"What do you mean 'It won't be him'?" DTH Karyn asked as the hop completed.
"Well for him we'll simply vanish into the past, he won't have met us again." DTH Jon stated.
Karyn pointed at Jon standing beside Past DTH Jon and Past DTH Karyn. Past DTH Jon was looking at the DTH which had just bleeped.
"He's standing over there beside the earlier versions of us."
"So you can time travel?" Jon asked DTH Jon.
"Obviously, didn't I say so?"
"No you said you couldn't till there was a divergence."
"Well that beep the DTH just made was a divergence being created by us appearing from the future."
"Is that what it's called? a DTH?" asked Jon
"Yes, I must have neglected to mention that detail. Most of the versions of myself that I have met are already familiar with it. Now if you don't mind I was in the middle of a conversation."
He turned back to DTH Karyn.
"You really must stop hopping in the middle of conversations. It's very rude." DTH Karyn told him.
"I'm sorry I'll try not to from now on."
"Now please explain how that Jon who made the wish is not the Jon we just left."
"It's a different timeline. It diverged when we time travelled back here, so this is a different version of him and us."
"So what happened to the timeline that we just went through?" asked a confused Karyn
"It's still there, we can go to the end of it but if we try to go to the start we'll just make a new timeline with three sets of us instead of two and so on."
"Just when I was starting to get the hang of this, I'm confused again."
"Our past is permanent Karyn, those events are fixed and can't be changed. If we could it would create a paradox. Look at this version of us standing over there, they have memories of seeing us appear on the drive. We don't have those memories because it didn't happen to us."
"Does that mean we can't actually meet ourselves, just different versions of ourselves?"
"Precisely."
"Wow, I'm actually getting my head round this." she said with a smile.
Past DTH Karyn spoke next.
"So does this mean we don't have to travel into the past because you've already proved we can?" she asked DTH Jon
"Well you can if you want, but I don't advise it. It could create a never ending loop. If you come back to here again, the new Jon and Karyn will keep meeting more and more versions of themselves. Eventually the entire world fills up with Jons and Karyns. If the same Jon and Karyn repeats the loop there will be a similar outcome but they'll probably die of old age before there is more than 50 million of them."
"Right... So we still need to find out what the wish was before we can leave."
"Us too."
Four pairs of eyes stared silently at Jon.
"Okay. Okay. You made your point. I just... ", Jon double checked he wasn't holding the stone,"...wished for something interesting to happen."
"Good now we have more context." said Past DTH Jon as he took his Karyn's hand. He pressed some buttons on the DTH and they both vanished.
"Back to just us again." said DTH Karyn
DTH Jon stood silently deep in thought.
"What is it Jon?" she asked.
"Just thinking about the wish. Something interesting happened."
"Yes it did. We appeared."
"It has to be a coincidence. The wish shouldn't have affected us. Would we have still came to this timeline even if the wish didn't happen?"
"Okay, so it's a coincidence then."
"A very big one. I'm wondering if the stone is influencing our destinations. One of the other Jon's we met said it only worked if the wisher and the stone were in same dimension. We weren't in this dimension when Jon made the wish so it should have affected us. Is it possible the stone can affect our timelines in subtle ways we can't perceive?"
"I don't know. It exists everywhere we go. How can we escape it?"
"Only by leaving this multiverse."
"Surely that's not possible."
"I'm not so sure about that."
