“It’s always my decision,” said Noxon. “Because I’m the one who actually does it. So I’m the one who bears the responsibility.”

“But without advice?”

“Hear me out and then give all the advice you want,” said Noxon.

Noxon woke up in the morning and joined the others, who were having room service breakfast. Ram fluttered a two-page note toward Noxon. “Read it,” he said. “It’s from future you. Apparently our expedition today didn’t turn out too well the first time around.”

“Because apparently I’m an idiot,” said Deborah. “Apparently my dead body appeared out there in the grass about two hundred years ago, and hyenas already had their way with me.”

“Let the man read,” said Ram Odin.

Noxon read.

“So the thing to decide,” said Noxon, “is whether to go out there at all, and trust that we’ll do better, or just go back to watching the camp.”

“I say we go,” said Deborah, “and I just won’t be an idiot.”

“He lays it out—you lay it out pretty clearly, Noxon,” said Ram. “Slice time from the start, place cameras to record everything, then watch from invisibility the way we always do.”

“Makes sense to me,” said Noxon. “But what about his other suggestion?”

“His?”

“Future me wrote this note,” said Noxon. “I didn’t. So it’s his suggestion, not mine.”

“I don’t remember my parents,” said Deborah to Professor Wheaton. “Not enough to want to trade them for you.”

“It’s not a trade,” said Noxon. “What he’s suggesting will copy us. You—the you of right now, eyeless and brilliant and semi-annoying—”

“Thanks for that ‘semi,’” said Deborah.

“You will still exist,” said Noxon. “But that other you, the baby with parents and eyes, that version of you will continue. And live a completely different life. She’ll never know you existed.”

“She’ll probably get hit by a bus at age twelve,” said Ram. “There are no guarantees.”

“Or her parents might get divorced. Or all kinds of bad things. But she’ll have that life, and whatever happens, she’ll see it happening with her own eyes,” said Noxon. “And meanwhile, the four of us will still exist because we’re the agents of change. And we’ll jump forward in time and go calling on the other version of Professor Wheaton, and he’ll take us in because he’s a generous guy.”

“I’ll be living in a garret somewhere,” said Wheaton. “Or a homeless shelter. Or I’ll be dead.”

“And if you are, then the four of us will find some other way to survive,” said Noxon. “It isn’t hard for me to make a killing on the stock market. We don’t need some version of Professor Wheaton’s pension. That’s just the simpler way.”