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Everything I ever needed to know about being in the Time Patrol I learned from cheating at Solitaire
01/10/2005 . Source: Mark R. Leeper 
Poul Anderson wrote a series of stories about a group of time policemen called the Time Patrol. They go back in time and change history or protect history from being changed. I have had a chance to actually experiment with going back in time and seeing how well I can make things right. It comes from an unexpected source. Buy Time Patrol in the USA - or Buy Time Patrol in the UK  I carry a palmtop computer in my pocket and use it probably every waking hour in the day. Perhaps it is every half-hour. Most of the applications are fairly practical, but I also have a few games. One of these games is Klondike. This is and electronic version of what is probably the best-known card solitaire game. In fact, most people just call the game "solitaire." There are seven stacks of cards, and four collection stacks, one for each suit, etc.
The palmtop version of the game has a feature that just recently I have taken more notice of. It has a backspace key with which the user can back the game up one step. Using it is probably "cheating" by the standard rules. But since the game makes a few moves automatically that anyone in his right mind would make, they probably wanted to still give the player a chance to back those moves out. So the players are given the capability to back up a step. In fact hitting the backspace key repeatedly backs the game up as far as the user wants. He can go all the way back to the beginning of the game.
It occurred to me, that this game could be used as a sort of laboratory for examining the sort of assumptions made by science fiction authors in time travel stories. Poul Andersen wrote his stores about an organization of agents who go back in time and try to influence events based on their knowledge of the future. If we think of the game as a metaphor for a period of history one has the capability to back up the clock, make a different decision based on knowledge of what is to come, and see how the game plays out. If we do not like that one we can go further back and change it again.
I won't say I have discovered anything very astounding about time patrolling, playing this game. Mostly I just have confirmations of things that most science fiction writers have assumed. What have I learned follows.
Going back and changing the past does significantly improve your chances of a positive result. This is particularly true if you allow yourself any number of trips back in time. Is what is important the tide of history or individual decisions? Both are. If the cards are bad there may be nothing you can do. But individual decisions make important differences.
Frequently one wants to go back short jumps just to decide on a trivial case. You might want to change a few big things, but you change as many small things. You ask yourself do I get what looks like a better result if I do A or B?
What looks like a better result often is not. There can be eight good results from action A and one mediocre result from B, but frequently that one mediocre result may later turn out to be the crucial one.
Chance plays a very big part in results. There is some chance and some things you can control. And you have to figure out which is which. I think there is a famous prayer to that effect.
Captain Kirk notwithstanding, there really are lost causes and no-win situations. A "never say die" attitude will get you a long way, but the belief that it will always save you is a fantasy.
Ironically, frequently knowing the future and what to avoid will cause you to make things worse. Usually this is because you bring about a different fate from the one you were expecting. Sometimes it makes things worse because you bring about just the fate you were trying to avoid but in an even worse form.
The best course of action will many times seem illogical to others. Sometimes even knowing the future, the best course of action will seem insane even to you. The world is more complex than you realize. The least promising path can be the best in the long run.
Sometimes what appear to be the best opportunities to achieve your goal actually get in your way.
I suppose none of this is really surprising, but it is always interesting to see examples of it and to see that it is true. Now I am ready for the Time Patrol. Where do I sign up?
Mark R. Leeper
(c) 2005 Mark R Leeper
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