The Temporal Tourist

When a man in a purple spacesuit floats up to the International Space Station and asks — politely — to come aboard, astronaut Sophia Reyes probably should have said no. Instead she finds herself stepping out of orbit and into history itself: an Apollo launch, the Library of Alexandria, a philosopher who may or may not have existed, and a future that finally explains why the universe has been so quiet all this time. Her guide is Jake, a time tourist who never quite arrives where he intends. His companion is PIT, a mechanical rat who communicates almost exclusively in Taoist aphorisms. And somewhere behind Jake's easy charm is a question he has been chasing across every timeline there is — one that no amount of travel may be able to answer.