Timelike Infinity (Xeelee Sequence #2)

by Stephen Baxter

There had been a flurry of speculation about the effects of the rebels’ escape into the past among what was left of the human scientific community, too. Could the rebels truly alter history? Some argued that their actions would only cause a broadening of probability functions - that new alternative realities were being created by their actions. Others maintained that reality had only a single thread, opened to disruption by the creation of the rebels’ ‘closed timelike curve’, their path through spacetime into the past. In either event, no one knew whether consciousness could persist through such a disruption - would Jasoft know if the world, his own history, altered around him? Or would he go through a mini-death, to be replaced by a new, subtly adjusted Jasoft? Nor were there any estimates of the rate - in subjective terms - at which the disruption was approaching, emerging from the past as if from the depths of some dismal sea. To Jasoft such speculation seemed unreal - and yet it also lent an air of unreality to the world he inhabited, as if his life were all no more than a brightly painted surface surrounding a vacuum. He wasn’t afraid - at least he didn’t think so - but he sensed that his grip on reality had been disturbed, fundamentally.

‘In case of emergency, break laws of physics.’