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Consider a time-travel scenario where three characters travel from the future to the past. All three originate from a future that already exists and requires each of them to have lived long enough to reach the point of time travel. While in the past, one of the three characters (the adult time traveler) dies, while the remaining two survive and later return to the future.
The character who dies in the past is the same individual who had already lived to adulthood and initiated the time travel; no younger version of that character is directly targeted. Despite this, the death does not retroactively erase the causal chain that produced that character up to the moment of time travel, and the surviving travelers return to a future that remains internally consistent with the altered past.
Questions
1. Which future do the surviving travelers return to: the original future, or one consistent with the altered past?
2. How is paradox erasure avoided, given that the character both reaches time travel and later dies in the past?
3. Is this outcome explained purely by timeline branching, or by the failure of paradox erasure affecting the character’s origin?
4. Under VSBW standards, if a past death does not retroactively erase the causal chain that produced a character, does that qualify as Type 1 (time-paradox immunity), regardless of survival?
The character who dies in the past is the same individual who had already lived to adulthood and initiated the time travel; no younger version of that character is directly targeted. Despite this, the death does not retroactively erase the causal chain that produced that character up to the moment of time travel, and the surviving travelers return to a future that remains internally consistent with the altered past.
Questions
1. Which future do the surviving travelers return to: the original future, or one consistent with the altered past?
2. How is paradox erasure avoided, given that the character both reaches time travel and later dies in the past?
3. Is this outcome explained purely by timeline branching, or by the failure of paradox erasure affecting the character’s origin?
4. Under VSBW standards, if a past death does not retroactively erase the causal chain that produced a character, does that qualify as Type 1 (time-paradox immunity), regardless of survival?
