10 Possible Outcomes of
Gnegg’s Space-Time Paradox
Rick Scott

Samuel Gnegg, a troubled scientist bent on committing elaborate suicide, travels one hour backward in time and comes upon an earlier version of himself, Gnegg1, sitting calmly in a plush green armchair in his – their – living room. Gnegg2 marches up to Gnegg1, pulls out a gun, aims it point-blank at his younger self's heart, and fires.

If Gnegg1 is killed, Gnegg2 could not have existed, and therefore could not have appeared wielding the murder weapon. However, the rules of physics demand that a bullet be expelled when a gun is fired.

What happens when Gnegg2 pulls the trigger?

Cul de Sac

The bullet explodes from the gun, slows dramatically, and comes to an abrupt halt, hovering halfway between Gnegg1's chest and the barrel of the gun, at a temporo-physical point of dynamic impasse.

Bohr's Disintegration

The gun fires, the bullet flies. At the moment of its entry into Gnegg1's heart, the waveforms constituting Gnegg2, gun, and bullet begin to dither and fade, along with their probabilities of ever having existed. At Gnegg1's death, the waveforms disappear, leaving a dead body with a hole in its chest slumped over a chair. No bullet is ever found.

Infinite Temporal Loop

At the instant the gun is fired, a temporal loop is created in which the bullet pierces Gnegg1's chest, comes with a hair's breadth of penetrating his heart, then halts, reverses direction and flies back up the barrel of Gnegg2's gun, halts again, reverses direction, and so forth, ad infinitum, until the end of space time.

Failsafe

The universe, [Ow!] in not allowing any one part of itself to threaten the integrity of the whole, [Wow!] activates an instinctual protective mechanism that causes the entire world-line resulting in Gnegg1 and Gnegg2 to be instantaneously nullified, [Huh?] causing in turn all of time up to Gnegg2's temporal journey to be fundamentally altered, [Duh ...] thus changing the entire course of cosmic history, [Woah!] rescuing the universe from impending destruction, [Yo!] and reducing the probability of earth's ever having existed to approximately one over infinity [Uh-oh ...].

Many-Worlds Proviso

Because there exists an infinity of parallel universes, and because Gnegg2 is – at any given instant – an inhabitant of just one of these universes, there is no binding relationship between Gnegg1 and Gnegg2, save a kind of temporo-familial tie, as between predecessor and successor, father and son. Gnegg's paradox is thus obviated. Gnegg1 is killed, Gnegg2 lives on, and the universe churns indefatigably forward, cleaving from instant to instant into its infinite parallel branches.

Ragnarök

The gun fires, the bullet flies, rips through skin, muscle, bone, tissue, ends the life of Gnegg1, ends the potential existence of Gnegg2, and, through a hyperbolically accelerating omni-temporal chain reaction, warps the fabric of space-time, destroying, permanently, the entire universe in all its once-glorious multi-dimensionality.

Deus ex Machina

The moment the gun is fired, an intelligent, compassionate energy – which may, for the sake of argument, be called "God" [Tantum ergo sacrementum. Et antiqum documentum. Pacem in aeternum simianum rectum. Deus ex machina omnipotentum. Amen.->] – appears on the scene, snatches up bullet and gun and firer and sends them all back to their point of origin, one hour in the future. Gnegg2, upon recovering consciousness, finds all destructive impulses exorcised from his being, abandons his scientific research, gives away all his worldly goods, and devotes himself to a life of blissful, solitary contemplation.

Schrödinger's Nosferati

The gun fires, [Bork!] the bullet rips through Gnegg1's chest, [Scchhhweet!] pierces his heart, [Thwat!] exits through his back, [Visghz!] and imbeds itself in the wadding of the armchair. [Gonk! Gnegg1's heart convulses [Owowowo-> and stops. [Boomp!] Blood fills his lungs, [Inhale] fails to reach his brain. [Cackle] At the exact moment of his death, [Groan->] the process of expiration is suddenly suspended. [Tongue cluck!] Gnegg1 stares up at Gnegg2, [Hunh?] who like him has grown pale and glassy-eyed. [Hunh?] In a rush of mutual understanding, [Ahhhhhhhhhhhh->] the two Gneggs realize their singular fate: The act of killing a former copy of themselves has given rise to a paradox in which Gnegg1 and Gnegg2 are neither alive nor dead, [Twilight Zone->] but in some indefinite state between. Thus are born the universe's first true quantum-mechanical living-dead: Schrödinger's twin Nosferati. Children of the night; what lovely music they make!

Protoplasmic Agglomeration

The gun fires, the bullet flies. During the time it takes for the bullet to advance a fraction of an inch down the barrel of the gun, the space directly to the left of Gnegg2 shimmers and fills with another copy of the scientist, Gnegg3: a future projection of Gnegg2, who – after it has become clear that the act of killing Gnegg1 has created an ever-widening rift in space-time – travels back into the past to stop himself (Gnegg2) from committing the abysmal act. During the next few microseconds, a fourth copy, Gnegg4 – a future projection of Gnegg-3 – appears directly to Gnegg2's right. This process continues indefinitely until the entire room is filled with Gnegg temporo-clones, the tissues of his various bodies intertwining and eventually fusing into one solid, room-shaped block of Gnegg protoplasm. This block grows in density until it reaches a critical mass, implodes, metamorphoses into a psycho-temporal black hole, then disappears altogether from the face of the universe.

Kensho

The metal alloy of the bullet, faced with the impending extinction of all materiality, suddenly realizes its inherent intelligence and free will and chooses to curve abruptly upward and enter Gnegg2's skull, severing his cortical lobe and ending his emotional imbalanced desire to committing suicide, thus preserving both the life of Samuel Gnegg and the ongoing integrity of the known universe.