The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [193]
These stories depend on an assumption of duality (or other pluralities) of time and space—that an individual is in fact a different individual from one moment of time to another (which is certainly true, in terms of physical and perhaps mental processes). Thus, under this hypothesis, a person is not really a discrete entity, but rather a contiguous chain of identities, all with a great deal of similarity but all slightly different, and (this is the basic assumption) that any of these identities can persist physically, if removed from the temporal chain that binds them together.
Naturally, one of the benefits of fiction is that it is a simple matter to remove the temporal linkage; the author merely devises a plausible causality, and declares it to be true. The only drawback to this particular fictional assumption is that if one uses it, it’s so obtrusive as to require the device to become the central premise and conflict of the story. Fine, but limiting.
If one assumes instead—on the basis of the natural phenomenon/nonsimultaneousness argument—that it is not possible for pluralities to exist, then a different set of intriguing situations and logical evolutions occur. What happens if one tries to exist simultaneously in more than one temporal location? How might one avoid the possibility?
The Gabaldon Theory postulates that it is not possible for plural identities of the same character to exist simultaneously. Therefore, a character can exist only once, whatever the time period in which that character finds himself. On the assumption of nonsimultaneousness, if a character tries to exist in a time in which he or she already exist(s/ed), the result should be disaster or displacement or both.
Ergo, when Roger first enters the stone circle on Craigh na Dun and passes through the cleft stone while thinking of his father, he inadvertently travels through his own lifeline—that is, he (involuntarily) tries to exist twice in the same time. Since he can’t possibly do that, the result is something like what happens if two atoms try to exist in the same space—an immediate explosion of force that drives them apart.4
Had Roger not been wearing gemstones (which presumably absorbed or deflected the force), he would undoubtedly have been killed. Lucky for him (and the story), though, he was.
THE MOEBIUS TWIST OF FATE
What I call a fictional “Moebius twist” effect is a situation in which a character by the action of free choice achieves a result that preserves a personal historical reality, which would not be preserved without the character’s intervention. Examples of this are (in Drums of Autumn) a young man who risks his life to save a baby for humanitarian motives—this child being (unknown to him) his own ancestor; or (in Jack Finney’s Time and Again), a time-traveler who takes a conscious but trifling step that prevents the conception of a man who will later discover time travel, thus removing a personal risk. This sort of situation of course smacks of predestination—but as I said, we do like to feel sometimes that someone is in charge.5
1In answer to the assorted pleas I get for Jamie Fraser to find some way of traveling forward, because some people think it would be so neat to see him be amazed at microwave ovens and video games… sorry, not on your tintype. He’s a man of his time, and I have more respect for his dignity than to try to circumvent the ways of nature for the sake of a lame joke.
2As my husband once observed, “In your books, you can only be sure somebody’s really dead if you see them clutch their throat and go ’Gak!’ right in front of you.”
3 We can only speculate as to the nature of these; however, she did, when talking to Claire about gemstones, refer to them as bhasmas