A Welcome Habitat tabloid interviews Zak3 for their regular feature: "The readers ask, Zak3 answers."

"Zak3, what is the reason for the confusion of Sharlyn 1 und 2?"

"This is easy to answer: they are autoclones. The miracle took place a long time ago. But the chain of events is ongoing and progressive. It all started with the washing machine, itself a development on several other time saving devices such as the scrubbing board and mangle. Then came Hoovers and Dishwashers, bread makers and so on. Autoclones are time saver too, they are fully automatic. Should there be anything out of the ordinary, the first clone would be notified immediately, directly by emitting audible signals. This is how the confusion started."

"Do you have any questions for Zak3?

"Do you need someone to come down?"

"Yes, thanks." 

"We may be about 10 minute late."

They are concerned.

"Anything wrong?" 

"I got lost."

"I'm terribly sorry."

"Cigarette?"

"No, thanks. Don't smoke."

"Get some fresh air. You look terrible."

They desperately need an elevation.

They hail a VTOL Air Taxi."

"How much to LHS 475 b?"

"90. If I forget to turn the meter on."

They are passing by locations where the same features appear in all places. Their eventual destination they arrive at is unambiguous: it's the same as their starting point.

"So this is it."

"It's gonna be a few minutes. Do you mind waiting?"

"It'll be a pleasure."

Some minutes later they enter the elevation device. They paired. But it got stuck because of a singularity in the device control. They unpaired and then paired again and thought at first that it fix it, but the elevation did not start working.

Calling something a "singularity" is a visitor's way of saying "we don't know what the heck we're talking about". 

"Is there any emergency button?" 

"They are on it over here. Don't worry."

"I understand."

"Please be patient. Someone will be right with you."

Eventually they made it.

"I am super excited for tomorrow!"

They're on a planet that is orbiting a star at 30km/s. 

That star is orbiting the centre of a galaxy at 250km/s. 

That galaxy is moving through the universe at a rate of 600km/s. 

Since they started thinking about this, they have travelled about 3,000km. 

S/He made Sharlyn 1 disappear. Bad things happen because it’s the only way they can keep remembering what good is supposed to look like. It is on the grounds that it's all a chain, and quite a while in the past somebody did the main awful thing, and that drove another person to do another terrible thing …

Now the visitor from a planet that never existed is the owner of a 2 billion enterprise on LHS 475 b, a small rocky planet 41 light-years away."

But Sharlyn 1 will take it all away from them.

"Tell me if you need any help."

"Mind to tell me where I am now?"

"You own this place."

"S/He didn't tell you about me. But I wish s/he had."

"Is anyone still at there?"

"Listen! I do not have all day."

"Anybody at the Welcome Habitat that can open that door for me?"

One of the Units, the visitor from a planet that never existed manages to reschedule. The visitor is happy to give some answers.

"Didn't you talk to Shaklyn 2?" asks Shaklyn 1.

"No, I was on an elevation device when it happened."

"You know, that's funny. I checked Shaklyn 2's phone records. S/He made a call with their calling card at 11:02 p.m. Your home number."

"I did not do anything wrong. S/He asked me to elevate."

The visitor from a planet that never existed disappeared, mysteriously.

Suddenly Shaklyn 1 cannot touch anything. Their atoms' electrons repel objects, but s/he can feel the force of resistance. Technically s/he is elevating. No touch, no hugs, no kiss and nothing. 

Shaklyn 2 worries a lot.

"You all right? Hey. Take it easy.  I told you, 120 minutes. It's too long. You're really pushing your luck."

"What happened?"

"You got a smoke?"

"Sure."

"Thought I'd be shooting hoops for the rest of my life."

"But it works?"

"Oh, it works. Elevation and time travel, we will be in the know very soon."

"I need your help."

"No, no, no. We won't help you. You're taking a serious risk."

"I have to get in."

"You could die."

Since Shaklyn 1 failed to upload a digital copy of themself Shaklyn 2 throws Shaklyn 1 in a black hole.

Space within a black hole is governed by the same set of rules as space outside a black hole. It means all the things they call real are just a projection of information stored in a distant 2D surface! 

"You think that s/he is lost forever but the information of Shaklyn 1 is not lost; instead the information is stored in the 2D surface of the Event Horizon of the blackhole and you can use the information to reconstruct Shaklyn 1 outside the black hole."

"If you're thinking what I think you're thinking."  

"What are you talking about?"

"Set the timer for 120 minutes."

"60 is safer. I'm setting it at 60."

1-2-0.

Back in the present they recreate Shaklyn 1.

Shaklyn 1 now wants to find all out.

The comunicator: "Restore. To restore messages, press "rewind" now. "

"Instructions for building a Tipler cylinder, press 9."

They assemble an enormous cylinder of infinite length with the total mass of about ten Suns. It is so dense, that it turns into an elongated black hole. They make it rotate at an unimaginably fast rate, a few billion times every minute. The cylinder drags space-time along with it. They hop on a spacecraft and follow the spiral course of the cylinder. That takes them back in time. Time folds upon itself, and Shaklyn 2 finds theirself in a closed timelike curve. It’s a loop, in which their traveling into the past has always been a part of that past. So s/he will not create any time paradoxes. 

30 minutes after Shaklyn 2's arrival Shaklyn 1 will leave. 

"Sorry I'm late."

"Glad I caught you."

"Well, I have been under a lot of stress lately."

"What are you doing here?"

"I want to help."

Two forty-five p.m.

Unlike prior methods that impose manual parameter setting by the operator of digital clones, their invention provides automatic configuration. Thus the operator is not obliged to set the parameters of their digital clone manually. This function is still experimental.

"What's going on?

The memory transference with the link-it froze. Started overlapping!

"I'm trying to get into the files before we  start copying the clone."

"For what?

"Shaklyn 1 left a message for me the night s/he died. S/He knew someone wanted to kill them."

"Did you tell the administrator?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Please. This is my stuff, okay?"

COMMUNICATOR MESSAGE

"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion." sounds Shaklyn's voice channeling Democritus.