A word of advice: never read Philip K. Dick before going on vacation through time. 

 Did you know the Earth formed through planetary accretion during the formation of the Solar System approximately four-point-five billion years ago? 

 About four years from now, most of the human race will be wiped out by a plague, a virus. We know it’s because of a man named Leland Frost. I have to find him. 

 Did you see the tape at your seventh birthday? I think we already did build it. 

 “Quick,” he shouted. “What year is this?” 

 Which word don't you understand? Time or travel? 

 Time Turner actually did pretty well with her power until she accidentally let slip . . . 

 This bead marks the moment you told Tom Merchant (high on your first-ever vodka shots and the teeth-jittering adrenaline of being out—even just as part of a group—with Tom Merchant, the most brilliant, amazing guy you’d ever met) that you couldn’t care less about your practical engineering major, that thing that your parents were both so proud of. 

 He looks at me, looks at my look, looks at his bag, opens his bag, looks in his bag, takes out a gun. He does not look as if he is about to use it. Instead, he breaks it open. “Look!” he says, and I am looking already. “It hasn’t been fired! How can Princip have laid his hands on another gun so quickly? The car went by thirty seconds after I stole this from his pocket. He didn’t have time! How is it possible? 

 I picture you standing in the kitchen downstairs, over a century ago. I imagine that you’re staring out through the little window above the sink, your eyes traveling down the path that leads from the back door and splits at the creek; one trail leads to the pond, and the other leads to the shelter and the anachronopede, with its rows of capsules and blinking lights. 

 Oh. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Oh my God. Holy Mother of God. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh God. 

 Just push me back. 

 I didn’t turn around. Who wants to see an older, uglier version of himself? 

 We scanned her I.D. and it showed she had medical insurance. Otherwise, the rule is that we treat you for the injuries, but there’s no swap. 

 And I’m Jermey when he was in the fifth grade. 

 Okay. But to get to the point, Castoroides ohioensis was a giant species of beaver that lived during the Pleistocene epoch. It’s been extinct for at least ten thousand years. Our project requires sending an animal-capture expert to the late Pleistocene to catch an ohioensis and bring back tissue samples. 

 Not entirely true. Georgie had traveled, two-three times to Kansas City. Hadn’t liked it much: fair enough. It hadn’t liked him, either. Been to Joplin a couple times to visit a sister; to Fort Scott once, to have a special piece of metal crafted for his time machine. That was it. 

 Hackerman: I was able to triangulate the cell-phone signal, trace the caller: His name is Adolph Hitler.
Kung Fury: Hitler. He’s the worst criminal of all time.
Hackerman: You know him, sir?
Kung Fury: I guess you could say that. In the 1940s, Hitler was a kung fu champion. He was so good at kung fu that he decided to change his name to Kung Fuhrer. 

 That radar is more advanced than anything the Germans are using at this point. 

 I regret to inform you that I will not be attending your reception, scheduled for 12:00 UT, 28 June 2009. 

 The scientist who brought it here is dead. His grave was the first one you dug behind your house. 

 Once, we flew back in time. We had breakfast twice that day. 

 Barry: Cyd, when that laser blasted Reynaldo, it was set at two. You guys were blasted at four . . . hundred. [laugh track] There is no telling what could have happened. It could have sent you to another dimension or made you time travel or rendered you invisible.
Cyd: [Sticks finger in mouth. Makes popping noise. Threatens Barry with slobbered-on finger.]
Barry: You’re not invisible. [laugh track] 

 Amy plus Six: Amy, it’s me . . . you, I time traveled from six years in the future.
Amy: How does that work?
Amy plus Six: I don’t know! How does electricity work? You just pay for it. Now listen, five-years-in-the-future-you is gonna come back and talk to you.
Amy: Wait, I thought you were from the future.
Amy plus Six: I’m six-years-in-the-future-you. Five-years-in-the-future-you has bangs. Now, she’s gonna come and she’s gonna tell you—
Amy: If I should get bangs or not?
Amy plus Six: No! Shut the f*** up! She’s gonna tell you not to move in with Travis?
Amy [devastated]: Why not?
Amy plus Six: Because he cheats on you; he gives you gonorrhea and bed bugs. It’s a nightmare.
Amy: Oh, God, I’ve never had bed bugs before. I won’t move in with him.
Amy plus Six: Oh, no no no. You have to move in with him, okay? It turns out that by being warned to break up with Travis that things in the future get really screwed up, and California is now in the ocean.  

 On their way, the Force had discovered the time gates, a pair of artificial wormholes connected across eleven years of time. All the ancient wormholes were incalcuably valuable; their possession was the defining feature of the patron nations. Finding a wormhole was the Union’s chance to slip from beneath the yoke of the Congregate. 

 Then he pulled out the recently engraved Time Law Charter and lingered on it, his fingers brushing the inscriptions. He had found what he was looking for. 

1. Watch The Terminator.
2. [optional, but recommended] Watch T2.
3. Suspend all questions about how various timelines can mesh.
4. Enjoy Genisys.
5. Bonus points if you can identify the other excellent time-travel movie with a main character named “Pops”! (Yes, it’s in my list.)

 Come with me if you wanna live! 

—Sarah to Kyle Reese

 “You see, Inspector,” he says, looking me up and down like I was dressed up for Halloween, “we are not permitted to adjust local-time affairs, for the simple reason that laws vary with time. The legal or moral, I am sure you understand, is a matter not only of place but also of time.” 

 Editor’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Please don’t attempt time travel in this way. 

 Okay, listen you two: We froze time for a pretty long time, so when I unfreeze it, the world’s time is gonna be fine, but our time is gonna need a little time to, you know, stabilize. 

 Well, maybe not everyone. 

 This day, the next hour, were the reasons he had built the device. Not so that graduate students in religion could travel back to Christ’s cruxifixion to see if it really happened as the Bible said. Not so that historians could add to their dissertations by actually speaking to Thomas Jefferson. Not so that techs could fruitlessly try to modify the device so that someone could finally shoot Hitler. 

 She’s wearing a cocked hat of beaver fur over a red waistcoat. Her boat just arrived at a northern city on the Baltic, under a sky of zinc marred by sooty clouds. 

 They became to society as pagans are to us. Considered mad but harmless they were left to their own devices, forgotten for over a century. 

 This Commander Parsec show is pretty ridiculous. The commander is always rescuing bimbos and defeating the bad guys all over the Galaxy. 

 Uh, I really don’t have time to explain right now, but I’m you from just a few minutes in the future. 

 I’m building a time machine, so I don’t have to wait. 

 What’s time travel like? Where’s Hiro? 

 Mother had gone on ahead, Ancesters only knew where. So there was no way forward. But somewhere in the starlit hours of the past—somewhere in the days when the Citadel still existed, and Bright Princess Ngoc Minh’s quarrel with the empress was still fresh and raw—Mother was still alive.
There was a way back. 

 What will become of me? 

 A child doesn’t fully mature until it self-consciously overcomes the mistakes its parents and its community made in raising it. What we are doing is saying to our ancestors, ‘Here and here you were wrong. We refuse to accept these errors. We are taking command of our own history.’ This is part of the maturing of human culture. 

 Will this whole dream last through all that drive and any time after they get there? Is he losing it, maybe, the way Niamh is? Are they both lying in a mortuary somewhere, dead and cold, and this is some kind of afterlife? Has time been changed somehow, so he can do better for her this time around? Jesus, would that even work? Could he be better. do better, given the chance? 

 But first let’s get things rolling by introducing an incredible invention of mine that I like to call the WABAC machine. 

 When questioned what speed he was doing, the driver stated that he was doing 88 miles per hour. 

 What do you think? Your machine is broken. It’s spitting you out, over and over. You’re coming out in groups so you always add up to a prime number. We had seven. Now it’s eleven. 

 Protesting that he was “put up to the whole thing” by a local gang, Martin McFly, Junior, 17, was arrested for the theft of an undisclosed cash amount by Hill Valley Police this morning. The theft, which was accomplished with a stolen degaussing unit, took place at the Hill Valley Payroll Substation on 9th Street at exactly 1:28 A.M. this morning. 

 I substituted phase-compensating lenses to dispel the zero average of the cosine function mandated by Eberhard’s proof. I instituted an autocidal-prevention mechanism to avoid the self-canceling paradox. Kill my own grandfather? Father a child who will bear a child who will kill me? What nonsense. My calcite crystals generate superluminal tachyons. Information from the future! The Nostradamus Machine! 

 Dutton nudged forward, arm shaky, stick wobbling, and when the tip pierced the surface, he was caught unawares by the forceful tug from the other end. He didn’t let go fast enough, stumbling forward, falling into it with two faint words whispering in his mind: Jess . . . Lucy . . .  

 The conversation I was having was déjà vu, but at the same time I was already into tomorrow, and back to earlier in the evening walking up Marty’s porch, looking at the huge Om symbol on the psychedelic tapestry that curtained his window, 

 If I remember right, I don’t have much time, so let me get to the point. What’s really hard to understand is whether or not you can change stuff. 

 You can’t change history, dude. Known fact. You can’t mess with things. Create paradoxes. You could much everything up so you don’t even exist, like in Back to the Future. And, like, every time travel story known to man. You shouldn’t even be telling me this. 

 Time reversed, dragging at my atoms like a boat suddenly throwing down its anchor whilst traveling at full speed. Nausea and vertigo twisted about, dancing just beyond the perimeter of my mind before slamming into my chest and driving the air out of my lungs. 

 I boot up my laptop and search for an old report I got on Jeff when he first started coming in. A report from the future. We call it an insight document. And it tells us everything we need to know about the future of our clients. 

 It’s an escape, of sorts. But . . . but not outward. 

 Pulling back the tarp, I exposed a chromed grill and red paint. Peeling it back fruther, careful not to drap the tarp and bugger up the finish, I found more chrome, more red paint, and red vinyl upholstered seats. As I uncovered more and more of the car, a vague feeling of familiarity crept over me. 

 Five years later, on September 1st, 1980, just after midday, I ceased to exist for a second time. There was no flash, no blinding light or thunderouse drama. No perfect sphere of swirling lightning. I just blinked and everything changed. If I remember it right, on September 1st, 1990, which is where I was when I next opened my eyes, it was raining. 

 What followed were twenty pages of neatly written text intertwined with drawings, sketches, and mathematical formulas. Then several pages with lists of materials. 

 Mostly the job is scratching stray seconds and the occasional minute out of the rigging, sucking up a misplaced nanosecond that somehow got into the cockpit. 

 I was in the way back. Far, far back. I skipped downtime and uptime, back to my past and then up to my home, and everything worked find. Then one day, in the far back, I tried to go home. 

 Thanks for reading these instructions and enjoy the creation and operation of your new universe. With luck, your creation will go on to give you many billions of years of entertainment and pleasure.