A time fractured world. A desperate mission. Lives intersecting across time.
Role: Protagonist, rebel operative, fugitive through time
Themes: Identity, fate, moral conflict
A hardened rebel fighter known only as The Stranger in the future timeline, Gary is a man shaped by loss, warfare, and the collapse of civilization. His life fractures when a failed mission forces him through a damaged time portal, sending him into the past: older, worn, and unrecognizable.
Here, he becomes a fugitive hunted by the Planetary Police and Dictator Thayne, all while trying to protect a boy who should never have been part of this war.
Gary is complex: cold when necessary, darkly humorous, driven by a stubborn belief that he can still alter the future, even if it means facing himself.
Role: Gary’s younger self
Themes: Self-confrontation, destiny, fear
Young Gary is who the Stranger used to be reckless, hopeful, a bit naïve. Meeting his older self forces him to confront the man he will become and the weight of the future that rests on him. His existence complicates everything: if he dies, so does the Stranger. Their tense, strange partnership is one of the book’s emotional anchors.
Role: Gary’s closest friend and partner
Themes: Loyalty, sacrifice, the cost of resistance
Josh is the rare blend of comic relief and tragic weight, a grounded, sharp-tongued ally who has stood with Gary through rebellion, bloodshed, and impossible missions. His loyalty transcends timelines. Even when confronted with Gary’s unbelievable story of time fractures and altered futures, he chooses trust over fear.
Josh brings heart to the narrative, reminding both versions of Gary what friendship looks like under fire.
Role: Young boy pulled into the rebellion by accident
Themes: Innocence, survival, destiny
Ben becomes entangled in the war for the future when he lifts his blinders in a time travel capsule and witnesses Gary’s attack on the Planetary Police. Seen as a threat to the Dictator’s bloodline, Ben is hunted relentlessly. Gary never intended to involve him, but once Ben follows him, returning him safely becomes a mission he refuses to abandon.
Role: Ben’s parents
Themes: Family, fear, trust and betrayal
Steve and Anne arrive innocently as tourists from the past, unaware of the brutal authoritarian world they’ve stepped into. When Ben is missing, they become pawns, questioned, manipulated, and dangled between hope and despair. Their emotional arc is rooted in desperation: two parents begging a collapsing system to return their son.
Role: Antagonist, authoritarian ruler of the future
Themes: Power, legacy, manipulation
Thayne is the orchestrator of the New Rule, the mastermind behind temporal manipulation, and the man whose existence Gary is willing to risk everything to end. Ruthless and calculating, Thayne hides tyranny behind ceremony and control. His obsession with lineage and the threat Gary poses to it, drives the story’s chase across time.
Role: Conflicted officer of the Planetary Police
Themes: Duty vs. morality
Captain Beel embodies the moral tension inside the regime. Caught between orders and conscience, he is both dangerous and sympathetic, a man who knows too much and fears Thayne more than he fears justice. His involvement deepens the political complexity behind the chase for Gary and Ben.
Role: Ally from the failed mission
Themes: Loss, fractured timelines
Adam’s early death in the opening mission underscores the stakes of the rebellion and when Gary later sees him alive in another time, it exposes how deeply fractured and disjointed the timelines have become.
Role: Gary’s sister
Themes: Family ties, unintended involvement
Jenny becomes an unwitting shelter for Young Gary during the escape. She represents the normal life Gary once had and what he stands to lose permanently.
Role: Enforcers of Thayne’s totalitarian rule
Themes: Oppression, surveillance, mechanized violence
The Planetary Police serve as the omnipresent threat, cold, relentless, and always advancing. Their A.P.B. units, hovercrafts, and militarized presence highlight the dystopia Gary fights against.
