You're describing a Stable Time Loop. Like, the stuff we see in Terminator. Everything in the past always happened the way it did, everything in the future always happened the way it did, and it's all connected.
But in this trope, whenever you land at any time in history, everything that happens after that time is "deleted". You go from the present to the past? Everything after the past is deleted and has to be remade. You go from the present to the future? You weren't in the timeline from the present to the future. You go from the future back to the present? Everything after the present is deleted and has to be remade. So the new future that is made (the one with you living through the present) is different than the one before it (the one with you traveling straight to the future). It's just another case of Our Time Travel Is Different.
Although... if you go from the present to the past, before being born... and then go from the past straight to the future... then you could see a future version of yourself (the other version of you, who got born in this new timeline), all within the laws of this trope. Ha! And that means that if you go to the past before birth, and then return to the present after birth, then you'd have to compete with the version of you born in this timeline? Oh, the joys of Timey-Wimey Ball.
Edited by BaronGrackle
My grandson said the exact same thing.
You Are Not Alone...Until I Find You.
- The makers of Back To The Future considered that this could logically happen according to their time-travel rules when Marty and Jennifer went to the future in Part II, but only by some theories of time travel.
- In fact, it did happen once. But just in the time machine's initial test with Einstein, which makes it less noticeable due to him only skipping over a single minute.
First point: This is a could have happened example — in Part II as it was actually made, the future that Marty and Jennifer visit is clearly not one in which they've both been missing since the 1980s. Hypothetical examples should be avoided; there's plenty of actually-happened examples to be going on with.
Second point: Given that the series as a whole doesn't use this trope, it's not likely that it did happen just once. This trope is not the only reason why a person might travel into the future and not find a future-them waiting; if they stayed in the future and never returned to the past, the same thing would happen. (Which, IIRC, is what happened with Einstein — why bother go back just to live through one minute?)
@Sullivan "Why should a second version of you spontaneously materialize and live your life in the present?"
It wouldn't, unless, at some point in the future you returned to the present.
If traveling to the future is possible, then that must mean that the future already exists for you to travel to. If it does indeed exist, then it must be the culmination of everything that has happened until then. So, if you returned back to the present, at some point after you traveled to the future, then you would continue living from that point until the future. Since you're already in the future, and you already returned before that point (i.e. the present) then your other self would be there to tell you how long you were in the future for.
The only way your other self 'would not' be there, is if you never returned to the present. Which in turn could be a very bad thing (i.e. dying in the future) or you just never rejoined the time line by continuing to time travel.
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