[Aren Petrosyan]

Hello Mr. Korman

I read Operation Do-Over in one sitting last night (from 10PM-2AM), and I wanted to ask you a few questions about the time-travel logic and the way the ending came together. I really loved the high stakes and intensity of the first half of the book, but I had two big issues with how the story wrapped up.

Firstly, I wanted to ask what happened to the "autopilot" Mason during those 5 years? After the carnival, 17-year-old Mason was sent back to the future, meaning that another version of him had to live through ages 12-17 of scenario B. If 12-year-old Mason was the one who took over after the concussion, this would mean he wouldn't remember anything that happened in the past few weeks and he would also act completely different from person Ava and many others have come to know him by recently. He would also have no clue why he is set on playing football, or avoiding falling for Ava again. On the other hand, if the Mason who lives through these 5 years is still the 17-year-old one, this means that he still fell for a girl 5 years younger than him during these years and that he would mentally be 22-years-old before his memories get wiped by the main-timeline Mason reseting him to 17. Either way, it doesn't make much sense and leaves a huge paradox!

Second, I really wanted to go deeper into how the love triangle was somehow solved off-screen. Deleting that photo of Ava and Mason at the carnival didn't actually change anyone's feelings. Erasing one piece of evidence wouldn't stop Ty from chasing Ava, or stop Ava from liking Mason after that day. Having Ty naturally move on to Clarisse and Ava/Mason start dating off-screen skips the most important part of the story. How did deleting one picture erase all the romantic tension built up over the past few weeks and how do these conversations actually play out? Plus, it makes you wonder how Mason and Ava's relationship is even going to work long term when Mason has a 5-year memory-gap while Ava remembers everything.

I'm a 14-year-old who has read over 20 of your books and you are definitely my favorite author. I'd love to hear your thoughts  on these points.

-Thanks         ---Aren---

Hi, Aren. Glad you're such a fan.

First of all, I love your time-travel analysis. I used to be into time travel myself and my friends and I would spend ridiculous amounts of time and brainpower thinking and overthinking the possibilities in our favorite books and movies.

For OPERATION DO-OVER, my logic was this. There are two ways to look at time travel. One is that every "fork" in the timeline creates two parallel realities, leading to potentially endless possibilities, all of which must exist somewhere.

But there's another approach - the one from Avengers: Endgame - where characters follow a single unbroken line regardless of whether they jump forward or back in time. In this analysis, Mason lived seventeen years, jumped back five for a few weeks, and then jumped forward five and continued on from there. And while things certainly changed - with Ava, for example, and especially with Rufus - there were never any alternate realities. Mason traveled a path where Rufus had died for a while. Then, after a detour, he was on a path where Rufus was still alive. But for Mason, it was all one path (although you're correct that, at the end, he would have had some shared history with Ava that he himself could not remember - some awkward moments for OPERATION DO-OVER 2?)

Does that make sense?

----------Gordon Korman----------