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practical experience meddling with it, and sloppy meddling with time was disastrous. The historian numbered 07760 met with himself, and because he was a historian, it became a matter that needed an investigation.
    Historians meeting with themselves could be an attempt to take advantage of their historical knowledge. Historians knew better than the average person that trying to alter a personal timeline was a fairly fruitless endeavor. People who attempted to alter their past seemed only to reap the consequence of their actions. If a person told their younger self exactly how to capture the heart of another or the winning lottery numbers, the time traveler would come back to a future where another person who looked exactly like them had reaped the benefits and a time agent investigation. If they married the “one that got away” based on advice from their future self, they would come back to a timeline and be in a relationship where both partners remembered the past differently. The relationship would be awkward and nothing like the one where both partners shared all the same memories.
    Wealth was fairly meaningless to most people because nanomachines and grayspace left people wanting for nothing. Most time crimes were motivated by power, thrill, righteousness, and other emotional motivations. Even a person going back to win the lottery for themselves, and then staying in the past to reap the rewards could recreate the scenario in the grayspace. Time crimes were usually always something different. Since most time travelers attempted to avoid crossing personal timelines, a historian meeting himself meant trouble.
    Traveling back through history to correct possible problems means choosing time travel moments carefully. Time agents tried not to cross their personal timelines, so they would not inadvertently change their history. A person who claimed to be one of Nanette's protégés wiped himself on a case. He thought he’d go back and tell himself where to find his subject. The poor bastard thought he innovated the agency and ended up getting his past self killed. The ripples were more costly to him. According to Nanette, he’d died on his first mission. To him, he was just coming back from telling himself a clue. During the three years, he’d been dead, his wife moved on, son killed himself, and daughter got married. There was something to be said for not crossing personal timelines. When Nanette's business is traveling in the past to catch people, she had to travel carefully.
    But the careful nature of her work was a disadvantage in a situation like this. Unusual situations demanded unusual responses and unusual thinking. She was hoping her protégé would provide what she needed. If she waited for her supervisors to make a decision, there was a good chance the case would become generational. The generational cases were the equivalent of taking a problem too complicated for a simple solution and dumping it on the next generation. There were unsolved cases dating back hundreds of years. One researcher a few hundred years ago discovered that the original Black Plague strain that wiped out one-third of Europe had genetic markers of bacteria manufactured from the future. The person who created and unleashed the plague was never caught. Agents at the time figured that the case might eventually be solved in the future. Since a future generation could always travel back to Europe once they solved the case to apprehend the criminal, they left the case for future agents. The future agents also left the case, and so forth. Generational cases were unsolved. She didn’t want this one to be someone else’s mess.
    “His memory is wiped,” her protégé said.
    “Reasons for your conclusion?” She buried her surprise through rigid questioning. He may never detect the respect she had for him.
    “He crossed his own timeline yet still continues to exist without perceivable change to himself or the past. So the future self probably had