Content Warning: This section references drug use and addiction; it also discusses nonconsensual sex (specifically, sex engaged in under false pretenses) and brief anti-gay/anti-trans sentiment.

Oona Lockhart stands looking in the mirror and thinks the old woman wearing a funeral dress reflected back is out of sync with who she is inside. She touches her gold necklace made of clockwork gears, which reminds her that time travel used to be agony, but now she has learned life brings good along with the bad. She muses that in each era, there is someone she misses, loses, or sees again. She doesn’t know what age she will be next year, so the point, she thinks, is to live in the moment she is in. She thinks back to the party when she first time travelled; she was happy, young, and more in love than at any other time. She hopes one day she will get back there and get it right.

It’s New Year’s Eve 1982 and the night before Oona’s 19th birthday. She is in a basement in Brooklyn celebrating with a group of high school friends and members of the band she plays in: Early Dawning, a name inspired by the band the Velvet Underground.