Timeline Dilemna *Spoilers DTVII*

BevVincent

Hi everyone,



I'm having a hard time unparadoxing (no, it's not a word) a timeline/loop problem I came across.



I don't remember what the suspected factor of difference was between midworld and keystone earth (one day in Midworld = a week in keystone, for example). Knowing this might solve my problem.



Jake saves SK's life June 19th, 1999. After Roland returns to Midworld, 21 days + a number of weeks have passed. Roland reaches and ascends The Dark Tower.

Resumption follows shortly thereafter.



If resumption turns back the clock on all our favorite characters, did SK ever have a chance to finish writing the story in the first place?



Knowing/remembering the time difference between both worlds would help, but did 21 total days + ? weeks (Midworld) equal approximately 4-5 years time (Keystone)?



If not, wouldn't all of time be set back before Stephen King could have written about time being set back before Stephen King could have written about time being set back before Steph..... lol nevermind, you either got the joke or you didn't.



Question remains though.



Any suggestions?



Mike

BevVincent

Resumption doesn't turn back the clock on all the players.



What happens in the end (in my opinion) is that the trajectory of time continues onward for everyone. Roland, in effect, dies when he goes through the door bearing his name and is reborn to a new existence. In this new existence he is an elevated being, one who is just slightly better than his previous incarnation. He is a Roland who is far-sighted enough to pause for a few seconds to pick up the horn of Eld at Jericho Hill. His vision isn't so single-mindedly set on the Tower that he is oblivious to the important things close at hand.



So, Eddie and Susan and Jake's lives go on from Central Park. Tet Corporation goes on to do its battles against NCP...in that timeline/level of the Tower. King went on to write the ending; we know this because he tells us this directly in the book, at the point where he gives readers the chance to stop before following Roland inside the Tower.



I see the ending of the book as being a progression to a new level of the Tower. This isn't a loop; it's an upward spiral, exactly analogous to the upward spiral staircase inside the Tower. We return to Roland at the same geographic coordinates, and at the same temporal location, but this Roland is up a level on the Tower. What happens after this is open. Roland can make changes that further improve his character and move him one step closer to the day when he achieves perfection and goes on to the clearing at the end of the path with everyone else.

Lou_Sytsma

Interesting as I must admit that I thought the timeline was set back for everyone else as well.



Bev, are you saying that the Central timeline continues as well as Roland remeeting Eddie, Jake, and Susannah? Or on the next spiral Roland will form a different ka-tet?



The mentions King makes about Eddie, Jake, and Susannah learning new skills rapidly because it is almost like they have done those actions before leads me to believe they will meet again and again.

crimson_queen

Bev I think thats the best explanation I have ever heard.(Or read)    I have to admit I wasn't quite sure if everything just started over again or if time and characters moved on....  in more ways then one BRAVO!               -crimson queen :P

BevVincent

Lou_Sytsma wrote: Interesting as I must admit that I thought the timeline was set back for everyone else as well.  



Bev, are you saying that the Central timeline continues as well as Roland remeeting Eddie, Jake, and Susannah?  Or on the next spiral Roland will form a different ka-tet?  



The mentions King makes about Eddie, Jake, and Susannah learning new skills rapidly because it is almost like they have done those actions before leads me to believe they will meet again and again.

I believe Roland has drawn them before and MAY draw them again, but there's no guarantee that he will. He may find a solution to his existence that doesn't require that he do so. If, for example, he figures out that the man in black really has nothing to tell him in the Golgotha, if he decides to not sacrifice Jake under the mountain, he might not be maimed by the lobstrocities and wouldn't be so badly in need of Eddie's help to save his life. In that case, ka may decide he either doesn't need more helpers or that he needs different ones. The Eddie and Susannah he draws will possibly be elevated versions of themselves, too. A little better, a little quicker to learn, a little truer.



He might someday understand Allie's comment about the clouds near Tull and realize the path of the beam is nearby and forego the chase across the desert altogether.



All these are possible. And many other variations, too. Delah.



I think of it like an old adventure computer game, where you get to a certain point and fail and have to go back to the start again, but it's easier the next time because you've learned things. Ultimately, with persistence, you'll solve all the riddles and zoom right through it to the end.

Lou_Sytsma

Ahh I get ya! Kind of like replaying Zork over and over again.

BevVincent

Exactly! I refer to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game in Road, where if you don't give a dog a sandwich early in the game the dog will eat a tiny space ship later on, and there's no way to go back and fix that problem if you don't do it at the right moment.

Foreverlad

Thanks Bev.

I'm also glad to see I wasn't the only one who had been mistaken, or at least uncertain about the rules.

Alternity is tough to digest sometimes, no?

While Walter tells Roland there has never been another being like Roland ever, it still makes me wonder why Ka should even care lol.

Actually, let me take that back. I guess we'd have to go a lot higher up the chain. This is all Gan's/SK's doing, isn't it?



Reminds me of a few episodes of ST: Voyager where the whole ship and crew get cloned through some space anomaly, and while the original ship and crew are destroyed, the duplicates continue on as if nothing ever happened. Oooooor, when a future version of Janeway comes back in time and changes the future for her earlier self.

In which case I would assume, there's almost a... splitting of souls, or a pair of the same soul.

Heaven/Hell/TCATEOTP is just a family reunion for all of your own souls.

BevVincent

Yep, and when you consider that at each of the gazillion points in our lives when we make some minor decision, reality could split at that point and there are alternate realities where we made different decisions. Each one is a parallel reality, although parallel is a misnomer as they obviously diverge from that point onward in spite of being very similar.

DTUK

I wonder when we dream of ourselves (if indeed this is another version of us which exists in another reality) allowed through the subconscious whilst we sleep. I guess on a level, daydreaming would work also.

BevVincent

I find it disheartening that the palaver with walter is meaningless in the revised gunslinger and with respect to dt 7. the palaver in the original gunslinger is the best part of the series, and to have it reduced to meaningless chatter....



i think king originally intended for the palaver to mean something, and i wish he had stayed with that line of thinking.

BevVincent

My reflections on the palaver, even in the original version, made me realize that there was nothing much for Roland in it. Most of what Walter told him, he already had from other sources, including the Oracle. The only profound bit of wisdom Roland gleaned was "go west" to direct him to the Western Sea, which may or may not have been important.

DTUK

Other then the "Go West" and the Drawing of the Three parts of the palaver, I see nothing of real benefit or interest to Roland here that would help him in anyway.



I think that it was set up as an opening to another part of the story that became DT2 - remember, King had written this in short parts largely for his own entertainment. I daresay back when he wrote the parts that became the Gunslinger, he never imagined how many people would want to see the story finished.



Possibly a loose thread, that's all....