@gatrnerd Victor is caught in a "quantum immortality" scenario thanks to one of the fuel cubes for Emmet's time machine becoming accidentally lost in the past.

(I use the term "accidentally" loosely. It *looks* like one of Emmet's fuel cubes, but he has strong reason to believe it's been tampered with and he suspects he knows who did it. He just can't prove it yet.)

The cube "belongs" in its time of origin. Since its destruction in the past would create an unresolvable time paradox, any event that threatens its physical dissolution results in it reconstituting in the future.

(It actually travels through *every possible path* in spacetime until it reaches a point where it is no longer in danger. This may be years, decades, or even centuries away from the threat.)

Victor is entangled with the cube and experiencing the same phenomenon. Therefore he travels through time by *dying* (or technically, being in inescapable mortal danger).

In that case, he "wakes up" in the future, in the same physical state he was in when he first touched the cube. He retains his memories, but they are like memories from a dream. They dissolve quickly if he doesn't work to remember them, or they're insufficiently vivid.

(The fact that he is in the "same physical state" but with memories implies something about the metaphysical structure of this universe, but that won't be relevant for a good long while.)

He's learned some tricks for managing these little hops. If he places the cube in a sufficiently safe place and then dies, he can "jump" to it a relatively short distance in the future. However that risks someone finding the cube and making him jump to THEM, so he prefers to keep it close by. It somewhat randomizes where and when he ends up, but he prefers not to become somebody's summon.