Time Travel - A Conundrum

[The Bloated One]

My protagonist finds a diary written by Shakespeare when he was 14. In the diary, young Will visits Kenilworth Castle in July 1575 and records festivities over a two week period. He also draws what he sees. In one of these pictures my protagonist can clearly see two men (Leonardo Da Vinci & Nostradamus) he recognizes. He knows they are from another time period, and should not be there. In fact, he and a government body have been chasing them through space and time. Now the conundrum;

If the two mens own time line doesn't change, and history, including theirs isn't altered (their knowledge of science would alter history), does that mean that my protagonist and the government body went back and removed them from 1575? Until my protagonist went back, they wouldn't know if they'd be removed from 1575 or not?

I am trying to write a scene where my protagonist finds this diary with the pictures. As it's in the past, I don't want history to be changed, but I do want him to have to go back to 1575!

Help!

 

[J Riff]

There's no real help with time paradoxes, muaha. Someone can always go back further... and if he goes back then he was always there anyway, so it isn't really a change, or is it? Next thing you know, multiple time-lines show up, breaking even more natural laws, and the challenge is to write out of it, any way you can. )

 

[WarriorMouse]

Would not the answer be
Remove them from the timeline and convince them they dreamed the whole experience.

 

[The Bloated One]

Thanks for the suggestions!

I've also been advised to read a short story by William Tenn, called the Brooklyn Project.

Thanks again.

The Bloated One

 

[Anthoney]

It could also mean that history as the protagonist knows it already includes whatever the other time travelers did or that they didn't do anything that effected the timeline to any real notice.

If the protagonists timeline already includes changes they made then by "fixing" things the timeline could change.

 

[The Bloated One]

Thanks. That's exactly what the short story concludes, but in a very sinister way!

I did make a rule; You cannot revisit a time you have already been in, whether it's your own time or somewhere you've time travelled to. The theory I made up is that you cannot occupy the same time twice.

The Bloated One