Creon info 2

  Lorenzo smiled sadly. “You are powerful. And so young. You have not traveled through time before?”

  Cole shook his head.

  “And you know little of Creon?”

  Cole nodded.

  “You need some fundamentals,” Lorenzo said. “First, the past is fixed. You cannot go back in time and change the past. If you do, you will only discover that you become part of the past as it already happened.”

  “What if I went back in time and killed you when you were a baby?” Jace asked.

  Everyone stared at him.

  “Not that I would,” Jace clarified hastily. “For the sake of argument. I mean, how could you stop me if you were just a little baby?”

  “I wouldn’t have to stop you,” Lorenzo said. “I’m here. I didn’t die as a baby. It didn’t happen. The past is fixed. You would somehow fail. You could make mistakes. Someone might intervene. You might change your mind. You might even inadvertently save my life. In the end any attempt you made to alter the past would become part of the past as it already transpired.”

  “But if I went to the past, wouldn’t I be a new addition to what happened?” Cole asked. “Couldn’t I change the outcome from whatever happened before I went there? I’m just thinking out loud. I want to understand.”

  “If you visit the past, there is no other past without your visit,” Lorenzo said. “The past you visited would be new to you, but it already happened with you in it. You’d just be the last to know. All that already occurred is inevitable. You can’t avoid it.”

  “There’s no way around it?” Cole asked.

  “People have tried,” Lorenzo said. “The theory is sound, but hundreds of attempts have been made to disprove the concept and alter the past. They always fail.”

Chapter 4