Chapters 16-19 Summary

In Chapter 16, Charles examines the book from the future, which is part autobiography and part field manual. He cannot understand why he would travel back to the past to hand it to himself before being shot. Although normally distrustful of being told to trust himself, he once took a course that happened to contain this exact scenario of a visit from the future, providing mathematical proof that it was possible. In his own handwriting, the book is inscribed with the admonition to read it, and then write it, which will save his life. He puts it in TAMMY's TM-31 Textual Object Analysis Device (TOAD), which allows him to read and simultaneously generate a new version of the book to be held in TAMMY's memory. Chapter 17 begins with the usual heading that indicates an excerpt from the book, but this time, it...