Mainwethering to Everard:
"'If you fail, history will change and will not ever have recorded your success; I will not have told you about it.'" (4, pp. 28-29)
(He has just told him about it.)
Mainwethering continues:
"'That is undoubtedly what happened, if I may use the term "happened," in the few cases where the Patrol has recorded a failure. Those cases are still being worked on, and if success is achieved at last, history will be changed and there will "always" have been success.'" (p. 29)
Mainwethering uses the past tense:
"...happened..."
- the present tense:
"...still being worked on..."
- and the future tense:
"...will change...will be changed...will 'always' have been..."
Thus, he refers to a temporal sequence. This sequence is not between moments in the current timeline but between a hypothetical previous timeline, the current timeline and a hypothetical subsequent timeline. Moments in the current timeline occupy a single temporal dimension. A sequence of timelines would have to occupy a second temporal dimension. Mainwethering's failure to acknowledge this second temporal dimension obliges him to place inverted commas around the word "happened." He cannot fit "happened" and "did not happen" into a single temporal dimension but does not acknowledge a second temporal dimension.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
That was a lot of analysis to put on a story which, at the time Anderson was writing it, might have been the only Time Patrol story ever to be written! But, putting that aside, the analysis makes sense.
Ad astra! Sean
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