July's staff meeting takes place barely twenty-four hours later. You've already briefed your senior staff about the specifics of your disappearance. For the last few weeks Winston has been spreading the cover story that you had been urgently called away for personal reasons. You see no point in contradicting that story, either internally or to the public at large. And so you let it stand.
Once again, you sit at the head of your meeting table, and pause a moment to glance around the room. You feel oddly desynchronized; from your internal perspective, you last sat in this room no more than a couple of days ago. You've lived only two days to everyone else's thirty; you idly wonder if this means you'll have to recalculate your birthday.
"First point," says Winston. "Randy McGinty."
"What about him?" you ask.
"He's stuck here. The magic he uses to travel through time is no longer functioning, apparently. He can't leave this time period, so he's offered to work for us, for a few months at least. He envisages a post in our research department."
You glance over at Claudette. "Opinion?"
Claudette frowns. "I'm not sure he'd be a good fit. We've always specialized in advanced technology. McGinty seems like a sorcerer of significant ability—enough to destabilize our current technological focus and bias our work in favor of magic. Magic and science aren't exactly compatible, remember."