It's the same person!!!

(Excerpt from Robert Heinlein short story "All You Zombies.")

A baby girl is mysteriously dropped off at an orphanage in Cleveland in 1945. "Jane" grows up lonely and dejected, not knowing who her parents are, until one day in 1963 she is strangely attracted to a drifter. She falls in love with him. But just when things are finally looking up for Jane, a series of disasters strike. First, she becomes pregnant by the drifter, who then disappears. Second, during the complicated delivery, doctors find that Jane has both sets of sex organs, and to save her life, they are forced to surgically convert "her" to a "him." Finally, a mysterious stranger kidnaps her baby from the delivery room.

Reeling from these disasters, rejected by society, scorned by fate, "he" becomes a drunkard and drifter. Not only has Jane lost her parents and her lover, but he has lost his only child as well. Years later, in 1970, he stumbles into a lonely bar, called Pop's Place, and spills out his pathetic story to an elderly bartender. The sympathetic bartender offers the drifter the chance to avenge the stranger who left her pregnant and abandoned, on the condition that he join the "time travelers corps." Both of them enter a time machine, and the bartender drops off the drifter in 1963. The drifter is strangely attracted to a young orphan woman, who subsequently becomes pregnant.

The bartender then goes forward 9 months, kidnaps the baby girl from the hospital, and drops off the baby in an orphanage back in 1945. Then the bartender drops off the thoroughly confused drifter in 1985, to enlist in the time travelers corps. The drifter eventually gets his life together, becomes a respected and elderly member of the time travelers corps, and then disguises himself as a bartender and has his most difficult mission: a date with destiny, meeting a certain drifter at Pop's Place in 1970.

***

This is one of the more complex timetravel paradoxes I've heard. But I find it really interesting.

What happens to the time line? Does it close up into a loop, constantly repeating itself out of necessity (trapped). Or does the bartender live on in a linear timeline starting a new one each cycle of the paradox, so there would be many timelines diverging from the original.

The mind boggles.
Any other thoughts?

Uhmmm.....yeah....
I guess if the paradox of meeting yourself didn't completly screw things up it might be possible, but it certainly sounds like one screwed up individual whom the universe absolutely hates for one reason or another...

That sounds more like a story that Spider Robinson might have written in his "Callahan's Place" series of sci-fi short stories...

In fact, one of the characters, Josie Bauer, had joined the Time Cops from the future (more a a local agent than a real "patrol cop") & says to some friends of hers, "I'm not sure, but I think I'm going to grow up to be my mom."


[Edited on 12-11-2003 by MidnightDStroyer]

pparently if you see/meet yourself in another timeline you both blow up.

Actually, according to the most respectable theories of time travel, it's impossible to actually meet yourself...Because if you do happen to travel back in time, you'll only be experiencing a "fading image" of yourself (Sort of like viewing an old video tape of yourself) in which there can be no interaction possible. What you would actually be seeing is the light-reflections from the actual reality at that time (Which means that you wouldn't be able to hear any *sounds*)...But it's more like an old hologram than than a video.

Originally posted by DaRAGE
pparently if you see/meet yourself in another timeline you both blow up.

Why would you blow up? It isnt possible to see yourself according to physics. But even if it were...how would you know that we would "Blow Up"?

As far as the post, that is a cool story to get you thinking. I know that we as humans cant understand something that never began though. And in that story, the never ending loop could have had no beginning. Thats why it facinates us, because we cant understand it. We understand the story, and we can understand how the loop works. But we cant grasp the concept of the loop not having a begining or end. I like it.

it would mean that the person in the story just spontaniously burst into existence at some point or at all points in time. Kind of hard to get your head around. Just like the thought that the whole universe just suddenley appeared at the point of the big bang.

Anyone remember "Red Dwarf"? It sounds similair to how Lister was born, but I doubt this concept is a new one. If no one has seen this show, its definately a must see.

I can't get into time travel at all.

My knowledge of quantum physics and string theory lead me to believe that by changing the time parameter you change the physical substance of your makeup (i.e. the strings resonate differently when the time variable is altered) and you are no longer capable of this "reality" comprehension.

I believe that the different alterations in time would create multiple parallel universes that would each contain the different variations in the story. Each time time travel occurs, a seperate parallel universe is created in order for the actions in one universe to not interfere with another. This would make the risk of a paradox impossible.
Example: If a person goes back in time and kills his or her own mother before he or she is born the killer would still exist in the universe that he or she has travelled through. The universe that he or she came from would no longer have him because he travelled to a different time. A seperate universe would be created in which this person was never born.