SecondSun
@Faust
You are correct- one of the earliest incidents of a recognized asymptomatic carrier was Mary Mallon, aka Typhoid Mary. She refused to believe she was the cause of various outbreaks of Typhoid fever, and resisted repeated attempts to get her to stop working as a cook (or at least to wash her hands). She died while still under a forced-quarantine.

PyroKill
Yes. But why Charlie?
Btw I think that should be "things happen" in panel 3

urlittldog
Aha. So with the "time-travel paradox" and all, this set up an endlessly repeating cycle, with a slight deviation variable each time; events that feed on themselves to cause them to repeat, with a bit of chaos theory thrown in. Hence the whole set of "whorls" . . . Watch a stick swirl in a river eddy to see how this works. Poor Charlie; he's stuck.

SlugFiller
Okay, so they can recognize that killing Charlie changes things. But, again, the only reason it does is because, for some reason, killing him causes the birth of Memnon. Which, honestly, kind of makes no sense, because this is a result of Charlie's whorls, which are themselves a result of attempts to kill him. I'm getting a chicken and egg problem from this whole thing. Since this isn't a close time loop, chicken and egg problems apply. And they're good enough to aim for "things happen differently"? No need to question HOW they are different? At least Memnon has some causality supporting his attempt. These people are running blind.

Phlatus
Feed the kid and give him a shower, shampoo, & a haircut before you try and explain time travel paradoxes, for cryin' out loud!

Walex
Ohiohi, our diabolical authors seems to have created a rather unlucky situation for humanity: if Charlie is *not* killed, terrible wars happen among humans, and a total plague eventually eliminates humanity; if Charlie *is* killed, then EOS builds MEMNON, the military kill her, and he eventually eliminates humanity.
So EMI was sent to the past to ensure that Charlie is lives, without knowing that this means a plague will kill all humans, and Rothwell was sent to the past to ensure that Charlie dies, without knowing that this means that MEMNON will kill all humans.
However, however, there is now a vital new detail to the story: "two critical points in the timeline", so it does not need to be Charlie's death.

Walex
Well 'PyroKill' the question is indeed "why Charlie?". What is the links between Charlie's death and the plague that kills everybody?
I can imagine two possibilities:
#1 If Charlie does not die, MEMNON does not get built, and humanity survives and inevitably develops weapons that wipe themselves out.
#2 The link is EOS: IIRC she works in a biology lab, and maybe she is the one to develop the plague.

walex
In page http://www.bloodsplatteredsocks.com/archivewide/374 Rothwell says that he would have killed Charlie for complicated reasons, and also that he does not know why somebody saved Charlie. That means that in Rothwell's timeline indeed they don't know that killing Charlie means another type of extinction.
BTW I have found a "everybody but Sam has a happy ending" solution: Rothwell meets and marries EOS (who is turned on my him being a murderous post-apocalyptic survivor) and they have children that are immune from the plague and are AI descendants. :-)
PS Interesting note: in this panel the little boy who presumably is Rothwell speaks "normally" but in Sam's timeline he speaks in funny characters.

Walex
Also, if I have it right there are 6 timelines so far:
#1 The "root" timeline from which Charlie is plucked.
#2 The timeline of the (human) agent from 2054 who plucks Charlie.
#3 The ¨current" timeline where Charlie lives with Sam.
#4 EMI's timeline where MEMNON has exterminated humanity.
#5 Rothwell's timeline where a human-designed (?) plague has exterminated humanity.
#6 HYPERION's "far future" timeline.
Most likely there is another timeline, perhaps HYPERION's, from which the infant EOS is put into Charlie's timeline.

Phlatus
@Walex, Adult Rothwell's wEirD spEecH pAtTernS have been explained as a artifact of time travel, at least by the method he's using.
It's interesting that Rothwell refers to Emi as "that thing." That suggests he's entirely bio and she's not. (His complexion must be from rarely being exposed to natural light. Presuming Skinny Kid is young Rothwell, the sun vanished and the sky went black long before he was born.)

G
just a thought, but since our villain?? stated he has changed his mind about killing Charlie, at least for now, perhaps he hopes that by telling Charlie what his future self will do he hopes to prevent the plague from ever being developed at least that's what I got from page 512 since I wasn't sure if he meant he was not gonna tell Charlie, or that he meant he was not gonna kill him