“This servant woman…was she really responsible for the theft of the papers or was it just an assumption made by the authorities?” Tina asked.

“I found the list of names involved with the experiment and guess whose name was on the list?” Alice was beaming from excitement. “Clarice Johnson, maid and cook.”

“Well, that answers my question,” Tina nodded thoughtfully. “And that explains how she was able to travel into the future in 1859.”

“Needless to say, Clarice was never found until she had appeared in front of Bette in 1875. By that time she was considered crazy because she was living in the woods like a gypsy and since she had the knowledge of the future, nobody could understand what she was talking about,” Alice added. “And guess what else I have found?”

“What?” everyone asked in unison as their excitement of Alice’s discoveries grew.

Alice’s smile was a permanent fixture on her face by now. “Am I awesome or what? I found one of those old daguerreotype photographs, dated 1859, of Halsey and his team of scientists and…there are a few servants on a background. Tina, take a look. Anyone looks familiar?”

Tina moved the photograph closer and stared at the faded faces for a moment. After awhile she nodded, “Yes, the older woman on the side of the back row looks like Clarice I’ve met.”

Bette picked up the photo and looked at it as well, “Oh my God…it is Clarice, though she looks younger than I remember and not as scary.”

“What does it all mean?” Dana was clearly having a hard time processing all information that Alice had shared with them. Bette was also slowly digesting all the elements of the research that their friend had done until most of the dots were connected.

“Are you saying that Clarice the Oracle appears to be the first person to travel forward in time after she stole Sir Halsey’s patent papers and the time travel device? The first time she went 120 years into the future into 1979 where she somehow met Tina’s grandma and made the connection with the Kennard family from the past, which was Clarice’s present but that trip didn’t go unnoticed by the local busy-body, though nobody believed his wild theories.”