"Not Even Dreams"

"'...think of the countless world lines intermeshed throughout the continuum as a spiderweb. A touch on one strand trembles through many. A disruption somewhere changes the configuration of the whole.'" (The Shield Of Time, p. 135)

But spiderwebs are very fragile. Thus, another comparison is also used:

"'...it's rather as if the continuum were a mesh of tough rubber bands. It isn't easy to distort it; the tendency is always for it to snap back to its, uh, "former" shape.'" (Time Patrol, p. 15)

"'World lines, our tracks through space-time. They're like a mesh of tough rubber bands, right? Pull on them and they'll try to spring back to their proper, uh, configuration.'" (The Shield Of Time, p. 31)

The phrase, "...tracks through space-time...," is misleading. We do not move along the fourth dimension, leaving a track behind us, nor is there already a track laid out for us to move along. Rather, if this "space-time" model is valid, then we simply extend in that direction. (I would say that we endure through time and leave it at that.)

A completely different image is that of a river whose course can be diverted although again not easily. (The Shield Of Time, p. 399) Shaken by her experience of the divergent alpha and beta timelines, Wanda uses a fourth, more abstract, image:

"'...if there is nothing out there, no firm reality, only a mathematical shadow show that for all we can tell keeps changing and changing and changing, with us not even dreams within it -'" (ibid., p. 433)

Hold on there, Wanda. Let's differentiate between:

something that is not even a dream (what is it, then?);
dreams;
dreamers;
waking experiences.

We are at least dreamers because we seem to ourselves to be experiencing something. But we can classify some of our experiences as "dreams" only because we are able to contrast them with the shared experience of the stabler environment that is perceived in what by consensus we call waking experience. Thus, it would not make any literal sense to ask if all our experiences might be dreams, although this is a powerful metaphor -

Lewis Carroll: "Life, what is it but a dream?" See here.

Buddhism:
"Thus shall ye think of all this fleeting world:
"A star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,
"A child's laugh, a phantasm, a dream." See here.

Could reality be changing continually without our knowing? If it did, then all our memories and records would have to be changing consistently with it. Otherwise, we would notice. So we only need to concern ourselves about the world that we seem to be living in right now. In a new season of a TV series, a familiar character might be played by a different actor. We have to accept that other characters' memories plus any photographs or other records have changed accordingly. Only we, looking into that fictional world from entirely outside it, notice the difference. Might someone looking into our universe notice such differences? Could my memories of what I think I was doing this afternoon have been inputted to my brain only a moment ago? When I remember, I do not seem to be consulting a present record of past events. It seems to me that I have direct knowledge of my own past experiences and actions. But that is how it seems.

The Danellian who reassures Wanda uses yet another image:

"'Think, if you wish, of diffraction, waves reinforcing here and cancelling there to make rainbow rings. It is incessant, but normally on the human level it is imperceptible.'" (ibid., p. 434)

Rainbow rings seem much more positive than a shadow show. Everard had already though of reality as:

"...a spectral flickering, diffraction rings across abstract, unstable space-time, a manifold brightness..." (Time Patrol, p. 480)

Some of the language used sounds beautiful rather than threatening. Do the Danellians perceive the incessant diffraction that is normally imperceptible on the human level?

"'I will come to you on the rainbow,' Niaerdh plighted.
"So it was. So it is." (ibid., p. 469)