Four Women, One Machine

In 1967, four brilliant women—Margaret, Lucille, Grace, and Barbara—combine their expertise in a remote English lab to create the world's first time machine. Their camaraderie and isolation fuel their ambition, and after successful animal trials, they become the first human time travellers. The experience is exhilarating but destabilizing, especially for Barbara, whose sensitivity and relentless work ethic make her both the heart of the group and its most vulnerable member. Their invention promises to change the world, but the psychological toll of time travel is only beginning to reveal itself.

The Breakdown and the Ban

After repeated time jumps, Barbara suffers a manic episode, broadcast live during a BBC interview. Her public breakdown leads to her expulsion from the project and the group's decision to cut her off for the sake of their reputations. Margaret, ever pragmatic, consults experts and institutes strict psychological testing and hazing for future time travellers, effectively barring anyone with a history of mental illness. The Conclave, the organization that will control time travel, is born from this moment of exclusion and fear.

The Candybox and Consequences

As time travel technology spreads, the Conclave commercializes it, creating products like the Conjuror's Candybox—a toy that sends sweets a minute into the future. Barbara, now living in obscurity, clings to a stolen piece of time machine fuel and dreams of returning to her life's work. Meanwhile, the psychological and ethical costs of time travel begin to surface, as the Conclave's culture grows increasingly insular and elitist.

The Conclave's Ruthless Rise

Under Margaret's iron rule, the Conclave becomes a powerful, secretive institution. Time travel is strictly regulated, and only the psychologically "fit" are allowed in. Hazing rituals and psychological conditioning become standard, desensitizing recruits to death and risk. The Conclave's justice system is harsh, relying on ancient trials of ordeal and blood revenge. The organization's internal culture grows toxic, with cruelty and exclusion justified as necessary for the greater good.

Messages from the Future

In 2017, Barbara's granddaughter Ruby receives an origami rabbit from Grace, one of the original pioneers, containing a future newspaper clipping about an unidentified woman's death. This message sets off a chain of events as Ruby tries to protect her grandmother and unravel the mystery. The pioneers' fractured relationships and the secrets of the Conclave's past begin to resurface, threatening to upend the present.

The Body in the Basement

In 2018, Odette, a young archaeology student, discovers the body of an elderly woman in a toy museum's basement. The room is locked from the inside, and the corpse bears gunshot wounds and traces of radioactive bacteria. The inquest yields no answers, and Odette becomes obsessed with solving the mystery, even as it triggers her own trauma. The dead woman's identity and the circumstances of her death become the central puzzle of the novel.

Trauma, Therapy, and Obsession

Haunted by the murder, Odette seeks therapy from Ruby, now a psychologist. Their sessions explore the nature of trauma, memory, and the need for narrative closure. Odette's obsession with the case mirrors the psychological scars left by time travel on the pioneers. Meanwhile, Ruby's own family history and guilt over Barbara's fate intertwine with Odette's quest for truth.

The Games Time Travellers Play

The Conclave's culture is revealed to be one of ritualized cruelty. New recruits are subjected to psychological and physical hazing, including the infamous "Angel of Death" ritual, where they must deliver news of impending death to strangers. These games are designed to desensitize time travellers to mortality and bind them to the group, but they also perpetuate cycles of trauma and exclusion.

The Hazing of Newcomers

Odette, determined to solve the murder, applies to the Conclave's detective division. She passes the entrance tests but is confronted with the moral cost of belonging: to be accepted, she must participate in the same cruel rituals that traumatized others. The Conclave's system is revealed as self-perpetuating, rewarding conformity and punishing empathy.

Love, Loss, and Legacy

The novel explores the impact of time travel on love, grief, and identity. Ruby's relationship with Grace, and her complicated feelings for her grandmother, are set against the backdrop of the Conclave's inhumanity. Time travellers struggle with the knowledge of their own and others' deaths, leading to emotional detachment or obsessive attempts to control fate. The pioneers' legacies are both scientific and deeply personal, marked by loss and longing.

The Candybox Roulette

Margaret invents "Candybox roulette," a game where players fire bullets into a time-traveling toy, risking their own lives or those of future users. The game becomes a test of loyalty and psychological resilience, but also a tool for Margaret's control and cruelty. Barbara, Julie, and others are drawn into the game, with lasting consequences. The Candybox becomes both a symbol and instrument of the Conclave's moral decay.

The Murder of Margaret Norton

In 2017, Margaret is killed in the same toy museum basement where Barbara died. The murder is orchestrated through the Candybox, with bullets fired weeks earlier by Ruby, seeking revenge for her grandmother's death. The investigation, led by Odette, uncovers the truth: Margaret's own system of cruelty and exclusion led to her downfall. The cycle of violence and retribution is laid bare.

Justice, Fate, and Forgiveness

Ruby is tried by the Conclave's archaic justice system, facing a trial of ordeal based on her childhood memories. With the help of Grace, she survives the ordeal and is acquitted, but the experience exposes the Conclave's reliance on fate and ritual over true justice. Odette, having solved the case, is forced out for her own past trauma, highlighting the institution's ongoing exclusion of the vulnerable.

The Cycle of Grief

The novel returns to the theme of grief, showing how time travellers experience loss differently—able to revisit the dead, but never able to change fate. The pioneers' deaths are foretold and ritualized, but the emotional impact remains. Ruby and Grace's relationship endures, shaped by the knowledge of each other's deaths and the impossibility of changing the past.

The Next Generation

As the Conclave's old guard dies or is deposed, a new generation of time travellers, including Odette and Elspeth, seek to reform the institution. They envision replication sites around the world, free from the Conclave's toxic legacy. The possibility of change, though uncertain, offers hope for a more humane future.

The End and the Beginning

The novel ends with Ruby and Grace's wedding, a celebration of love and survival in the face of fate. Odette, having exposed the truth, is offered a chance to help build a better system. The story closes on the recognition that while time travel cannot change the past, it can offer new perspectives—and that healing, though never complete, is possible.

Characters

Barbara "Bee" Hereford

Barbara is the youngest and most emotionally open of the original four inventors of time travel. Her breakdown after early time travel experiments leads to her expulsion and lifelong exclusion from the Conclave. She is defined by her longing for belonging, her scientific brilliance, and her vulnerability. Her relationship with her granddaughter Ruby is central, as is her tragic fate—her death, indirectly caused by Margaret's cruelty, sets the novel's central mystery in motion.

Margaret Norton

Margaret is the driving force behind the Conclave's rise, a baroness with a genius for organization and a cold, pragmatic approach to leadership. She institutes the psychological screening and hazing that define the Conclave's culture, justifying cruelty as necessary for the greater good. Her inability to empathize, obsession with control, and eventual murder by her own system make her both villain and victim of the world she created.

Grace Taylor

Grace is a brilliant physicist and conceptual artist, known for her playful, cryptic nature and her refusal to be pinned down. She is the only pioneer to maintain intermittent contact with Barbara and Ruby, sending cryptic messages from the future. Her relationship with Ruby is passionate but complicated by the nonlinear nature of time travel. Grace embodies both the wonder and the alienation of living outside common chronology.

Lucille Waters

Lucille, a black physicist from Liverpool, is the most compassionate of the pioneers. She is torn between loyalty to Barbara and the pressures of the Conclave. As Head of Knowledge, she oversees communication across time, but is ultimately sidelined by the institution's culture. Her death, like those of the other pioneers, is foretold and ritualized, but her warmth and integrity endure.

Ruby Rebello

Ruby is Barbara's granddaughter, a psychologist haunted by her family's past and driven to protect those she loves. Her journey from bystander to avenger is central to the novel's plot. Ruby's relationships—with Bee, Grace, and her own mother—are fraught with secrets, guilt, and longing. Her act of revenge against Margaret is both a quest for justice and a perpetuation of the cycle of violence.

Odette Sophola

Odette is a young archaeology student whose discovery of the body in the museum triggers the novel's central mystery. Traumatized but relentless, she seeks therapy from Ruby and ultimately infiltrates the Conclave to solve the case. Odette's outsider status, moral integrity, and refusal to be corrupted by the Conclave's culture make her a key figure in the novel's critique of institutional cruelty.

Angharad Mills

Angharad is a medical engineer who advises Margaret on psychological screening and later joins the Conclave. She is both complicit in and critical of the institution's practices, especially as they affect her own daughter, Julie. Angharad's journey from enabler to avenger reflects the novel's themes of guilt, complicity, and the possibility of change.

Julie Parris

Julie, Angharad's daughter, becomes a time traveller but is undone by the psychological toll of the work. Her eating disorder and eventual resignation highlight the Conclave's failure to protect its own. Julie's suffering and her mother's guilt are central to the novel's exploration of intergenerational trauma.

Fay Hayes

Fay is a time-travelling barrister who both enforces and questions the Conclave's harsh justice. She participates in and later regrets the institution's hazing rituals. Fay's encounters with her own family across time, and her role in Ruby's trial, illustrate the personal costs of living outside linear time.

Elspeth Niven

Elspeth is the head of Criminal Investigation at the Conclave and becomes a mentor to Odette. She is part of the new generation seeking to reform the institution, recognizing the need for change and the dangers of perpetuating the old system.

Plot Devices

Nonlinear Narrative Structure

The novel's structure mirrors its subject: chapters jump between decades, characters, and points of view, reflecting the disjointed experience of time travellers. This device allows the reader to piece together the mystery alongside the characters, while also experiencing the emotional dislocation and repetition that define the Conclave's world.

Foreshadowing and Fate

Characters frequently encounter knowledge of their own and others' deaths, through inquest announcements, art, and direct encounters with future selves. This foreknowledge creates a sense of inevitability and fatalism, challenging the idea of free will and raising questions about the meaning of choice and responsibility.

The Candybox

The Conjuror's Candybox, a seemingly innocuous toy, becomes a central plot device. Used in deadly games of chance, it embodies the Conclave's culture of risk, exclusion, and moral ambiguity. The Candybox's role in both Barbara's and Margaret's deaths ties together the novel's themes of legacy, revenge, and the unintended consequences of technological innovation.

Psychological Testing and Hazing

The Conclave's use of psychometric tests and hazing rituals serves as both a plot mechanism and a critique of how institutions pathologize and exclude the vulnerable. These devices drive the plot—determining who is allowed to time travel, who is excluded, and who is broken by the system.

Murder Mystery

The central mystery—who killed the woman in the museum basement—drives the narrative and allows for an exploration of time travel's ethical and psychological implications. The solution, involving bullets fired weeks earlier and the manipulation of fate, exemplifies the novel's blending of genre conventions with philosophical inquiry.

Analysis

The Psychology of Time Travel uses the trappings of science fiction and murder mystery to interrogate how institutions wield power, exclude the vulnerable, and perpetuate cycles of trauma. By centering women—scientists, leaders, victims, and survivors—the novel challenges the male-dominated narratives of both science and time travel. Its nonlinear structure and focus on psychological realism invite readers to question the meaning of fate, agency, and justice in a world where the future is both known and unchangeable. Ultimately, the book argues that true progress requires empathy, accountability, and the courage to break cycles of cruelty—even when the past cannot be changed.

Last updated: May 11, 2025