The protagonist has undergone several years of training in the Time Institute, after leaving a hotel five years earlier. Their study involved private instruction and self-study in the Time Institute library and at their apartment with their pet cat, Marvin, who was a gift from Zoey.
The protagonist is introduced to the travel chamber which contains a desk and an embedded wall bench. Zoey is also present in the room and has a device that appears like a gun.
Zoey explains that the gun-like device shoots a microcomputer, a tracker, into the protagonist’s arm that interacts with their personal device and the time machine.
Zoey reveals that the cat, Marvin, is not from the present time. She tells the story of an agent who fed her tracker to a cat and subsequently, the cat was transported through time instead of the agent. Marvin is that cat and he is originally from the year 1985.
The protagonist expresses surprise and dismay at not being told about Marvin being a time traveler, to which Zoey dismissively responds that a cat is a cat, regardless of its time of origin.
Zoey injects the protagonist with the tracker, causing unexpected pain. She then proceeds to use a floating screen projection to adjust something before holding the protagonist's device close to the projection.
Zoey programs the protagonist’s first destination into the device and instructs them to sit in the time machine.