That's not time travel then. He's not going against the flow of time and he's not changing the past, he's just guiding the future.
Based on information that travels back from the future. I would certainly think of that as time travel.
The problem of course is then the Gatekeeper practically becomes the master of time and the single most powerful individual in the entire universe.
I'm not seeing this is of necessity a problem - given the underlying premise, which appears to be fairly solid, that human free will is important and in some significant way unique among all the thinking beings in the DV.
It's not even a competition, now, Gatekeeper can wipe the floor with Uriel, Mab, Ferrovax, Drakul.
I'm not seeing that that necessarily follows; they can still be smarter or stronger than him. The ability to select between possible futures does not good against an enemy so superior in other ways that all possible futures end in defeat, no ?
Yes, but you don't know which result you will get. x - 2 - 2 = 0 always results in x = 4, no matter what order you perform the steps, the outcome of solitaire however, is not predetermined, only the possible outcomes are.
I'm not disagreeing with you here at all, I think, I am asserting that full advance knowledge of all the cards in a given round of solitaire, plus, in this case, a high degree of arithmetical intelligence, would allow one to a) determine
a priori whether it can be worked out and b) choose a set of steps that work it out if that is possible.
Precisely because the future is changeable. If it wasn't changeable paradox would be impossible and it would never be a concern.
I think I may be misreading you.
I am saying if you see future A, and can then change it to future B based on information from future A, I am not seeing why paradox would be a concern; doesn't matter whether future B is consistent with future A or not if the future is mutable. it's only if some elements of future B and future A are (for whatever reason) required to match up, that the prospect of them not matching up becomes a problem. Am I making sense here ?
Basically, let's call the accident as a means of delay as plan A. There was a lot of intervening time between the accident and the use of LC, which leaves a lot of time for someone else to screw up the plan. I think any entity savy enough to design plan A would also be able to design plans B - Z (one of which is manipulating the time of Molly's phone call). Plans B - Z would all have less intervening time, increasing the odds of the plan being successful because other entities would have less of an opportunity to interfere.
What sort of interfering entity are you positing ?
I mean, if you are proposing another entity with the ability to see the future tangling with Rashid's plans, I do not see that the size of the window makes that much of a difference; because the difference between a plan that takes two hours to work and one that takes five minutes to work becomes less so if either of them can be seen from, say, three days in advance, and the preparation to intercept it gets three days.
I would accept that if PG had just been written. However, hindsight and WoJ clearly indicate that Lash actually changed,
I believe I have argued at some length before why I do not believe the information we have from text and WoJ is enough to confirm that the way in which Lash changed counts as redeeming her or making her one of the good guys now.
Interestingly, I notice that I am arguing against both Gatekeeper and Lash as the entity that fixed LC. It would seem likely either you don't think Gatekeeper arranged the accident or that you don't think Lash knew about the flaw in LC. Of course, the two arguments aren't necessarily inconsistent (Lash could have known about the flaw but Gatekeeper fixed it), but it does make me wonder if you actually believe everything you are arguing.
I thought I'd already made my general position here clear with regard to considering possible explanations. I think Rashid is one of the most plausible options we currently have for having fixed LC; I think Lash may well have been aware of the issues with it and be playing Harry in a more subtle way than is immediately visible; I'm interested in figuring out the logic of the possible solutions and which if any solutions are impossible, but I'm seeing nothing in any of this debate to rule out "someone had a word with Thomas, convinced him Harry was in danger, and used Thomas' key to get past Harry's wards" for values of "someone" we might not even have met yet.
If you want to use words like "believe", that imply I have a strong conviction I know what's actually
true in the DV beyond what Jim has said in the text, I'll have to deny the accusation. I see very little point in placing faith in anything beyond that whatever answer Jim eventually gives us is likely to be awesome in ways none of us have yet figured out, and similarly little point in arguing about matters of that sort of faith.
In summary, I'm debating interpretations here as a way of refining them, not, in general, because I have a specific horse in the race; having a specific horse in the race seems a) less fun by a long shot and b) kind of presumptuous for fiction written by someone who isn't me.
Also, one other thought. WoJ tells us it would take the whole White Council to defeat Mab outside of Winter. Rashid is a member of the White Council. We've also seen some of the other members of the Wouncil are very powerful. Thus, we can infer Rashid isn't nearly as powerful as Mab and by extension isn't nearly as powerful as her peer, Uriel. Since it would take a creature with the knowledge level of Uriel to enact plan A, and since Rashid is not as powerful as Uriel, I believe it is unlikely that he could have so perfectly set up the crash.
That argument does contain what seems to me the unwarranted assumption that power and knowledge have to work on the same scale; I can easily see rashid, given foresight, having more knowledge in some directions than a peer of mab's who is much more powerful than he is.
