Single Consistent Timeline

The discovery of negative entropy introduces quite new and revolutionary conceptions into our picture of the physical world.

—are the same piece!

You will be tampering with tremendous natural forces, Don! It is dangerous! You may unleash some awful catastrophe!

But the big puzzle: how had he—his earlier self—known that a piece of wire and a bus token would save his life? He had known, all right. Known in advance. But how? And the other five. Probably they were just as precious, or would be.

I turned on the futurescope and saw her kissing Edmund, a man I work with!

The brain can foretell events for approximately 24 hours in the future!

You haven’t a prison record yet. But you will have . . . unless you let us help you!

I just left Novitch this morning! How could he have been arrested, tried, convicted and sentenced, all in one day?

Oh . . . The Crucifixion. You want to witness it, of course—

When I opened you, I found a mess. I sent for the Chief of Surgery while I got the baby out, then we held a consultation with you on the table—and worked for hours to salvage what we could. You had two full sets of organs, both immature, but with the female set well enough developed for you to have a baby. They could never be any use to you again, so we took them out and rearranged things so that you can develop properly as a man.

Thin lightnings winked from above. The cloven air boomed behind them. He felt a chill, deeper than the night cold. But he eased his pace. There was no more reason for hurry.

Thin lightnings winked from above. The cloven air boomed behind them. He felt a chill, deeper than the night cold. But he eased his pace. There was no more reason for hurry.

Yeah, it takes dopey pictures—dopey pictures like things that haven’t happened yet, but they do happen.

Tel était le but des expériences : projeter dans le Temps des émissaires, appeler le passé et l’avenit au secours du présent.

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Such was the purpose of the experiments: to project emissaries into Time, to summon the Past and the Future to the aid of the Present.

Isn’t it obvious? The war did happen. You never did go back with your warning.

Somehow I’ve become another Jessamy in a different time! It must be a different time because of the clothes. Nobody wears long skirts like Matchett and Aunt now—I mean that—oh, I don’t know what I mean!

“Dragons can go between times as well as places. They go as easily to a when as to a where.”

Robinton’s eyes widened as he digested this astonishing news.

“That is how we forestalled the attack on Nerat yesterday morning. We jumped back two hours between times to meet the Threads as they fell.”

“Dragons can go between times as well as places. They go as easily to a when as to a where.”

Robinton’s eyes widened as he digested this astonishing news.

“That is how we forestalled the attack on Nerat yesterday morning. We jumped back two hours between times to meet the Threads as they fell.”

Zresztą Bosch nie powstrzymał się od niedyskrecji. W „Ogrodzie uciech ziemskich,” w „piekle muzycznym” (prawe skrzydło tryptyku) stoi w samym środku dwunastoosobowy chronobus. I co miałem z tym robić?

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Even so, Bosch couldn’t refrain from certain indiscretions. In the “Garden of Earthly Delights,” in the very center of the “Musical Hell” (the right wing of the triptych), stands a twelve-seat chronobus. Not a thing I could do about it.

He thinks of me now as the one person who’ll be able to say who’s the original and who’s the plagiarist when “the other guy” does eventually turn up!

McCoy: You realize that by giving him the formula you’re altering the future.
Scotty: Why? How do we know he didn’t invent the thing?

. . . мы сможем в будущем, и не таком, господа-товарищи, далеком, заснять всю жизнь Пушкина скрытой камерой, записать его гол . . . представляете, какое это будет счастье, когда каждый школьник сможет услышать, как Пушкин читает собственные стихи!

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. . . we will be able in the future, and, gentlemen-comrades, not such a distant one, to photograph Pushkin’s entire life with a hidden camera, record his voice . . . imagine how wonderful it will be when every schoolboy will be able to hear Pushkin read his own poetry!

Most excellent!

“Wow,” whispered Jack. “I wish we could go to the time of Pteranodons.”

Jack studied the picture of the odd-looking creature soaring through the sky.

“Ahhh!” screamed Annie.

“What?” said Jack.

“A monster!” Annie cried. She pointed out the tree house window.

“My magic wand!” Annie said, waving the flashlight. “Get down. Or I’ll wipe you out!”

“For a thousand years,” said the ghost-queen. “I have waited for help.”

“No one escapes Cap’n Bones!” he roared. His breath was terrible.

“The moonstone will help you find your missing friend,” the master said.

Jack nodded. Now he remembered. The ninja master said they wouldn’t be able to find the Pennsylvania book until they had found what they were looking for.

If you can’t change anything because it’s already happened, you may as well smell the flowers.

She stroked the mammoth’s giant ear. “Bye, Lulu. Thank you,” she said.

Jack nodded. “The book says the moon base was built in 2031,” he said. “So this book was written after that! Which means this book os from the future!.”

“You must show that you know how to do research,” said Morgan. “And show that you can find answers to hard questions.”

“It didn’t seem a good show,” Anna said to Mrs. Streichman. “A comedy and not very funny.”

Mrs. Streichman twisted into the space next to her. “That was just a rehearsal. The reviews are incredible. And you wouldn’t believe the waiting list. Years. Centuries! I’ll never have tickets again.” She took a deep, calming breath. “At least you’re here, dear. That’s something I couldn’t have expected. That makes it very real. [. . .]”

“Slim, you should write your book,” said Annie.

Jack watched as she hopped off the ladder. Then she started to walk through the tall grass, between the zebras and giraffes.

The tree house was on the ground. There were no trees and no houses, only an endless field of ice and snow.

“This story was in a library in a Roman town. I need you to get it before thelibrary becomes lost.”

“Give a message to the silk weaver. You will see her at the farmhouse,” said the young man. “Tell her to meet me here at twilight.”

The serpent’s neck was as tall as a two-story building. Its green scales were covered with sea slime.

At that moment, Plato returned. With him was a young woman dressed in a long tunic with a colored border. She was holding a scroll.

“Well, at least that’s good,” said Jack. “The ship won’t sink, even if it is lost.”

“. . . I got in the way of the buffalo. I couldn’t escape. So I held up my hands and shouted, ‘Stop!’ Then, out of nowhere, a beautiful lady in a white leather dress came to help me.”

“When you saved the tiger, you saved all of him,” said the blind man. “You saved his graceful beauty—and his fierce, savage nature. You cannot have one without the other.”

But at least I got to have exciting adventures as a dog!

We’d like to volunteer as nurses.

“Yes! And you have to keep going for our sake,” said Annie. “For the sake of the future children of America, sir.”

Suddenly, the schoolhouse door blew off its hinges! It went flying through the air!

Jack slowly stood up. His legs felt wobbly. As he brushed off his pants, the deep rumbling came again—louder than before.

I want you to bring someone from the past to the present—someone who would otherwise die only a few hours afterward. Surely that’s possible.

“’Tis,” said Wil “The queen pretends to be young and beautiful. Just as you pretended to be a boy, and the bear pretended to be an actor. You see, all the world’s a stage.”

But he couldn’t find the magic. He couldn’t find the words that finished the rhyme. Worst of all, he couldn’t find Annie.

Be kind to those who feel different and afraid.

Jack took a deep breath. “I’d like to read a little about surfing first,” he said. He put his board down and pulled out the research book.

“People can’t go back. You can’t change history Think about it! When my father was five years old, he lost his brother. It changed his life. He became an only child, grew up as an only child. All his memories are of being an only one. You can’t change that now, can you?”

“No,” Charlie said quickly. “I’m sorry.”

His uncle hadn’t finished. “Henry’s parents mourned him, just as they mourned poor little Daphne. James was their only child and, as a result, he was probably spoiled. His father died in the war and his mother left everything to him, including her lovely cottage by the sea. You can’t change that, can you?”

Shorty: Look, if we know anything, we know that time travel's not possible. Einstein proved that. Right?
Michael: Time travel, yes. But Einstein was very clear that he believed time viewing, theoretically, could be accomplished.

Hang on! That’s not possible. Ancient Runes is at the same time as Divination. You’d have to be in two classes at once.

Oh, bless my bum-flap. You’re time travelers.

If I had the power to decide never to meet him again, I reasoned, surely I had the power to change the course of the relationship for the better.

So if they had gotten home five minutes before they left, like those ladies promised they would, then they would have seen themselves get back. Before they left.

Mr. B. invented a camera that takes pictures of the future.

About four years from now, most of the human race will be wiped out by a plague, a virus. We know it’s because of a man named Leland Frost. I have to find him.

—from “Splinter” [s01e01]

If you do travel back in time, even though it’s in your subjective future, it’s in the objective past. So if you could travel back in time and if you were determined to change the past, when it came down to it, you’d either decide not to, or you’d fail.

If I kill you now, you will never go back in time, there is no formica bomb, and Adolf Hilter takes over the world . . . with me as his heir.

One minute he’s tall! The next he’s short! One minute he can throw the ball! The next he can’t!

Later on, Ugo developed a theory about it. He said that in reality everybody Leaps all the time. The proof? Déjà vu. The feeling of having already experienced what is in fact happening for the first time was for him the ultimate, definitive evidence of Leaping. The only difference between Ugo and everyone else was that he remembered, while we don’t.

Each of the foregoing cases involves a self-defeating act—an act such that, if it were performed, it wold not be. Self-defeating acts are obviously impossible, since the performance of such an act would imply a contradiction. Yet time travel seems to make such acts possible. This suggests the following line of argument against backward time travel:

(P1) If backward time travel were possible, it would be possible to perform a self-defeating act.

(P2) It is impossible to perform a self-defeating act.

(C) Backward time travel is impossible.

Tiffany [waking up late]: Oh, no! It didn’t go off. I thought I’d turned it on.

Annie turned back to the couple. “Excuse me again, do you know today’s date?” she asked.
“September eighth,” the woman said with a friendly smile.
“Nineteen-hundred?” Jack asked.

“So I hear,” said the emperor. “When I first met you, I thought you must live nearby in Carnuntum. But now I do not think that is so. Where is your home?”
“Frog Creek, Pennsylvania,” said Annie.
“Beyond the Danube,” said Jack.

Morgan’s telling us to take Ben to Frog Creek. To our time.

“Oh, I get it—your dad is Erik, so you are called Erik-son!” said Annie.

Do I ever find any kind of stability? Or do I live life year after year like some kind of existential hobo?

You were right—the photograph, it was me, it . . . It will be. I don’t know how, but it will.

“Show us,” the emperor ordered. “Show us all how this little llama speaks.”

I think that if we really try hard, we can make sense of this. But there’s a rule in physics or whatever that the more surprising and weird the phenomenon is, the more you’re gonna have to work to introduce some weird elements into your theory to explain it. That’s not surprising, right? So we’re gonna need some leaps of faith here, but I think I can come up with the scheme that involves four ingredients on the basis of which we can actually make sense of Back to the Future, Looper, and other similar movies.

If you’re a friend of bears, then take my advice: Walk softly and carry a big stick.

Wow. I wish we could go there.

Grandfather: Who are you? Where do you really come from? Elma: Just an Americana who plays the drums.

Annie: [turning on her flashlight] That’s right! We have a magic wand and we’re not afraid to use it!

She wants to go back more, as far as possible. Maybe before he was sick, even. But two years is the limit the doctor from the company gives her, his voice serious, concerned.