spoilers galore ahead
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so just how omniscient is the elimmist? i mean, beings that can see the future are fairly common in scifi, and that is fine. the elimmist however, seems to take it to a new level. when he looks at the earth, he is able to see its great future (ie humanity,) but humanity only came about due to his meddling in the first place, beause the animorphs wouldnt exist without him (andalites may never have evolved to be so advanced), so they never would have gone back in time and wiped out the dinosaurs/meercora. so, he is able to not only see the future as it will be affected by time travel, he is able to see the future as it will be as a result of his own indirect actions. does that mean he has no free will? in theory, the ability to change the future would say that no, he does have free will, however, the existence of cassie (and perhaps other anomalies like her) would render him unable to change reality on a great scale. going back to elfangor, aside from being responsible for his existing in the first place, the elimmist was responsible both for his leaving the andalite fleet (via the creation of the time matrix), and directly for his return to it. without either of these actions, tobias never exists (or never gets the power to morph) and without the events of book 13, he never gets BACK the power to morph. the elimmist is extremely closely tied into the existence of humans in many ways. he would have to be able to foresee ALL of these events in order to know to move the earth out of the way of crayaks destruction.
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