"Old Nick isn't going to invest in expensive facilities unless there's a reasonably stable social order to keep the trade routes open. And the Katandaran Empire looks like the only suitable area on the whole planet." (III, p. 102)
Does it matter how the stability is maintained? What is the "Empire" like? In fact, what does that word, "Empire," imply?
There is some similarity between the Solar Spice & Liquors Company and the Time Patrol although the latter operates in (at least) one more dimension. Thus, for the Patrol, "stability" means guarding a single timeline even though some of that timeline's periods are anything but stable for their inhabitants. The Holocaust must be maintained because it is part of the history that leads to the Danellians who will found the Patrol. Would you agree with or support that?
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I can't possibly say for sure if, assuming I was recruited into an actual Time Patrol, I would choke down working to preserve the Gulags of Lenin and Stalin, because that would lead to the Danellians.
Ad astra! Sean
I take it, since Time Patrol existed to guard the Timeline, that points of departure did not create new timelines but instead altered the only existing one?
If so, preserving it is an act of self-preservation for anyone born downstream in time from the POD. If we are to believe the butterflies theory, even small changes far enough back will lead to one never being born.
Johan,
I have discussed reality alteration a lot on this blog and on my Logic of Time Travel one. States of the three dimensional universe succeed each other along a single temporal dimension. States of a four-dimensional continuum would succeed each other along a second temporal dimension (I argue). Each such 4D state constitutes a "timeline." A time traveler who has "deleted" a timeline will think of it as no longer existing but anyone living in the timeline will be unaware of any change. His entire timeline is in the past of the second temporal dimension from the point of view of inhabitants of later timelines but each of these timelines has its own internal temporal dimension. Any inhabitant of any timeline has his own past, present and future within that timeline. Within his timeline, he does not first exist, then cease to exist.
Paul.
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