“No, it’s not. I remember when I showed you before that he lived. Remember? You joked and said something about how you were glad he wasn’t dead.”

“I get that you’re confused but…” Yusuf trailed. “You’re saying that you changed our future and that altered Figueiredo’s past? How does that… work?”

The film that I saw from the other world was already becoming hazy, like my brain wanted me to forget what had really happened. Threads and storylines crossing and tangling up.

“I’m saying I know it sounds absolutely batshit crazy, but it’s the machine. We know Figueiredo could connect to it. We saw him sending fleets of machines to tons of different universes.” I tried to keep my words slow and even. “What if, just like he does, I connected to whatever powers the thing? And used it to… do something?”

Yusuf waited a long time before answering, drawing his shoulders up and down with his steady breaths. I could see the battle behind his eyes. All the evidence suggested that I’d had an aneurysm, but something made him want to believe me.

“I’ve heard you say things about M-Theory or whatever,” I said. “Get theoretical with me. Please. Anything. What could’ve happened?”

*   *   *

Okay, so, hypothesis. Tossing it over to Yusuf.

Suppose that the Envisioner could understand the state of every bit of matter in the universe—impossible but remember we’re supposing—and use that to accurately predict—can’t say predict but more like map out—the only possible events of every action, down to electrons bouncing off each other. Suppose that the only way it’s possible to change a mapped event is to actually subsume—that means, like, absorb, Hayes—another universe where the event happened the way you wanted it.

This is assuming that every possible history of every universe exists simultaneously, and new ones don’t branch off for every infinite outcome of every possible quantum event. I mean, maybe the Envisioner somehow violates the laws of thermodynamics and the law of conservation of mass as we know them because the system is no longer closed—that is, the Envisioner blasts open the barriers between universes and maybe lets matter and energy flow between—sorry, sorry, I’m just thinking out loud.

Yeah. What?

Okay. If universes are different threads, maybe when you pushed at the Envisioner, or—what’d you call it? When the Envisioner blinked, you made this universe absorb another one where the only outcome of the riot was that Kaori handed me the gun, I shot the intruder, and I lived.

Yeah, but how is that different from us using intel from the Envisioner to stop that attack in Cape Town?