History Literature / Millennium

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The Gate Project successfully sends 200,000 healthy humans to a new Earth where they can re-populate. Mayer reunites with the daughter who the Project rescued from a plane crash. Louise joins them, and even successfully produces a healthy daughter with Bill, despite her first child dying before her second birthday. However, Mayer turns out to have idealized his relationship with his daughter, who spitefully reveals to him(but [[TheUnreveal not to the reader]]) a tragic secret behind the death of her mother. Louise dies just a year later, leaving Bill with their daughter -- who will neglect her, as he never even mentioned that he has an ex-wife and two ''more'' children who he abandoned in the past. Sherman bemoans that he and his fellow sentient machines will have a ''lot'' on their hands keeping humanity from wasting their second chance. And he's not even aware that it's actually humanity's ''third'' chance]].

In 1989 Bill Smith, an agent of the National Transportation Safety Board, is sent to the scene of an airline accident in Minnesota where a Boeing 747 was bumped by a DC-10, shearing part of the wing off, crashing both aircraft. He and his colleagues find several oddities to the wreckage; all the watches found in the wreckage are forty-five minutes ahead -- some were found running ''backwards'' -- and the black box recorded the flight engineer running into the cockpit screaming that the passengers he had gone to check on were all burned and dead.

* PhysicalGod: [[spoiler:Big Computer]].

** [[spoiler:The Big Computer admits to Himself that humanity irreversibly wrecked the planet, and he has to essentially re-make the world -- It's not just ''an'' Adam and Eve plot, it's ''the'' Adam and Eve plot. He even admits that this will make ''three'' times he's done it; the first time with the old "make him out of dust and her out of one of his ribs" gag had turned out even worse than the current science-based "humanity dies out in 82,000 AD" timeline, so this time he's dropping intelligent machines like Sherman into the Garden with them]].

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The Gate Project successfully sends 200,000 healthy humans to a far-future Earth where they can re-populate the planet. Mayer reunites with the daughter who the Project rescued from a plane crash. Louise joins them, and even successfully produces a healthy daughter with Bill, despite her first child dying before her second birthday. However, Mayer turns out to have idealized his relationship with his daughter, who spitefully reveals to him(but [[TheUnreveal not to the reader]]) a tragic secret behind the death of her mother. Louise dies just a year later, leaving Bill with their daughter -- who will neglect her, as he never even mentioned that he has an ex-wife and two ''more'' children who he abandoned in the past. Sherman bemoans that he and his fellow sentient machines will have a ''lot'' on their hands keeping humanity from wasting their second chance. And he's not even aware that it's actually humanity's ''third'' chance]].

** [[spoiler:The Big Computer tells Louise they're actually being sent into the future where the world has recovered, so she'll join them and conceive a daughter with Bill]].

** [[spoiler:The Big Computer tells Louise they're being sent into the far future where the world has recovered, so she'll join them and conceive a daughter with Bill]].

In 1989 Bill Smith, an agent of the National Transportation Safety Board, is sent to the scene of an airline accident in Minnesota where a Boeing 747 was bumped by a DC-10, shearing part of the wing off, crashing both aircraft. He and his colleagues find several oddities to the wreckage; all the watches found in the wreckage are forty-five minutes ahead - some were found running ''backwards'' - and the black box recorded the flight engineer running into the cockpit screaming that the passengers he had gone to check on were all burned and dead.

Meanwhile, about ''eighty thousand years'' [[MeanwhileInTheFuture in the future]], JustBeforeTheEnd[[note]](Beat ''that'' TabletopGame/Warhammer40000!)[[/note]]. Pollution is so bad it is not only killing everyone but they can't exist without it, either. A plan is underway to use TimeTravel to pluck humans from throughout history just before their deaths if it can be done in secrecy - historical lost colonies, shipwrecks, airplane cashes, any situation lacking survivors - the living are replaced with brain-dead duplicates and stored as {{Human Popsicle}}s so they can eventually be sent somewhere far enough in the future (or elsewhere) that the pollution had broken down and the human race can start anew. This is tricky business, though - ''anything'' out of place can cause a time paradox which results in massive issues in the future they came from.

* AdamAndEvePlot: The point of collecting the doomed people is to send them to an un-polluted world. [[spoiler:Turns out that the colonists aren't being sent to another planet, but ''a hundred million years'' into the future. Louise even joins them, conceiving a daughter with Bill]].
* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The Gate Project successfully sends 200,000 healthy humans to a far-future Earth where they can re-populate the planet. Mayer reunites with the daughter who the Project rescued from a plane crash. Louise joins them, and even successfully produces a healthy daughter with Bill, despite her first child dying before her second birthday. However, the colony lacks the infrastructure of 81st-century Earth, implying that the future civilization will be just as screwed-up as the one that saved them. Mayer turns out to have idealized his relationship with his daughter, who spitefully reveals to him(but [[TheUnreveal not to the reader]]) a tragic secret behind the death of her mother. Louise dies just a year later, leaving Bill with their daughter - who will neglect her, as he never even mentioned that he has an ex-wife and two ''more'' children who he abandoned in the past. Humans won't waste their second chance, but they won't make the best of it, either]].

* {{Chronoscope}}: The Gate can be used as one - just not on any time period when the Gate was in operation.
* {{Cyborg}}: Many of the people in the future have aspects of this, especially as the 21st century came up with "genetic warfare" - diseases that not only killed enemy populations, but left the survivors with ''congentital'' conditions. After a few centuries of ''that'', people who ''didn't'' have at least one failing organ replaced with prosthetics are completely unheard of; the most common being a "skinsuit" that acts as an external immune system and general cosmetic for a blighted appearance. It's rather common for people to spend the rest of their lives in the equivalent of iron lungs.

* DerelictGraveyard: When it's easier just to pull the entire doomed craft through the gate they do so and then dump it here. Louise notes the interesting juxtaposition here - the Titanic sits next to a starship.

* GainaxEnding: [[spoiler:For the same reason as ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'', too; the Big Computer is revealed to be God, and Sherman his prophet. They discuss that Louise was an UnreliableNarrator - so crazy there's no way to tell if ''anything'' she said throughout the story is true. Once Sherman goes to sleep in preparation for the jump to the future, God admits to himself that the "hundred million year" jump explanation is actually for the benefit of Sherman, who he's lying to only slightly less than Louise; he's actually '''''RECREATING THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE''''' and starting a new "sequence", hoping the addition of intelligent machines like Sherman will help humans make better use of their free will this time - the first time was purely Biblical from Garden of Eden to Second Coming, the second our own science-based universe complete with evolution, making this the third time he's created the universe. His last thoughts are; "Maybe this time it will work, and I'll get that vacation I keep promising myself, on the seventh day]]."
* GasLeakCoverup: The NTSB finds dozens of weird watches in the plane crash; as things got rather hectic right before the crash, dozens of the replacements the Gate Project left behind are forty-five minutes ahead give or take those who hadn't re-set their watches for new time zones - those are a few hours ahead ''plus'' forty-five minutes. Four watches that were too close to the gate when things went completely to hell are running '''backwards.''' In the end the NTSB simply replaces them all with ones that ''aren't'' proof that someone was screwing with the laws of physics, insisting rather firmly that [[InternalRetcon they never existed]].

* IdiotBall: Bill - an NTSB agent who should know better about tinkering with evidence - stuns himself by continuing to prod around on the inside of the stunner when he knows he should be calling people about it. He lampshades this in his testimony.

* NeverTheSelvesShallMeet: Invoked. No one can enter a time where they already exist - and it rarely comes up anyway, as the gate can't access any particular time more than once.

* OurTimeTravelIsDifferent: Aside from the constant danger of a TimeCrash, the Gate can only appear [[WeOnlyHaveOneChance once]] in any specific time period - either as an entry or an exit. After that, that period of time is off-limits even for viewing through other means. That means that since the Gate was obviously in operation after it was created, no-one can travel back to ''that'' time and travel further back again, or even get a good look at the time period when it was created. As the biggest of the ''many'' wars that separated the present day from JustBeforeTheEnd occurred shortly after the Gate was created, that means that '''no-one knows where the Gate came from.''' [[spoiler:All this is {{Foreshadowing}} that humans ''didn't'' actually create the Gate, but it was in fact "given" to them by '''''God''''' in the form of the Big Computer]].

* UnreliableNarrator: In the last chapter, Sherman reveals that [[spoiler:Louise is actually a textbook case of this; she's so intensely delusional that she only ''thinks'' she use a prosthetic skinsuit to support a mutated, crippled body - the act of "taking it off" in Sherman's presence is merely an aid to his application as a psychological therapist. There's no telling what else is wrong with her, or if ''any'' of her statements throughout ''the entire book'' have even ''that'' much connection to reality]].

In 1989 Bill Smith, an agent of the National Transportation Safety Board, is sent to the scene of an airline accident in Minnesota where a Boeing 747 was bumped by a DC-10, shearing part of the wing off, crashing both aircraft. He and his colleagues find several oddities to the wreckage; all the watches found in the wreckaged are forty-five minutes ahead - some were found running ''backwards'' - and the black box recorded the flight engineer running into the cockpit screaming that the passengers he had gone to check on were all burned and dead.

* TrickedOutTime: ''The'' key plot element. Sure, they can travel back in time and take anything they want... as long as they leave something in its place that no-one ever discovers the difference. For the people the Gate Project rescues, they use cosmetically doctored corpses from their own time period, and stick to eras where DNA fingerprinting won't or can't be used.

Meanwhile, about ''eighty thousand years'' [[MeanwhileInTheFuture in the future]], JustBeforeTheEnd[[note]](Beat ''that'' TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}!)[[/note]]. Pollution is so bad it is not only killing everyone but they can't exist without it, either. A plan is underway to use TimeTravel to pluck humans from throughout history just before their deaths if it can be done in secrecy - historical lost colonies, shipwrecks, airplane cashes, any situation lacking survivors - the living are replaced with brain-dead duplicates and stored as {{Human Popsicle}}s so they can eventually be sent somewhere far enough in the future (or elsewhere) that the pollution had broken down and the human race can start anew. This is tricky business, though - ''anything'' out of place can cause a time paradox which results in massive issues in the future they came from.

* TrickedOutTime: ''The'' key plot element. Sure, they can travel back in time and take anything they want... as long as they leave something in its place that no-one ever discovers the difference. For the people the Gate Project rescues, they use cosmetically doctored corpses from their own time period, and stick to eras where DNA fingerprinting won't be used.

* FantasticSlurs: Louise calls the people they rescue "Goats" because they're ridiculously healthy compared to people from her time. Those she calls "Wimps", because they're dying in such numbers that the Gate Project freezes their bodies as TrickedOutTime replacements.

* AdamAndEvePlot: The point of collecting the doomed people is to send them to an un-polluted world. [[spoiler:Turns out that the colonists aren't being sent to another planet, but several aeons into the future. Louise even joins them, conceiving a daughter with Bill]].

* AdamAndEvePlot: The point of collecting the doomed people. [[spoiler: Also, while there are lots of disaster survivors in the end to move the race on, it turns out Louise was not at all a cyborg, that her body skin was keeping her from knowing that truth, and she alone of the future humans was able to reproduce.]]

* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler: Sherman says he's like Jesus. Louise makes a comment and he changes it to Moses. In the end it turns out he's been the prophet of Big Computer all along.]]

* DeusEstMachina: [[spoiler:turns out Big Computer was actually God on earth.]]
* TheEndingChangesEverything: [[spoiler:The Big Computer had been God himself all along, helping humanity save themselves.]]

* OurTimeTravelIsDifferent: Aside from the constant danger of a TimeCrash, the Gate can only appear [[WeOnlyHaveOneChance once]] in any specific time period - either as an entry or an exit. After that, that period of time is off-limits even for viewing through other means. That means that since the Gate was obviously in operation after it was created, no-one can travel back to ''that'' time and travel further back again, or even get a good look at the time period when it was created. As the biggest of the ''many'' wars that separated the present day from JustBeforeTheEnd occurred shortly after the Gate was created, that means that '''no-one knows where the Gate came from.''' [[spoiler:All this is {{Foreshadowing}} that humans ''didn't'' actually create the Gate, but it was in fact "given" to them by '''''God''''' in the form of the Big Computer.]]
* PhysicalGod: [[spoiler:Big Computer.]]

* PopulationXAndCounting: Louise asks Sherman the population of earth as most people are committing suicide. He keeps updating his answer to reflect reality.

* UnreliableNarrator: In the last chapter, Sherman reveals that [[spoiler:Louise is actually a textbook case of this; she's so intensely delusional that she only ''thinks'' she use a prosthetic skinsuit to support a mutated, crippled body - the act of "taking it off" in Sherman's presence is merely an aid to his application as a psychological therapist. There's no telling what else is wrong with her, or if ''any'' of her statements throughout ''the entire book'' have even ''that'' much connection to reality.]]

* OurTimeTravelIsDifferent: Aside from the constant danger of a TimeCrash, the Gate can only appear [[WeOnlyHaveOneChance once]] in any specific time period - either as an entry or an exit. After that, that period of time is off-limits even for viewing through other means. That means that since the Gate was obviously in operation after it was created, no-one can travel back to ''that'' time and travel further back again, or even get a good look at the time period when it was created. That means that as the biggest of the ''many'' wars that separated the present day from JustBeforeTheEnd occurred shortly after the Gate was created, '''no-one knows where the Gate came from.''' [[spoiler:All this is {{Foreshadowing}} that humans ''didn't'' actually create the Gate, but it was in fact "given" to them by '''''God''''' in the form of the Big Computer.]]

-->'''Louise''': The critical problems were all inside. Various organs were in advanced states of disrepair. Many were gone, replaced by artificial ones. It was a toss-up which would be the next to go.Some we can replace with self-contained, life-sized imitations. Some require a roomful of machinery if they go rotten.

* {{Cyborg}}: Many of the people in the future have aspects of this.

* OurTimeTravelIsDifferent: Aside from the constant danger of a TimeCrash, the Gate can only appear once in any specific time period - either as an entry or an exit. After that, that period of time is off-limits even for viewing through other means. That means that since the Gate was obviously in operation after it was created, no-one can travel back to ''that'' time and travel further back again, or even get a good look at the time period when it was created. That means that as the biggest of the ''many'' wars that separated the present day from JustBeforeTheEnd occurred shortly after the Gate was created, '''no-one knows where the Gate came from.''' [[spoiler:All this is {{Foreshadowing}} that humans ''didn't'' actually create the Gate, but it was in fact "given" to them by '''''God''''' in the form of the Big Computer.]]

* UnreliableNarrator: In the last chapter, Sherman reveals that [[spoiler:Louise is actually a textbook case of this; she's so intensely delusional that she only ''thinks'' she use a prosthetic skinsuit to support a mutated, crippled body - the act of "taking it off" in Sherman's presence is merely an aid to his application as a psychological therapist. There's no telling what else is wrong with her, or if ''any'' of her statements throughout ''the entire book'' have even ''that'' much connection to reality.]]

* LostForever: Any times already visited.

* PhysicalGod: [[spoiler:Big Computer]]

* NeverTheSelvesShallMeet: Invoked. You can't go back to any time anyone was already at.

* GasLeakCoverup: The NTSB finds dozens of weird watches in the plane crash; as things got rather hectic right before the crash, dozens of the replacements the Gate Project left behind are forty-five minutes ahead give or take those who hadn't re-set their watches for new time zones - those are a few hours ahead ''plus'' forty-five minutes. Four watches that were too close to the gate when things went completely to hell are running '''backwards.''' In the end the NTSB simply replaces them all with ones that ''aren't'' proof that someone was screwing with the laws of physics, insisting rather firmly that you imagined it.

* GasLeakCoverup: The NTSB finds dozens of weird watches in the plane crash; as things got rather hectic right before the crash, dozens of the replacements the Gate Project left behind are forty-five minutes ahead give or take those who hadn't re-set their watches for new time zones - those are a few hours ahead ''plus'' forty-five minutes. Four watches that were too close to the gate when things went completely to hell are running '''backwards.''' In the end the NTSB simply replaces them all with ones that ''aren't'' proof that someone was screwing with the laws of physics, insisting rather firmly that YouImaginedIt.

Meanwhile, about ''eighty thousand years'' [[MeanwhileInTheFuture in the future]], JustBeforeTheEnd[[note]](Beat ''that'' TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}!)[[/note]]. Pollution is so bad it is not only killing everyone but they can't exist without it, either. Plans were made to use TimeTravel to pluck the living but soon-to-die passengers from aircraft, replace them with duplicate but brain-dead bodies and put the saved passengers in storage so they can eventually be sent somewhere far enough in the future (or elsewhere) that the pollution had broken down and the human race can start anew. This is tricky business, though - ''anything'' out of place can cause a time paradox which results in massive issues in the future they came from.

Meanwhile, about ''eighty thousand years'' [[MeanwhileInTheFuture in the future]], JustBeforeTheEnd[[note]](Beat ''that'' TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40,000}}!)[[/note]]. Pollution is so bad it is not only killing everyone but they can't exist without it, either. Plans were made to use TimeTravel to pluck the living but soon-to-die passengers from aircraft, replace them with duplicate but brain-dead bodies and put the saved passengers in storage so they can eventually be sent somewhere far enough in the future (or elsewhere) that the pollution had broken down and the human race can start anew. This is tricky business, though - ''anything'' out of place can cause a time paradox which results in massive issues in the future they came from.

In 1989 Bill Smith, an agent of the National Transportation Safety Board, is sent to the scene of an airline accident in Minnesota where a Boeing 747 was bumped by a DC-10, shearing part of the wing off, crashing both aircraft. He and his colleagues find several oddities to the 747 crash - all the watches found in the wreckaged are forty-five minutes ahead - some were found running ''backwards'' - and the black box recorded the flight engineer running into the cockpit screaming that the passengers he had gone to check on were all burned and dead.

* GasLeakCoverup: The NTS finds dozens of weird watches in the plane crash; as things got rather hectic right before the crash, dozens of the replacements the Gate Project left behind are forty-five minutes ahead give or take those who hadn't re-set their watches for new time zones - those are a few hours ahead ''plus'' forty-five minutes. Four watches that were too close to the gate when things went completely to hell are running '''backwards.''' In the end the NTS simply replaces them all with ones that ''aren't'' proof that someone was screwing with the laws of physics, insisting rather firmly that YouImaginedIt.

In 1989 Bill Smith, an agent of the National Transportation Safety Board, is sent to the scene of an airline accident in Minnesota where a Boeing 747 was bumped by a DC-10, shearing part of the wing off, crashing both aircraft. He and his colleagues find several oddities to the 747 crash - the digital watches are all running backwards, and the flight engineer came running into the cockpit screaming that the passengers he had gone to check on were all burned and dead.

Meanwhile, about ''eighty thousand years'' in the future, JustBeforeTheEnd[[note]](Beat ''that'' TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}!)[[/note]]. Pollution is so bad it is not only killing everyone but they can't exist without it, either. Plans were made to use TimeTravel to pluck the living but soon-to-die passengers from aircraft, replace them with duplicate but brain-dead bodies and put the saved passengers in storage so they can eventually be sent somewhere far enough in the future (or elsewhere) that the pollution had broken down and the human race can start anew. This is tricky business, though - ''anything'' out of place can cause a time paradox which results in massive issues in the future they came from.

* TheEndingChangesEverything: [[spoiler:The Big Computer had been God himself all along, directing humans how to save their race.]]

* UnreliableNarrator: In the last chapter, Sherman reveals that Louise is actually a textbook case of this; she's so intensely delusional that she only ''thinks'' she use a prosthetic skinsuit to support a mutated, crippled body - the act of "taking it off" in Sherman's presence is merely an aid to his application as a psychological therapist. There's no telling what else is wrong with her, or if ''any'' of her statements throughout ''the entire book'' have even ''that'' much connection to reality.

Meanwhile, about ''eighty thousand years'' in the future, mankind is on its last gasp[[note]](Beat ''that'' TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}!)[[/note]]. Pollution is so bad it is not only killing everyone but they can't exist without it, either. Plans were made to use TimeTravel to pluck the living but soon-to-die passengers from aircraft, replace them with duplicate but brain-dead bodies and put the saved passengers in storage so they can eventually be sent somewhere far enough in the future (or elsewhere) that the pollution had broken down and the human race can start anew. This is tricky business, though - ''anything'' out of place can cause a time paradox which results in massive issues in the future they came from.

* NoAntagonist
* OurTimeTravelIsDifferent: You can only go back to or even watch things from a time period ''once''. Once you've been to or watched events happening at say 5:05am-5:10am on a certain day no one can go back to those five minutes... ever. Also, previous paradoxes are incredibly damaging to the present (future) time