The ELI Event B007R5LTNS

simply doesn’t change, no matter what.”
    Aurora picked up the point. “And conversely, some past events which, if changed, would certainly reset the timeline, do not respond to change efforts. That is, despite attempts to modify them, they always happen exactly as they did the first time. It is as though certain events cannot be budged off their original timeline, as if they are somehow locked, meant to occur in a certain way at a certain time—and they do, always.”
    Arty considered this. “I see. So, I have to ask... Let’s say you do somehow prevent this L.A. disaster. How will you know if you’ve really changed anything back home?”
    “Ah, a very insightful question,” Aurora replied. “As you correctly observe, when an event changes, the downstream timeline is immediately reconstructed. Thus, from a downstream point of view, history was never changed at all. For any observers anywhere down the timeline, the history they know is the only one that has ever existed for them. Only returning travelers, such as us, would know otherwise.”
    Arty frowned again. “Okay, wait. But once the initial change kicks off the new timeline, there’s no controlling it, right? I mean, you don’t know whether the new future will be better or worse; the only thing you know is that it’ll be different somehow. For all you know, time travel may not even have been developed in your new future.”
    “True enough,” said Denes somberly. “That is a chance we take.”
    “Ah,” Arty said, satisfied. “So let’s be honest. You have no damn idea whether you can prevent L.A.’s destruction at all. If you do prevent it, you have no damn idea if that’ll have good or bad results or no results whatsoever, either twenty or three hundred years down the road. You have no damn idea whether the people who sent you here will know you when you get home. And you have no damn idea if you’ll even be able to get home! Basically, your whole plan is to send me off to try to change the past, kick back, pop some corn, and hope for the best.”
    “Bluntly put, but essentially correct,” Denes sighed. “Mathematical probabilities weigh in our favor, but there are no guarantees.”
    “Okay, but you still haven’t said what you think my connection is to all this.”
    Aurora gave Arty a motherly, patient, shame-on-you look. “Yes, let’s do be honest,” she said gently. “I think you know what your connection is.”
    Arty put his head in his hands. Through his fingers he watched the woman on the magazine cheerfully continue to cook the hell out of those vegetables. Finally, he lifted his head and sighed, “Yeah, I know. I just have one other question.”
    “Yes?”
    “ Modern Chef?!? ”
    “We were rushed. It was the only thing handy,” Aurora said curtly. “Does this mean you will you help us?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Does it at least mean that you aren’t going to use that… thing on us?” she asked only half-jokingly, indicating the pistol.
    Arty picked up the Colt and smiled. “Oh, it doesn’t work anyway,” he chuckled. “This model has a delicate mechanism, prone to breakage—and break it did, decades ago. The cylinder won’t even turn anymore. I keep it mostly to wave at the occasional stoner who sneaks in to bust open the munchie machine. Sorry about that.”
    Aurora had not the faintest idea what a munchie machine was but elected not to pursue the issue.
    “If I decide to help you, what would you have me do?” Arty asked.
    “The plan is for our colleagues at the temporal relocator to retrieve you and first return you here to Colby in 2015, but only briefly, to perform a specific task. You will then be retrieved again and sent on to Los Angeles,” Denes explained. “Through our research of the event, we have identified three principals who will try, but fail, to stop the weapon. One you know; two you do not. Even though they did not originally prevent the disaster, Lokus will almost certainly intervene to make certain they don’t prevent it now, either through their own efforts or ours—that is, yours.” He looked at Arty earnestly. “You must at all costs protect these three individuals. From Lokus… and from history.”
    “And,” Aurora added, “there is the little matter of preventing the weapon from destroying Los Angeles.” She smiled, wryly but sympathetically.
    “Yes, there is that,” Arty muttered to himself. “Go back in time twenty years and help some nice folks prevent the Eli