The cascade started the very moment badger invented the machine that let him move objects and creatures back and forth in time without superstrings attached. The device had been a mere side-effect of his more serious research in quantifiable acceleration of growth of fruit and berries under temporal constraints for use in hyper colossal smoothies, but that did not matter afterwards at all, at least not for a day. All it took was the inception of the device, not even creation or testing of it, and what ensued was a full recursive revision of history of time, one skip a turn.

From the perspective of an unsuspecting observer a day before the event it looked something like this: you are walking down the street, humming that catchy tune you heard while passing the barber shop, and then suddenly badgers everywhere. All of them looking the same so much that you could swear it’s one and the same badger. From the perspective of an unsuspecting observer a year before the event it looked something like this: you are walking up the street, thinking about getting a haircut, and then suddenly badgers everywhere. In fact, from the perspective of all unsuspecting observers of all points in time, and there could not be any other type of observers for this whole thing just happened all out of the blue, all at once and so much ahead of it’s time, it was just badgers everywhere – badgers on the street, badgers under the bed, badgers in your swimming pool and so on.

Surprised as much as the unsuspecting observers, the badgers looked at each other and hummed all at once in chorus and as they had appeared, they started popping out one at a time, leaving behind them “toodles”, and “sorry” and “oops” and other very polite apologies.

Here’s how it looked from the perspective of the badger, the only suspecting observer: you invent the time machine, not even create it yet and then suddenly there is two of you in the room, the other you being very much yourself. You say to yourself something in the lines of ‘you can’t imagine how much time it took to actually build it’ and ‘I brought some tools’ and while your future self is saying that, two other yous appear, politely bow and say something in the lines ‘there is plenty of work for all of us’, and then four of you appear and then eight and then sixteen. And, apparently, it takes two hundred fifty six badgers to build a time machine in a day. Plus another two hundred fifty six to make sandwiches, rent out extra space and so on.

After the machine was built the other badgers returned to their timelines and an innocuous point in time was chosen, like yesterday or day before. You, the inventive badger, jump to that point only to see that all other future yous have picked the same time. You apologise with an “oops” or “sorry” or just “toodles” as it’s your thirtiest jump and apologies have to be changed up and you jump to some other time where there is more of you. And whichever moment in time you pick, it’s you, and you, and you again. A little tired from the time jumps you return to your very own time, but before that you jump into the time of another you and since you are there, help yourself in finishing the time machine, and then jump back to your own time, this time for real.