When she came to, Deanna was holding her hand, looking very worried. Igor was wiping her forehead with a cold wet washcloth. They both looked very relieved when Alex awoke.
Deanna and Igor both asked "Are you okay?" at the same time. She nodded, but wasn't able to speak just yet. She wasn't ready to accept what had just occurred.
"That's never happened before," Igor said. "No one has ever done more than simply feel like they were adrift. No one has ever actually disappeared on their first attempt."
Alex supposed she should feel flattered, but wasn't up to it. She found her hands were shaking slightly.
Igor said, "I was told that you were possibly one of the few people with a natural ability to time travel, but I didn't believe it."
"I'm having trouble believing it, too," she said, and described what she had seen.
"There's no doubt about it," Igor said. "You've described the feeling exactly, and also the fact that this laboratory was formerly a machine shop. Rest awhile, and we'll try it again." He left the room.
"You really gave us a fright," Deanna said. "You completely disappeared. You were lying there, then there was a 'whoosh' that Igor said was air rushing in to fill the hole you left behind." Deanna's hands, too, were shaking. "Then, a few seconds later, there was a sound, something like a thunderclap but not as loud, and there you were again."
After a few minutes, Igor re-entered the room with a tray, announcing that it was time for lunch. He knocked the stuffed black cat off the table onto the floor, and placed the tray on the table. Alex and Deanna picked at the fruit and cheese without paying them much attention.
Afterwards, they repeated the time travel experiment, but Alex was able to do much of the preparation herself, especially when Igor said the word 'alyssum', which seemed to have an immediate calming effect. Because of the hypnosis, Alex did not panic, but sat up on the couch. As she had been instructed, she did not leave the couch, but took the time to examine her surroundings. The electric glow surrounded many of the metal surfaces for a short time, then stopped. The machinery, she saw, had that beautiful old-time look from movies about the Victorian era. She recalled the fancy time machine in the movie The Time Machine. An effort had been made by the builders of these machines to create beauty, as well as to get a job done.
The other furnishings of the room were not noteworthy, consisting of tables heaped with machine parts, filled trash containers, and several piles of items she could not identify. She noticed a large fireplace in the far wall that she had not seen in the room before.
Gradually, the electric sparks began their dance again on the various metal surfaces, and Alex knew she was about to go back. She tried to oppose the change with her mind, but it came anyway. This time, everything shimmered and faded out-of-focus; when the shimmering and focus cleared, once again she was back with Deanna and Igor.
She did not feel faint or disoriented. Immediately, she looked at the far wall, and saw the outline of the fireplace on the wall. The opening had been bricked over, and it was obvious that the closing had happened long before. This, more than anything, finally convinced her that she had, indeed, traveled into the past.