Every kid can tell you about Lewis & Clark’s 1804 westward romp, but fewer can tell you about Zebulon Pike’s. In 1806, Pike was charged with mapping out the southwestern sweep of the big plot of land (Louisiana) that we’d just bought. But the more I read about his incredible willpower to travel toward a goal, his fascination with science, and his scribblings in his cryptic and ever-present journal, the more it all seemed eerily familiar. Then it hit me: Zebulon Pike, through some magnetic accident, was actually the dislodged-from-time, past self of plucky physicist Daniel Faraday.