Timeline Complications

I argue (see here), that a divergent timeline succeeds the original timeline along the second temporal dimension but that this does not contradict the fact that the entire four-dimensional continuum of the original timeline does exist/did exist (new tense needed) at an earlier moment of the second temporal dimension. If this is so, then why is the Time Patrol needed? My answer is that the Danellians want to ensure that, if, having traveled into the far past, they set out to return to their present, then they do not arrive in an altered version of that present as happens to Everard and Van Sarawak in "Delenda Est."

In "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth," Everard, in 1935, tells Farness that:

it must have been Farness himself who appeared in the role of Wodan/Odin and betrayed his followers in 372;

if this betrayal had not happened, then a specific story about Hamther and Sorli would not have existed, the texts of some Eddic poems and sagas would have differed from the way scholars know them to be and Ermanaric would have died earlier and in different circumstances than is recorded.

However, Everard addresses Farness in the 1935 of a timeline where the story about Hamther and Sorli did exist, the Eddas and sagas were as Farness and his colleagues know them to have been and Ermanaric did die not in battle in 372 but of a self-inflicted wound in 374. It follows that Everard's and Farness' conversation occurs in a timeline where the betrayal did occur, therefore in a timeline where Farness did appear in the guise of Wodan to make the betrayal. If Farness in 1935 refuses to travel to 372 to betray his followers, then this refusal will not prevent Farness from having appeared in 372 and betrayed his followers.

But the Farness who made the betrayal will travel to 1935 to find it already occupied by the Farness who had refused to make the betrayal. Farness would have duplicated himself, an unacceptable outcome.