Rule One: You can only travel to a point within your lifetime.
Rule Two: You can only travel for ninety seconds.
Rule Three: You can only observe.
The rules cannot be broken.
In this electrifying science fiction thriller from acclaimed author Philip Fracassi, a scientist has unlocked the mysteries of time travel. This is not the story you think you know. And the rules are only the beginning.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Philip Fracassi’s The Third Rule of Time Travel, which is out March 18th 2025.
Scientist Beth Darlow has discovered the unimaginable. She’s built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time—to any point in the traveler’s lifetime—and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it’s not perfect: the traveler has no way to interact with the past. They can only observe.
After Beth’s husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella—their only daughter—and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology.
Then the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp.
As her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future.
Of course, there are rules…
I’m in an airplane.
A small propeller plane. I look to my left and see my sister, Mary, seated next to me. A large headset covers her ears, but I make out her profile easily. Her mouth, her cheekbones, her eyes. Chestnut-brown hair falls to her shoulders. She wears jeans and a black down jacket.
My vision turns toward the front of the plane.
I have no choice but to follow.
A windshield filled with blue sky. A man seated to the left. I can only see the back of his head, but I know it’s my father. Seated on the right is my mother. Between them, the plane’s console is a smattering of buttons, levers, and lights.
Even through my noise-dampening headset, I can hear the whine of the propellers. The sound is like a swarm of hornets.
I continue looking forward.
My feet, flat against the metal floor of the narrow cabin, vibrate unpleasantly.
As a young girl, I’d flown in this little plane dozens of times. Dad’s Cessna. The last time any of us flew in the Cessna I was twelve years old. My sister, Mary, was fifteen. I think…
No… it can’t be.
I feel a concussion to my right—as if someone punched a hole in the sky—and my vision jumps toward the sound. Out the window, a thick stream of black smoke flows past. I lean forward and glance far below, where an earthen carpet of dense, endless forest rolls past. The plane shakes with a sudden violence. It dips and sways, battered by currents of air.
My father’s voice erupts in the headset.
“Hold on!”
The windshield tilts sickeningly and Mary’s hand clutches my arm. My head turns toward her and I see my own terror reflected in her wide eyes and oh God, no… please, no…
No!
Why have you brought me here?
RULE NUMBER ONE:
Travel can occur only at destination points during the previous lifetime of the traveler.
These destination points are random.
The plane shakes with such violence that I’m forced to clench my jaw to keep my teeth from rattling. My vision is vibrating, turning everything around me into a blur of trembling colors. I can barely understand what I’m seeing. Everything is distorted. Focus is impossible.
I turn to look at Mary, and then the plane drops. The engine shrieks like a demon and my stomach leaps into my throat. My hips and chest strain painfully against the locked seat harness, fighting gravity. I watch in shock and wonder as Mary’s hair rises into the air, naked fear on her bloodless face.
My dad is screaming into the headset, but all I can make out amid the savage fury engulfing our plane are the words “Hold on!” and “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”
Mom is yelling into a hand mic attached to the plane’s radio. I don’t know what she’s saying—I can’t hear her—but I assume it’s a distress call.
Her lips form the words: Mayday! Mayday!
I think I’m screaming but can’t be sure. It’s too chaotic. There’s too much stimulation.
The windshield is no longer blue; it’s green.
We’re plummeting; we’re going to crash.
Again.
RULE NUMBER TWO:
The traveler has only enough energy to maintain contact with the arrival world for approximately ninety seconds.
The ground rushes toward us as smoke and fire billow past the plane’s windows. A piece of the engine snaps free, slams against the door next to me. The window splinters, and if I wasn’t already screaming, I’m screaming now.
My sister claws at my arm; her fingers and nails dig painfully into my flesh, but I don’t bother turning toward her. My eyes are fixed ahead. Even in the maelstrom of the plane’s descent I can make out individual trees growing closer as my dad yanks helplessly on the controls, desperate to somehow slow our downward plunge.
We hit the top of the first tree just as my mom whips her head around, twisting back for one final look at her children. In that split second her face wears a mask of unimaginable sorrow I’ll never forget. Then the windshield implodes and thick branches rip into their bodies, shredding them like tissue, and I’m sprayed with a burst of glass and blood; the plane lurches sideways as it’s torn apart.
Something sharp and hard smacks into my face, shatters my arm.
I no longer feel Mary’s grip. It’s vanished.
The cabin rolls as we slash and tear through endless branches. I’m turned upside down as dark earth flies toward us through the ragged hole that was, only seconds ago, a cockpit. My parents.
My legs drop upward and I’m suddenly hovering in midair like an astronaut in zero g, and then we crash into the ground like the blow of a hammer.
RULE NUMBER THREE:
The traveler has no ability to interact with the world they have traveled to…
What’s left of the plane settles to a stop.
I’m hanging. My arms and legs dangle, lifeless.
My vision blurs everything a swampy gray.
I turn to my left to find my sister. I see nothing but torn metal and ruptured dirt.
Her empty headset.
I try to twist my head to look behind me, to find her, but the harness strap is cutting into my neck and my chest blossoms with a pain so deep it steals my breath.
In the end I suffered broken ribs, a broken arm. A concussion. Internal bleeding.
I steel myself against the pain, force my head to turn toward what remains of the rear cabin. Spattered against metal walls I see broad sprays of dark blood and parts of my sister’s body. I’m not sure which parts they are.
I vomit into the dirt a few feet below, my body limp, suspended in the wretched belly of the shattered Cessna like a broken marionette.
When this happened—the first time—I remember what I was thinking:
I’m in a tomb.
I’m alive, somehow alive.
I’m alone.
