I've got an idea for a novella I'm going to start writing soon (I've been in a small slump, lately). It's a time travel story with an interesting twist, but I'm curious if others will buy it.

The idea is that our hero will meet two other versions of herself who time traveled at some future point in their lives. So, let's call them 1, 2, and 3, where 3 is our hero.

1, in her 30s, travels forward about 1000 years, but can't get back. She tries to send a message to her younger self, a couple years before she left, to prevent her from going. But this backfires and she ends up making it so that 2 just invents time travel sooner, and travels forward to about the same time.

So, now 2 and 3 are both in the future. 2 is a few years younger (late twenties) than 3. They try to work together to undo this, but end up developing very different ideas, and have a falling out.

They work separately for several years, 1 becoming more bitter, while 2 becomes more hopeful. Eventually 2 has an idea, but she needs something that only 1 has, and 1 won't listen to her.

So, 2 sends a message back once more to an even younger version of themselves, 3, our hero, who's in her early twenties, and working on her PhD (maybe at MIT). 3 comes forward, and 2, in disguise, convinces her to go get the thing (haven't worked out what that is, but I'll come up with some appropriate technobabble) from 1.

The story starts, though, with 3, and her work in grad school that eventually culminates in her coming to the future.

So, I've been thinking about this, and am trying to decide if this is even believable (insofar as time travel stories are at all believable). So, what do y'all think? Would a plot like this work?

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