“I shoot my future self. He steps out of a time machine, introduces himself as Charles Yu. What else am I supposed to do? I kill him. I kill my own future.”

The novel begins in medias res, or in the middle of the action. Charles informs the reader that his future self’s shooting is guaranteed to happen. Though the novel jumps back to show Charles’s life in the Present-Indefinite, it establishes the inevitability of the shooting in the reader’s mind, foreshadowing the time loop. Because the narrative has already discussed the shooting, it focuses not on what happened, but how and why it happened.

“The good news is, you don’t have to worry, you can’t change the past.

The bad news is, you don’t have to worry, no matter how hard you try, you can’t change the past.”

Charles reminds each of his clients that the past is impossible to change, emphasizing the impact that this could have on their lives. While this may not feel like a good thing, Charles hints at a kind of freedom; if one can’t change things, one is not responsible for trying. The quote also hints at Charles’s journey through the father-son axis, where he watches his memories of the past but starts to change his understanding of them. Insight into the unchanging past can prove useful to one in the present.