Margaret had studied this landscape her entire adult life without ever seeing it.
She stood on the observation platform ARCHIE rendered—a stable point in the Devonian afternoon—and watched the world that would become Scotland assemble itself from data accumulated four hundred and ten million years ago. The air was different. The light was different. Everything was different, and yet somehow, impossibly, she recognized it.
"The hot springs," she breathed. "They're still active."
Silica-rich water bubbled up from vents scattered across the lowland terrain, depositing the mineral formations that would preserve this moment for geological eternity. Steam rose into an atmosphere with more carbon dioxide and less oxygen than modern Earth.
"Rhynie chert formation in progress," ARCHIE confirmed. "The preservation event you are witnessing will continue for approximately two million years."
"I've sampled this material a hundred times. Thin sections. Microscopy. The cellular preservation is extraordinary—individual cell walls, organelles, structures finer than anything else in the fossil record." She watched the silica-laden water flow across the terrain. "I never imagined I'd watch it happen."
"Margaret." David's avatar approached. "Are you alright?"
"I'm standing in the early Devonian. In the location that will become the excavation site where we found the teaching set. Four hundred million years before the Picts would find this place." She turned to…
