First a day. Then a year. Then forever.

Joseph Eckert’s The Traveler is a captivating time travel novel perfect for fans of Blake Crouch, Interstellar and Project Hail Mary.

It’s a morning like any other when Scott Treder first slips. One moment, he’s driving to work, fingers drumming the steering wheel. The next, he is tumbling down the road, his car gone, his world changed.

7:51 am. Monday, April 13th.
7:52 am. Tuesday, April 14th.

Twenty-four hours, lost in a heartbeat.

This first slip is just the beginning. At precisely 7:52 am each morning, Scott jumps forward in time in ever-doubling intervals. First a day is lost. Then weeks. Then decades. As Scott hurtles helplessly toward the future, he watches his seven-year-old son, Lyle, grow into a man – and then an old man – in a matter of days.

But Lyle has a plan. He dedicates his entire existence to a single, impossible goal: catching the father who is leaving him behind . . .

An epic story of survival, heartbreak, and a father-son bond that defies the laws of physics.

The Traveller is due for release from Tor on 11th June – you can pre-order your copy on Bookshop.org

CHAPTER 1

I was driving to work the first time it happened.

It was a chilly April morning in Madison, Wisconsin, the sun peering over the rooftops in my neighborhood. I was running a little late, but not much more than usual. A sports podcast played in the background, although I wasn’t really listening. I was just driving. One more day, one more morning, like any other. I had a headache. It had pulsed behind my eyes since I’d gotten up, but it was getting steadily worse. Then, for less than a single heartbeat, the world

slipped

and my car disappeared.

For a fraction of a moment, I was still moving forward, a little over the posted twenty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, in a sitting position, one arm up, fingers of my right hand curled in a circle where the steering wheel had been. Knees bent; one foot extended to feather a gas pedal that was no longer there. Then I fell, gravity pulling my poised position apart.

My feet hit the pavement first, then my rear end, then my knees as I cartwheeled forward. I tumbled across the rough asphalt, arms and legs flailing, my buttoned-up Oxford shirt and khaki pants tearing like paper. I didn’t even have time to cry out. One moment I was in my car, the next I was rolling across the roadway. I flung my arms up to cover my head as I curled in a ball. The ground hammered into my back, my sides, my thighs, my knees, my shoulders.

I tumbled a dozen yards before I came to a stop, my cheek pressed against the road. The double yellow center line extended away from me, bright against the rough pattern of the asphalt. Before me was the rust- etched underside of a parked car. I couldn’t breathe, and I felt panic rise before a clear thought made it through the muddle in my head and I forced myself to breathe in. Cold air flooded into empty lungs. I coughed, sucked more air in, and groaned. “What—”

A horn blared, tires screeched, and a black truck—there hadn’t been any- one behind me—swerved around my outstretched feet before roaring past. The driver shouted something at me as he went by, but I didn’t catch the words. I jerked up and crab-walked backward until my wrists hit the curb. I pulled myself onto the concrete sidewalk, moving on adrenaline, and fell to my back.

I stared at drifting clouds in the bright morning sky. The wind had drawn them into a broad wing shape, framed by trees and powerlines on either side of the street. I raised trembling hands, my heart hammering in my chest. The heels of my palms were bloody patches dotted with rocks and bits of asphalt. Everything hurt. Blood trickled down my calves from my knees.

“What the hell?” I croaked.

I heard the scrape of someone’s shoes on the concrete to my left. I turned my head and felt a spike of pain as the muscles in my neck seized up. Two young girls wearing identical backpacks stared wide-eyed down at me. They turned, looked at one another, then pelted down the sidewalk away from me.

“Mom! Mom!” one of them screamed.

I opened my mouth to call out and ask them what they’d seen, if they knew where my car was, but my phone started buzzing in my pants pocket. I fumbled with shaking hands and pulled it out. The screen was cracked in three new places. I held it against the backdrop of the sky and squinted. I had dozens of missed texts and several voicemails. I checked the texts, my thumb going to them by reflex. The first was from my officemate, Andy. “Dude. You coming in today or what?”

I could only frown at the phone and shake my head, the concrete rough beneath my hair. I swiped to the next. This was from my supervisor, Melissa. “Scott. It had better be an emergency. You can’t just not show up for work. You have to call in.”

I flipped through the rest, all variations on the same theme. I shifted to the voicemails. All were from Amy, my wife. I listened to the first while reading the automatically generated transcript, the little bubble moving across the screen to mark the passage of time as she spoke. “Scott, where are you?” Amy asked. “The police called me. They said you hit a parked car, and you left the Honda there, with the keys still in it and the engine running? Jesus, Scott. I mean, what did you do, just—just walk away or something? Call me when you get this. This is so bizarre.”

The next one was from her, too.

“Scott. I had to leave school and drive to Winslet to deal with the police. The Honda’s a wreck. It cost two hundred dollars to get it towed, and I had to give our insurance information to that lady whose car you hit. Her parked car you hit. I called your office, and your boss said you didn’t show up for work. Where are you?”

Amy again. “Scott? Just—just give me a call, okay? I’m not mad, I just want to know what happened, and if you’re okay. Call me.”

The last one was from her, too, and she sounded like she’d been crying. “Scott. Jesus. It’s half past nine at night. Where are you? Lyle’s beside himself. I’m—I’m worried. Call me. Or come home.”

I pulled myself up until I sat on the curb. I gazed at my torn pants and dirty, bloody shirt. I held the phone up again. The time read 7:52 AM, which was fine. The smaller letters beneath those read Tuesday, April 14. That was not fine.

It was April 13. It was Monday, April 13. I knew it. I knew it was April 13. But those little glowing white letters, plastered over the photo of Amy and my son, Lyle, hugging in front of a carousel, said otherwise.

“What the hell?” I said again. I glanced around, but apart from the occasional passing car and an elderly woman walking a dog a couple blocks down, there was no one around. I thumbed through the contacts and speed-dialed my wife’s phone. She picked up on the first ring.

“Scott?”

“Amy, I—”

“Scott, what the hell? Where have you been?” Her voice rose several octaves in the few seconds it took her to rush through the words.

“Amy, I don’t know what’s going on, one second I’m driving to work, the next I’m—”

“Where are you?”

I rubbed my head and frowned as I pulled a sharp pebble from the skin above my eyebrow. “I’m on Winslet. I don’t know, midway down?”

“I’m coming to get you. Stay there.” “Aren’t you at work?”

“I took the day off. Lyle, he—Jesus, Scott.” She paused. “Where have you been?”

“Amy, honestly, I was driving and then the car, it was gone . . .” “The car was gone? What does that mean?”

“Exactly like it sounds. One second, I’m driving, then I’m . . .” “Then you were what, Scott?”

“Just—just come get me.”

I heard her breathing. In the background, I heard my son’s voice asking if she was talking to Dad. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Thanks, honey. I love—” She hung up before I could get the words out. I sighed and slipped the phone into my pocket and, stifling a groan, began the slow process of picking myself off the sidewalk. I managed to stand without doing any more damage to my skin or my clothes. I tried to brush off my pants and shirt without letting my fingers touch the raw scrapes.

“Hey, you okay, mister?”

I turned and winced as the muscles in my neck protested. A teenage boy had pulled up on a bike. He had a backpack slung over one shoulder. His jaw worked as he chewed gum.

“Yeah, I’m all right.”

“Shit, dude, you don’t look all right.” He blew a bubble of gum, popped it, and kept chewing. “In fact, you look like shit. You need an ambulance or something?”

“No, I’m fine. My wife’s coming to pick me up.”

He cocked his head. “This neighborhood gets weirder every day.”

I rubbed at the muscles in my neck. They were knots of rope, tightening under my fingers. “Why do you say that?”

The teenager jerked a thumb down the road. “Yesterday, I seen this car, right around here, nobody in the driver’s seat, just cruisin’ down the road. I watched it go maybe a half a block before—” He raised his hands, made one into a fist, and slammed it into the palm of the other. “Wham, you know? Hits this parked car.”

“Yesterday, huh?”

“Yeah, right around this time, too.” He looked at his watch. “Shit, I gotta get to school. You sure you’re all right?”

“I’m all right.”

“Okay. You keep tellin’ yourself that, man. Maybe it’ll come true.” He rode away before I could think of a reply.

I stood there, picking rocks out of my skin, until Amy rolled up in the minivan. She stepped out of the driver’s side. My son was in the back seat, his nose pressed against the window. The thick lenses of his glasses made his eyes look tiny and far away. His mouth was open.

“God, Scott.” Amy came around the front of the minivan. Her dark eyes, identical to Lyle’s, were bloodshot. She’d tied her hair in a bun behind her head, and she wore sweatpants and one of my T-shirts.

“Um, hey,” I said, and felt stupid. “How are you?”

She stopped a pace before me and looked me up and down. I could tell from her expression how terrible I must look. “What . . . what happened?” I raised my arms a little, thinking to hug her. Fresh pain pulsed from the scrapes at the movement, cloth sliding across torn skin, and I winced. Something in the set of her shoulders made me stop and lower my hands. She didn’t want me to hug her, not at that moment. “I don’t know, honey. I really don’t. One second, I was driving to work, the next, the car’s gone, and

I’m rolling down the street.”

She bit her lip, furrows creasing her forehead. “Did you get thrown out of the car or something?”

“I—Can we just go home? Please?”

She chewed on her lip and glanced back at the minivan and Lyle. He watched us with his intense eyes, unblinking. She looked back at me and took me by the shoulder. She guided me off the sidewalk like I was an old man. Or a crazy person.

“Daddy?” Lyle asked as I clambered into the passenger seat. It had been a long time since he’d called me “Daddy.”

“Hey, bud,” I said, turning carefully in the seat to meet my son’s eyes. “How ya doing?”

“Dad, where’d you go? You didn’t come home last night.”

Amy opened the driver’s-side door and got in. She started the engine, glancing sideways at me.

“I’m not sure, buddy,” I said, keeping one eye on Amy. “I’m trying to figure that one out myself.”

“Are you really okay, Dad?”

Amy looked into the rearview mirror, frowning at the change in Lyle’s tone. He did this, sometimes, catching us off guard. One minute he was a normal, albeit quiet and bookish, seven-year-old kid. Then he’d say some- thing so adult it threw us. His affect changed. Even the way he looked at us changed. I once asked my own father about it, if he’d ever experienced anything like that with me, during one of the rare occasions we had some- thing approaching a civilized conversation. He just shrugged, distracted as always, and said kids were weird.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, bud, I’m okay.”

Lyle sat back in his seat. I gave him what I hoped was a reassuring smile and not a frightening grimace and turned around in my seat, stifling a groan. We drove for the next few blocks, Amy glancing over at me or up in the mirror at Lyle every few seconds. I tried not to move, tried not to let out any sound as we went over bumps. I looked sideways at Amy, catching

glimpses of her in the corner of my eye. I was usually pretty good at reading her. Better than most people, her sister included. But I couldn’t read her now.

I took a breath. Steeled myself. “Amy.”

She held the steering wheel so tight the tendons in her hands stood out. “Yes.”

“Is it—is it the fourteenth? It’s Tuesday?”

Her lips drew into a line. She met my gaze for a second, her eyes wide. “Yes, Scott. It’s the fourteenth.”

I nodded and put my head back against the seat. We didn’t speak the rest of the way to the duplex.

My Honda was in my half of the driveway. It didn’t look too bad, considering. The passenger-side front was a little mangled, but it appeared drivable. I wasn’t looking forward to the repair bill. It was obvious to everyone, including my insurance, that I was at fault.

Amy walked before me up the steps and let Lyle into the house. He disappeared into his room before I’d closed the front door.

“Shouldn’t he be at school?” I asked.

“I took the day off, so I let him take the day off, too.” She took a breath. “Come on.” She walked toward our bedroom. I followed her, grimacing at each step.

In our room, Amy rounded the bed, heading for the master bathroom. She knelt and got cotton pads and a bar of soap from under the sink. When she stood, her brow remained furrowed as she looked at me. She stepped back to give me space. There was a battered version of myself in the mirror. I looked, if it was possible, even worse than I felt. I started to unbutton my shirt, peeling sticky fabric from the bloody splotches across my skin.

“We need to talk about this,” she said.

“Yeah.” I got my shirt halfway off. I took a long look at myself. I’d torn a ragged strip of skin from my chin, revealing raw, exposed flesh beneath. There was a deeper gash on my forehead, just above my eyebrow. The top of my left ear oozed blood. The rest of my body was worse. I was lucky I hadn’t broken anything. I’d been going, what, twenty-seven, twenty-eight miles per hour when the car vanished? And I was lucky the truck hadn’t hit me.

The truck that hadn’t been behind me a second earlier.

I stopped. I leaned against the sink, staring into my own bloodshot eyes. I took in a breath, the air cool on my lips and tongue, and let it back out in a shuddering wave that shook my whole body.

What was going on? Was I going crazy?

“Scott.” Amy’s voice cut through my thoughts. She sounded like she’d said it more than once.

“Yes,” I said, my voice distant to my own ears. I tried to take the shirt the rest of the way off. I grimaced as a large patch of cloth clung to the pinkish meat under the scraped-off skin. The torn fabric had pressed into the wound. Pulling it out felt like dragging needles through exposed nerve endings.

“God,” Amy said. “Here.” She took the shirt and worked the edges when the fabric stuck to my bloodied skin. She was firm but gentle, and she did a better job than I’d been doing. When the shirt was clear she stood back and watched as I pulled my khakis off one leg at a time. “Scott, you need to talk to me. I mean—what happened? You disappear for a day and show up like this, looking like you got in a fight with a mountain lion. A fight you clearly lost, you—”

I glanced at her in the mirror, hearing the shift in her tone. She trembled. I turned and grasped her shoulders. She went rigid in my hands, then allowed me to pull her close. Her hair felt soft against my chest, one of the few places on my upper body that wasn’t covered in cuts and scrapes. “Honey. Honey, I wasn’t in a fight. No mountain lions were involved. None were in the vicinity, I swear. Not even a big house cat.”

The tiniest hint of a smile quirked at the edges of her mouth.

“I don’t know what happened,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I do know, okay?

But it . . . it’s going to sound crazy.” She pushed back. “Tell me.”

I let my arms fall. I turned back to the sink and started washing the scrapes and cuts with a washcloth as I spoke. The water in the sink turned a brackish pink from blood and bits of gravel. Talking distracted me from the sting. A little. “I was driving to work like every other morning.” I struggled to keep my tone even. Felt around the edges of what I was saying and what Amy needed to hear. Prodded at the truth even as I spoke. “Everything was normal. I was running late, but nothing too bad.”

“And this was yesterday?”

I hesitated, glancing at myself in the mirror again, as if my reflection would have the answer. It didn’t feel like it had been yesterday. It felt like it’d been half an hour ago. “Yes. Anyway. I was driving down Winslet.” I winced as I rubbed some pebbles and dirt out of a raw patch on my shoulder. They rattled down the curved porcelain of the sink. “Then the car disappeared.”

“What does that even mean, Scott? You said that before. It doesn’t make sense.”

“I know. I know it doesn’t make sense. But that’s what happened. One second, I’m driving, the next I’m in midair, a foot off the ground, still going twenty-five miles an hour. Must’ve rolled half a football field before I stopped. Then I almost got hit by a truck.”

“And that’s what all this is from?” Amy motioned at my body.

“Yes.” I rubbed the dirty scrapes, wincing every time the rough cloth touched broken skin.

Amy stared at me. “Okay, Scott. Assuming that’s true, that was yesterday morning. These look fresh. Like they happened twenty minutes ago.”

“Yes. Exactly.” “What?”

I turned. “Amy. Honey. When the car disappeared, when I stopped rolling, I thought it was still the thirteenth. I thought it was still Monday morning. The rest of Monday never happened, not for me. One second, it’s Monday, the next, it’s Tuesday.”

The worry lines were back. Amy stood next to the bathtub and was very still.

“Say something,” I said. I almost smiled. “Anything.”

“Did you hit your head, Scott? When you were in the accident?”

I didn’t feel like smiling anymore. I faced the mirror again. “I don’t think so.”

“I think we should take you to see a doctor.”

“I’m okay. These all look worse than they really are.” “I’m not talking about the scrapes, Scott.”

I rinsed the washcloth and started on another patch of bloody skin. “Yeah. I know.”

“I’m going to call Dean’s, see if there’s anyone available to see you this morning. You should call work. Tell them you were in an accident, that you won’t be in today, either.”

I nodded.

She stood for a second, watching me. She reached out and touched my bare shoulder, on a part of skin that wasn’t torn up. She did it gently, care- fully. Like stroking a wild animal. “I’ll call Dean’s.”

“All right.”

She gave me another searching look, then walked out of the bathroom, pulling the door shut as she went.

I stopped dabbing my wounds and stared at myself in the mirror again,

leaning forward until I was inches away. My own hazel-blue eyes, blood- shot and haggard, revealed nothing.

“You’re fine,” the doctor said as he shouldered his way through the door, one arm balancing his laptop. “Apart from all the abrasions and dermal contusions, of course. You’ll want to keep those clean and use a topical antibiotic to prevent infection. Over-the-counter should do, although I can give you a prescription if you prefer.”

I sat on the examination table, the thin, crinkly paper rough and cold under my bare legs. Amy perched on the bench next to the doctor’s desk. Lyle sat next to her, legs hanging off his seat, his intense eyes taking in his surroundings.

“The X-rays all came back negative,” the doctor said. He pulled the swivel chair from under the desk and sat, glancing at me over the top of his reading glasses. “No fractures, no broken bones.”

“What about a concussion?” Amy asked. “No sign of a concussion, either.”

“What about this, this missing day, or whatever?”

“Well, Mrs. Treder, again, your husband appears perfectly healthy apart from the cuts and bruises. We might see something more serious with an MRI—”

“More serious?” Amy asked, straightening. “Like a tumor?”

Lyle took this all in with his usual calm, his eyes flicking between the doctor, me, and Amy.

“I wouldn’t want to speculate, Mrs. Treder,” the doctor said. “But I doubt we’d find anything. Your husband’s health record is clear, and he’s had no other symptoms.”

Amy sat back and blew out a long breath.

The doctor turned to me. “So, you can’t remember yesterday, is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“And this memory loss started after the accident?” “I—” I looked at Amy. “Yes.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows but didn’t push further. Instead, he stood. “I think you’re fine. The memory loss may be temporary and stem from the shock of the accident. It can surprise people. Even minor fender benders can be terrifying. And you certainly took some knocks. If you want, I can refer you to a psychologist for an evaluation.”

“No, thank you, that’s okay.”

“Okay. You can get dressed, Mr. Treder. Feel free to take aspirin for any discomfort in the next few weeks. And the antibiotics?”

“Thanks, I’ll get some aspirin and Neosporin at the pharmacy.” I stood and shook the doctor’s hand, and he left the room.

Amy didn’t say anything as I dressed. She met my gaze. “I’ll get the van.” Her eyes flicked to Lyle.

I caught the motion and gave her a tiny nod. “Thanks.”

Lyle and I watched her leave. I turned to Lyle. “Ready to go, bud?” “What happened, Dad?”

I crouched to his level. “Bud. I don’t know for sure. But I’ll tell you the truth. I was driving to work yesterday morning. Then, in an instant, in an eyeblink, it was today, this morning. The car was gone, but I was still traveling as fast as I’d been when I was driving. I got all these”—I held one arm up and nodded at the bandages scattered over my skin—“from falling on the road.”

He studied me a moment. “Okay, Dad.” He hopped off the chair and walked out.

I bit my lip and remained crouched there, reviewing what I’d said to him and his simple acceptance of something so outlandish. I was struck, not for the first time, that I might not have much time left to enjoy that side of him, that childish belief in his father’s authority and infallibility. He was seven already, seven going on thirty it seemed sometimes, and soon enough he’d be an adolescent and informing me in no uncertain terms how much of a fool he thought I was. I’d certainly let my father have it when I’d been a teenager. He’d deserved it—even growing up and becoming a father myself hadn’t changed my mind on that score. But I couldn’t bear the thought of my gentle and trusting Lyle doing that to me.

I stood, grimacing, and followed him.

When we got home, Amy changed clothes and asked if I wanted to take Lyle to the park. I was stiff and sore, and I wanted to do some investigating of my own, so I told them to go ahead without me.

Amy touched my shoulder as Lyle got his shoes on. “Take it easy, okay?

Just focus on getting better.” “I will.”

Lyle gave me a tight hug before they left.

I made myself some coffee and sat in front of the computer. Time to figure things out. I entered “missing time” into Google. Aside from blows to the head, the top result was stranger than I had imagined: alien abduction.

I was admittedly a little more credulous than I would have been two days ago, but still, the idea that I was snatched out of my car and deposited, traveling the exact same direction and speed, exactly twenty-four hours later by some advanced species from the stars was ridiculous. Although, if the web- sites I perused were to be believed, I was dealing with utterly impenetrable alien psychology.

I moved on.

I uncovered other, potentially more reasonable, explanations. One cause of missing time was multiple personality disorder. Another possibility was syncope, or fainting, often caused by low oxygen levels, hypertension, or extreme exercise. None could explain how I ended up traveling twenty-five miles per hour through the air with no car.

Overindulgence in alcohol was another potential and no doubt common cause of a blackout. Again, unlikely. The blackout would have to have been retroactive, assuming I started drinking later in the day. I hadn’t slipped vodka into my orange juice that morning. And I wasn’t much of a drinker. I never had been. Two stiff drinks and I was asleep on the couch.

I sat back and put my hands behind my head. I stared at the off-white spackled ceiling. I was forgetting something. My Honda. It had crashed into a parked car without me at the wheel. Twenty-four hours later, I fell out of the air.

I took a deep breath, let it out in a long rush, and closed the unhelpful billion-plus entries on “missing time.”

The Traveller is due for release from Tor on 11th June – you can pre-order your copy on Bookshop.org