Future Is “Down”

You twentieth-century folks don’t know how lucky you are.

There’s a project. A U.S. government project I guess you’d have to call it. Secret, naturally; as what isn’t in government these days? In my opinion, and that of a handful of others, it’s more important than all the nuclear, space-exploration, satellite, and rocket programs put together, though a hell of a lot smaller. I tell you right off that I can’t even hint what the project is about. And believe me, you’d never guess.

He had made three training jumps, two hundred years, then four hundred, then six hundred, and he thought he knew what to expect, that sickening sense of breathlessness, of dizziness, of having crashed into the side of a mountain at full tilt; but everyone had warned him that even the impact of a six-C jump was nothing at all compared with the zap of a really big one, and everyone had been right.

They’re back there in the past, trampling around, changing things, aren’t they? They don’t know it. They’re just living their happy lives, but changing small events. Mostly trivial, with no important effects. But every once in a while the effect of some small changed event moves on down to the—

Time had gone wrong—this is what the Hystorians believed. And if things were beyond fixing now, there was only one hope left . . . to go back in time and fix the past instead.

This is your moment, Billie. Coming up right now. Save the worlds, Billie. Change everything. You can do it.

If your parents don’t get married and have kids, then basically you just have no life to go home to because everything woud be different. No one would have any idea who you are.