From a time before the divergence point, Everard travels forward into the divergent beta timeline in order to gather enough intelligence to enable him to come back out of that timeline, then to prevent it from ever having existed. Thus, while he is in the beta timeline, he hopes that he is experiencing events that do not happen and performing actions that he does not perform. This is my best attempt to restate Everard's account. I prefer a successive timelines theory according to which the beta timeline does exist but, hopefully, recedes into the past of a second temporal dimension. (Thus, the alternative medieval history never occurred in the current timeline but does/did occur in a previous timeline.)
In the beta timeline, Everard and his colleague, Novak, are attacked. Novak offers to occupy their attackers while Everard escapes. Everard protests first that Novak will be killed and secondly that he won't exist anymore when the beta timeline is annulled. Novak reasonably asks how such nonexistence differs from the usual death. My point exactly. See
here. Novak, like everyone, will die sometime - although not this time because Everard will return through time to rescue him - but he is alive and conscious while he and Everard are conversing on this date in 1245beta A.D. Therefore, it is not true that he is not alive on this date in 1245beta A.D. (Logical non-contradiction.)
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Basically, you have argued elsewhere that timelines "deleted" by the Patrol were not actually snuffed out of existence but became inaccessible to travelers from the Patrol's world line. I liked that better than the "snuffing" out, because it spared the lives of the people living in them. However undesirable, in different ways, the alpha and beta timelines of "Amazement of the World" were, their continued survival would at least give the people in them a chance to find better ways of life.
Sean
It takes a while for even the trained agents of the Patrol to realize that their usual tactics -- the extreme care they take not to be too obvious -- are unnecessary in the "Empire Beats Papacy" timeline. After all, they're going to be erasing it anyway, and they have no interest in protecting the details of its history.
So they can swoop in with blasters blazing.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I agree! And since, because of Paul's arguments, I now think such "deleted" time lines were not snuffed out like a candle, but survived and became inaccessible to time travelers from the Patrol's world line, I wonder what people like Frederick II made of that "irruption" by the Patrol? And how would it affect their history?
Sean
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