Referring to the alpha timeline, Everard tells Wanda:
"'If you'd gotten stuck there, nobody would ever have come after you. That world doesn't exist any more. You wouldn't have!'" (p. 359)
I agree with this. The alpha timeline did exist but no longer does but these past tense propositions refer to no events in the Patrol-guarded timeline and therefore do refer to an entire four-dimensional continuum that did exist in the past of a second temporal dimension. This contradicts statements made elsewhere to the effect that the events in a "deleted" timeline never occurred. If Wanda had remained in the alpha timeline, then she would have lived for the rest of her life there/then. New temporal terms are needed but that is what the Temporal language is for. Wanda would have become permanently inaccessible to Everard but not because she had ceased to exist at any moment along her world-line.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I agree, and I think Anderson did as well when you proposed such arguments to him in your letters.
Ad astra! Sean
Not sure that he agreed but he said that he would keep my letters for reference in the event that he wrote any more Time Patrol.
Kaor, Paul!
Since the last Patrol story "Death and the Knight" was first pub. circa 1996, you probably wrote those letters about that time. Anderson seems to have been willing to give serious consideration to your suggestions.
Ad astra! Sean
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