Liam clicked his fingers; he understood the rest. ‘And I suppose they have a crinkly old yellowing copy of that paper?’

‘Dated September twelfth, 2001. That’s right.’

Sal looked from one to the other, her eyes widening. ‘And… and do you mean the words in the paper change? They actually change on the page?’

Maddy nodded. ‘It’s a tiny ripple in time. Nothing that would change anything else. After all… who’s going to be reading the lonely hearts section of the papers tomorrow?’

‘The papers would be full of that plane-crashing-into-building story, will they not?’ said Liam.

‘Exactly. Our little advert won’t be noticed by anyone, except, of course… a bunch of people carefully studying a page of a fifty-five-year-old newspaper in 2056, or thereabouts.’ Maddy clucked with excitement. ‘I can’t tell you how freakin’ relieved I am that there’s somebody else out there!’

Liam nodded at the screen in front of her. ‘Looks like Bob’s done.’

› I have decoded the message, Maddy.

‘What is it?’

› It is only a partial message. The signal has been interrupted.

‘Uh? OK… give us what you’ve got, Bob.’

Words spooled across the dialogue box:

› Contamination event. Origin time appears to be 10.17 a.m. 18 August 2015. Major contamination ripples. Significant realignment of time stream. Death of Edward Chan, author of original theory on time travel, resulting in failure to write thesis in 2029. Death may have been deliberate assassination attempt. Occurred while visiting Instit The three of them waited for a moment for Bob to print out more of the message.

› That is all I have. The partial ends there.

‘That’s it?’

› That is it, Maddy.

She turned to look at the others. ‘Er… what the hell are we supposed to make of that?’