Resilient Timeline

Looking backward later, Oliver thought that in that moment, for the first time clearly, he began to suspect the truth. But he had no time to ponder it, for after the brief instant of enmity the three people from—elsewhere—began to speak all at once, as if in a belated attempt to cover something they did not want noticed.

If you went back to, I would guess, 1946, and worked to prevent your parents’ marriage in 1947, you would still have existed in that year; you would not go out of existence just because you had influenced events. The same would apply even if you had only been in 1946 one microsecond before shooting the man who would otherwise have become your father.

He had boarded the kettle in the 575th Century, the base of operations assigned to him two years earlier. At the time the 575th had been the farthest upwhen he had ever traveled. Now he was moving upwhen to the 2456th Century.

Events are the result of a complex. There are no single causes. That’s why it’s so hard to change history. If I went back to, say, the Middle Ages, and shot one of FDR’s Dutch forebears, he’ll still be born in the late nineteenth century—because he and his genes resulted fom the entire world of his ancestors, and there’d have been compensation. But evey so often, a really key event does occur. Some one happening is a nexus of so many world lines that its outcome is decisive for the whole future.

If I could live the past thrity years over I’d not make the same mistakes!

In the case of a missing man, you were not required to search for him just because a record somewhere said you had done so. But how else would you stand a chance of finding him? You might possibly go back and thereby change events so that you did find him after all—in which case the report you filed would “always” have recorded your success, and you alone would know the “former” truth.

I’ve got a devil of a lot more than a premonition. Lincole will be assassinated unless somebody tries to prevent it!

You’re going to need a lot of dog food.

I’m not going to let anybody hurt you this time. I swear to you on my life.

“There’s nothing to return to.” Eliot’s knuckles bulged at the seams, but she didn’t yell. “When the Fade destroys a moment, it’s lost. Forever.”

En fait, je suis passé dans un cube, et ça . . .

translate

I actually went through this cube, and it . . .

All five Machines had limitations, but the hardest to surmount was what travelers call the Long Four Years. Wormholes only opened for people who remained within twenty kilometers of a Machine for at least 1,680 days.

So . . . some people inherit diabetess, some inherit curly hair, and I inherited time travel?

This isn’t Germany. And this can’t be 1924.

Reece, it isn’t just clarvoyance or neurosis, either.
She’d tell him in person, the thing they should have come out and admitted from the start.
It’s time travel.

Equally in the grip of dread and amazement, David Thorne began to awaken to a previously unthought-of truth, the ramifications of which were devastating and numberless.

The Ancient One: Her death is an Absolute Point in time.
Dr. Strange: Absolute?
A.O.: Unchangable. Unmovable. Without her death, you would never have defeated Dormamu and become the Sorcerer Supreme—and the guardian of the Eye of Agamotto. If you erase her death, you never start your journey.

“I know it’s your birthday,” Leonard said. “You’ve made me watch Sixteen Candles enough times to ensure that I wouldn’t let this one slide.”

There’s going to be an attack. It’s going to change the timeline. We have to stop it.