A red dawn was breaking over Ozaron IIb; elephant birds trumpeted their dawn chorus as they stretched their many wings. Ruby mangroves had long since invaded the crumbling canal, but it was still – barely – navigable. Through the red leaves and the dawn haze of the small red sun grey-bricked ruins were visible. Moss had climbed over the uneven surfaces, and trees had broken through many of the rooves.

It might have been a thoroughly alien vista, but Laila knew suburbia when she saw it. The existential horror of it gave her chills, only somewhat moderated by knowing that the banal bourgeois domesticity of the place had ended centuries before when the Mokanian civilisation pissed off one too many Meitagenan bureaucrats. Apparently, sapient amphibians were too stringy, with an unsettlingly salty aftertaste.

"Guys," she said into her comms. "I'm really not getting 'Lost Temple of Est'Emper' vibes in this neighbourhood. Are you sure you've dropped me in the right place?"

Bzzzzzt. "Confirmed. Proc … fty metres sou … turn right … glass steeple." Bzzzzzt.

"I'm getting a lot of interference," she complained.

"Stand by."

Laila kept punting forward, ducking to avoid a high, arced root.

"Is that better? Sorry, but you try maintaining a stable orbit around a binary planet some time."

"Yeah, you're coming through fine now. What was that last thing?"

"You're definitely in roughly the right place. Fifty metres south, then turn right at the glass steeple. Keep going and you'll hit the temple eventually."

"Definitely roughly? Is this going to be like the last three times?"

"You're the one who wanted the damn thing."

"And we're absolutely sure it's not on Ozaron IIa?"

"We're absolutely sure it's probably not on Ozaron IIa."

"I hate you," replied Laila.

"Then you need to work on your self-esteem," countered the Laila on the comms.

"Ha, ha."

The mangrove cleared a little as she reached the intersection with the glass steeple. The monument itself was once a stunning twenty metre edifice of crystal glass and white marble, paying tribute to the four cardinal directions in a style that reminded her of Tarlob VII ante-Gothic Deco. But it was now battered and broken. One of the mangrove trees had got inside it somehow, filling the interior, with roots and branches bent awkwardly inside the isotoxal octogrammic pyramid.

She rounded the corner, and there did appear to be some sort of impressive structure in the distance: she could just make out a few pinnacles rising above the mangrove with similarly elaborate symmetries.

She heard an almighty crash, and reflexively ducked, destabilising her punt, and crashing into the rancid water. A sharp triangular shard of glass crashed into the water right where the boat had been. Scrambling back onto the boat, Laila looked round, and sure enough, the steeple had smashed, with one of the mangrove limbs relaxing contentedly in the new open space it had suddenly found for itself.

"Yeah okay," said Laila into her comms, "I think we might have it right this time."

"What's going on?" Comms-Laila asked.

"A tree just tried to kill me."

********

Accepting the helping hand, Laila stood up, trying to recover some of her composure. The Laila in front of her was smiling benevolently, as well as a little lustfully, at her.

"You're about to learn," continued throne-Laila, "that the world is so much weirder and more awesome than you ever imagined."

Laila glanced around the eleven duplicate Lailas in the room, two of whom were definitely making out. "Really," she deadpanned.

"This is the centre of power in the known universe," throne-Laila explained. "From this ANT colony, we can travel anywhere in time and space. But be warned, with great power comes great–"

"I want the Heavenly Sword of Est'Emper."

Throne-Laila smiled. "I think we might be able to arrange that."

********

The Grand Canal of Teunex was just as filthy and overgrown as the rest of the city, but the buildings were definitely getting more impressive as she approached the temple. A few octopus fish leapt out of the water to catch hummingbats darting across the surface, and she heard the unmistakable roar of a winged llamadon in the distance.

Although the edifice of the temple stretched high into the sky, the steps at the entrance led down into the murky abyss. Laila pulled her scubagill out of her bag, and fitted it around her mouth and nose.

A pair of elephant birds fluttered down onto the symmetric columns of the torana, and glared at her ominously.

"This is really freaking me out," she confided to comms-Laila.

"Stay on your guard," the reply came back, "Don't let it intimidate you."

"SQUAA! SQUAA!," screeched the elephant birds, before trumpeting far-too-loudly at her with their trunks. It seemed very much like they didn't want her to go any further.

The resulting two short blasts from her Prionic Cannons were very therapeutic.

"Was that really supposed to work?" Laila asked.

********

"The universe… well, it really doesn't like time-travellers," explained throne-Laila, flexing a long thin piece of some elastic material in her hands. "Going back in time is basically writing over existing history, and there are hidden variables at work at the quantum level which try to push back against that from happening. The probability amplitude of the wavefunction changes shape to try to make things happen the way they did before.

"The more difficult it is for history to right itself–" she stretched the elastic by way of demonstration "–the greater the opposite reaction from the wavefunction. So if you sent a butterfly back in time and it flapped its wings, almost nothing strange would happen, because chaotic systems like an atmosphere are already superposed and can be corrected easily. If you send a conscious being back in time with a determination to change history–" she stretched the elastic almost to breaking point, and allowed it to snap back violently "–well, the universe basically just ends up trying to kill you. Often in surprisingly creative ways, since it seems the wavefunction can only distort its amplitude so far. So no brain-boiling; usually it'll be some unstable low entropy system collapsing, like a boulder falling on you, or a skittish lifeform perceiving you as a threat. Did you ever see that ancient Earth film Final Destination?"

Laila gestured at one of the ANTs. "So that explains why these ships are built like brick shithouses."

Throne-Laila nodded. "Pressure-stabilised neutronium, yeah."

"So if you can't change history–"

"You can," interrupted throne-Laila. "You stretch time far enough–" she demonstrated with her elastic again, "–and it snaps. If it's easy enough for the universe to right itself around your intervention, you might have a fairly easy time. But any serious attempt to change history and you better be ready for the vengeance of the wavefunction."

********

"My tricorder's not working…" complained Laila, bashing it against her hand. "Can you get a sense of the internal layout from the ship's sensors, now we've found it?"

"Just a second…" replied comms-Laila. "Yeah, we can. Downloading it to you now."

The temple complex was a maze of corridors and catacombs, because of course it was. Much of it was underwater, and Laila wasn't keen on having to trust her scubagill too far with causality itself out to get her. Her mind's eye was drawn to a breathable chamber about thirty metres below the surface which looked very much like a Mokanian sacristy; definitely the first place to look for any buried treasure.

"You seeing this?" she asked. "Can I trust my scubagill to get me that far?"

"It's pretty stable, it'll be fine."

"That's what you said about my tricorder."

"Yeah, but I mean it this time."

Laila rolled her eyes. "Look, I know now there's a bunch of backup Lailas I shouldn't really care that much about this particular instance of me surviving, but drowning in a swamp still doesn't sound like my idea of a fun day. I think I'd rather find a better plan."

********

"Is she still wearing that jumpsuit?" complained one of the other Lailas.

"Oh," said throne-Laila. "Yes…" she rooted around in a chest behind her throne. "Hang on, I've got it here somewhere…"

Various valuable oddments went flying around the room with reckless abandon as throne-Laila dived into the chest searching for whatever it was she was looking for, including the biggest ruby Laila had ever seen and what looked like a mint condition copy of Amazing Fantasy #15.

"Ah, here it is," said Laila, "You'll want to wear this."

"Seriously?" she asked throne-Laila.

Throne-Laila shrugged. "Keeps things interesting."

********

Having made liberal use of the ANT's matter replicator, Laila surveyed the makeshift dyke and enormous water pump with some satisfaction. A couple of llamadons had tried to attack it, and she'd got a nasty graze from their scouring wool before she'd managed to get a shot off, but the plan seemed to be working. The wavefunction could go suck it.

"I think you've cleared it as best you can," said comms-Laila. "There's a U-bend or two down there, but you could probably hold your breath for those even without the scubagill."

"You're sure?" Laila asked. "There's no horrifying crocodile monster with an inexplicable taste for ascenter blood down there, right?"

A pause. Was she actually fucking checking?

"No…" replied comms–Laila. "But watch out for acid toads."

What.

********

"So are you all, like, future versions of me? Do you remember all this happening before?"

Throne-Laila shook her head. "Nope, that's not how it works. It's best not to find out the future, whether a relative one or by actually travelling there. As soon as you do, your present becomes the past, and if you deviate even slightly from the path that brought you to that future, then the universe tries to kill you. So we like to keep the present a safe space."

"So where did you come from?"

"Occasionally we alter the past so much that it changes the circumstances that brought us here. Hey presto, new Laila. So the rest of us are from prior versions of the timeline."

"So I can still die quite easily," Laila surmised.

"Oh, yeah," said throne-Laila casually. "Much more easily than before, in fact. It's a matter of natural law that time travellers are the unluckiest people in the universe."

********

With the water pumped out of the temple, getting to the sacristy had been a relatively trivial matter. She'd had to get a grappling hook out from time to time, and hold her breath once or twice (the scubagill had, in fact, broken almost immediately after she came in contact with the water), but here she was.

Every surface was gleaming platinum, and she was practically salivating over the value of the many lost treasures she was seeing. But there was only one that mattered to her, and it occupied pride of place on a font in the centre of the room. Half expecting immediate disaster, she picked it up gingerly, but the roof didn't fall down. Exhaling, she started back as fast as she could turn round.

"Um, Laila…?" came the voice of comms-Laila again.

"What is it?" she asked urgently.

"Remember I told you about those acid toads? Well, like fifty of them just showed up on the dyke. I don't think it's going to last much longer."

Fuck.

"You still got those schematics up?" Laila asked. "There must be some kind of vent in here, right, to let fresh air in?"

"Yeah," comms-Laila replied, "But it's too narrow for you to fit through."

Laila grinned, and looking down at the Heavenly Sword of Est'Emper, switched it on. The red glow of the blade reflected off every surface in the room, making her look positively devilish as it radiated over her.

"Not a problem any more."

********

Back at the ANT colony, Laila could hardly contain her glee.

"Oh dudes, this is the best weapon in the galaxy!" she enthused. "It's a fucking lightsaber stun katana, and the history of it is unbelievable! Est'Emper used it to capture the Beast of Etraalu! Jecs Glurs was knighted using this thing. It's absolutely one of a kind, and it's mine. This is the best day ever!"

"She's so cute when she's happy," commented another Laila. "I never get tired of it."

"How come none of you ever went to get it before now?" Laila asked.

The other Lailas suddenly looked sheepish. Pulling back their various jackets, they revealed that every single one of them was carrying an identical sword. Laila gaped.

"Standard training mission," explained throne-Laila. "It's always the first thing we want to do. Sorry about the location mixup, but we have to keep grabbing it earlier and earlier in its timeline, and a lot of people have tried to retrieve this thing over the years."

"These are… all the same sword?"

"Yep," replied another Laila, lighting hers up. "Well, time travel duplicates, but yeah, same atoms and everything. And you're right. Coolest weapon ever."

"I'm honestly not even upset," said Laila. "I can only imagine what else we can do together."

"Well, about that…" said throne-Laila. "I'm afraid it's not all fun and games. You see, it turns out the galaxy is in terrible danger, and we're the only ones who can do anything about it."