"All Is Flux"

Heraclitus is the philosopher of the Time Patrol. We will find more of his aphorisms to display as images.

Meanwhile, we are still in Poul Anderson, The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), Part Two, where Everard, in another italicized passage, reflects:

"All is flux. Reality eddies changeful upon ultimate quantum chaos. Not only is your life forever in danger, the fact of your ever having lived is, with the whole world and its history that you know." (1988 A.D., p. 99)

This is a very clear statement that the ultimate enemy of the Patrol is not time criminals but temporal chaos. However, we have not yet seen that chaos manifested in a quantum fluctuation of space-time-energy. Such an event will not occur until Part Six. As yet, time criminals like Stane, the Neldorians and the Exaltationists have been the only evident agents of variable reality. How are such human agents connected to chaos?

On the historical level, there are nexuses where a small event can make a big difference: prevent the birth of Hitler, Lenin etc. On the quantum level, there are moments when the probability-waves can suddenly change their rhythm or converge powerfully on a single point. Do these historical nexuses and quantum moments correspond? Sometimes a time traveler changes events and sometimes events change without human agency. In Part Six, one human being, although not a time traveler, interacts with so many other world lines that small changes in his life, insignificant if they had happened to anyone else, do totally disrupt the course of medieval history and consequently also of modern history. I get the point that small changes are constant but usually inconsequential.