Becoming Nothing

The Shield Of Time, PART SIX, 1137 A.D.

Koch to Everard:

"'You mean that while I am in the wrong world, I must know that everything I do and see and think will become nothing?'

"'If we succeed.'" (p. 316)

 

This is the point where I am most in disagreement with Poul Anderson's text. If the Patrol succeeds in restoring the Danellian timeline, then there will have been a hyper-temporal sequence of:

the Danellian timeline;

the "wrong world," to use Koch's terminology;

the restored Danellian timeline.

 

The three spatial dimensions of length, breadth and height are at right angles to each other. The two temporal dimensions of ordinary, familiar time and "hyper-time," since we must coin a term, are also at right angles to each other. All three spatial dimensions are reproduced in each moment of time. All four spatio-temporal dimensions are reproduced in each moment of hyper-time.

 

To anyone living in the restored Danellian timeline, the "wrong world" has indeed ceased to exist/become nothing. That "wrong world," including its entire temporal dimension from beginning to end, has receded into the past of hyper-time. But there is no moment in the "wrong world's" temporal dimension when that world becomes nothing. The version of Koch who lives into that timeline will continue to live in it until he dies of natural causes. His world-line is at right angles to the temporal dimension in which the restored Danellian timeline succeeds the "wrong world," therefore is not affected by that succession. Of course, his world-line is not reproduced in the restored Danellian timeline but that need not concern him.