Revelations from Keynote II

[Cilia]

I don't think that the "countless yous" scenario really works in this case. That more applies to stuff like Groundhog's Day, where you're repeating the same segment of time over and over again until you get it "right". That's an entirely different sort of time travel than that implied by a stable time loop.

A closed time loop of this sort is more like a roller coaster. You're riding along like normal, then you come to this loop which takes you to another point in time. That loop was always there, and you only rode it the one time. Even if the time travel causes there to be more than one you at the same point in time, they aren't countless, they are limited by the number of times that you actually travel to that point in time. (The most Alexander ever supplied was two simultaneous WoLs - the point in A12 where you travel to the past to save your past self from Alexander's blast.)

It's also important to realize that this time loop was always a thing. There IS NO "original" timeline that was altered to create the time loop. This IS the original timeline. It just happens to be that the original timeline has a tangle in it.

That's a valid way to look at it... but since time travel is purely hypothetical, there's no "right" answer.

Regardless, what I supplied is something that has no paradoxes, i.e. is logically sound. Without a "Zeroth Loop" we can't observe where it all started, causality breaks down. To use the example of a hypothetical perpetual motion machine again, sure you could build one... but someone would have to set it in motion for it to start working.

To use the roller coaster example - yes, everything proceeds along the one track, a loop de loop causes you to spin for a moment, and then you continue onward to the exit. But what about characters like Mide, Dayan, and Quickthinx - who only exist within Alexander's looped time? Who only exist because of Alexander's looped time? Who's operating the roller coaster?

Your present self is saved by your future self before A12, who then has to save their own past self. But then your past self has to do the same things you did... and save their own past self, ad infinitum. Otherwise we end up with a time paradox, which lies beyond our observation (if only because we are dead in those possible "futures"). There are "potential yous" who deviated from the script... we just can't observe them (i.e. the "you" who died to Alexander's Holy Judgment because the "future you" failed to save them).

... time travel is complicated.