Timeline

“‘Problem number one,’ Doniger said. ‘Our capitalization. We’ll need another billion before we see daylight.’ He nodded toward the boardroom. ‘They won’t come up with it. I have to get them to approve three new board members.’”

Robert Doniger seeks to conceal the true dangers of the teleportation technology, even going so far as to cover up the death of Dr. Traub and the transcription errors that led to Robert Deckard’s instability and violence. Doniger’s sole goal is to reap the profits that the technology will bring him. Ultimately, he hopes to use the technology to create a new form of tourism. In this quote, it is clear that Doniger will ruthlessly pursue his goal to become even wealthier, even though he is already a billionaire.

“Some thought Marek carried his fascination with the past to the point of obsession. But in fact it was natural to him: even as a child, Marek had been strongly drawn to the medieval period, and in many ways he now seemed to inhabit it.”

André Marek is the character, along with Professor Johnston, who has the most affinity for the medieval world. This quotation foreshadows the decision that Marek ultimately makes at the end of Timeline, for he will decide to stay in the 14th century rather than return to the present with the others.

“Yet the truth was that the modern world was invented in the Middle Ages. Everything from the legal system, to nation-states, to reliance on technology, to the concept of romantic love had first been established in medieval times. These stockbrokers owed the very notion of a market economy to the Middle Ages. And if they didn’t know that, then they didn’t know the basic facts of who they were. Why they did what they did. Where they had come from.”

This quote articulates the theme of Similarities Between Past and Present. Many of the societal and economic structures that are taken for granted in the 20th century have their roots in innovations from medieval times. Marek is dismissive of Kate’s friends, the stockbrokers, because they do not understand these connections.