I like shipping. YAY.

Into the Day inspiration pic.

Professor Johnson holds a brass cube in his hand. It is six minutes to three o’clock. At exactly three, he tells his colleagues, he will place the cube on his time machine’s platform and send it five minutes into the past.

"Therefore,” he remarks, “the cube should, at five minutes before three vanish from my hand and appear on the platform, five minutes before I place it there.”

“How can you place it there, then?” asked one of his colleagues.

“It will, as my hand approaches, vanish from the platform and appear in my hand to be placed there.”

At five minutes to three the cube vanishes from Professor Johnson’s hand and appears in the platform, having been sent back five minutes in time by his future action of placing the cube on the platform at three.

“See? Five minutes before I shall place it there, it is there!”

“But,” says a frowning colleague, “what if, now that it has already appeared five minutes before you place it there, you should change you mind about doing so and not place it there at three o’clock? Wouldn’t there be a paradox of some sort involved?”

Professor Johnson thinks this is an interesting idea. To see what happens, he does not put the cube on the platform at three.

There is no paradox. The cube remains. But the entire universe, including Professor Johnson, his colleagues, and the time machine, disappears.