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from Cooper [H 35]. After discovering the advertisement, he tells Twissell about the barrier at the 100,000th and what happened to him [H 27]. |
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Chapter 16. While Twissell and Harlan are going upwhen to Nos [H 36], Twissell talks about the history of Eternity [E 2] and the possibility of supermen in the Hidden Centuries. After their return with Nos, Harlan shows Twissell the advertisement from a 1932 magazine [C 1]. Harlan agrees to go back for Cooper if Nos accompanies him [H 37]. |
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Chapter 17. Harlan and Nos prepare to go [H 38] on an exploratory trip to determine Cooper's exact time of arrival, then return and travel again to a point in time fifteen minutes after Cooper's arrival, pick him up, and deliver him to 2317. As that is done, Cooper's experience in 1932 will disappear (except for fifteen minutes) as will the advertisement [-C 1]. But when Harlan and Nos arrive in 1932 and Nos confronts Harlan and his coldness, he recalls [H 39] the barrier at the 100,000th [H 27] and its consequences [H 28-32]. He accuses Nos of being from the Hidden Centuries. He also recalls the night she whispered to him before their first sexual experience [H 7] and the comment of the Life-Plotter about Nos not fitting into the old Reality of the 482nd [H 25], their first trip to the 111,394th when Nos stopped the kettle [H 11]. He says he is going to kill Nos [H 40]. |
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Chapter 18. Nos admits she is from the Hidden Centuries and challenges Harlan to kill her [H 41]. When he is willing to listen to her explanation, she talks about the future of humanity and Eternity's effect upon it [E 3]. She also describes the actions of the Hidden Centuries when their residents discovered time travel and Eternity and the Basic State. During this, Harlan remembers the reactions of Voy to the elimination of electro-gravity spaceflight [H 24; - 2481st 1] and Life-Plotter Neron Feruque, to ease his guilt, railing at Eternity's handling of anti-cancer serums [H 25]. Nos talks about the reaction of humanity to the discovery that the Galaxy already was in alien hands [HC (Hidden Centuries) 2] and about the alternate reality in which Eternity is not found and humanity reaches the stars more than a hundred thousand Centuries earlier [BS (Basic State) 1]. She also tells Harlan that she was educated for her job to destroy Eternity [N 1] but had a choice of five Realities that seemed least complex. She chose the one in which she went back to the 482nd [N 2], met Finge and then Harlan [N 3], in which Harlan loved her, misdirected Cooper, and returned with her to the Primitive where they lived out their lives together [N 4]. But Harlan, holding her at gunpoint, is in a slightly different Reality, just as Twissell accompanying him in his last trip to the 111,394th [H 36] was not part |
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