Hodge was talking now, but Angela wasn't listening. What kind of technology do they have in the future, anyway? Do they have really realistic-looking humanoid robots? Maybe they could send one of those back in time, that looks exactly like the kid, and then the kid can stay here…

But if the people in JB's time had that as a possibility, certainly JB would have already thought of it.

Can Elucidators bring people into the future as well as the past? As in, the future even further ahead from the time JB is from? Would it be possible for JB or someone to go into that time period, and talk to people there? Maybe they would have better technology or ideas. Maybe they could help us.

But again. JB had said that the time agency had already looked in to every possibility. Surely Angela wasn't the only person who'd ever thought of going even further into the future to ask for help. Either it wasn't possible, or they'd tried it and it hadn't worked.

Angela tuned back in to the conversation. JB was giving an example to the kids, comparing the time crash to a nuclear explosion. Angela remembered that it wasn't just the past that the time crash had affected. It was the present as well. According to JB, none of the kids from the time crash were supposed to be in the twenty-first century at all.

Even if they did somehow come up with a solution that fixed the past, could the presence of the thirty-six extra kids in Angela's time period still destroy all of time?

She forced herself to focus on what was happening at the current moment. Jonah was asking Hodge to give him the code to go home—home to his ordinary life in October 2012. Hodge refused, so Jonah turned to JB. But JB also refused. "You're going to have to choose," he said slowly. "Your 'now' is off-limits. Which will it be—the future or the past?"

Jonah didn't answer. None of the kids did. They all just kind of sat listlessly, doing nothing. This was good—none of them were fully committing to either decision. Which meant that the kids probably thought the same thing Angela thought—that it was possible to come up with an alternate solution.

The problem was, they weren't doing anything. They were just sitting, doing literally nothing, rather than talking with each other and trying to figure out what to do.

Angela could say something, but that would clue JB in to the fact that she wasn't completely on his side.

Angela glanced toward Jonah, trying to catch his eye. Maybe Jonah could get a conversation going. He seemed like a take-charge kind of kid, and the other kids seemed to look to him as kind of a leader.

It felt like a lifetime, but Jonah finally looked in her direction. Angela knew she had to be subtle to avoid being seen by JB, so she simply raised an eyebrow and mouthed the word Talk.

At first, she wasn't sure whether Jonah had understood her or not. But then he stood up and addressed the other kids: "We're facing a very important choice." He hesitated.

Go on, Angela thought. Keep talking. Get the other kids involved.

"And yet," Jonah continued, and Angela silently cheered. "We don't know if we can trust the information we've been given. How do we know you're not all working together?" The question was directed toward Angela, JB, Hodge, and Gary. Out of the corner of her eye, Angela saw JB giving Jonah an incredulous look.

"So," Jonah pressed on. "We're going to take each of you to a different corner of the room and talk to you individually."

Okay, thought Angela. This could work. Her group, at least, could collaborate and try to think about what to do. She just hoped Gary and Hodge didn't have any tricks up their sleeves—ways to send kids to the future without using the Elucidator. Because that was possible, wasn't it? JB had remotely zapped her to Outer Time back in the library parking lot, and then the time agency had remotely zapped both of them into the cave.

This isn't going to end with Gary and Hodge being sent to time prison, she realized suddenly. It can't. I know they escape. Because it isn't November 21 yet. And on November 21, I'm supposed to go back in time and rescue someone from them.

Although, then again, this was time travel. For Gary and Hodge, Angela rescuing someone from them could have already happened, even though it hadn't happened for Angela yet. So there was still hope.

Chip, Katherine, and some of the other kids came over again and started pulling the adults away from each other, toward separate parts of the cave. Angela ended up in the back left corner, surrounded by Jonah, Katherine, Alex, and Emily.

"Quick," said Jonah, looking around surreptitiously at JB, Hodge, and Gary in their own corners of the cave. "What do you think we should do?"

"I don't know much more about this time-travel stuff than you do," Angela told him apologetically. "I can tell you this—the man you keep calling JB is sincere. That Hodge character doesn't seem very trustworthy."

Katherine frowned. "What's JB's real name?"

"Names in the future are very weird. I can hardly pronounce it," Angela told her. "It's something like Alonzo Alfred Aloysius K'Tah—you might as well keep calling him JB."

Not only that, but it might be important that they keep calling him JB. Could one of them be the note writer?

"How far in the future are we talking about?" asked Emily.

"He won't tell me. He says I've already been contaminated enough." Angela grinned, remembering what was arguably the most ludicrous thing JB had said to her when they were in Outer Time. "He says I was supposed to marry a plumber and have five kids. I told him, 'Uh-uh, I don't think so!' He must have had me mixed up with somebody else."

"Where did you go, that day at the library?" asked Katherine. "Jonah saw you disappear."

Ah, so Jonah had been watching. Angela hadn't seen him, but then, she hadn't exactly had a lot of time to look around. "You mean, earlier this afternoon?" she clarified, just to be sure.

"No, it was, like, three weeks ago."

Three weeks ago? What? "Get out!" said Angela in disbelief. "This time stuff can really mess with your mind. Honestly, to me it was just like an hour ago. Maybe an hour and a half." Since Jonah was looking at her strangely, she proceeded to describe what it had been like in Outer Time. Not surprisingly, Jonah and the others had a lot of questions about time travel and the things that had happened, and Angela answered them the best she could, recalling what JB had told her about the paradox of doubles, Damaged Time, JB trying to increase the damage so he could get in, and the time agency using future addresses to send notes into the past.

"This was a desperate case," Angela concluded, "Because of Hodge and Gary. JB says they totally mucked up time."

Jonah, Katherine, Alex, and Emily were all quiet for a moment. Then Katherine spoke up, and it sounded like she was trying not to cry. "So even if JB managed to fix all that time in the past—even if he sent all the kids back—how would he fix all the damage now? How would he tell my parents they don't have a son anymore?"

"I don't know." Angela remembered JB's concern about the twenty-first century, about how much it had been changed by thirty-six families adopting kids they were never supposed to adopt, and Angela never marrying that plumber and having five kids. "He's really worried about my nonexistent five kids too," she told Katherine and the others. "The way he acts, you'd think one of them was going to be president someday."

What if one of them was supposed to be president one day? Angela wondered. What if no matter what we do, we can't fix everything?