The Radiator Incident

Exhibit A in Priya's growing case file against her landlord: Mr. Higgins had, on three separate occasions this month, referred to the microwave as "the quick-oven," always with the faint, apologetic confusion of a man translating from a language he'd only half-learned.

Exhibit B: he'd fixed her radiator in November wearing what could only be described as a hazmat suit from several decades in either direction of the present, muttering something about "particulate exposure protocols" while using a wrench that appeared to be humming, very faintly, in a way wrenches generally didn't.

Exhibit C, and the one that had finally tipped Priya from "eccentric old man" to "I need to discuss this with someone," was the calendar on his kitchen wall, visible through the door he'd left ajar during the radiator repair, which was not, as far as she could tell through admittedly limited investigative access, tracking the current year at all.

"Mr. Higgins," she said, when he emerged from beneath the radiator looking pleased with himself in the specific way of a man who'd solved a problem using knowledge he probably shouldn't have. "Quick question. What year do you think it is?"

He blinked at her with the owlish alarm of someone who'd just realized he'd left the stove on somewhere very far away.

"That is," he said carefully, "an unusually specific question for a Tuesday, Ms. Anand."

"Is it, though? I feel like it's a pretty normal question."

"It is not a question I am contractually able to answer," Mr. Higgins said, which was, Priya reflected, possibly the single most suspicious sentence a human being had ever constructed, and she'd once dated a man who described his job as "asset relocation specialist" without a hint of self-awareness.

He packed up his tools — the humming wrench included — with the brisk efficiency of a man exiting a conversation rather than a repair job, and paused at her door only long enough to add, entirely unhelpfully: "The radiator should last you exactly as long as you need it to. Do try not to think too hard about what that means, Ms. Anand. It rarely helps."

Priya stood alone in her now-warm apartment for a long moment, radiator ticking contentedly behind her, and reached the only reasonable conclusion available to a woman with a functioning sense of pattern recognition.

Her landlord was almost certainly a time traveler.

Possibly a con artist.

The rent, infuriatingly, was still due on the first.