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“Before you get too attached to me,” the woman said, “I must tell you my horrible secret: I can travel through time.”

“Forward?” her husband asked. “Everyone can.”

“No,” she said. “Well, not just forward. I thought it was just forward for a long time. That would make sense. But after 2022, it stopped being just forward.”

“The Supreme Court,” she said. “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/09/arizona-abortion-supreme-court-ruling/" target=_blank>The judiciary generally</a>. One afternoon in June of 2022, I discovered it was actually 1973. At best.”

The woman had not had the power for as long as she could remember, she explained. Just since 2022. Specifically, June of 2022. Indeed, for most of her life she had thought of herself as a normal citizen of the 21st-century United States, endowed with the same rights and privileges as anyone else, and certainly not possessed of any special capacity for time travel.

But it turned out that such gifts could be bestowed at any time. This one was a gift of the Supreme Court. Now she, and millions of others around the country, could travel back in time at will. Not even at her own will. Sometimes it would just be the will of a particularly gerrymandered state legislature. It was a terrible way to spend a Tuesday, worrying that without warning you were going to be thrust back in time.

All across the country it was different. She was not the only person traveling like this. Almost everyone with a uterus was experiencing some form of temporal displacement. Some found themselves hurled back to the 19th century, others just to the mid-20th. Some felt no disturbance at all unless they moved closer to their respective state lines.

The odd thing about these powers, they were quick to notice, was that they brought no benefits whatsoever. “Can you hear ragtime music?” people would ask when a woman discovered she was being taken back to the dawn of the 20th century. “Can you see the stars without satellite interference? Is the rainwater potable?”

“No,” she would answer. “No, everything is the same, except, for some reason, the laws governing my body.”

“Did you feel that?” the woman asked her husband. He had been supportive, if confused, since she had begun time traveling. She knew something was amiss. She felt the vertiginous sensation that always accompanied one of these jumps through time.

“What year is it?” she asked, worried.

“It’s 2024,” her husband said. “We’re in Arizona. Why?”

She shook her head. “Not where I am.”

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/04/09/arizona-abortion-supreme-court-ruling/" target=_blank>He checked the news.</a> And sure enough: Her body was in the 19th century again. “1864,” he said. “Why would it be 1864?”

“No good reason,” she said. “The state supreme court.”

“Can you see a herd of buffalo, at least?” he asked. “If you’re in 1864 now? Moving thickly over the plain?”

“I don’t think that modifier is in the right place,” she replied. “And, no. Everything looks the same.”

“The laws governing my body,” she said grimly. “Just watch me try getting some routine 21st-century medical care without my doctor facing the loss of their license.”

“It’s ridiculous!” he fumed. She could still hear him, even across the gap of time. “Why would they want to return you to a time before women could vote, when maternal mortality was still sky-high? Do they think this is a game? People will have their lives ruined. People will die.”

She was glad he was so upset on her behalf. She had worried that the power she now possessed might alienate him.

“It’s not a power at all!” he shouted. He looked helplessly at her. She was wearing wide-legged jeans like it was 2024 or 2005, but he knew that inside the jeans, she was stuck far in the past.

“Can you change anything?” he asked. “While you’re back there?”

She shook her head. “Ironically, no,” she said. “We searched high and low for Anthony Comstock to ask who hurt him, but to no avail.”

“Could you bend the arc of history, or something?”

“No. It turns out we have to keep pushing at the arc all the time or it snaps right back into place. It seems we’ll have to travel forward.”

“To November. We just have to hold on until November.”

Maybe if they could just hold on long enough to get to a voting booth, she would have rights again, instead of this mysterious power. Maybe, if they pushed hard enough at the arc, they could get back to where they had been in the past, instead of where they were in the present.

National Press Club Angele Gingras Award for Humor Writing 2016, Shorty Award 2016, Forbes 30 Under 30, Fifty Funniest People Right Now (Rolling Stone)

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Alexandra Petri is a Washington Post columnist offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of  <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Alexandra-Petris-History-Important-Documents/dp/1324006439/">"AP's US History: Important American Documents (I Made Up).</a>  

Alexandra Petri

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