Tampering With A Timeline

Poul Anderson, Genesis (New York, 2001), Part Two, V, 2.

In an emulation, Laurinda Ashworth invites James Cook, Henry Fielding and Erasmus Darwin to dinner. See Reflections On History.

She comments:

"'It tampers a trifle with their actual biographies, but Gaia can remedy that later if she chooses.'" (p. 155)

Gaia has greater power over an emulated timeline than either the Danellians or their Time Patrol have over a real timeline. In "Genesis And The Time Patrol" here and "Genesis: A Few Details" here, we saw that a sequence of emulations could be used to mimic the sequence of timelines in the Time Patrol universe, thus:

in timeline (or emulation) (i), there is no eccentric Miss Ashworth in eighteenth century England;

in timeline (or emulation) (ii), a time traveler playing the role of Miss Ashworth invites Cook etc to dinner;

in timeline (or emulation) (iii), the time traveler has been prevented from traveling to that century and playing that role so that, as in (i), Cook etc do not have dinner with Miss Ashworth.

But Gaia can also do something else which I suspect is many readers' idea of what does happen in an altered timeline. Working with a single emulated timeline, Gaia can let Miss Ashworth entertain Cook etc, then change all memories and records so that it as if Miss Ashworth had never existed and as if Cook etc had been doing something else that evening instead of dining with Miss Ashworth.