Characters
Who is in the room
- Esther "Tess" KerteszEsther "Tess" Kertesz is a catastrophe modeler and the neurologically intact sole survivor of a childhood Alaska ferry disaster, whose near-unique causal history makes her almost impossible for Evan's machine to rewrite and keeps her causally independent even as she falls in love with him.
- Evan HaleA workaholic controls engineer who responds to helplessness by solving problems, even when the work itself becomes the thing destroying what he hopes to save.
- Lena VargaA shared-facility experimental physicist who believes Evan's data before she believes his interpretation and becomes the person most willing to stop a fascinating experiment while its meaning is still uncertain.
- Ruth HaleA retired mathematician losing access to her own continuity, yet often seeing Evan's mistakes more clearly than he does.
