I was watching an episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. recently and I kept wondering about a particular time-travel conumdrum they were faced with, so I thought I’d work it out here as a sort of hypothetical. It also applies to the multiverse, and relates after a fashion to what I’m writing now. Indeed, the answer I settled on is what I used in the novel that’s top of the editing pile, Who Killed Ron Raven?, a sequel to The Ballad of Evinrude and Eulalie, book 2 in The Constance Series. So, without further ado, let’s get into it.
The Problem
Let’s suppose you and a collection of your unusually heroic friends are part of a team dedicated to doing Good Things. Saving the world, all that. You and your friends somehow get transported to the future, which you discover is really, really bad. As in, post-apocalyptic, plagues of locusts, brink-of-extinction bad. You then get bounced back from the Bad Future to Present Day, and you naturally decide to do everything you can to avert the Bad Future. The only problem is that you’ve got a passenger. Let’s call him Phil.
Phil is from the Bad Future. And now he’s with you in the Present. The specifics don’t matter, but let’s just assume that Phil’s existence comes about through your friends’ choices that collectively led to the Bad Future. But let’s also assume that you like Phil; he’s not the bad kind of time traveler like Thanos in Endgame; maybe he’s even a descendant of some of your friends; grandson or nephew or second cousin or something, and naturally they don’t want to blink him out of existence. This leads to the problem.
What do you do with Phil? Or more precisely, if you avert the Bad Future, what happens to Phil? (Incidentally, bear in mind that I haven’t finished season 5 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. yet, so I don’t know what their final take on this at time of writing.)
The Options
Bad Future is averted, but Phil is erased as well.
I’ve never seen Back to the Future, but I gather this is what happens in that film except the other way; when the past changes, the main character (Marty?) is wiped from existence. Another example is in the Justice League episode Hereafter. Immortal supervillain Vandal Savage creates a superweapon that defeats the good guys but in the process kills off the entire human race except for himself. After millennia of loneliness he regrets this (who wouldn’t, honestly) and contrives to send Superman back in time to stop this, whereupon future Savage disappears. Same with our scenario: if Bad Future is averted, it just never happened. But that’s a problem for Phil, because that would mean he never happened.
Bad Future is averted, Phil survives.
Same deal as above, except Phil makes it out by virtue of being in the new timeline with the Good Future. Somehow….I’m not exactly sure how Phil survives. Maybe the theory is that Phil was born in the old timeline and therefore can’t just be unborn?
New Good Future is created, Phil survives, Bad Future rolls on.
You and friends manage to push the button or stop the scransoms inverting or whatever and the good future happens. Phil survives and stays in the new future. The bad timeline, however, doesn’t simply blink out; it keeps on going. So now you’ve got two timelines, two futures. This is the theory I personally lean towards (and, spoiler, am going with in WKRR) because I don’t think timelines can be so easily snapped out of existence just like that. At least not if I understand conservation of mass. Also, I write stories about angels, and if you’ll forgive me, I don’t think the Almighty would be so casual about entire swaths of Creation blinking each other in and out of existence willy-nilly.
The Bad Future can’t be changed; it’s a loop; Phil survives.
Essentially, this theory is that you can’t change the future. You try; it happens anyway. You go back and try to avert it; you end up causing it. Time snaps back. See: Stephen King’s 1963, Avengers Endgame, Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, etc. So the Bad Future is immutable.
In the real world, yeah, probably, in that I doubt very much that time travel’s occurred yet, and we don’t know the future. In this scenario? Eh, maybe. But the mere fact that you traveled back in the first place indicates to me that change is possible; otherwise, what’s the point?
There may be other scenarios I haven’t considered; feel free to suggest them in comments. I’m leaning towards the Bad Future/New Good Future scenario, but I could be wrong (and frequently am). Just for fun, how about a poll? Which do you think is most realistic?
Closing Time
On a completely unrelated note, something that I recently discovered and will always be hilarious is this clip from Full House, in which young Stephanie Tanner discovers that the R on Joey’s 1963 Rambler (in primo condition) does not, in fact, stand for Radio.
Until next time,
Michael
Very interesting question. I listened a podcast recently by a guy named Jimmy Akin (Jimmy Akin's Mysterious world is the name of the podcast). He was grappling with a similar type of problem and one of the solutions he came up with was you could travel to the past but God (or the universe) would limit your possible movements and actions in order to not change the future. This is similar to the hit sci-fi novel, Doomsday Book, where the college students can travel back in time, but only to a place/time where their actions cannot change the future. A great book by the way.
The branching timelines seems to make sense to me as well. There is still so much we don't understand about time.