Asimov’s Science Fiction, January/February 2026
“The Tourist” is a time travel story centered on a mysterious port that allows travelers to visit alternate timelines—or “splinters”—of reality. The protagonist, known only as M, arrives from 2081, a future where money has been abolished and class distinctions eliminated. He’s traveled to 2074 to commit a specific act: preventing an eleven-year-old girl from witnessing a protest that would have radicalized her into leading a violent nationwide revolt.
M successfully completes his mission without harming the child—simply distracting her at a crucial moment. However, when he attempts to return home, he faces an unexpected problem: he needs to pay for his return trip, and his utopian 2081 never prepared him for the concept of money. The story’s attendant—a weary, sardonic port employee—explains that M can choose from several splinter timelines of 2081 to return to, but the one he wants most (where he appears to rule as a king) costs ninety-seven million dollars.
The central mechanism of the story involves the Bank of Year Zero, an institution that exists across multiple timelines and owns the time travel technology. M discovers he can raise money by sending objects from 2074 to various splinters of 2024, where they’re sold for profit. He begins with small items—a cigarette lighter, a bicycle—but gradually escalates to stealing cars and eventually a valuable Courbet painting.
The attendant, Kyle, grows increasingly disturbed by M’s mercenary behavior and his eagerness to abandon the egalitarian 2081 he came from. He tries to convince M to simply return home for free, but M is obsessed with achieving the timeline where he’s recognized as superior and rules over others—a direct rejection of the values of his origin timeline.
The story’s clever structure reveals that timeline splitting occurs when travelers make changes, creating multiple versions of events. In one timeline, M successfully pays his way to his desired future and undergoes a “mind-merge” that transfers his consciousness into the body of his alternate self who rules as king. In another timeline, however, Kyle manipulates M into accepting a different deal: traveling to the kingly timeline without the mind-merge, essentially as an imposter who will likely be executed.
Kyle accomplishes this by suggesting M take a stolen revolver and assassinate his alternate self to claim the throne. The story ends ambiguously, with Kyle waving goodbye to M as he departs into the transporter, while simultaneously greeting new tourists—suggesting the cyclical, repetitive nature of his job and the infinite variations of travelers and timelines.
Ester’s story is a sharp critique of individualism and the corrosive nature of inequality. M’s willingness to destroy a utopian society in pursuit of personal status serves as the story’s moral center, while the Bank of Year Zero represents how capitalism can colonize even the impossible—turning time travel into just another exploitative business model where everything, including alternate realities, has a price.
