The emperor finished speaking with the priest and returned to Matt and Jia. “Come this way,” he said. They went to a corner of the roof where there was a table with a few hanging lanterns to give them light.
“May I see your compass?” the emperor asked. Matt looked to Jia first. She nodded, and Matt reached inside his robe and pulled out the compass, holding it out for the emperor to see. The emperor reached in his own robe and put on a pair of spectacles. They made him look very scholarly. He leaned down so his nose was inches from the compass, but he did not touch it. It seemed to Matt that he was not eager to possess such a thing but rather studied it with the keen curiosity of a scholar, nodding and humming at the dials, the numerals and symbols.
“It appears to be identical,” the emperor said, “or at least an identical design.”
“What do you mean?” Jia said. “Have you seen the compass before?”
The emperor smiled. “You are not the first time travelers to pay me a visit, nor is your mother the first to ask after Jìnzhĭ Suŏ.”
Jia looked at Matt, alarmed. “Who did you see?” Jia asked, though Matt was fairly certain he knew exactly who.
“Captain Vincent. The very man you have traveled with all these years. He paid me a visit just yesterday, in fact. I didn’t think it could be coincidence that you should come so closely together.”
“Yesterday!” Jia gasped. “Is he still here?”
“Not in the Forbidden City,” the emperor said, “but perhaps still in China, somewhere, seeking for what I could not give him.”
Matt glanced at Jia. He must still be here in order to pick up Jia, unless Matt brought her to him outside of China. But Vincent told Matt he picked up Jia in China. He just left out that minor detail that Matt was the one to bring her to him. Maybe Matt had told him not to mention it, just like he told Jia.
“What did Captain Vincent say to you when he visited?” Matt asked.
“Our conversation was very similar to the one I just had with your mother,” the emperor said. “He also wanted the Aeternum so he could change the world as he pleased. He also was not pleased with my response. But, it seems he found what he was looking for anyway, despite my warnings. Please, may I see the inner workings of the compass? Just to satisfy an old man’s curiosity.”
Matt took off the compass from around his neck and set it on the table. He removed the top piece, revealing the innards of the compass, the many cogs and dials and pathways. “Ingenious,” the emperor said. “And this is all your design?”
“Yes, though truthfully, I saw it before I made it, so I’m not sure I can say it’s totally original.”
“But of course it’s original!” the emperor said. “You are a time traveler, and so it was inside of you all along, even this observatory was clearly inside of you, though you had not yet been here when you built the compass.”
“The observatory? What do you mean?”
“You have never been to China, correct?” the emperor said.
Matt shook his head.
“Never been to China, never seen this observatory, and yet see how you have captured its design, the various astronomical instruments, all inside of your compass!” The emperor pointed to the inside of the compass. Matt leaned in and studied it, trying to see it with new eyes. He looked up at the various instruments on the roof, then down at the compass. He looked back and forth and each time was more and more astonished. The compass held every astronomy instrument in miniature form.
“See the sextant and equatorial armilla,” the emperor pointed excitedly, “and the armillary, ecliptic armilla, altazimuth, quadrant altazimuth, and azimuth theodolite.”
Matt was speechless. How could this be? He’d had no idea at the time what he was doing. He had been designing it all with some kind of intuition. Yes, there had been drawings and formulas and equations, but he hadn’t considered any outside sources or designs. It all just came from inside of him somewhere, and yet here he was, staring at his design in giant form, in seventeenth-century Imperial China.
“Incredible,” Jia whispered.
“The only thing that I don’t see is the celestial globe,” the emperor said. “A significant piece, but ah! I am thinking that the compass itself is the celestial globe! If I am not mistaken, the rings of this device can separate? This spot here,” the emperor said, pointing to the divot in the center. “This is the center, where the sun would go.”
“That’s where the Aeternum should go,” Matt said. “Where it did go. Captain Vincent put it there, and then it unlocked the rings and made a sphere.”
“And broke Jìnzhĭ Suŏ,” the emperor added.
Matt remembered that moment, how everything had stopped and they’d all been flung back in time and then everything fell apart. Unraveled.
“Is there any way we can fix it? Is there any way I can bring back my family? My brother and sister? My mom and dad?”
The emperor shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t understand all this myself. Some of your story has confounded me. There are clearly missing pieces. You had Jìnzhĭ Suŏ all along but did not know it?”
“Yes,” Matt said.
“And you do not know who gave it to you or how it was formed?”
“No. I didn’t know what it was then, and it was inactive, but then I met my future self, and when our hands touched it
