The world was made of particles. All reality, particles. Discreet particles of matter, of time, of space-time. Building blocks of the universe. Now, take these particles; and return them to the positions they occupied a moment ago—and you travel into the immediate past. Re-arrange them into the positions they occupied years ago, decades, generations, aeons—and you have time travel.
Crash program. Billions of dollars, he thought. All the world's great physicists. It could be done. He could do it.
But—so what?
Jason Wall smiled. It was the way his mind often functioned. Decide on something, apparently without relation to your problem. Then use it.
He couldn't have the world destroyed, despite his money and the decided possibility of instituting a crash program to do it. He wouldn't be able to fool the scientists, and the scientists just wouldn't do it.
But a crash program for time travel, now that was something else. That could be done. He would see that it was done.
For what purpose?
To return to the dawn of the human race. To find dawn man, the first man. Call him Adam. To find the first truly human being.
To kill him.
To snuff humanity out at its source, as a flame is snuffed before it can start a fire.