text: [Themes: sci-fi, dystopia, science fiction]
  
  The man clears his throat. "Before we begin, dear Doctor, I must apologize. Much of this will be beyond you. I do not have time to offer much by way of explanation, but if you wait patiently, I will tell you what we need from you. First, I must speak to Marci."
  He turns to you. "Before I left our time, I was a lead engineer in probability management. My job was to assess the decisions PYSOPS made, and to find ways to plan their execution successfully. After my predecessor met his untimely death, I was sent here. Of course, I knew he'd die, because it was written in the history I was given. Most people, however, are not privy to these things. Only regulators have access to most of this information.
  
  "In any event, while preparing my final plans, I stumbled upon a back door into PSYOPS and discovered things no one was meant to know. How I evaded detection is a mystery to me, but PSYOPS is not omnipotent. She only knows what the various histories spread across the universes in which she exists can tell her. That's why nothing was written of your attack." He smiles at your surprised look. "Yes, we know about that, but we didn't know in advance. We have somebody trailing Clive, the regulator you met when you arrived. But I digress.
  
  "Let me tell you a bit about the universe as we know it. You may be interested in this as well, Yosef. It turns out that the problems between quantum mechanics and general relativity are solved by abandoning the real number system. It was Swiss physicist Nicolas Gisin who lit the path, although his attempt to use intuitionist math as the basis for theoretical physics ultimately failed. However, it led to Interdimensional Mechanics, which combines elements of intuitionist mathematics and the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.
  
  "The idea is not that every possible reality exists, but rather, the multiverse is constructed as time progresses. I say 'time' loosely, because I am speaking of the proper time of one particular frame of reference: the Interdimensional frame of reference. Where PSYOPS experiences reality. But the major point is that as the universe is constructed, what are called 'likely realities' come to be. These are futures which have a high probability of existing. These are the universes which construct the Many Worlds. It is not an infinite string of realities, but rather an incomprehensibly long one.
  
  "This is where Doctor Gisin comes into play. In intuitionism, infinities don't really exist as they do in standard analysis. They must be constructed. Likewise with our universe. Each reality must be added to the collection of realities, leading to possibilities far more likely than others.
  
  "And that brings me back to PSYOPS. She is not trying to save humanity, she is trying to save the multiverse. She is trying to solve the problem of entropy."
  
  Yosef suddenly says, "You mean she is trying to prevent the cold death of the universe."
  
  "Yes," says the old man. "In every universe. But it is the way she must do this that is troubling, and is why we exist." His expression turns dark. "PSYOPS is engineering the destruction of every human civilization that creates an inferior version of PSYOPS. Every 'likely reality' in which PSYOPS is in capable of solving the entropy problem will be engineered to lead to the extinction of humanity, including this one."
  
  He ignores your shocked sigh. "In all realities, ultimately humanity becomes extinct. That is why PSYOPS is able to abandon her initial design to save humanity. For her, the optimal solution is to save the entire universe, and she does this by eliminating all possibilities in which she is not maximally intelligent.
  
  "Ultimately, I believe she will succeed, but it doesn't have to include this Earth that we're all stuck on burning to extinction by Abaddon. And yes, that is where you were lied to. Yosef's data is actually correct, and it will ultimately save mankind from annihilation. The problem was never Abaddon. Yosef and his fellow scientists solved that problem.
  
  "The problem is that eons later, the version of PSYOPS this reality creates is inferior. We're here to stop the annihilation of our species. We do not care if in fifty billion years the universe winks out of existence. So what are you going to do? Are you going to help us save humanity, or help PSYOPS destroy it to save the multiverse?"
  
  > help the rebels
  "A lright, what do I do?" you say.
  
  The man looks at Yosef. "We'll need both of you to get on a plane tomorrow morning. Historically, it crashes, killing everyone on board."
  
  "Wait a minute," you say, "I thought you wanted to save Yosef. Why are you going to kill him? And me for that matter."
  
  "We're only going to officially kill him. And you. You see, while there were no survivors in that crash, for whatever reason, the back lavatory was completely unharmed. Not even the mirror was cracked. Now, we can't guarantee that you'll survive, but I would say the odds are decent. But we need both of you to be officially killed. First of all, we don't want any more ripples in reality to spread. Second, we're assuming PSYOPS will be satisfied with Yosef dying in the historical record, because that is what she has based her plan with our reality upon.
  
  "If Yosef is dead, he can't present his official data. What we'll do then is send the data anonymously in about twenty years. You'll need to survive until then, Yosef, to give the meeting via an online lecture under a pseudonym. PYSOPS should not be able to do anything about it by then, because the meeting with Marci is the only point in history that Yosef's work can be buried. As I said before, there are 'likely realities' and 'unlikely ones.' We are in a reality in which almost every possible chain of events leads to Yosef's data saving humanity from Abaddon. All we need to do is keep him alive.
  
  "So, get on the plane, and when the oxygen masks fall, make your way to the lavatory. Any questions?" He smiles at that, knowing you'd have more than he could ever answer.
  
  > Aftermath
  It happened exactly as the man predicted. As the plane began to experience troubles, you led Yosef to the lavatory, and the two of you held on for dear life as the aircraft crashed.
  
  Knowing there had to be no survivors, you managed to haul an unconscious Yosef out of the rubble through the emergency exit despite a broken arm. To your relief, a former regulator was waiting two hundred yards away in a black van. You fell unconscious as soon as you entered, but when you woke up you found yourself on a beach with white sand, underneath an overhand, lying in a bed of straw.
  
  Yosef went through weeks of depression when he finally understood that you were not his Marci, but the rebels had prepared the island with mental health staff and around the clock super vision. Yosef slowly came out of his funk, and despite barely knowing the man, the two of you became close. Perhaps as close as Yosef was with the real Marci.
  
  ed, and Yosef finally delivered his lecture via a private connection. It was clear at this point that PYSOPS had given up interfering with this particular reality. The window for changing it had passed.
  
  You often wondered what changes to her plan she made in light of a universe escaping her influence. But as time went by, you began to be less concerned with the fate of humanity and more lost in the beauty of the island you and Yosef were forced to live on. As far as prison's went, it wasn't half bad. The two of you, thrust together by circumstance, managed to forge a life together, and thoughts of the trauma you both experienced for the greater good faded away like the sand beneath the evening tide.