The secret research program at Cornell University has made a terrifying and powerful discovery, and the whole aim and focus of their work will change. In the course of negotiating this change, two older scientists studying time travel visit their younger selves, an archive is built, a robbery is attempted, and a historian and an historian are both hired. Things start to go wrong, of course, but with time travel, you always get another mulligan. Which is good, because this go around they'll need it.

"Qyartet for the End of the Beginning of the End of Time" is the first story in the second movement of the Retcon story mosaic (and the tenth story overall). In the Retcon story cycle, each story can be read on its own, but when seen together they tell a larger story as well.