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Page 156
of that Reality [N 4]. When Harlan asks why it was not enough just to misdirect Cooper, Nos says that the probability of the creation of Eternity must be reduced to nearly zero. The Minimum Necessary Change to achieve that is for her to send a letter to "a man of Italy" who will begin experimenting with the neutronic bombardment of uranium. Harlan is horrified at the prospect of destroying Eternity [H 42] but responds to her accusation that Eternals are psychopaths by recalling his group of Cubs learning about Reality [H 2] and recalling the abnormal life led by Eternals [H 2-37]. His decision [H 43] is signaled by the disappearance of the kettle [-E 1-31 (Of course, almost everything else turns to minuses as well, for now no Reality exists except the Basic State strengthened by the results of Nos's letter.)
Asimov probably did not plan this labyrinthine complex of time relationships as a way of providing a stylistic counterpoint to the theme. Certainly he was aware of the complexities of the subject. Heinlein had already exploited the paradoxes of time travel in "By His Bootstraps," although the solipsism of "All You Zombies" was still in the future. Reality-changing was not as thoroughly explored as it would be after Fritz Leiber's Change War stories, culminating in The Big Time (Galaxy, March-April 1958/book 1961), and Philip K. Dick's reality-questioning stories and novels of the fifties and sixties, but H. Beam Piper's Paratime Police stories began running in Astounding in July 1948 and his Time Crime was serialized beginning February 1955, and Poul Anderson's Time Patrol stories were first published in F&SF in May 1955 but not collected (Guardians of Time) until 1960. The idea of time manipulation wasn't new, but Asimov considered in detail the complications of a systematic effort to change reality.
When Twissell is instructing Cooper, Harlan thinks:
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Remember that, Cooper! Remember the 13th Reality of the 222nd so that you can put it into the Mallansohn memoir so that the Eternals will know where to look so they will know what to tell you so you can put it. . . . Round and round the circle goes. . . ."
After Harlan sends Cooper off to the wrong time, Twissell brings up the question of why Reality changes immediately after an alteration in Time: a Technician, he says, could go back and reverse the Change he has made. It must, he says, have to do with intention: the Technician has no intention of reversing his alteration, so Reality changes. But Eternity has not yet vanished, so Harlan must intend to reverse his

 
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