Nathan went back to the scene of the crime to get more readings. Having the jacket in place acted as a tracker to the doubles and the various stories they spawned. Some died anyway, when the rescuers couldn’t find them in time, delayed by obstacles or just generally lost.
It seemed the girl was in charge of her own rescue and was directing the process from behind the scenes. It was only when she stepped out of the shadows that things really fell into place.
Several different scenarios felt plausible, and memories for them filtered in as the doubles experienced them. Some of them hardly included anything based on Time Travel, and different editing suggesting it was either a source of confusion, or the answer to the problem. Others featured it heavily and events were impossible without it.
Everyone around seemed to have a different opinion, and the girl was obviously flustered with the conflicting views. It caused her to loop back to the beginning and try things again, somehow her version of Time Travel was tied to her emotions.
In the end she green lit a whole spectrum of versions and sorted out the various crews to go through each scenario. It was a lot more work than strictly necessary but seemed the only way to end the conflicting accounts of the events.
Nathan surveyed the various tangents and made sure the various groups were kept clear of each other, and swept away the initial confusion. Each branch could have it’s own test timeline, as events were happening concurrently, and the directing of the experience would be hidden from memory.
That way things could happen as naturally as possible and still be exact enough that there was a solid anchor to the whole thing. Balancing the probability matrix would be a job for Doctor Time but Nathan hadn’t seen enough of the puzzle to try moving everything at once.
It would be a long night, but he worked himself into each of the timelines as a stunt coordinator or dialogue coach, or someone with enough pull to tweak things at the critical moments.
He generally succeeded into blending into the background, till the fourth time he tried it. The girl, now comfortable in the director’s chair, spotted him almost immediately.
“You’re here again” she said plainly. Nathan looked away for a moment, his cover blown, but quickly found a thread to follow. “I’m a technical advisor, for the Time Travel” he blustered out. Close enough to truth he thought.
