Wintermute -
I believe you are assuming that the current Laura must be pulled back so that the future Laura can go back again, but since future Laura is picked up as today's Laura, and is going back into her own future past (the day she was sent), current Laura does not have to be picked up. The premise of the story is that there can be more than one iteration (otherwise how do they speak to one another), so today's Laura CAN be left to die without affecting future (now also current) Laura's ability to go back and waylay her. If future Laura goes back in current Laura's place, current Laura is an extra Laura.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this create a loop? If so, this creates major problems with the arrow of time and the second law of thermodynamics. Basically, if something starts looping in time, its age would "immediately" approach infinity.Obvious problem for living matter, as people age, but even with inanimate objects, like the Terminator arm, wear and tear means that it's
not the same object when it gets into the loop again.
Say, for example, I recieve a book that my future self sent back in time by one day. I very carefully, os as to cause as little wear and tear as possible, pick up that book and put it in the time machine the next day, and send it back one day. That book, which I just carried to the time machine, is carried again, rpesumably held in exactly the same place by exactly the same hands, depositing exactly the same skin oils on the book, making exactly the same microabrasions on the cover; exactly the same ultraviolet light hits the paper, exactly the same atmospheric humidity soaks into the pages. And then I put it in the machine AGAIN, repeat ad infinitum. Heck, hundred-year-old books are usually not in great shape; this book is now older than the entire universe, and it happens the moment I close that loop!
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That said, I enjoyed the story pretty well, though it was a concept piece; I was more interested about the issues raised of recieved guilt and how we remember horrific moments of our past than in any of the characters or events of the story. I agree with the outro that the bombings are undertaught and under-thought-of, espescially in a world where the United States, the only country to actually use these weapons, is one of a small self-selected group of countries that claims to be exclusively able to posess nuclear weapons responsibly.