Combeferre, now sitting on the side of the bed in his night shirt, runs a hand through his already unruly hair. "Yes, my last memory is of reading a book about a France in a world where humans remained almost entirely arboreal. I entered it in the spreadsheet--in that France, 1830 resulted in a monarchy, but then six months later it was overthrown again, and a republic took its place." Combeferre remembers the descriptions of the protests-turned-battles in the trees, the hacking of branches, the close-quarter knife-fights, and the monarchy's last desperate attempt to start a forest fire...

"And then I went to bed. I had a pile of books I meant to read when I woke. They're gone now. I remember nothing after that. Not returning to Paris, not how our--our other selves' efforts in that other world, after 1830, turned out."