Timeline I: Rome won the Second Punic War;
Timeline 2: Neldorians helped the Carthaginians to win the Second Punic War;
Timeline 3: the Patrol prevents the Neldorians from helping the Carthaginians to win.
In Timeline 2, Manse Everard and Piet Van Sarawak depart from the Pleistocene lodge expecting to arrive in New York in 1960 but instead arrive in the altered history. What happens in Timeline I? There are two possible answers but I think that the first answer fits the Time Patrol scenario better.
First Answer
Everard, Van Sarawak and several other agents disappear from periods prior to the Second Punic War, never to be seen again. This would alarm other Patrol agents. They would realize that some of their colleagues had departed into a divergent timeline. However, having noticed the disappearance of certain agents, the remaining agents would continue to exist in Timeline 1.
How often does this happen - disappearance of time travellers, signalling a temporal divergence?
Second Answer
In Timeline 1, Everard and Van Sarawak arrived in New York in 1960, completed their vacation there and then returned to the rest of their Time Patrol careers. Similarly with other agents who also arrived in Timeline 2. But then why did these particular agents arrive in Timeline 2 as well as in Timeline 1?
In Timeline 3
We get the impression that the restoration of the history leading to the Danellians also restores all the departing and arriving time travellers that had been deleted when Timeline 2 replaced Timeline 1. If this is the case and if "Second Answer" above is also the case, then the Everard who had been in Timeline 2 and who returns to New York after the completion of that operation will there meet the original Everard who had returned to New York in Timeline 1.
2 comments:
The "first answer" begs the question -- why hasn't this phenomenon been spotted before? Because in Everard's timeline, it never occurs.
I thought that "First Answer" fitted with the series, i.e., that a time traveller who moves forward into Timeline 2 does not also move forward within Timeline 1.
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