Steve wasn't caught quite as off-guard. His eyes did narrow further, though.

"That's why you wanted the paper," he guessed. "Because you think this is the wrong year."

"It's entirely the wrong year," Taylor muttered, taking a sip of her coffee. She carefully avoided looking at either of them.

"And what year do you think it should be?" Steve kept his attention on her, trying to figure out if she was telling the truth or not.

Taylor hesitated. She wasn't sure how much she wanted to tell him or not, but she figured she was in too deep to try to back out now.

"2014," she replied cautiously.

Steve's jaw dropped a little at that. That... was so far in the future he couldn't even contemplate it.

"That's... You need to talk to Howard again later. I don't even..." Steve trailed off.

"That's why it can't possibly be 1943, because if it's really 1943, then we have no idea what happened or how and how to fix it again," Taylor said. She fidgeted with her coffee.

Steve shook his head. "You realize how impossible that sounds, right?" he asked quietly. He didn't ask if she was telling the truth, and he didn't say that he doubted her.

"Imagine how we feel, then," Taylor replied, still just swirling her coffee in the cup.

Steve shook his head a bit. "We'll figure things out," he said. "It may take a while, but we will." Somehow.

Taylor made a vague neutral sound. At this point, she wasn't sure if anything could be done, and she wasn't in any sort of mood to try to figure things out yet.

Steve gave them a few hours to adjust and calm down and drink their coffee, keeping an eye on them. Because this was as big a shock as any most people ever had to deal with, and he knew that could be bad. Very bad. So he made sure to keep an eye on them.

The next day, after they'd had a chance to rest and really come to terms with the situation, the girls found themselves back in Howard's lab. Taylor cautiously poked at one of the machines, wondering what sort of thing it was and what it did.

"So, I hear they have an explanation for you two now," Howard said, looking over at them. Steve had told him, but Howard still didn't quite believe it.

"Sort of," Taylor hedged a bit. She had no idea what he had been told, and she wasn't sure what his reaction would be about it.

"I don't know about in 2014, but right now, there's no way people can travel through time," Howard said. "And there's no reason for me to believe you. I believe in Science, Science is good, and Science dictates that if there's no proof, it didn't happen."

"No, it's not supposed to be possible in 2014, either," Taylor replied. "We really have no idea what happened."

"Uh huh." Howard eyed them both.

Alissa rolled her eyes and pulled out her cell phone, which still had about half a charge. "Here, play with this, it's from our time," she said, shoving it at Howard.

Howard's eyes lit up as he caught the little device.

"Now what is this?" he asked, cautiously doing the preliminary pokes and prods.

"It's called a cell phone. You said you wanted proof that we're from the future? There's your proof." Alissa watched him poking around. There wasn't anything harmful he could do to her phone, and she knew the technology was so far away it wasn't harmful to let him look.

"A cell phone?" Howard asked, pushing buttons to see what they did. "What sort of name is that?"

"Short for cellular phone. Means that when I'm in my proper time, I can call people from anywhere, I don't have to be at home." Alissa watched him, grinning a bit. Okay, this was kind of fun.

"This is a telephone?" Howard asked, turning the little gadget over in his hands. "Remarkable, absolutely stunning. Where's the cable? I assume it has a cable that you can use to connect to the telephone service."

"Nope, it's all wireless," Alissa said. "It wirelessly connects to towers built specifically for these, so no cables involved."

"Wireless?" Howard asked. "that's impossible, there's no wireless network that large, it would be impossible to maintain a signal that strong over a widespread area."

"It's not in our time," Alissa said. "In our time, it's perfectly normal. Plus these do a lot more than just make calls."