The Dick Hypothesis

From doktorsleepless

This hypothesis is named in honor of Philip K. Dick, intrepid pioneer of many of our crucial themes, including the one this hypothesis revolves around: time displacement.

The Dick Hypothesis is the proposition that, through means mystical, technological, or both, John Reinhardt's personal timeline has become nonsimply connected. In this scenario, the John Reinhardt in Cell 23 of the St Thomas Institute is the "current" John Reinhardt, who will one day emerge from Cell 23 and, at some point thereafter, "travel back in time" to appear as Doktor Sleepless. In turn, Doktor Sleepless, or a further iteration of Reinhardt, will one day "travel" yet further "back in time" and die in a hotel room in Hamburg. (I quote references to "time travel" because I expect that, should this hypothesis pan out, we will find that the actuality of the process makes these phrases seem as quaint as speaking of shooting someone with a "ray gun".)

As this hypothesis relies on magic and/or science sufficiently advanced (Clarke's Third Law), and the book is being written by Warren, not Grant, this is a fairly long shot as explanations go. Everything that we have actually seen take place seems to do so in a world whose only magic is provided technologically. The main question mark here is Sleepless's flashbacks to the Cthulhoid mass of tentacles associated with his parents' room. If this is, a bit against the odds, both a true recollection and an intimation of the activity of Lovecraftian elder gods, then this hypothesis becomes very plausible, with all the hypergeometrical properties attributed to that class of being and the possibilities opened by Reinhardt's interaction with them.

This would make the whole theme of a stolen future relate to Reinhardt essentially stealing his own future in order to accomplish some goal within time he's already lived through.