Of All Possible Worlds

The story follows Max Alben, a low-level civil servant plucked from obscurity because ancestral immunity allows him to survive extended time travel, who is sent back to the exact instant of a missile test to deflect it and prevent a catastrophic event called the Blight. Wealthy black-market magnates and political officials orchestrate the mission to reshape history to their advantage, treating the experiment as both a spectacle and a high-stakes gamble. Scientists add a last-minute precaution, a sealed cylinder to be released into the temporal medium, heightening the sense of scientific uncertainty and risk. Through darkly comic detail the narrative examines power, resource control, and the moral hazards of manipulating the past.