Chapters 7-9 Summary

In Chapter 7, the narrator describes his manager, a middle management software program named Phil, who is easygoing but thinks he's a real person. The protagonist holds a hologram of Phil's head in his hands as they communicate. Phil warns him that his time machine is overdue for a maintenance check. Phil starts stuttering and crashes, which reminds the narrator that he'll miss the program whenever it's replaced. In Chapter 8, the protagonist makes a call to a client in Oakland during the latter part of the twentieth century. A young woman is leaning over her grandmother, who is lying on a couch, dying. He tells the young woman she has used her time machine to make a small window into an alternate past, where she was present when her grandmother was dying, rather than absent. She can stay for a while but...