said, in what seemed a truly magnanimous gesture. “After all, you wrote the book we found her name in.” His voice on the phone sounded genuine; he really was deferring to me.
“No, you should go,” I countered, aiming to be equally generous. “It was that family tree you worked so hard on that made the connection. I still can’t believe we have such... courageous genes in our family.”
* * *
Two Months Earlier
We’d realized only one of us could go. Astrotranscendentalism was brand new, just recently approved by the Regulatory Bureau, and the expense of the training made it prohibitive. But if we pooled our funds, we’d calculated, one of us could go to the capital, take the four-week training, and go on to traverse whatever boundaries there are that separate us from other times and places.
One of us, either my brother or I, would set off for wartime Paris and discover whether we really are related to one of the underground resistance fighters I’d spotlighted in my recently published history book, Heroic Women of World War II. My book, featuring a spy network that operated in Paris from 1942 to 1944, was well received by the critics, who’d pointed out how helpful it was to have this detailed, AI-enhanced record today, almost 110 years after VE Day.
You might ask why I should care about the whole astrotrans thing, or any of the other recent advances in time travel: I, a middle-aged, dedicated reference librarian, happily ensconced in my local branch library in the small Northeastern city I’ve lived in all my life. Librarians are said to be a quiet, introverted bunch, and I’m no exception. I’ve been content to assist patrons in finding whatever materials they’re looking for and, when time permits, to follow my own special research interest. I’ve been obsessed, you might say, with the stories of the remarkable women who fought in the resistance movements of World War II.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I sit in my cozy library office, gazing at the framed art prints I chose myself and the potted plants I take rather good care of, thinking about and admiring a band of heroic women who gave up all measure of safety and security, conquered overwhelming fear, and risked their lives to save the lives of others. I was comfortable and content and had no plans to travel, temporally or otherwise. Astrotranscendentalism would have been nothing to me but a feature story in the newsfeeds but for the day my brother delivered the bombshell that made it exceedingly relevant.
“I’ve read your book, as you know,” Bob said on the phone that day, his usually mellow voice marked by a mildly accusatory tone, “but I can guess you haven’t read the latest version of our family tree, which I sent you almost two months ago.”
“Sorry,” I said, wondering why I’d want to read what was basically the same document over and over. I considered my brother’s absorption in our family tree a bit of a bore and have never understood why he’s so fascinated with the project. I find names, birthdates, and depictions of lineages uninteresting by themselves.
“No need to be sorry,” Bob said. “It’s just that I’ve been in touch with Cousin David lately, and when I told him about your book, he was interested enough to purchase it and then to read it through rather quickly.”
“Nice,” I said.
Bob went on. “So he gets to the section about Rosa Weil — the one you say led the section of the Paris network that infiltrated those Nazi-run cafes — and, well, he called me and kind of gasped...”
“He gasped?” I echoed.
“He said he remembered hearing from Grandma, who’d heard it from her mother, that we have an ancestor with almost the same name who’d lived in Warsaw and then Paris in the 1940s and may have died at the hands of the Nazis, although she didn’t know how or when, or even if that was true. So this woman’s name, as Grandma remembered hearing it, was Rose Weile — Rose not Rosa, and “Weile” with an e at the end.”
“Interesting,” I said. “As you know, the Rosa Weil in my book was captured and executed in 1944.” Then, after a brief pause, I added, with as much sarcasm as I could muster, “And you waited until now to tell me this because...?”
“Susie,” he said, using that tone he’s perfected, part-ironic and part-plaintive, “I put Rose’s name in boldface in the latest version of our family tree. I thought that would be a cool way to tell you!”
I concluded the conversation by saying what we both were thinking, “Could these two women be one and the same?”
Until now, time travel has been merely a fantasy, an amusement, and a premise for speculative fiction, but a physical impossibility. You simply couldn’t do it. And there was the famous grandfather paradox: you go back in time, you kill your grandfather, and so you can’t be born, except you were born. All this changed just a few years ago, during the summer of 2053, when the famed collaboration between artificial intelligence and transcendental meditation finally came to fruition.
First, with the help of AI, we can now glean information from more than what has been input into a computer drive. AI can now access any information from any time or place, including ancient manuscripts and arcane papers, and there’s even been early work on sourcing information from people’s minds.
Similarly, transcendental meditation, which grew out of the eighteenth-century philosophy of transcendentalism, has become more than a school of meditation that enabled students to develop and amplify their intuitive ability. With AI’s support, its practitioners have the potential to go beyond ordinary perception in order to traverse the old boundaries of space and time.
The result of this joint effort is that people today can travel back and forth in time simply by sitting on the ground in the lotus position, usually on an embellished yoga mat of sorts, and achieving what is now called a lucid meditative state. So no need for the DeLorean, the Time Machine, or any of those black holes or wormholes as depicted in fiction so many decades ago. And, most important, the grandfather paradox is now on the way toward resolution — all that work with parallel universes in the past two decades may be paying off.
It seemed inevitable that Bob and I would mull over the idea of one of us applying to take the astrotrans training and go back to 1940s Paris. This was a big deal, so we decided to meet to talk about it in a coffeehouse midway between our homes. We hoped talking in person would lead to a decision. Meeting Bob in my favorite chic café on Newbury Street in the Back Bay of Boston added a note of festivity to the momentous conversation we were about to have.
I spotted my younger brother easily as soon as I walked into the restaurant. There was no mistaking his sharp jawline, noticeably jutting out even as he had his head down to study the menu. That prominent jaw — often associated with confidence and vitality — was such an attractive family trait that as a child I’d felt shortchanged in lacking it, though years later I was pleased to see this feature show up in an appealing way in my daughter, Hillary.
And of course he was wearing one of his signature plaid flannel shirts; how many times had I told him that the shirt with two shades of orange, which he seemed to favor, clashes badly with his dark auburn hair.
“Over here, Susan!” he shouted in greeting, as if I weren’t clearly headed straight for his table. “I just ordered your coffee,” he added, gesturing toward a waitress walking away from the table. Bob knows I’m an addict, can’t live without it. I thanked him and sat. From there, we didn’t waste time on small talk.
“So why do we care so much about this?” I asked. Of course, I knew what my answer would be.
“Easy,” he said. “You get to write the preface to a new edition of your book, or maybe a whole new chapter. Or a new book. I get to add a stunning footnote to the family tree, maybe publish something of my own. And one of us goes on the journey of a lifetime—”
“Okay, so let’s say one of us goes back,” I said. “Exactly how are we going to figure out whether this Rose, or Rosa, is really our relative?” He looked at me quizzically, as though I, being the older sibling, should know better than to ask such a question.
“Oh,” I said, and we spoke almost in unison, “Ultra uber DNA, of course,” referring to the latest innovation in genetic analysis.
We’d read that travelers were permitted to carry on their trip something small enough to fit in a pocket, and while they weren’t supposed to take anything home with them, we knew that some of the earlier travelers had brought back small tokens, which they liked to call artifacts.
Since no one in 1944 would be likely to provide a swab of saliva for DNA testing, we decided that whoever went on the trip would locate Rose, trail her for as long as it took, and then pick up a cigarette butt she’d discarded, a cup she’d drunk from, or the remains of a sandwich she’d eaten, and take it back in the plastic container complete with the preservative we’d have brought with us in a pocket.
Finally, I asked what had been on my mind from the beginning: “How would we resist interfering with her life if we knew she was fated to be executed for spying? And how dangerous would this venture actually be for the traveler? There’d be a war going on after all.”
Bob had been reading whatever he could find regarding the astrotrans, so he told me about the recent research that was going to allow travelers to move out into what are called “parallel universes” for a period of time and then back to their “home universe.” This maneuver would be useful in case of anticipated danger for the traveler or of accidental or intentional acts that could interfere with events of history, or even the unfolding of everyday life.
If achieved, the traveler might then have the choice to stay in the parallel universe or go back to their home universe. The process of changing universes, which was called “pulling the cord,” required visualizing an actual cord as well as achieving an even deeper lucid meditative state than required for initiating the trip in the first place. However, this procedure appeared to be in its infancy, and its success rate wasn’t clear.
When it came time for us to decide which of us would take the training and go on the trip, it seemed Bob would be the natural choice. He clearly wanted to go, while I didn’t especially like to travel. I knew Bob was only being polite when he reminded me how much better I had done in high school French than he.
As for me, while I did rather like the idea of visiting the setting for the events described in my book and possibly even meeting some of the amazing women I’d written about, I was in fact resistant to change and was most comfortable in familiar surroundings.
Despite what seemed the obvious conclusion, we soon came to realize what had to be the deciding factor. I knew from the research I’d done for my book that in Nazi-occupied Paris, the appearance on the street of an unfamiliar young or middle-aged man who wasn’t in uniform would be noticed, likely leading to immediate arrest despite his possession of flawless papers; most of the men were away, fighting the war. An unknown, unobtrusive woman, dressed appropriately in simple garb and with impeccably forged papers, might not attract attention. It had to be me.
Before we said goodbye, as we walked together to our parked cars, Bob added the final touch to our joint decision. “You,” he said, “need to be the one to go anyway, because you’re — you know — you’re too comfortable in your life. I’m glad it’s going to be you.”
I didn’t completely believe his sincerity but appreciated his graceful surrender. I thought I should throw in my own last-minute gesture of charity. “I guess I owe you an apology,” I said, grinning. “It turns out that family trees aren’t the slightest bit boring!”
We said good-bye, and I walked the few remaining blocks to my car, furtively admiring the elegant boutiques I passed along the way and the handsome brownstones that lined the street. And yet my mind was involved in another place, and another time, where the surroundings would be of a very different nature.
I was also thinking about the preparations I would have to undergo as part of the training for my journey, especially the much-touted fear-reduction training, popularly known as Anti-Angst. The newsfeeds had made a big deal of this revolutionary program. With some reservations and much trepidation and with Bob’s encouragement, I plunged ahead into the application process and made appointments for the required interviews.
When my first interviewer asked me why I wanted to go on this trip, I referred to the history book I’d written, which I’d brought along, and explained that this period of history was extremely important to me. My answer seemed to be satisfactory, so I didn’t mention the possibility that someone featured in my book could turn out to be a relative of mine. The interviewer added that my life would certainly be transformed after this trip, probably in unexpected ways, and implied that for most travelers the effect of their trip was life-altering.
Early on, there seemed to be some disagreement among the officials I encountered regarding whether I would be allowed to travel into a time and place in which war was ongoing. I soon realized there was a faction that especially wanted to sponsor a trip in which the traveler was likely to need to pull the alternate universe cord, owing to their life being in danger. Apparently, they wanted to test the process, which made me feel like a human lab animal. I thought about reneging, but the interviewer wanted me to stick around to undergo the first level of the fear-reduction seminar, saying it was standard procedure for this stage of the process, and that the trainers were expecting me that afternoon.
First, I had to sign a disclaimer saying I wouldn’t hold the company responsible for any losses, physical or financial, I might incur owing to inhibition of normal fear, for example in crossing a road without paying attention. It was believed that the state of reduced fear might revert over time to normal, although this process was too new for anyone to be certain of its long-term effects. My trainer mentioned, as though an afterthought, that my memory for the events of the trip would also be affected for a period of time but that it would come back.
In addition, I needed to prepare for what the company liked to call “blending in.” My destination required that meticulous identity papers be drawn up as well as an outfit created with attention to every detail that, if done incorrectly, might reveal that I was not a humble French woman of the era.
While it was true women could remain anonymous in wartime Paris more easily than men, it would be dangerous for me to wander about Paris in 1944 wearing an outfit typical of another time or place. Even the wrong type of seam on a dress could arouse suspicion. Finally, despite my excellent spoken French, I needed to have language intonation sessions in which I would learn to speak with an authentic French accent of the time.
Any thoughts of reneging diminished as the fear-reduction training continued, putting me in a state of intense, almost hypnotic mellowness. It was at that level of consciousness, therefore, that I received a severe warning about the danger of interfering with the future in any way, as well as an admonition that the alternate-universe cord was to be used only if my life were in danger.
* * *
Copyright © 2025 by Silvia Hines
