To Minseok and Jinsu’s mutual relief, her father more or less wanted to dump her at the Attayear warehouse with a strict briefing on ensuring she knew enough about it to hold an intelligent conversation and, in his words, “see off any nosy children at the convocation who think they know better than you”.  He granted them half an hour and left.

There was a very awkward silence as the two of them watched him walk away.  Jinsu fiddled nervously with her fingers.  Minseok looked around him at the various workers.  A few technicians were running tests, putting the various computers of the Attayear through their paces and seeing if they could do any refinements.  Jinsu noticed a mechanic perched on the top of the machine who appeared to be measuring something.

“Well,” said Minseok.  “The general has given his orders, so we probably ought to get on with it unless we both want to be courtmartialed.”  He turned away and surveyed the time machine before them.

Jinsu cleared .  “Sorry,” she said.  “A-about yesterday—”

Minseok looked back over his shoulder at her.  “I take it you don’t mind me saying that your father can be an absolute douche sometimes?”

“Oh, no, no, not at all,” Jinsu said hastily before realising what she’d just agreed to.  “I-I mean—”

Minseok snorted.  “How unfilial,” he teased.  “Don’t worry about it.  You can’t do anything about it, unfortunately.  I was already aware of it because he’s a tough boss to work for even though engineering something like this is more or less my dream job, and I heard about the lawsuits years before I signed the contract, of course, but I wasn’t aware of quite how bad the animosity still was.  I’ve never seen Baekhyun like that before, much less your father.  Baek’s usually a very friendly kid.”

Jinsu pursed her lips and said no more.  Minseok seemed to realise he was touching a nerve.

“I apologise,” he said.  “Anyway, shall we make a start?”

Even though she’d been inside the Attayear before while she was preparing the interior of the living quarters and then helping to decorate it, Jinsu had never properly had the chance to appreciate just how big it was.  It was also the first time she’d seen it without it being covered in scaffolding, and at first glance, anybody would have thought they were building a very fat miniature rocket.  It was about two storeys tall, the girth of a house, and gleaming white.

“So, first thing I have to say,” said Minseok, “the white was not my choice, because just imagine going back to the beginning of the Silla dynasty in something made from solid titanium with a white plastic coating.  It’d probably be taller than all the buildings there and very conspicuous.  How would somebody from 30BC even attempt to comprehend what they were looking at?  I was all for camouflage instead, but alas I was not on the exterior design team and got overruled by showoffs.”

It was going to be an entertaining tour, Jinsu could tell.  Smothering a smile, she listened with interest as he moved on past the dimensions to all the prototypes that had failed until he was hired (“because nobody’s as good as me, you see”), although with each one, significant steps had been made.

“You could get about twenty-five to thirty people on this comfortably,” he said as they stepped over the threshold, bypassing what looked to be a series of state-of-the-art security instruments.  The hydraulic doors hissed shut behind them, and as Jinsu gazed at the sleek trappings of her surroundings, she couldn’t help feeling like she’d just stepped into a sci-fi movie.

Minseok referred to the space they were standing in as the atrium and pressed an index finger to a dimple on the nearest wall.  Immediately, there was a responding beep and a panel slid away to reveal a screen.  He toyed about with it for a bit, and Jinsu saw him through maps, plans, statistics and various other data.

“This is just a general information screen,” he told her.  “Anybody can use it.  Tells you where you are, the weather, map of the area from the time you’re in – all the useful stuff.  It’s got a blueprint of the Attayear on it too, but this place is small enough for most people to get to know their way around pretty quickly.”

The Attayear was circular, so they continued on round on the ground floor, circling the main room via passage that felt a little like a tube.  The silver-grey carpet was thick enough to muffle their footfalls and for Jinsu to be able to feel her feet sinking into it, and the passage didn’t have the austerity and harsh white glare of the atrium.  She smile to herself as she recognised the colour scheme she’d personally picked out, alongside the various narrow shelves for decorations such as flowers and pictures every few feet to brighten it up.  The place was lit by continuous strip lights, one to each side of the curved ceiling in a manner that reminded Jinsu a little of the emergency floor lighting on a plane.  They went round the kitchen, the gym and all the other communal areas before taking the short flight of stairs up to the top floor.

It wasn’t until they were on the walkway that was ringed on the outside by the sleeping spaces and bathrooms that Jinsu got her first ever glance of the heart of the machine.  Minseok stopped just a little way along the walkway and turned to look down over the railings, one of his toes scuffing almost childishly against the metal platform and making a harsh grating noise.  Jinsu joined him to look over just in time to see several people staring up, curious as to who was upstairs.

The circular room in the middle housed banks of computers.  There might have been other machinery in there, but it was frankly negligible compared to the vast array of screens, keyboards and motherboards.  Even though it was much quieter than Jinsu would have expected, there was a steady, omnipresent hum coming from the room.

One of the men sitting at a computer took off his headphones and waved up at Minseok.  Minseok waved back.

“That is currently the world’s most advanced supercomputer,” Minseok told Jinsu with evident pride, “and by far the most ambitious thing I will ever build in my life.”

“Oh, you’re a computer engineer?” Jinsu asked, hardly able to contain her excitement.

“I’m kind of all three – engineer, IT specialist and computer engineer.”  Minseok scratched bashfully at the back of his head.  “That’s why I