An infinity of moments.

Once upon a time, there was a moment.

And in that moment a man stepped out of his spaceship onto a far away planet for the first time.

In that moment, a knight in shining armour rescued a fair damsel from the clutches of evil brigands.

In that moment, a robot started to build the tallest skyscraper in the world, but it didn't build it in the way you know, it printed it a layer at a time. It was one of many robots, all smaller than your fingernail.

In that moment, the king of England reached for a sheet of paper that would create a new law at the same time as that same king died in his bed and waved to his subjects from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

And in exactly the same moment a gigantic brontosaurus thundered across the landscape fleeing a tyrannosaurus rex.

And that moment is right... this... second.

"But uncle! How can all those things happen at the same time."

"Time isn't what most people think. It's not just something that stops everything from happening all at once. It's a tree of infinite possibilities. Anything at all that can happen, will or has, somewhere. A tree that branches a billion times a second. New worlds, each one the result of the choices we make. The choices nature makes."

"How do you know?"

"I've been there. Well, not all of them obviously, no-one could do that, but I've seen what dinosaurs would look like today if they hadn't died out. I've seen worlds that use those little robots to build skyscrapers. I even spoke to two kings of England who were both kings at exactly the same time. I even took one of them to talk to the other."

Angela stood in the doorway and smirked. "Eric, stop showing off."

"I can't help it can I?" Eric leaned down and kissed his niece on the forehead. "Now get some sleep."

He got up, left the room and closed the door behind him.

"Just... Don't tell her the bad ones, please."

"Don't worry. Not until she's older."