We continue examining temporal anomalies in Primer. The problems have become progressively more complicated since our first look considered a simple mistake. Now we come to an event that has the marks of disaster.
It starts with a passing comment: Aaron says if he could do anything, he would punch a man named Joseph Platts, a venture capitalist who for a long time pumped them for information about their projects without investing in their operation. Aaron would only do it, though, if he knew he could make it so that it never happened. As the narrator says, "the words wouldn't go back after they had been uttered aloud." They wonder what would happen.
What would happen depends on your theory of time. Under replacment theory, preventing yourself from doing what you did almost always creates an infinity loop, because you probably also prevent yourself from preventing it, so two alternate histories are causing each other perpetually. Under fixed time theory, the entire question is nonsense, because you cannot change the past and therefore if you succeeded in delivering the punch you must have failed to prevent yourself from doing so. Parallel dimension theory fares only slightly better, as the time travelers vanish from their own world but their counterparts do not vanish from the world they have entered (as illustrated in The Two Brothers: Why Parallel Dimension Theory Is Not Time Travel). In any case, it is a bad plan; but it became their plan.
The plan reached fruition one night when kids in Abe's neighborhood set off a car alarm, rousting him from sleep. He gets this idea, to awaken Aaron, find Platts and deliver their message, and then travel back to earlier that evening to wait in Abe's neighborhood to prevent those kids from executing their mischief. He figures in that case the car alarm will never awaken him, he will never awaken Aaron, they will never punch Platts in the nose, and the history they created will be undone.
The problem is, if they undo that history, they also undo their own trip to the past with the result that they will not be there to prevent the car alarm. The Abe who is awakened then will not know any of what happened, and will think that his idea of finding Platts and then preventing the car alarm from sounding is new, so he will awaken Aaron and they will do it.
In the movie they never get that far. They are interrupted by the appearance of someone who cannot be there, and the only explanation they have is that he discovered their time machine and traveled to the past to spy on them. That is a problem for next time; this time, it means that our current problem is not answered by the film, and we have to consider the possibilities.
The worst outcome would be that they succeed, that they find Platts and hit him and make the trip to the past, then prevent the car alarms from awakening Abe. As noted, this leads to an infinity loop, history permanently unstable. That would for practical purposes be the end of the story, and nothing else that we see in the film could ever happen. The interruption that comes from the future to prevent them from succeeding never comes. However, even without that interruption they might fail, and in this case that would be good.
It might be that they spend hours trying to find Platts, but never find him.* Perhaps he is not home. However it was, it could be that they never delivered the intended punch. Not having punched anyone, there was no reason for them to make the trip to the past to undo what they had never done. Of course, failure of the mission does not mean they would not attempt to prevent the car alarms from sounding; it just makes it less likely.
They might succeed in the first part but fail in the second--that is, punch Platts in the nose, but not manage to prevent the car alarms from awakening Abe. That would be unfortunate for Aaron, who now would undoubtedly face assault charges (and whose new-found wealth would be discovered in the process, leading to all kinds of complications). However, it may be the best outcome for history, and it does help explain what happened next.
That, though, is for our next installment, when we consider the inexplicable traveler.
Comments
Great analysis, Mark. I have seen Primer several times and I am still asking myself many of the fundamental questions that you are raising here. I am really enjoying this series and hoping that you will finish with some speculation on Aaron's future plans with the very large time travel box in France. Keep up the great work!
Thanks, TW. That's an interesting question you raise, and I'm going to grab another look at the end of the film and see whether there's something there that's worth another article.
--M. J. Young
This is a good series. Cannot wait to see the articles that follow. Very insightful indeed!
I'm a little confused about your article. It seems like Primer makes perfect sense under the Parallel Dimension theory. There are no paradoxes (no lost information) if Abe and Aaron aren't changing the past but rather creating another timeline that is independent of their pasts. The line about how "only the last revision counts" is because the story is being told from the perspective of Aaron. Only the last revision counts *to him*... in fact, Carruth's story works because it is a narrative.
Michael--I have reasons for thinking this is not a parallel (or, as you describe, divergent) dimension theory story, but I'm going to tuck that away to discuss in a future article, when I address a few other questions that have been raised about the series.
I always begin with the assumption that replacement theory is being used, because it is the only theory I know which 1) is real time travel; 2) allows change to the past; and 3) respects causality. However, since you've raised it, the possibility that the story "works" under divergent dimension theory will be addressed.
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