When you start playing with time, that all goes out the window, 'cause then, like. You meet versions of yourself from the future, and they all already know what you're supposed to do because they've already done it, and from their perspective they also know what THEY'RE about to do because they witnessed it when they were the past them that you are now. So there really isn't any kind of choice at all, you're just following along the script you yourself set out, except even the scripting is something that's been predetermined.

And if you deviate from that in any way, you end up making a offshoot timeline, because from the alpha timeline's point of view, the thing you were supposed to do is the thing what you already did, and the only way an alternative can exist is in this runty split-off reality that's doomed to collapse in on itself eventually.