Cease To Be?

"Star of the Sea," 2.

Everard and Floris agree that:

"'...tomorrow we shall cope.'" (p. 493)

But tomorrow might be too late if, as Everard had reflected earlier, the reality around him:

"...at any instant could not only cease to be but cease ever having been." (p. 480)

But that is not going to happen, is it? If events in the first century AD had prevented our familiar reality from ever having been, then that reality would not have existed from the first century until the present moment, then ceased to exist at the present moment, but would not have existed period. The fact that we exist now is sufficient to establish that we are not in a timeline where we never came into existence. If such a timeline does exist/has existed/will exist in some tense expressible in the Temporal language, then that timeline is not this one. This conceptual confusion continually lurks in the background of the Time Patrol series.