There is only one chance, and I have only enough power for one trip. I am not so foolish that I think to send myself, even if it were possible. No, we have been designing the item that will go back for almost 40 years: a portable Universal Constructor, one that works on a fusion reactor to rearrange the structure of almost any material. It has been pre-programmed with the ability to build anything from simple wooden tools to nanoscale microfibers. It can even, with time, build more of itself.

We will send it back to a time and place carefully selected to present it to our relatives at the earliest stage of their development when they might use it. In a time before writing, a time before memory, an ancient tool will wait to be discovered. It is my hope, and the hope of the entire team, that it will be enough to change our fate.

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