You ' ve been drinking from the punch bowl , I see . <| sep |> Rather than crossing through the void to another stream running parallel to his own , Okabe simply takes a separate path . World lines are not parallel worlds that exist simultaneously , there is only 1 active world line in any moment , when world line changes whole world is rebuilding itself according to the new line . The original post I referenced mentioned whether divergence numbers can change within a given worldline . I ' m pretty sure they can , given that one scene in the anime where Mr Braun mentions that towards the end of her life , Suzuha kept muttering about whether the numbers on her display were before the shift or after . Am I misinterpreting what she means by that ? Not they can ' t change in the same world line , that number is the number of current active world line , that scene that you are referencing was in other world line when it was before , that ' s why it changed .