What Saunders sees after the universe begins to reform:
a long journey futureward to avoid being pulled into the point-source
a molten planet
rain on naked rocks
under seas
strange jungles
glacial ages
the familiar Moon
"...low forested hills and a river shining in the distance...." (p. 286)
the village of Hudson, New York
a tear-off calendar and a wall clock in a bank
June 17, 1936, 1:30 P.M.
return to 1973 when the time projector, moved in the future, is now outside the house
After all that time, home at last. A sufficiently long space-time journey returns the traveller to his starting point. The Time Traveller had to turn back whereas Saunders continues forward.
Newtonian Explanation
Every particle has the same position and velocity at the beginning of every cosmic cycle.
Einsteinian Explanation
The continuum is spherical in all four dimensions.
To us now, Einstein sounds more plausible.
In Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix multiverse, we imagine many linear (not spherical) four-dimensional continua separated by a fifth dimension: a fourth spatial dimension? I think. In the DC Comics multiverse, many universes occupy the same four-dimensional space-time by vibrating at different rates. Characters travel between universes by changing their vibrational rates. This might happen to some of the quantum jump hyperdrive spaceships in Poul Anderson's Technic History.
In Anderson's Time Patrol series, we imagine a single four-dimensional continuum changing in a second temporal dimension. I think. However, Time Patrollers' accounts of their experiences do not present a completely coherent metaphysic.
On this blog, we try to imagine a megamultiverse incorporating all the different kinds of timelines. Such a multidimensional framework must also include the spherical continuum of "Flight to Forever." Olaf Stapedon's Last And First Men also features a circular timeline.
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