The cel always goes off when you’re in the middle of something uninterruptable, like sampling kidneys. My elbow-length gloves were immersed in ripe-smelling nutrient broth as I carefully cornered the Brooks-Jones kidney, trying not to squeeze it. Just when I had it, the receiver vibrated in my ear. I cursed as my hands slipped and the half-grown kidney darted off to the other side of the compartment. Good thing my cursing didn’t activate the speaker pinned to my lab coat. I activated the speaker instead with my chin. "Jo here."

"This is Catherine, Jo." The receptionist; she could only want one thing. "Are you busy?"

I triumphantly grasped the squishy organ. "I’m in the middle of sampling."

"Isn’t there another tech out there who can take over?"

There were three, but they were busy discussing last night’s holo. God forbid I interrupt them for something less important. I sampled some cells from the kidney with a syringe and injected them into the auto-analyzer. As I waited for results, I asked, "Does Ed want to show me off to another set of clients again?"

I hated that for two reasons. I never liked being on display, of course, especially with a face like mine. Even people who didn’t know anything about TwenCen music knew my face, thanks to all the ads with my great-grandparents. Also, every time Ed showed me off, he made it sound as if Golden Helix had sculpted my features. I don’t know why he did that; Golden Helix grows organs for transplants. It has nothing to do with gene sculpting. Besides, I came by my great-granddad’s face honestly, through my dad.

Lucky me.

Silence. Then Catherine said, "Yes, but it’s not what you’re thinking. Your name has been brought up for an important assignment. I think it would pay a considerable bonus."

A bonus! The magic word, even better than please. Mom’s medicines and the board at the TransAIDS Long-Term Care Clinic consumed her alimony, which was why I had to sample kidneys for a living. A bonus would be very helpful. I might even get to go back to school for another semester.

The auto-analyzer bleeped reassuringly; the kidney was developing within specs. I took that as a good sign. "So, when’s the meeting?"

"As soon as you get here."

Typical; wait till the last minute to tell me what’s going on. I drew the gloves off with a snapping sound and dropped them on the cart. "I’ll be there in five minutes," I said, then deactivated my cel.

I quickly entered the data from the auto-analyzer into the handheld, then rolled the cart of instruments next to the other lab techs. They moved to make way but kept on talking. "One of you has to finish sampling," I told them. "I’m wanted upstairs."

As I washed my hands, the monotonous dance song playing on HitNet ended. I overheard Maria saying quietly, "Effing celeb brat, always going on about how she gets to schmooze with the big boss."

"Wonder if she sings or sleeps with him?" someone asked. The other two laughed cruelly.

Trying to ignore my co-workers, I pulled my cap down over my face, slipped my handheld into my lab coat pocket, and headed up to the main office.

I was the only one in the vator on my way to the twentieth floor. The smartads sensed my presence and immediately began their spiel. A holo of white-faced teenage girls romping in a virtual meadow materialized in front of my eyes. Accompanying it was an ineptly synthesized but still recognizable song: "Imagine." The kids singing it were way out of tune, and the lead singer – a blonde with huge, sculpted breasts – couldn’t keep the beat if you handed it to her in a bag. I was probably the only one in the world who noticed, though, or even cared. The important thing was the group looked hot enough to get horny fourteen-year-olds to download their pathetic cover. Another number one for them, and another hundred grand for my cousins. Angrily I chopped my hand through the holo, cutting it off.

Before another smartad started playing, the doors opened onto Golden Helix’s reception room. Sitting across from me was a fiftyish or sixtyish woman in a hot pink blazer and turquoise jeans. Silver earrings with pink and blue stones dangled from one ear, matching the stud in her nose. She was bent over her handheld; just another businesswoman, I thought at first. But over the years, I’ve learned to sense a fan at fifty paces. Unfortunately, she must have sensed me at the same time. She looked up, and awe spread across her tanned face. "She looks more like him than I do!" she quoted at me as she stood up.

I didn’t continue the quote game. Instead, I discreetly reached for the vator buttons and slapped them repeatedly. It didn’t help; the smart-but-stupid vator had delivered my to my destination, and by God, it was going to sit here until I made it to my destination. Besides, this was probably the customer Ed wanted to impress with me. It wouldn’t do my performance reviews much good to run and spoil the show.

I put on my fan smile and left the safety of the vator. Holding out my hand (and hoping she didn’t kiss it) I said the ritual words we both knew but still had to be said, "Hello. I’m Joanna Mitsu Ono Lennon, John Lennon’s great-granddaughter."

"Zoe Clairdon, Music Historian for World Music." Despite her long pink nails biting my skin, she held my hand far too long for a normal handshake. But this was an "I-can’t-believe-I’m-touching-a-Beatle-descendant!" handshake, so I let it slide. "Ms. Lennon, this is such an honor!" She peered at me closely. "It’s really quite uncanny, the way you look so much like John after all this time."

"I’m a strand off the ol’ DNA," I quipped.

It must not have matched her expectations of Lennon humor, for she continued, "I was only a teenager when The Beatles Anthology aired in the 1990s, and it changed my life! It’s what inspired me to study music history, I mean."

She continued her chatter while I, prompted silently by Catherine at the huge walnut desk, led us to the big conference room. Surprisingly, Ed was already there, talking with half a dozen other businessmen in real, TwenCen-style suits. I suddenly wished I had washed my lab coat recently, or at least done something different with my hair besides gather it into a ponytail and pull a cap over it.

I stood there, feeling awkward, until Ed finally beckoned me over. He surprised me again, this time by not trumpeting my history to the skies. Instead, he simply said, "And this is Joanna Lennon, the one who will ultimately decide the success of this project."

I was so puzzled – and a little flattered – by that remark that I missed most of the suits’ names. I did notice some of them were actually physicists; the rest were from World Music. Before I could figure out what that meant, I saw another face like mine in front of me.

"Uncle Jack—" I stopped myself from blurting out the rest of my private nickname for him – Uncle Jackass. He was the heir to the wishing well – not to mention the money well.

"Hello, Jo." He smiled politely, but his eyes remained dull as stones. "How’s your mother?"

"Getting better all the time," I singsonged ironically. "She’s gained a little weight since the doctor prescribed pot brownies, but her white blood cells are still rarer than gays in the Fundie party. The closest I can get to her is the other side of the Plexiglas wall. Course, I can’t hug her without bruising her anyway – or getting TransAIDS myself." Stretching to my full height, I stepped closer and looked him in the eye. "When are you going to make that donation to the TransAIDS Foundation? You said you would!"

He blanched and moved away, muttering lame excuses.

I moved away too, more curious than ever. I didn’t know why they wanted two Lennons at the same meeting, but I doubted it was to sing. I grabbed a cup of hazelnut coffee and hid in a seat next to Zoe.

Forty minutes later, I wished I hadn’t drank so much coffee. I was used to safety meetings that ended after half an hour, but this meeting had barely begun. All the suits from World Music had done was show us an interminable number of graphs about their poor profits, despite a near monopoly on recorded music worldwide. I crossed my legs under the table and hoped my bladder wouldn’t burst. My benefits didn’t extend to organ cloning.

"Of course, some artists have always sold steadily, and if their current sales don’t match up to the hottest current artists, their cumulative sales are far more impressive. I’m not just talking about Elvis Presley or The Beatles here –"

I couldn’t help it; I automatically looked up at the B-word.

The suit continued, "but also Bob Dylan, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix – rock’n’roll legends may die, gentles, but their sales only get better. That’s why, when Professor Joshua Kim confirmed that the Hawking Wormhole leads to a parallel universe, we initiated the Classic Rock Replication program. Professor Kim?"

A balding Eurasian suit connected his handheld to the holoprojector. A holo of an open wormhole rotated slowly above the table. "When the Hawking Wormhole opened up a couple of years ago, astrophysicists everywhere jumped for joy. When our probes passed through the wormhole intact, we jumped a little higher. But when we confirmed the existence of a parallel universe on the other side – well, let’s just say we all felt like we were floating in a null-grav field!"

He tapped his handheld. The holo switched to a white-and-blue image of the Earth, followed by close-up footage of TwenCen-looking people and cities. I watched, fascinated, while Zoe and some other historians explained how they were able to pinpoint the comparable date of the parallel Earth by extrapolating from this or that detail. The date they agreed on: 1960. Freaky to think you could jump back and forth eighty-six years just by going through that little tunnel in space.

But the people were even freakier. There were a few subtle differences—the historians happily argued about them—but they were all of people from our Earth. JFK was alive and well. So were Presley, DiMaggio, and Monroe.

The professor tapped his handheld a final time, bringing up holos of three scruffy, longhaired, leather-wearing youths. I knew them instantly: Paul McCartney; George Harrison; and my great-granddad himself, John Lennon. Three of the four Beatles, still confined to playing in Liverpool and Hamburg.

I didn’t have all the numbers just yet, but they were adding up to something I didn’t like. I tapped a few buttons at random on my handheld while the first suit said, "As you all must realize, this parallel TwenCen world offers many opportunities for scientific and commercial research. We have the unique opportunity to watch many of our most creative minds at work—and to bring the raw genetic material of their greatness back to our own world for further study. We’ve already started that phase of the project; now it’s time to expand it."

That was the last clue I needed. I surprised myself by asking in a hoarse voice, "You’re planning to clone my great-grandfather, aren’t you?"

The suit –and everyone else—looked at me condescendingly. "Of course, Ms. Lennon. He was one of the best, most profitable singer/songwriters of the Twentieth Century, even though his career was sadly cut short. Think of this as his second chance at life, but this time with modern musical instruments and recording equipment available."

"Grandpa Sean wouldn’t approve!"

"Grandpa Sean doesn’t remember John very well. Hell, these days he has enough trouble remembering how to use a handheld." For a moment, Uncle Jackass sounded truly regretful. He was talking about his own dad, after all. Jackass seemed to enjoy running the estate, but I doubted he liked seeing his dad incapacitated from a stroke.

"But you know it won’t be the real John. You can’t clone his environment—or the Threetles, for that matter. You can try for a singer and wind up with an artist—or maybe a hacker."

You’d think even a suit would know a clone isn’t ever exactly like the original. Clones are rare, but the first human clone—a boy simply dubbed "Guy" by the media to tie in with the first sheep clone Dolly—was born in 2002. Others followed, inspiring a slew of papers in the science e-journals. I’ve read a few of them, and they all say that in every way, clones are less like their parents than identical twins are like each other. Clones and originals don’t share the same mitochondrial DNA or in utero environment, for instance, and they grow up with different families, surroundings, and expectations. I know a few news services tried to publicize these findings, but with the Fundies so popular, interest in science is at an all-time low.

As for the Threetles—I’ve read that McCartney, Harrison, and Starkey all signed non-cloning forms before they went to the Great Concert in the Sky (or, as the e-tabloids claim, before McCartney had himself cryogenically frozen. Personally, I’ve never believed the Paul Is Live rumors.) But, since Great-Granddad died long before cloning became possible, he never forbade his own cloning.

Leave it to Uncle Jackass to exploit a loophole like that.

"Frankly, Ms. Lennon," the suit said, steepling his fingers as he leaned toward me, "it doesn’t really matter if John the Second—"

"Third," I said automatically.

He raised his graying eyebrows. "Third?"

"My great-grandparents had a stillborn son before they had Grandpa Sean. They named him John Ono Lennon II."

Never try to match a Lennon at Lennon history; we have it shoved in our faces as soon as we can hold the child-sized guitars.

"Second, Third, it doesn’t matter." The suit’s tone told me he wouldn’t tolerate further interruptions. "No offense meant, Mr. and Ms. Lennon, but a genuine Lennon clone would have much more drawing power than a mere descendant. If he has half the original’s talent, our sales will skyrocket. If not, well, we can always put him on tour singing the old standards, either alone or with other classic rock clones."

As if forcing three generations of Lennons into music wasn’t enough slavery for World Music. "I still think it’s wrong," I said. "And as a mere descendant of the person in question, I object."

"And as another descendant of the person in question, the one with the authority to represent the Ono Lennon Estate in this matter," Uncle Jackass paused to glare at me, "I grant my full approval."

I glared back.

"And Jo, now that you’ve voiced your official protest, I hope you’ll settle down and co-operate."

"Why should I?"

Uncle Jackass put on a false smile. "Because we want you to be the one to take the DNA from John."

"ME! Why?"

"It’s as plain as the nose on your face." He snickered at his own stupid joke. "The family resemblance should get you close to him, and with your science background, you should have no trouble taking the sample. It’s about time you did something for the family."

I hid my hands in my lap so they couldn’t see me ball them. If Ed hadn’t been there, I would’ve ripped into Uncle Jackass both verbally and physically. The rent was due in three days, though, so I tried coming up with reasons why the money-grubbing neo-Yuppies should leave me out of their little scheme.

"I can’t go," I said. "Think of all the work I’d miss—"

Ed looked up. "There’s a ship leaving for the wormhole this week. If you’re on it, you could be there and back again in about a year. We can always hire a temp to fill your place until you return."

Or they could make the other lab techs actually work for once, I thought to myself. Aloud I said, "I can’t be gone that long. I’ll never complete my degree, and if something happened to my mother I’d never forgive myself."

"You’d have access to e-mail and Net University during your trip," Kim said. "You could even take some virtual classes so you wouldn’t fall behind in your studies."

Damn, they had this trap baited with caviar. I still didn’t like it, though. I twiddled my fingers while I tried to think of other objections. But I couldn’t think while everyone was staring at me.

Uncle Jackass finally leaned forward, his thick eyebrows drawn together. "Look, Jo, you’re our first choice for this job, but we can always get someone else if we have to. Just tell us how much money it will take to get you on board. We can be generous."

I lost it. I rose and shouted, "It’s not the money, Jackass, it’s the principle of the thing. You do know what principles are, do you, you little –" I used a few impolite Japanese terms. "Yeah, it’s too bad Great-Granddad was murdered, but no matter what you do, you’ll never get him back. You can’t recreate him, and you can’t make me into him. So leave me alone."

I grabbed my handheld and bolted. I rushed past Catherine’s desk to the vator, then stopped. My bladder was threatening to lyse open and flood my guts. I entered the women’s bathroom instead of the vator.

Alone in a gently perfumed stall, I slumped as I relieved myself. I’d really messed things up this time. I’d lost my job, I was sure of that, and Uncle Jackass would probably cut me permanently out of the estate. His stinginess had already screwed up my education. I hoped he wouldn’t stoop so far as to cut off Mom’s alimony; without it, there was no telling where she’d wind up.

The outer door swung open, but I didn’t hear the click-click of Catherine’s high heels. "Ms. Lennon?" Zoe asked hesitantly. "The receptionist said she saw you come in here."

No privacy anywhere. "Just call me Jo," I said. I finished, flushed, and came out to wash my hands.

Zoe fiddled with an earring. "I’m sorry about what happened back there, Jo."

"It’s not your fault." Someone had left a bottle of hand lotion next to the sink, so I helped myself. Being a lab tech is hard on the skin.

"Maybe it is, in a way," she said.

I looked at her.

"Like many Beatle fans, I can’t help but think that if John hadn’t been killed, things would have been a lot different. I guess that’s why we all want him back so much. I just never thought how hard it must be to be one of his descendants, especially when you look so much like him."

I leaned against a stall. "You don’t know the half of it, Zoe. I can’t get away from him. Ever since I was a little girl, he was all I heard about—at school, at home, every place I went, everyone compared me to John. My mom’s the only one who ever treated me like just plain Jo, not John Lennon’s great-granddaughter. He never did anything to me, and yet there are times I hate him."

I waited for her to crucify me for my blasphemy. Instead, she regarded me with sympathy in her green-brown eyes. I’m not used to sympathy; it makes my eyes feel itchy. I looked away and swung my long ponytail over my shoulder to finger-comb the snarls from it.

"I wish I was your age, Jo," Zoe said finally. "I’d give anything for the chance to travel to another, younger universe and experience the finest days of rock’n’roll myself. And to meet the Beatles, especially John…." Her voice trailed off with longing. "But I think it would be better for you to go back. You’d see he was just a man after all."

"Hey, if you’re saying I need primal ancestor therapy or something, you can forget it. I’m fine. I can take care of myself. Been doing so ever since Mom got locked up—"

I stopped as I looked in the mirror and saw myself. Not just my features, but my expression. I wasn’t fooling anyone that I was happy, not when my face looked shut-off and defensive compared to Zoe’s open, serene face. I tried smiling and was appalled by how unnatural it felt. Was I really going around looking so sullen? No wonder I hadn’t had a live date in over a year.

Maybe Zoe had a point. Maybe I should go back and yell at Great-Granddad for messing up our whole family. Wouldn’t change my own past, of course, since he wasn’t really my great-granddad, but it might make me feel better. Or who knows, maybe I’d get to analyze his genes and finally figure out what my problem was. I managed a genuine smile at that thought.

"All right, I’ll do it," I said. "But I can’t go back and face Uncle Jackass and all those suits. Could you tell them for me, Zoe?"

She smiled in return. "You made the right decision, Jo, you’ll see. You won’t regret it. I’ll be happy to tell them."

Her hand was on the door when inspiration struck. "But maybe you should make it sound like I’m not sure. Tell my uncle that I’ll only do it if he finally makes that donation to the TransAIDS Foundation."

She laughed and hummed a few bars of something—I think it was "Money"—before she left.

When I was alone, I stared at my reflection again. "All right, Great-Granddad," I whispered. "You and me, one on one. We’ll see who’s really toppermost of the poppermost."

Ed wasn’t kidding when he said that ship was leaving in a few days; as soon as I agreed to go, the suits sent me running around for paperwork and physicals and all that garbage. What with sorting, packing, and sending most of my things to storage, not to mention getting out of my lease and handling all of the other last-minute details, I was lucky if I got three hours of sleep a night. And of course it was impossible to sleep on the train or the space shuttle to the Sagan, the spaceship. By the time one of the officers showed me to the six-by-ten cubicle that would be my home for the next year, I was too wired-tired to think straight. Still, I knew there was one thing I had to do before the ship broke orbit: call my mother. I dug my portable digicam and handheld out of my carisaks, linked them, and hailed Mom.

"Mom?" I said. I sprawled on the firm cot – more like a ledge, actually – while I waited for her to finish whatever modifications she was making to her client’s website. "Come on, Mom, hurry up. I don’t have much time."

Her too-thin face finally appeared in a holo. "Jo? What’s wrong? Aren’t you supposed to be at work?"

"I am, sort of. You’ll never believe where I’m calling you from – a spaceship!"

"A spaceship?" Her sparse eyebrows knotted together. Watching the skin on her forehead fold was an anatomy lesson; you could see every muscle underneath. "You’re…you’re going into space? Now? And you only just got around to telling me?"

"I had no time before, I swear. I just found out myself a few days ago." I wanted to bury my head in the firmfoam pillow for six months, but I made myself rattle off an edited version of the meeting and the mission I’d been entrusted with.

Mom frowned as I finished. "Joanna," – that was a bad sign in itself – "this has got to be the most foolish thing you’ve done since that time you shaved your head. Flying in space, passing through wormholes into strange universes, trying to recreate your great-grandfather – it’s dangerous!"

Tell me something I don’t already know. "I’ll be fine, Mom. I brought an extra sweater."

She didn’t crack a smile. "And how long will you be gone?"

"At least a year –"

"A year! No one’s going to visit me for a year! I miss you already, Jo."

"I miss you too, Mom." My eyes felt itchy again; maybe there was something in the recycled air. "At least we’ll have e-mail—"

The firmfoam under me started to vibrate; they must be starting the engines.

I spoke quickly. "Don’t worry, Mom, I’ll e-mail you every day. Even with the time lag, you won’t have a chance to miss me. Here’s my new address." As icons on the bottom of my screen warned of impeding disconnection, I typed in my new e-mail address, one that could use the relay of satellite servers between here and the wormhole.

"Got it, thanks." She looked directly at me. Even a lo-res holo couldn’t disguise the pain in her sunken, shadowed eyes. "Be careful, Joanna. Don’t let your father’s family push you around. Your name doesn’t dictate your path in life, after all."

Maybe not, but biology was destiny, leading us down separate paths of life and death. I may have mouthed that; I’m not sure if she caught it.

"I love you, Jo."

"I love you too, Mom."

The holo disappeared. "Stay healthy, Mom," I whispered, "I want to see you when I get back home."

I laid down for an hour, but it was impossible to rest in a strange, blank, room, especially with odd rattling noises startling me every time my eyes shut. After about the fifth or sixth time that happened, I decided to stop worrying the ship was going to fall apart and leave me floating in the cold darkness of space. Might as well unpack and make my little cube more home-like.

Unpacking two carisaks and setting up holos of Mom, a history of the Lennon name (the one Great-Granddad included in his Walls and Bridges album), and reproductions of "The Scream" and my favorite Van Gogh paintings didn’t take long. The activity woke me up again, and I decided to explore my new home away from home. I linked into the main server for the Sagan with my handheld and downloaded a map. I was getting hungry anyway, so I needed to find the mess hall. I found it easily enough, but I also noticed that it was close to a pair of genetic/medical labs. Surely they wouldn’t mind if I peeked in….

The corridors were painted pale blue; the orange doors were so bright they nearly gave me a headache. The door to the genetics lab was partway open, allowing me to hear voices carrying over an old opera playing in the background. I peeked in.

The lab seemed to be nothing but boxes at first, covering the lab benches and blocking the narrow aisles. A portly, balding man, pencil-like scanner in one hand and handheld in the other, squeezed through the gaps, scanning each box and identifying its contents for the tall, black-haired woman following him.

"Petri dishes. Verify?"

"Verified," the woman replied after opening the box in question.

"How many? Did we receive all that we paid for?"

"You know I’m not going to count them all, Ferdie!"

"But how else will we know if we have enough for the trip? Supply companies don’t deliver out by the wormhole!"

"It’s too late for other deliveries anyway." The woman picked up an open box and started to move it closer to the door. She saw me before I could flee. "Hello," she said. "Don’t I know you from somewhere?"

I shook my head; I didn’t want to get into explanations.

"Is that the new lab tech?" Ferdie asked, not turning around.

The woman turned back to him. "Don’t you remember? She got bumped at the last minute for that traveler."

Ferdie swore in what sounded like German.

I wondered uneasily if they were talking about me. "Actually, I used to be a lab tech back at Golden Helix."

They both turned to look at me. "She must be the traveler!" Ferdie said. "Look at her. Isn’t she just like those singers that shake their heads and go, ja, ja, ja?"

"Don’t play dumb, Ferdie. You know who the Beatles were, even if they didn’t sing opera. Don’t mind him," she said to me. "He’s always like this right after departure. Anyway, welcome to the Sagan." She put the box back down and stuck out a hand. "I’m Elizabeth Tappen. You said you worked at GH, Ms.…?"

"Lennon. Joanna Lennon, but call me Jo."

"Lennon! Ha! Just wait until she meets George!" Ferdie slapped his knees in glee.

Elizabeth shook her head slightly. "So, what did you do at GH, Jo?"

"Mostly I sampled developing organs, with some occasional work in testing experimental media and additives."

"Any cell work? DNA analysis? Cloning?"

I shook my head after each question.

"Still, we don’t get travelers with lab experience every day, and we can always train you ourselves, to make sure you’re doing it right…." Elizabeth turned back to Ferdie. "How about it, Ferdie?"

He was back to scanning boxes. "What?"

"How about we take Jo on as a part-time tech, at least for now?" She turned back to me. "Any idea of what your schedule will be like—any orientation programs or history courses, for instance?"

"I don’t know and I don’t care," I said. "Anything that might get me closer to my degree is my top priority."

"You don’t have a degree?"

I was certain I’d jinxed myself. "I had to stop when my mom got sick."

Ferdie and Elizabeth looked at each other, then Ferdie put his scanner down and stuck out his red, meaty hand. "There aren’t nearly enough scientists to go around these days, and anything we can do to get another one off of the ground…ah, we are off of the ground, aren’t we?" He chuckled as we shook hands. "Welcome to our lab, Jo. I’m Ferdinand Hessthal, but everyone calls me Ferdie. I manage this lab – and Lizabeth manages me."

I beamed for about a minute before he thrust a pair of safety glasses at me. "You can start by helping us put all our supplies away, before the other techs come back from lunch and start wasting them."

It was a good way to learn the layout of the lab, though at times it was almost impossible to open the cabinets. Before long, we uncovered a stack of perishable items mixed in with the normal equipment. I had to take the perishables to the walk-in cooler, which felt more like Antarctica than a mere cooler. There was a lab coat tossed on a bench, so I borrowed it, rolling up the sleeves before returning to work.

I was squatting in the cooler, organizing reagents on the bottom shelf, when I heard the door open behind me. "Er, excuse me," a man said in an appealingly low voice, "I think you’ve got my lab coat."

I turned around and looked up at one of the cutest techs I’ve ever seen – and he beat some of my old non-tech boyfriends too. He had reddish highlights in his otherwise light brown hair. It was cut short, but it was still wavy. His face was strong and gentle, and his mouth looked like it laughed a lot. His eyes – deep blue, sheltered by long, dark, eyelashes – widened as he looked at me.

"Oh, I’m sorry," he said. "Lizabeth just said Jo took it, so I thought you were a boy Joe, not a girl Jo."

"Uh, yeah, I’m a girl," I said stupidly. Where was the famed Lennon wit when I needed it? "Last time I checked, anyway."

He smiled. I liked the way he smiled; he did it with his whole face.

I left the reagents on the floor and stood up slowly. "Sorry about taking your coat, but I didn’t want to become part of any cryogenics experiments you were running in here. I’m almost done; you can have it back." I hesitated a second before undoing the top button. Despite the chill, my face felt flushed. I was wearing blue jeans and a black, short-sleeved turtleneck under the lab coat; why did I feel like I was doing a striptease?

"No, no, that’s all right. It looks better on you than me. I mean, I don’t need it this afternoon. I’m just sequencing a couple of mutants I’ve been working on."

He was babbling too, I realized. He must not meet that many women in space. I looked down at the lab coat, trying to read the blue, upside-down embroidery. "You must be…George, then?"

"Yeah." His grin widened, as if he was trying not to blurt out the punchline of a joke. "I’m George Harrison."

"No, you’re not," I said before I realized it. Damn it, this wasn’t the kind of Lennon wit I wanted to display!

He didn’t seem to mind, though. "I’m not the famous one, I know; not even a relation. My mom named me for him. I was born on the day he died."

"Boy, I’d have killed my mom if she had done that to me." Mom always said my dad had picked out my name, claiming it was family tradition, while she was still doped up from giving birth. Sometimes I wished she had taken a stand against calling me Joanna, but changing my name now wouldn’t help.

"Oh, I don’t mind. It’s kind of fun, in a way." He raised his dark eyebrows inquiringly. "Actually, Ferdie made some joke about there being two Beatles in the lab now…."

No getting away from it, not even with a cute guy. I took a deep breath. "My name is Joanna Lennon."

"Really? Are you a relative?"

"I’m his great-granddaughter. Can’t you tell?"

Slowly, he reached forward and gently nudged my cap slightly off of my face. "Well, yes, you do look like him," he said finally, "only you’re much prettier."

My face burned hot enough to set the cooler on fire. No one ever looks at me for prettiness, just traces of Great-Granddad.

I was trying to think of a graceful response to his compliment when my stomach grumbled. "Did you miss lunch?" George asked.

With all the traveling, I think I’d missed more than one meal. "I haven’t eaten since somewhere back on Earth."

"What was Ferdie thinking, putting you to work without letting you eat first! If you can wait ten more minutes while I load the sequencer, I can show you around the mess hall."

"That’d be great," I said. I hurried to put the rest of the reagents away. "I’ll see you out there."

I don’t know if George said anything to Ferdie and Lizabeth while I was in the cooler, but my two new supervisors had huge grins on their faces when I emerged.

The next two or three days were frustrating, as I had to learn a bunch of new techniques and procedures. Working on the cellular and subcellular levels was tricky, and though everyone, especially George, was eager to help me, I wanted to prove myself by doing it on my own.

They’d given me a lab bench in the back of the lab, close to the cooler. I was peering through my microscope, trying to inject some DNA into a mouse cell, when a woman said sternly behind me, "So, this is where you’ve been hiding, Ms. Lennon."

I was so startled I shot the DNA into the media, not the cell. I bit back a curse and turned my head. Behind me was a graying woman in a TwenCen suit – with a skirt. A pair of gold-colored spectacle frames – no lenses, of course – hung from a chain around her neck. I had no idea if she was the captain of the Sagan or someone from World Music, sent along just to keep an eye on me.

"I’m not hiding, I’m doing my job," I said. "And it’s hard enough without people sneaking up behind me and startling me, thank you very much."

"Your job?" She raised one eyebrow, then tapped her state-of-the-art handheld. "Your job is to retrieve a DNA sample from an historical person on the alternate Earth, not to take up valuable space in the genetics lab. And you’ve already missed two of your orientation programs; how are you going to pass as a contemporary on alt-Earth without training?"

"What orientation programs?"

She put a hand on her hips. "Didn’t you check your e-mail? We sent you a complete schedule."

"I might have skipped that message."

The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I had skipped it. I’d been spending a lot of time in the lab, trying to learn new skills. And when I wasn’t in the lab, I’d been with George. He’d shown me all around the Sagan, from the hydroponic gardens, humid and sweet-smelling, to the real-time screens where you could see what was outside. Last night, we’d watched the Great Red Spot on Jupiter and marveled at how that centuries-old storm kept going. So when I did have some time alone with my handheld before I slept, I spent my time writing long e-mail messages for Mom. She already wanted to know everything about George, after all.

"Well, in the future, Ms. Lennon, I suggest you be a little more thorough in reviewing your e-mail. Now put those things away and come with me."

I frantically peered around for Ferdie. He was standing by the microcentrifuge, patiently waiting for it to stop spinning. "Ferdie!" I called over the Wagner opera playing in the background. "I need some help here."

He came over. When he saw the suit next to me, he lowered his head, bull-like, at her. "Now, Ms. Pluckenreck, what’s going on? Why are you bothering my lab tech?"

"Your tech? She’s a traveler, she needs to go to the training sessions…."

While they argued, I reloaded my microinjector and searched again through the microscope for my specimen. Might as well make the most of however little time I had left in the lab….

Maybe it was all the practice I’d already had, or maybe it was just luck favoring me for once, but I got it right on the next try. "Ha!" I triumphantly transferred the cell to a new dish of media. If it had really worked, I should be getting growth in the next day or two.

"Gut, Jo, gut." Ferdie glanced back at me quickly before returning to Pluckenreck. "We lost a lab tech so they could add Jo at the last minute, Ms. Pluckenreck. It’s only fair if she helps us out in return."

"I suppose the captain would agree with you." Pluckenreck sniffed, then donned her empty spectacles. "Very well, it’s not as if she’s staying there for a long time; she won’t have much opportunity to damage the timeline. I’ll review the schedule and just place her in the essential classes."

As if I didn’t have enough to do already. But as weeks passed and I got a better sense of what I was doing, I was better able to schedule my experiments around the classes. Sometimes the classes were actually interesting, like when we watched TwenCen 2D-holos, many of them still in their flat format. Hard to believe people got so caught up in something so unrealistic. And the big, stationary, cels with the dial you had to spin…I’d have never been able to figure out how to use them without the class. Pluckenreck often said the little, day-to-day details would be the ones that would give us the most problems, and I have to admit she was right.

I wasn’t the only traveler on the Sagan, of course. That would’ve been an expensive trip just for Great-Granddad’s genes. There were sixteen others, mostly grad students in history. Some, like me, were sent to study a specific person or event. Others, like Winnie, were supposed to collect DNA samples of extinct plants and animals, like rhinos, cheetahs, and elephants. The poor girl was going to be stuck in Africa for at least two years, but she was thrilled beyond words at the prospect. Me, I can’t even go twelve hours without checking my e-mail. I’d be mad beyond medication if I had to go two years without any of the modern necessities.

One neat thing about having so many other travelers taking DNA samples was that I was the only one with a science background. That made me the expert. I spent a couple of sessions demonstrating the care and proper use of the samplers, which looked so much like the writing pens we had to practice with that more than once, someone tried to write with one. It was flattering the way the others questioned me about the samplers, cloning, or genetics in general. But I have to admit there were some sessions that really gave me fits, like the ones on clothing and fashion. Seemed like almost every session, I’d trip in the high heels or snag the dammed stockings or do something unladylike with the skirt. Winnie helped me with the makeup, but no matter how often she showed me how to move in the outmoded clothing, I couldn’t get it.

"Just wear them for George," she said one day over lunch, as I complained for the umpteenth time about the useless clothing. "You’ll see how useful they are."

I considered her advice before acting on it. George and I still saw each other every day – hard not to when you both work in the same lab. And though Ferdie and Lizabeth, along with Olivia, the equipment wizard and Lizabeth’s spouse, helped me when I needed it, I worked the most with George. He was very easy to get along with, a serene yet cheerful guy who actually listened to you sympathetically. We spent hours together talking about anything and everything while examining cell cultures, sequencing mutant genes, and cleaning our equipment. And he was helpful too. When I told him about my mom having TransAIDS, he introduced me to two immunology researchers in the medical lab next door. After a series of prolonged e-discussions with Mom and her doctors, we came up with some new, experimental drugs designed to bolster her almost defunct immune system. For a while that made up for not being able to see her; she’d stopped adding holos to her e-mail. I kept telling myself she did that only to keep the messages compressed, not because she didn’t want me to see her.

There was only one thing George did that I couldn’t stand, and that was his tendency to hum or sing while he was working. Not that he sang poorly; he had a decent voice, better than some of the stars on HitNet. But more often than not, he’d sing a Beatles song. I was used to that; their songs were here, there, and everywhere, to quote Paul. I just didn’t want them in the lab, my refuge from being Ms. Lennon.

"Can’t you sing something else?" I complained one particularly bad morning. I’d broken three big beakers in half an hour, and Ferdie had immediately yelled at me for the waste. He’d apologized afterward, but my nerves still felt sharp as slivers. George’s choice of "Glass Onion" cut too close to the bone.

George broke off his tune, looking at me with puzzlement in his blue eyes. "What’s wrong with it? Don’t you like your great-granddad’s music? I think it still sounds good, even after all this time."

"I’d like it better if he hadn’t written it," I said. I looked away from him, carefully checking my fourth beaker for hairline cracks. I didn’t want this one to split while I was heating my solution. "I don’t want Great-Granddad in my face all the time, even if he is."

"What’s so bad about it? I get the comparisons to the original George Harrison all the time." He drew closer. "You can change your face and your name, Jo, but you can’t change your ancestry. Why not just accept it and go on with your life?"

I glared at him. "Because no one expects you to replace Beatle George like the way they expect me to replace my great-granddad."

George didn’t sing at all for the rest of the day; when he had to speak to me, he did so in flat monosyllables. I felt like I’d broken more than just a few pieces of glass; like I’d broken the harmony of the lab, or worse yet, the still fragile harmony between George and myself.

I spent the next few days browbeating myself for being such a jerk like my great-granddad. Finally, after that lunch with Winnie, I decided I had to apologize to George, and why not do it in a way that would both please him and set me apart from Great-Granddad?

I put on a red, clingy, dress with thin shoulder straps and a scooped neckline. I had a white sweater to wear over it, for modesty, but I decided I didn’t want to wear it. I carefully pulled on the dreaded stockings, garter belt and the lethal heels, then donned some silver jewelry. I tried putting my hair up, but it was too long to manage. I finally just twisted it over my shoulder.

"Not bad, Joanna, not bad at all," I said after backing up to view myself in my tiny mirror. "I don’t think too many people will compare you to Great-Granddad tonight."

That’s when I heard George singing and playing a guitar – a guitar? – outside my door:

I wanted to stomp over to the door, but I didn’t dare. I did pound the button a bit hard as I opened the door. "George, what are you –"

I stopped as I looked at him. He had spiffied himself up too, with a haircut and neatly pressed white shirt and gray pants. I could even smell his musky aftershave. And yes, I hadn’t imagined it, he had a guitar, a real, TwenCen style guitar. Clipped to his DNA-patterned tie was a white flower from the hydroponic gardens.

His whole face rounded with surprise as he looked at me. "You’re beautiful," he blurted out. Milliseconds later, his face was bright pink. I think mine must have matched it.

He tried again. "I’m sorry, Jo. I was going to apologize for making you think I was comparing you to your great-granddad. I was going to sing you a love song, a non-Beatles one, but that was the only thing that came into my head."

"It’s alright," I said. "I was going to apologize to you too, for snapping at you over a silly song."

We stared at each other sheepishly for a few more minutes before he said, "You really do look wonderful, you know. Are you sure you don’t have any plans this evening?"

"Only ones that involve you."

"May I take you out to dinner then, at our lavish, five-star mess hall?"

"Did you make reservations?"

"No, but I’ll make Ferdie give up his table for us. He won’t mind sitting at the bar, it’s that much closer to the wine."

Ferdie considered himself a wine connoisseur and would go on about various types for hours if he cornered you in the lab.

"I’d love to, then," I said.

"The pleasure is mine. Do you mind if I leave this guitar here?"

"Of course not. Actually, I didn’t know you could play."

"I wasn’t sure what’d you think," he said as he set his guitar inside the door. "Oh, and this is for you." He unclipped his flower from his tie and attempted to fasten it to my dress with his tieclip. I finally just tucked it behind an ear.

Since it was past the supper rush, the mess hall was mostly deserted. There wasn’t much of a selection: a few hard rolls, cooling vegetable soup, wilting salad, meatloaf, and a few pieces of cherry pie, which I hated. I helped myself to everything else and followed George to a corner table with a starscape hanging above it.

"Watch the floor," he said, "it’s wet…"

With impeccable timing, the dammed shoes slipped. I almost did the splits as I fell onto my tray. China crunched under me.

"Damn it!" I yelled. "I wasn’t this clumsy before I came onboard!"

George hurried towards me. "Jo? Are you alright?"

I rolled off the tray and surveyed the damage. My leg muscles felt strained, but not badly. What food I wasn’t wearing was completely inedible, and George’s flower was floating in the soup. The front of my dress was sopping wet, a carrot had wormed its way into my bra, and ranch-flavored lettuce was clinging to my face.

George started picking up the scattered pieces of china. "Are you all right, Jo?" he asked again.

"I won’t be," I said, brushing noodles out of my hair.

"You won’t be?"

"Yeah. When Pluckenreck hears about this one, she’ll strangle me with all the other clothes I’ve ruined."

He tilted his head back and laughed. I glared at him, then threw a noodle at his face. It clung to his cheek, but he was laughing too hard to brush it off. Finally, I started laughing myself. I took my shoes off and brandished them, spiky heels first. "Let her come after me! I’ll poke her eyes out!" George’s face turned bright pink, which made me laugh harder. We sat there for a couple of minutes like that; every time one of us started to calm down, we’d look at the other one and crack up again.

I don’t think I’d laughed like that for a long time.

When we could breathe normally again, we cleaned up as much of the mess as we could. Then we went back to my cubicle, my shoes in one hand and my other hand on George’s arm. We never did eat dinner that night, since I had to shower and try to soak the soup out of my dress. Instead, we made love for the first time.

George wasn’t the first guy I’d slept with, nor – to be honest – was he the most skilled. But he was loving, and he was unexpectedly sensual, and he made the physical act of sex into something more, a private celebration made more joyful by its spontaneity. As we lay there afterwards, trying a new contortion every minute as we struggled to fit two people into a half-person cot, I decided I wouldn’t mind having him around for the next forty years or so.

As long as we got a bigger bed, of course.

Two days after that, George had to go into the lab early. I didn’t mind, as that meant I could catch up on my e-mail over breakfast. In my normal clothes, the floor of the mess hall presented no hazard, and soon I was hunched over my handheld, skimming messages between bites of a bagel and yogurt blended with fruit. Winnie and a couple of other travelers waved at me as they came in. I waved back and went back to my e-mail.

There was a short note from Mom; not much personal information, just a funny story about a client of hers who wanted something off-the-wall for their website. She closed with her usual phrase: "All my love to you; send me some love too." There was also a message from Net University telling me I’d received credit not only for my lab work, but also for the history courses Pluckenreck was making me take. A second, more personal message from NU told me I only needed twelve more credits to graduate with my science degree. If I wanted to add a history minor, I’d have to prepare a web presentation on my upcoming trip to the TwenCen. I was supposed to reply immediately with a proposal on my topic.

I spread some cream cheese on my bagel while I pondered. I hadn’t thought of pursuing a history minor, but if I was so close to obtaining one, I might as well go for it. The tricky part was deciding what my presentation topic should be. Great-Granddad would’ve been acceptable, but he was too obvious. Still, I knew my topic had to be something I could research while I was in Liverpool; I wouldn’t have time to travel elsewhere. Finally, I typed in: "My presentation will discuss some as-yet-to-be-determined development of mid-TwenCen British rock music." Ideally, maybe I could research another band besides the Beatles; they’d been done to death already.

I checked out of e-mail and skimmed the month-old news stories. At first, they all seemed the same as always: more political battles between the Fundie and PC parties, more physical battles in the MidEast, more environmental devastation in Africa and Asia. Then a flagged story picked up by my personal search engine caught my eye: "E. coli Outbreak in TransAIDS Long-Term Care Clinic; Deliberate Introduction by Extremist."

Oh my God. Mom….

My hands shook so badly I had trouble scrolling the story. Police had picked up an extremist Fundie woman claiming to be the Wrath of God, sent to Earth to purge it. Somehow, she’d managed to penetrate the quarantine surrounding the clinic where my mom was. Before she’d been caught, the dammed Fundie had infected the water supply with a virulent strain of bacteria to punish supposed sinners. By the time the article had been uploaded, over 90 percent of the patients and staff had been infected. There was no word in this story on deaths, but I knew they were inevitable. One of Mom’s friends at the clinic had died of simple food poisoning; something like this would probably wipe out the entire clinic.

The yogurt suddenly tasted bitter, almost noxious, and the coffee only made it worse. I clenched the warm cup tightly and stared into the coffee, wishing it could show me Mom’s face. But the only images I found in there were ones of my childhood, of visiting my dad one weekend soon after my parents divorced. "How do you like your new school, honey?" he asked half-heartily, staring at a holo of scantily-clad blondes shooting lasers at each other.

"It’s awful, Dad. Mr. Huerta spent a whole hour telling everyone how special Great-Granddad was, how special I was to be related to him. Now all the boys shoot their fingers at me, and the girls call me "Beatle" and make up nasty songs. Someone even put bugs in my lunch today!" I hadn’t eaten it, of course. I was still hungry, and I started to cry.

Dad froze the holo and turned to me. "Come here, Joanna," he said, patting his lap. I climbed into it, and he awkwardly dried my tears with his sweater sleeve. "When I was your age, the same thing happened to me at school – though I never got the bugs in the lunch. That was rather clever, actually. Oh, don’t cry, Joanna," he said as I wailed again. "Crying never solved anything; it only makes it worse. And fighting back only gets you into trouble. I should know; I spent more time in detention than I did in front of the computer. Just act tough and pretend it doesn’t bother you. They’ll stop when they see it isn’t working. Now, as soon as my favorite girl stops crying, we’ll go out for pizza!"

Don’t cry, Joanna. Pretend it doesn’t bother you. Dad had been right; the teasing died down after a while, though it resurfaced occasionally in middle and high school. Here I was, sixteen years later, still not crying. Dad would be proud of me.

I set my handheld to chime the millisecond e-mail or updates on the story came through, then went to class.

The e-mail came about five hours later, while I was studying a gene sequence I’d just printed. As distracted as I was, the printout looked more like alphabet soup than a protein recipe. I didn’t realize at first that my handheld was chiming; the tone blended with the background noise and beeping timers. I placed the handheld on the benchtop and stared at the blinking icon for several minutes. As long as I didn’t open it, I could pretend nothing was wrong and my mom was fine. A cruel hope suddenly seized me. Maybe she was all right; maybe the new drugs had allowed her to resist the bacteria, and she was letting me know she was still alive. I deliberately pressed the icon with my forefinger.

A plaintive duet – I don’t remember the name, but I’ll always know the melody – was playing in the background. I glanced quickly at the strange name in the address before I was drawn to the more familiar ones in the message:

Dear Ms. Lennon,

It is with deepest sympathy that we inform you of the death of your mother, Cassandra Wells-Lennon…

I couldn’t help it; I let out a little scream. Halfway through, I changed it to a more acceptable "Fuck." Then I couldn’t stop myself: "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck…"

"Jo, stop that." Lizabeth looked up from her microscope, eyes narrowed in irritation. "Whatever went wrong, you can always do the experiment over again."

"No, I can’t." I started to laugh; even to me, it sounded brittle, forced. "I wouldn’t live my whole fucking life over again anyway. If I’d had the choice, I wouldn’t have lived it the first time."

George had come back with a rack of tubes in time to hear that last bit. "Jo! You don’t mean that, do you? What’s wrong?"

"My mom…my mom…."

I literally could not finish the sentence; my throat felt like it was swollen shut. I wouldn’t have finished it anyway; it would have made the whole thing real, not just another piece of downloaded news. I finally pushed my handheld over to George. Lizabeth craned her head, and they read the rest of the message together.

Lizabeth reacted first. "Oh, Jo, that’s so awful about your mother. And telling you by e-mail – maybe I’m TwenCen about this, but I think bad news ought to be delivered in person, or at least over the cel. Guess that’s hard when we’re so far from Earth."

Lizabeth’s babbling was preferable to what George did. Murmuring "I’m here for you, Jo," he pulled me into his embrace, smothering me in bleach-scented lab coat, in the warmth of his body. Smothering me in comfort, tempting me to be vulnerable.

Don’t cry, Joanna.

I was stiff in his arms; I didn’t even know how to let myself relax. I wouldn’t have dared to even if I could; I didn’t want George to think me weak.

"Jo? Joanna? It’s alright." George stroked my hair from the crown of my head to the small of my back. "Lizabeth’s not going to mind if we hold each other here in the lab, right, Lizabeth?"

"Of course not. Just don’t make a habit of it."

Even her light tone couldn’t make me react.

"I think you’d better take her to her cubicle, George." She whispered, but I still heard her. "She’s clearly in shock. Call the med lab if she gets worse. I’ll tell Ferdie not to expect her to work for a few days."

George led me out of there, still in our lab coats and safety glasses. When we got to my cubicle, he helped me take them off, then my shoes and the rest of my clothes, finally tucking me in. All the while he talked softly to me or held my hand. But though I let him strip my body, he could not uncover my heart.

"God damn it, Jo." I flinched just as much from his words as from his sharp tone; George almost never swore. "Stop acting like you’re made of computer chips. I know there’s a human inside of you somewhere; why won’t you let me see her?"

It had been two days since I’d heard the news. I’d spent them in my cubicle, mostly staring at holos of Mom or reading her old e-mail. George had been there whenever he could, and Winnie and some of the other travelers had stopped by as well. I was getting sick of putting on a brave face for all of them, getting sick of staring at Munch’s screamer. Helping George secure the lab equipment before the Sagan passed through the wormhole had seemed like a good idea, until he started ragging on me.

"You should know by now I’m human," I said, deliberately ignoring George’s true meaning. "You’ve seen me break enough glassware." I zipped my microscope into its padded case and placed it in a cabinet, next to the others.

"That’s not what I meant, and you know it."

I put all the loose equipment on my bench into a drawer and locked it. "What do we do with the glassware in the drawers? Won’t they smash each other?"

"We’ve got padding to wrap around them. It’s in the closet – don’t try to change the subject, Jo. I’m worried about you. I don’t believe you’re taking your mother’s death as well as you want me to think you are."

I walked away from him, towards the closet. "So not everyone wails and caterwauls when something bad happens. At least I save the money on tissue."

I dug around in the storage closet until I found several sheets of crumbling foam rubber, probably old enough to be TwenCen. Sometimes Ferdie took reuse to extremes. I bundled them up and turned around.

George was standing right in front of me, arms crossed, his blue-eyed gaze fixing me in place. With most of the equipment already shut down, the lab was unnaturally silent.

We stared at each other for several seconds before George spoke, quietly but with great emphasis. "You really are just like your great-grandfather, you know."

I clutched the padding closer to my chest. It was too late; the shot had already gone home. "No, no I’m not." Even I knew my denial was as flimsy as the padding.

"You are, Jo. It’s not just your face, or your name, or your wit. You’ve got the same tough-guy – or tough-girl – pose, but it’s all a sham." He paused. "Sometimes I can’t help but wonder –"

"Wonder what?" I asked when he didn’t finish.

He bent down slightly, so his eyes were just inches from mine. "Sometimes I think you deliberately model yourself after your great-granddad, despite all your talk about not wanting to be like him."

"George!" I tried to back away, but there was no room. "That’s a horrible thing to say!"

"Well? Do you?"

"Look at me! I keep my hair longer than he ever wore it! And I’m a scientist, not a rock musician!" I had to stop this dreadful conversation somehow, so I turned on George. "What about you? You sing and play a guitar. Aren’t you trying to be just like the first George Harrison?"

"I just do it for fun. But you – you let being John Lennon’s great-granddaughter run your whole life." He put his hand on my shoulder. "I love you, Jo, but until you straighten yourself out and decide who you really are, I don’t see how we can have a future together."

He turned and left the lab. He was already out the door before I recovered enough to call out, "George, George!" But he didn’t turn back.

We passed through the wormhole that evening. Maybe it was the magnetic shields specially turned on for the crossing, or maybe it was just laying strapped into my cot, staring at the ceiling with nothing to do but think about what George had said, but I had a strange dream. I dreamed I was Great-Granddad, playing a family concert in front of everyone: Grandpa Sean, Uncle Jackass and his family, and my parents. Only problem was I’d forgotten how to play the guitar; I couldn’t even remember what song I was supposed to sing. I stood there, trying to fake something, until Uncle Jackass called out, "You’re not John! You’re a failure!" They started pelting me with anything they could throw….

I woke up to find a barrage of discs I’d forgotten to put away on my blanket. My sheets stank of stale sweat.

"Hurry up, Ms. Lennon," Pluckenreck said as she grabbed my arm. Her spectacles slipped off her nose as she tried to pull me towards the shuttle. "We can’t miss our launch window."

We’d come as close to alt-Earth as we dared. TwenCen tech was obsolete and puny compared to what we had, but it was still capable of picking up signals from the Sagan. A smaller shuttle, though, would have a better chance of approaching alt-Earth undetected. All the other travelers were already on board, but I was taking advantage of the delay the cargo loading caused to wait for George. We hadn’t even seen each other since the last time in the lab, since Pluckenreck had put me in classes full-time. I couldn’t believe he’d let me leave without seeing me off.

I tried to stall. "I need another sampler, in case something goes wrong with the first one."

"We’ve got everything you need packed away in your luggage. Now, come on!"

Just then, George appeared in the doorway to the shuttle bay, unmistakable in his lab coat. At the same time, the crew loading the shuttle finished and left. A computer voice announced, "Depressurizing beginning in two minutes."

"George!" I twisted out of Pluckenreck’s grip. "At least let me say good-bye to him!" I said to her.

"You should have thought of that sooner," she answered in an arrogant tone.

I didn’t stay to listen to a scolding. Slipping out of my pumps – the heels on this pair were relatively flat, but I still didn’t trust them – I picked them up and sprinted across the cold metal deck to him. I put my arms around him, still clutching my shoes. "Oh George, I’ve missed you!" I whispered into his ear.

"I missed you too." He ran a hand over my hair. "Good luck, Jo. Hope when you meet your great-granddad, you find everything you’re looking for. Come back safely."

We kissed, but it felt like it hardly started before he urged me back. "One minute, Jo! Hurry!"

I sprinted like an Olympian. As soon as I was inside the shuttle, the door slid shut, cutting off my last glimpse of George. A silent, thin-lipped Pluckenreck practically pushed me to an empty seat next to Winnie. She grinned at me while I put my pumps back on.

"Now, remember, travelers," Pluckenreck said, clutching her spectacles as the shuttle accelerated across the shuttle bay and out the second, larger door into space. "While you’re on alt-Earth, always stay within your assumed identities; in fact, it wouldn’t hurt to start using them here." That wouldn’t be much of a problem for me; I got to keep my name. "And please remember to be extremely cautious about what you do or say. We’re still not sure how this timeline differs from ours, or what a careless slip of the tongue might change."

She continued to lecture us all the way down to alt-Earth, repeating points she’d said in lecture. After a while, I tuned her out to think. What had George meant? Did he think meeting Great-Granddad was really going to solve my problems? I wished I felt as confident about that as he did. For all I knew, I’d be so overcome by Great-Granddad’s personality that he’d only make things worse.

We landed in a cold, dark, desert. I didn’t have much time to appreciate the clean air or the myriad of stars – and the invisible Sagan – above us before they shoved my luggage, tickets, papers, and purse of money at me. Pluckenreck ushered me into a car along with a few other travelers. We were all silent as we headed for the airport, staring out the windows at alt-Earth.

"Well, so far, it’s not much different from home," I joked. No one paid attention.

We’d seen layouts of the airport, so it was easy to figure out what we were supposed to do. I wished my fellow travelers good luck and checked in for my flight. It went much quicker than I thought it would; I’d forgotten no one worried about terrorism in these times. I was too tired to people-watch, so I bought a zine at a kiosk. The paper pages felt flimsy, like they would tear if I touched them, and there was no way to block all the silly ads on every page – the zine was more ads than articles. Even the articles were stupid, full of nothing but advice on men. I admit I looked for something that would help me with George, but there was nothing. Besides, I already knew I had to solve my Lennon problem before tackling my Harrison problem.

I was so tired I slept most of the transatlantic flight to London, despite the uncomfortable seat. I transferred to a train for Liverpool and spent several hours staring at the English countryside without really seeing it. The closer I got to Great-Granddad, the more I wondered if this really was a good idea. It didn’t seem right to clone him without his permission, but I couldn’t ask for it without giving myself away. And I was sure Pluckenreck would run me through all nine circles of Hell if I returned with empty samplers. She might even strand me here in this pre-Net wasteland.

It was mid-afternoon in Liverpool when we arrived, foggy and much colder than I expected. I stopped into the women’s restroom to inspect myself. All the practice wearing skirts and sweaters was finally paying off; I actually looked halfway presentable. All I had to do was straighten my stockings and retie the long pink scarf restraining my hair. I buttoned up my coat, then I emerged into the streets of Liverpool, ready to begin my search for one John Winston Lennon.

Read Part Two!

Sandra Ulbrich started her writing career in high school, when she made up her own lyrics to songs. She soon graduated to writing sonnets, villanelles, and free verse. After obtaining her bachelor's degree in molecular biology/English and a Master of Technical and Scientific Communication degree, she worked as a teaching assistant, a science writing intern at the National Cancer Institute, a technical writer, and a proofreader. She is currently a lab technician at an enyzme-producing company. In addition to writing poetry, Sandra has also written a fantasy novel called Day of All Seasons, which has been submitted for publication. She is currently writing a sequel, called Fifth Season. When not writing, Sandra enjoys listening to classic rock (especially the Beatles), reading, gaming, attending cons, and chatting with her friends.