World And Worlds II

Although Poul Anderson's Old Phoenix Inn welcomes guests from many worlds, each of them returns to the world from which s/he came - as far as we know. By contrast:

Klaproth: Lady? HOW do we leave this place?
The Landlady: By the door. Just leave and walk. You will return to the worlds from which you came, or ones very similar.
-Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Worlds' End (New York, 1994), p. 158, panel 158.

Because Charlene Mooney opts to stay and work in the Worlds' End Inn, her traveling companion, Brant Tucker, returns to a world indistinguishable from that which he had left except that there never was a Charlene Mooney in it. Her car, in which they had been traveling, is in his name and only he remembers her - unless he has imagined all this. (That sounds authentic. We do live in a world where all this has been imagined.)

Thus, he is in the same position as a Time Patrol agent returning to a slightly altered version of his present.