Thanks, and no I’ve never seen it any sci fi I’ve read. The inspiration is that I don’t find the Sliders concept satisfying - where there are infinite timelines spawned by decisions we make - because it means time travelers can never really save anyone or stop disasters. Say Steve the time traveler kills Hitler and prevents the Holocaust - this creates a new timeline but doesn’t help anybody in all the other timelines.

It gets more complicated.

In my single timeline model, actions of time travelers don’t spawn new realities or new timelines. The consequences proceed forward at the normal speed of time it. But the changes aren’t exactly permanent. When the consequences of Steve killing Hitler in 1926 have propagated for 100 years (from Steve’s POV), the leading edge reaches 2026. Steve has now grown up in that altered band of time, so he has never heard of Hitler and has no reason to kill him. When the moment in 2026 when he travelled back is overtaken by the new history he created, the timeline in 1926 doesn’t get changes, and normal history moves forward with Hitler alive - seemingly undoing his accomplishment. But not really - the 100-year band of altered time is still there, moving forward at the speed of time. Renormalized time moves along behind it at the same speed for 100 years. When it reaches 2026 Steve has now grown up in the normal version of history, knows about Hitler, and goes back and kills him, starting a new band of altered history as before.

The two 100-year long bands of history alternate through time like a dotted line. More complexity is introduced as more people figure out time travel. Eventually the timeline becomes a chaotic mess - known only to time travelers who can visit multiple points and observe the differences. Ordinary people are completely unaware of the confusion because the world they know moves through time at the same speed as they do. That’s is one of my favorite features of this idea - it could be the real deal and we wouldn’t notice.