Step Back in Time (short story)

Step Back in Time was the sixth story in the Bernice Summerfield anthology Professor Bernice Summerfield and the Dead Men Diaries. It was written by Matt Jones.

Plot
When Anderson is late for lunch, Benny goes looking for him and finds him admiring Porl Tomas, a Jeillo temporal anthropologist, in the Great Library whom he sends her to speak with on his behalf. Despite finding Porl arrogant, Benny is attracted to him and they go for dinner three times over the course of a week and have a picnic in the Observatory where he tells her about a civilisation whose members used time travel to move back in their own timelines to learn more about their partners.

Benny apologises to Anderson and they get drunk. She wakes up in the bar the next morning and returns to her rooms for a shower before finding Porl at breakfast. When he notices that she has a love bite on her neck, he leaves angrily and does not speak to her for the next two days. She remembers what Porl said about the race of time travellers and steals a stone ring from Braxiatel's private collection to go back in time; as she leaves, she bumps into Braxiatel and he tells her that somebody released an aphrodisiac into the air conditioning at the bar.

Benny breaks into Porl's apartment and they have sex after she presents the ring. Porl is secretly surprised that she has brought him the ring so soon, having expected it to take several weeks to manipulate her into doing so, and intends on using it to fix his relationship with Rebecca. Benny wakes up in the middle of the night to find Porl missing and Braxiatel stood there with Anderson and two security men. He tells her that Porl was the one who released the aphrodisiac and asks where the stone ring is. She sends them to the Great Library and goes alone to the Observatory to confront Porl.

At the Observatory, Benny finds Porl about to use the stone ring and learns about Rebecca. She is humiliated and kicks it to the ground before repeatedly punching him until Anderson pulls her off of him. The stone ring responds to her desire to have never met Porl and she picks it up, but chooses to drop it on the floor, smashing it into pieces. She cannot think of anything to say to him and leaves without looking back.

Characters

 * Bernice Summerfield
 * Irving Braxiatel
 * Anderson
 * Porl Tomas

Continuity
to be added