Consequences Of An Incident In 1533

"The Year of the Ransom," 3 November 1885.

To paraphrase an exchange between Vasquez and Everard:

Vasquez reports that, in Caxamalca in 1533, hysteria, with potentially hideous consequences, was building rapidly because of the disappearance of two men from inside a treasure house. 

Everard: Such consequences are not in known history.

Vasquez: We, "uptime" of that incident, have not ceased to exist.

Everard: We can cease to exist. "We can have never been..." (p. 679)

Observations

To cease to exist is not never to have been.

It cannot possibly be a consequence of an incident in 1533 that, after that incident, events unfold as if the incident had not occurred until 1885, or any other year, and then the world changes into whatever state it should have been in as a result of that incident. Poul Anderson does not show a temporal alteration happening like this at any point in the Time Patrol series. Obviously, we are contemplating one timeline in which the incident does not occur and an alternative or divergent timeline in which the incident does occur and its consequences affect the entire period from 1533 to 1885 and later. What exactly is the ontological status of, and relationship between, any such timelines is the central question of the Time Patrol series.