“Do you require further elaboration, or shall I get to the point, Zoe?”
From anyone else, this might’ve sounded extremely sarcastic. From Al, it just sounded like a question.

“Uuum…I need a little more,” she said sheepishly. [NOTE: Zoe has now insisted that I never use the word “sheepishly” in conjunction with her, ever again.]

“The Universe is like a computer. It has its codes, programs, protocols, system checks, and what have you. It also has its viruses. In our case, the time-travellers’ overlapping timelines, their paradoxes, their re-writings of the code – as it were – are the viruses. If too many of these viruses corrupt the coding, the Universe will do what any other computer would do.”

“I have a bad feeling that I know exactly what your next words will be,” I said.

Zoe had the same feeling. “It’d shut down?”

“It would shut down,” Al echoed.

“Holy fucking hippos,” Zoe whispered loudly.