The Grandfather Paradox by Jacen

A Time Travel Scenario

“A grandfather is someone with silver in their hair and gold in his heart.” - Anonymous. This paradox is where you kill that lovely man. Or maybe his own grandpa. Either way, someone in your family tree dies. And the result can be… unpredictable.

What the scenario is, is this. You go back in time. Don’t ask how. And you accidentally kill your grandpa or any other ancestor of yours. The question is, what happens now? By following through with simple logic it seems, well, simple. Your grandpa is dead. So one of your parents is also dead. Well, they cease to exist. Which means, by the transitive property, that you also cease to exist. So boom. There goes your part of the family tree. But then more complicated logic comes into play. If you’re dead you never go to the future. If you never go the future, then your grandpa never dies. So then your parents are alive and well and you also end up existing again. Congratulations. But then that means you’re grandpa dies. Bwah bwah bwaaah. This is where everything falls apart into an endless abyss of curiosity and opinions and we all know what happens when people have opinions. And that’s why when you make a grandpa, you make sure the whole body is silver. Not just the hair.