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became such a grand failure that it destroyed her career. Ergo, she must be about to die. She sighed and shut her eyes, closing out the trial’s beginning. Retreating deep inside her mind, she analyzed the situation looking for the best course of action.
    Unless she followed her original course of action, she would be creating paradox at the nexus of all historical destabilization. That was not truly an option, since any aberration in history at this time and point brought with it the possibility of destruction of the course of history. And not just by splitting out the time streams. This one was much larger than that. If she altered her course, it could simply cause them all to cease to exist, replaced by who knew what.
    She got up and walked out of the courtroom, a single tear running down her cheek.
    2344 B.C.: Unmapped land.
    Alex wiped the sweat from his brow and leaned the shovel against a tree. Rubbing the small of his back, he stretched and yawned. It had been a long day, and he was only half done as of yet. He leaned back against another tree and watched the sky for a few minutes. The brilliant and clear day shone down on him, warming him.
    Birds chirped and he could hear animals in the distance. He didn’t get beauty like this upstream. Or rather, all of the pollution and then repair done to the Earth had created a different kind of beauty that lay upstream from this point. This time seemed purer, untouched by the hand of mankind.
    With a sigh, he pushed himself forward. Back to work. Kneeling down at the lip of the small hole he had dug, he reached his hand down and into it, letting nanos slip from his system into the claymore he had placed in it. Once the transfer completed, he closed the lid of the silver box, trapping the mine in its airtight container.
    While the machine would corrode and rot, regardless of the hermetic sealing, the space would be there still because of the box, and land erosion should make it at the perfect height for his use when he needed it. The nanos he had dropped into the system would remember the shape and function of that mine. They were programmed well. And though the mine might be gone by the time he needed it, the nanos would replicate the effect on an invisible scale.
    He stretched his senses through the time stream and checked all of his traps. He had over seven thousand placements and he felt no strain monitoring them all. With an impish grin to himself, he said aloud “Damn, son, you are good.”
    The traps served a secondary function, linking up to his home time. He hoped he never had to trigger the function … or rather, since he would be dead when it triggered, he hoped it never triggered for him. Scooping the shovel back up in his long, calloused hands, he filled in the hole and moved to the next time to continue placing the traps he would need to survive his death.
    ***

Relativity Synchronization:
The Third Cause
    2044: Rude Awakenings
    Chris’s eyes fluttered open, the dreamland in his mind evaporated as his pupils adjusted to the waking world. Where am I? Scouring his mind, searching for memories, he found only nothingness, a blank slate. He couldn’t remember anything from before the moment he opened his eyes. He knew his name and could recall any number of theories, equations and formulae, but nothing else remained.
    No faces, no events, places or objects, just impressions that those things had at one point existed. Only one name endured: Christopher Nost . That’s me , he thought vaguely, and smiled sardonically to himself. I know who I am but the rest of the world is gone. Too bad for the rest of the world, I guess.
    Chris looked around the windowless room. The walls and floor were piercingly white and a pervasive smell of sterility under laid the pine scent of the air. Hospital. The word drifted into his consciousness along with images of faceless people, sick and dying.
    Am I dying? he wondered.
    Not far from where he sat on the edge of the bed the numbers