Something funny I thought about...

Assume you are from the future (say 2150), and insert a "variable" into the past (the 4400 in this case).

As soon as you complete the seeding, the results would be immediate in the future. With me still?

We are watching things play out "play by play", but in reality, if something didn't work the future would know immediately.

That would mean that if we filmed this show from the vantage point of the future, you could go from beginning to end in about 30 minutes.

Just try a bunch of stuff until you get it right.

Unless of course, lets say you change the timeline and end up killing the inventor of the apparent "time machine" that is being used.

Then, in an instant, you would no longer have the "redo" option.

Then again, the ultimate conundrum. If you send someone into the past and they kill the person who invented time travel, then it becomes impossible for them to have been sent back to the past in the first place, which would probably make the earth explode.

That in my opinion is where God just calls it quits.