Thursday 14 August 2014

Other Time Patrols?

In Robert Silverberg's Time Patrol story in Multiverse, the Danellians found a "Time Patrol II" in a divergent timeline even while requiring the remnants of the original Time Patrol to restore the preferred timeline. But Silverberg merely refers to "Time Patrol II" without developing this idea.

Poul Anderson twice refers to the idea of an alternative Time Patrol.

"'...Christianity never arises. Therefore, the entire world that brought you and me into being is a phantom, a might-have-been, which, conceivably, an alternate Time Patrol keeps suppressed.'"
-The Shield Of Time (New York, 1991), p. 76.

"'There'd never have been a you or a me, a United States, a Danellian destiny, a Time Patrol...unless [the Exaltationists] organized one of their own to protect the misshapen history they brought into being.'"
-Time Patrol (New York, 2006), p. 718.

Several points here:

(i) It would not be the Exaltationists but one last Exaltationist because we know, Raor tells Everard, that they would fight among themselves after eliminating the Danellians and the Patrol.

(ii) The Exaltationists would create a "...misshapen history..." but other "time criminals" might create improvements on the standard model?

(iii) Are there any survivors of alternative Time Patrols in the Danellian timeline?

(iv) There could be survivors of the Danellians' Time Patrol in the Carthaginian, Tacitus Two, alpha or beta timelines. By traveling far enough pastward, then returning futureward, such lost Patrolmen would be able to re-enter their home timeline but they might not have access to temporal vehicles or some of them might be happy where they are. I imagine a tavern for displaced time travelers further along the Carthaginian timeline.

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