“I have the ability,” she said, “but I’ll need ideas from you for how to do it. I’m not allowed to change the past on my own without the command of a living being.”

“Okay,” I said, and realizing that this might take long enough that people would notice, I asked, “How hard is it to stop time?”

The instant I thought it, I knew. Using the device, it wasn’t hard at all. Everything froze around me, and I told Spark, “Tell me if I’ve got this right. Because Lee left this place hidden and abandoned, all times from the moment that he left until now are accessible if someone opened a portal here and stayed?”

She nodded.

“Also,” I continued, “from what I understand, even though you can go to times where no portal exists, it’s better to use someone who came from a particular time to do whatever it is you need done. So, even if I could go back to 1927, for example, it drastically increases the chances that things go horribly wrong.”

With a flick of her tail, she replied, “Adding someone from a different time period drastically increases the chance of significant changes even in the case of your sister or grandmother who would find it easy to be unobserved.”

“So…” I thought it through in my head, “my only realistic option is to send someone back to exactly when they left and have them change whatever I want changed.”

“That’s right,” she said, adding, “but the more they deviate from their normal behavior, the greater the risk of a significant change.”

I let out a long breath. “Basically, the only way to change things without a major risk then is to not tell them to change anything and send something back with them that does the work, like the implant we sent back with Ray.”

Nodding in exactly the same way as before, she said, “That’s correct unless what you send back interacts with anything but what you want changed, and if the change affects things differently than the original event. Then history diverges.”

“Okay.” I collected data from the GCD. “We have more than one hundred intelligent beings here that will be on Earth during Travis’ lifetime, and 19 of them, excluding us, will be in Grand Lake. Is there any reason I can’t send the original team, ideally, Travis’ grandfather Chuck, back with an implant that he could give to Travis? It doesn’t have to be him, though. Anyone on the original team could work. C or the Mentalist might be better since they’re alive as of the date we left.”

Spark closed her eyes, and I, connected as I was to the GCD, felt power running through the machine as it calculated, opening up pinhole-sized portals to the past for observation.

Never mind datacenters, predicting the future while accounting for infinite variables and checking your work with time portals drew a lot of power.

When she opened her eyes, Spark said, “It won’t work without significant deviation. Telling the original League to keep the implant for later use will cause deviations that will add up over time. Giving implants to one or all of them so that they could create an implant for Travis will cause just as much deviation.”

I could imagine how that might be true, but asked, “Why?”

“The time in their personal timelines between when they go back and when they would pass on an implant, plus the number of unusual situations superheroes get into, increases the chance of deviation substantially.”

She watched me, waiting for my next question.

I had one, and I felt like it was the best option. If the problem was that the original team couldn’t see the effects of their actions, why not give the implant to someone who could and who I knew would survive long enough to hand it to Travis at the best possible moment?

I asked, “What if I specifically gave an implant to Daniel’s grandfather and left it up to him to dispense it at the right time?”

She met my eyes. “He wouldn’t pass it on. The damage to Travis would not be survivable even with the implant without transforming almost completely into a machine. That opens up possibilities for deviation from the timeline, including more deaths within your group. In addition, possessing an implant, used or not, presents significant potential for deviation while fighting the Abominators in the 1970s.”

I looked at the room around me, my eyes stopping on Haley. I couldn’t think of a fix. I didn’t see a way around the various complications.

I tried a few more ideas without any better results and let time move forward.

I immediately felt a reconnection with Daniel’s mind and his surprise as he absorbed what he’d missed. Wow. I felt our connection break and reconnect, but I didn’t know you’d stopped time.

Not me, I thought back. The GCD stopped time. I just made a request.

The strongest emotion that carried over was Daniel’s resignation. Yeah. It’s still beyond what any but a few supers can do. Let it go. My grandfather told me that he hadn’t seen any futures where all of us survived that we’d want to see come true.

Okay, I thought back and watched as everyone gathered around, old and new versions of the Heroes’ League, looking at each other.

My grandfather held out a hand for Tiger to sniff.