Time Currents, What Happens If You Cross Them?

Science fiction writers love to put their characters in situations beyond normal and let them develop as to what they might do. There are many examples but I'm only going to mention a couple. One general "rule" in time travel appears to be that you may not do anything which affects your own time line; i.e., killing your grandfather before your father has been conceived or born would probably not be a good idea.

What if you could cross into another current of time or another time line on your own planet? My own belief has always been that whatever can happen, happens somewhen and somewhere. There's an Earth, somewhere in time, where I am a millionaire or president or perhaps even a king. What if I could find that world or time line and somehow replace the "me" who is there?

What if the "me" who is there wants to commit suicide, but God wants that position filled and decides to move me there to do it? That is somethng for philosophers to determine. I'd like to direct your thoughts to just a few ideas:

Kirk Douglas plays an admiral in Final Countdown, a movie which places a American nuclear aircraft carrier in the path of the Japanese fleet and aircraft which assault Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. How did the ship get there? What are his options? Can he stop the attack and, indeed, should he? You need to see the movie to find out.

Another take on a somewhat similar but with major differences situation is Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen, an excellent science fiction story by H. Beam Piper. This story finds a Pennsylvania state trooper suddenly transferred to another time line on Earth. This time he's outside his own time line and the rules may be different.

In this case, Calvin, whose name was "corrupted" into Kalvan by the people there, is literally fighting for his own survival and he has to kill in order to survive.

He not only has to worry about being killed or injured but also falls in love. If he survives the current situation, he has to worry about future survival, nor only for himself but for the lady he loves. The medical knowledge on this world line, for example, is no where near the standards of Calvin's world. Since he's not affecting his original timeline, it would appear that the "normal" time travel rules don't exist.

What can he do and can he really accomplish anything? Again, read the story, it's good -- and it'll give you reason to speculate.

The third premis I've mentioned can be found in the series Janissaries by Jerry Pournelle -- who also, along with Larry Niven, wrote a fact-backed novel of the effects of a comet strike on the United States and the Earth called Lucifer's Hammer.

Janissaries tells the story of a group of US Army men hired out to the CIA who are about to be killed by Cubans in Africa when a flying saucer's occupants offer them a chance to survive.

They're transported to another planet where humans also live and told to take over land so that they can grow drugs for the aliens. The planet, called Paradise by the aliens and Tran by the natives, is peopled by humans taken from various times in Earth's history.

Rick Galloway and his men have the edge in technology, knowledge, military strategy and weapons. They're dropped into the middle of a war among people whose military tactics and weapons are far outstripped by the CIA group.

What should they do? Do they accomplish their mission? There are already three volumes which describe their fate and a fourth may, eventually, be forthcoming.

Take the idea that there are different time lines on Earth and it becomes possible to move between them. Let's say you can pick your place to cross -- for example, you find it possible to move into a time line where Pearl Harbor hasn't happened yet. You have the ability to stop or at least make its effects less devastating. How would you go about it? Should you?

One, to me, obvious answer to whether or not is yes. You're not affecting your own time line but you're offering the people in that time line a difference, a chance to avoid a devastating war. We know what happened to us. We don't really know what would have happened if the war hadn't.

One thing, in our time line, is that many of the scientific and medical advances which were made as a result of that war might not have happened. What would turn out to be the greater calamity?

For that matter, one of the more popular Command and Conquer video games uses the premis that Albert Einstein manages to kill Adolph Hitler by traveling in time to a point before he comes to power. It backfires and thus unleashes an even greater threat.

What about preventing John Wilkes Booth from assassinating President Abraham Lincoln? What would have happened? Again, you would not affect "our" history, since in that time line, the assassination had not yet happened. One thing I would find interesting -- what if we could see what happened? Could we learn from it?

At the same time, consider that our natural resources are depleting rapidly. Perhaps there is another time line where the resources have not been depleted and should they be in the same area as ours in this time line, they might still be available to us. All we'd have to do is find out how to control cross between time lines.

However, there is a perfectly legitimate question. What if there's another civilization in another time line on our planet which has encountered the same problem and has come up with the same solution? What the heck do we do then?

Think about it. What if ...?