Nycticorax turned to the control panel at his right hand and punched in the coordinates: the southeastern shore of Lake Huron, July 23rd, 1834 CE. He checked his safety measures, pointed to each status light to confirm its greenness, and ensured the Third Law Allocation was set to DISTRIBUTED. With a deep breath, he put his thumb over the button labelled ACTIVATE. He hesitated. There was an extremely slight but also extremely real possibility that pressing that button would instantaneously kill 2.8 million people—Nycticorax among them.