She gets a message from Malcolm. "I think I've got something that'll do it. Tested on animals, as far as possible. Ready when you are."

So she tells everyone in Montreal—they'd been warned it'd happen, of course, and they're as ready as she can make them—and returns to Jacob's Bell.

"Sadde! Welcome back.

You could go back to the future now, or if you'd like to join us for dinner I can explain how it works over garlic angelhair."

"Garlic angelhair sounds delightful, if it won't be too much of an imposition."

"Not at all."

Once the Behaims and Sadde are seated, he explains. "It took a while to find a promising method, since this isn't something people have been interested in. Eventually I tracked it down. Curses. There's a long tradition of people doing this kind of thing to their enemies. Then the trick was neutralizing it so you don't get driven insane."

"—driven insane?"

"The form I was able to replicate freezes people indefinitely, keeps them from aging, and keeps them conscious. It was meant for enemies, and not the polite kind.

There's a Behaim family trick for the other half. Subjectively you'd feel like the time skips past, so you wouldn't even notice anything until we break the curse. That'll be a couple days before April twenty-seventh, like you said."

"Ah, and being conscious would drive them insane. ...I'm half tempted to want it anyway, sixty years thinking sounds like it would be great for plotting."

"I'm sure it would, at first. But sixty years is a long time."

"Yeah that was mostly a joke."

"Good. You'll be Merlin sleeping in the cave, but it's much better than a lifetime's worth of imprisonment."

"How poetic. Where will I be?"

"If you mean physically, it barely matters. There's an empty bedroom in the basement; that seemed less weird than anything else. Unless you've got a preference?"

"Well, I'm not sure it's the best of ideas for future Behaims to know who it is they got in the basement in advance of thawing me?"

"Definitely. Could even keep you completely secret, but something would be extremely off if we involve coffins."

"Completely? You can make me wake up without one of you having to do it?"

"No, but a note saying "do not open until" means keeping it secret until then would be easy."

"Ah, fair enough. I don't have preferences, then."

Shrug. "I can see why you wouldn't. But I don't like the symbolism there, so may as well avoid it."

"Makes sense."

"To make sure you don't experience the sixty years, I can connect you to something we use pretty regularly.

You'll be able to more or less zone out at will, in the kind of way that leaves you wondering where all the time went. It's not the most useful ability ever, but you'd be surprised how much it comes up. Except I'll leave all the safeguards off. They're meant to make sure no one gets stuck with no attention to spare at all, and impose a time limit just in case. You actually will be getting yourself stuck, at least until my successor disconnects you."

She nods. "That sounds about reasonable, I can do all the thinking I want until I'm tired and then sleep the next sixty years."

"I was actually going to recommend you start skipping forward first, before I attach the stasis curse. It'd probably be uncomfortable otherwise."

"Oh? Why?"

"Inability to move or breathe, noticeable absence of pulse and so on. It's not as if you'd get driven mad by the classic inability to scratch your nose, but the rest could be worth avoiding.

It works either way if you're sure."