"What I know so far is that Zulf didn't know us, but apparently remembered some of the last calamity. That means something changed," Colin says. "With what little I do know about the calamity, and can infer from prior conversations with my father and my teams, there are two potential causes for this. One, the fabric of time is weakening through repeated exposure to temporal reversion. This means that if it reverts again, the damage next time is likely to affect even more worlds."

"The other possibility is that the calamity is just that devastating of an event, and it only happened once before," Colin says. "What affected one world before is now affecting numerous ones. If that's the case, the damage is growing exponentially, and another reversion could amplify the damage to such a degree that... well... I can't even quantify it. The damage now is incalculable. Grow that exponentially, and it's not a pleasant though."

He sighs, and looks skyward. "I could be wrong, of course," he admits. "And I would really like to be. But if all I have to stand between more worlds than I can fathom existing being destroyed is a slim strand of hope, I'd rather err on the side of caution and not contribute to septillions of deaths."