Instant

Does Time exist independent of our perception of it? Is it only a small moving window illuminating a very small portion of eternity?

Mary though she could gain control over the movement of that window by applying her superior processing capabilities. She had great hopes the input from her three mobile processing facilities would contribute to the solution of the problem. She couldn't foresee that Mar, one of those mobile units, would form a bond so strong with a full human it would put her plans into serious disarray.

Mary didn't plan adequately for the vagaries of fate. There was no way she could have foreseen another life form as advanced as herself, perhaps even well beyond anything she might hope to attain in thousands of years, would oppose her plans.

The LIC at least confirmed Mary's understanding that Eternity and Time were not expressions of the same phenomenon. One wasn't an incomprehensible extension of the other. They simply existed in a co-dependent relationship; one with strict rules. Those rules couldn't be broken. What Mary and her unwitting agents of change didn't realise was that any interference with the fundamental structure of reality was absolutely forbidden.