Read in some other place that the split (baptism) happened AFTER he sold his daughter.
So, right now it looks like this to me:
Originally Booker is a depressed gambler after all the wars that he was in. Gets into a huge debt. Sells his daughter to a random person to wash a way the debt. Guilt eats at him. Turns to religion, gets baptized and becomes Comstock. Builds Columbia (btw what is \ who is Archangel?).
His lead scientist is the female Lutece. She works on a time travel technology. Because of the close contact to this technology Comstock becomes sterile. He thinks that he can buy his daughter from himself using time travel. A pretty good idea if you ask me! Because that is what happened already. That would work perfectly if it was a fixed timeline (have a look at this http://i.imgur.com/bc8Du.jpg). But instead we have alternate timelines. So Comstock buys Ana from alternate timeline Bookers with help of his own Lutece and alternate timeline Lutece. Which leads alternate timeline Bookers to depression and finally to baptism. Which he either accepts and creates one more Comstock timeline.
Or he refuses and we get to the events of the game. Now lets back up to the Columbia timeline. In this version the Lutece from alternate timeline was male and jumped into Columbia timeline after getting Ana from Bookers. Turns out Ana has tear powers. Everyone freaks out and Lutece build the siphon to stop he from doing it. Meanwhile Comstock's wife gets ups over this child, thinks her husband is cheating. Comstock creates a big fat lie to cover everything, gets pretty crazy and kills his wife and both Lutece.
Lutece don't die however and instead escape into the alternate timeline. The hire Bookers after he refused baptism to get back the girl and they hope that it will fix the whole time travelling mess. Now they take Bookers back to Columbia timeline and he wakes up on a boat with them. His memory gets all messed up. He confuses "get the girl", "wipe away the debt". The game events all happen.
The asylum bit - I still don't fully get it. Correct me. Songbird take Liz to asylum where she is tortured and brainwashed. He gets to her, breaks her out. Now my memory fails me a bit here. I might be off here. But I think you get attacked by Vox? Now if you don't have Songbird helping you I guess what happens is Bookers gets killed, Liz is upset and agry, wipes away Vox. Brainwashing + this hatred to Vox kicks in, she starts following Comstock. She attacks New York, but at some point she regrets what she has done, gets Booker from alternate timeline right after Songbird gets her and before he breaks in 6 months after that. Tells him whats up, write the message to use Songbird against Vox, sends him back at the time of the break-in. Somehow Luteces help Bookers there as well. Now they break out and use Songbird. All is good. Hand of Prophet, Bookers kills Comstock.
Liz starts the explanation. The find the moment of baptism, the fork, the moment when Comstock is created. Bookers is drowned. So there is no possibility of Comstock or Bookers going to Columbia. There is no Ana making tears. Bookers sold her to some random person and the was drawned when being baptized.
Shit, you know what? I just realized it doesn't fully close the loop. Man, I was typing and retyping this, because I realized something new as I go alone for like an hour already!
So, what I think now: unless you can change the events of existing timeline if Bookers gets killed at baptism it just leads to another time line without him. It doesn't solve anything. And it does look that you can only travel between timelines, not change anything. Because otherwise Comstock just buys daughter off his younger self and there is no problem. Another proof is the male Lutece. I think there is also a voxaphone of female Lutece having contact with male Lutece and it's like ... it is alternate timelines!
Argh, idk, it might not make sense in the end, guys. 99% of time travel fiction does not. The ones that do are an absolute mind fuck (see Primer). It gets me frustrated.
P.S. Does anyone know where Bioshock Infinite keeps save files? I think I wanna replay some bits, but I'm afraid if I load the chapter the new autosaves will overwrite existing ones.
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