Well, you are on the right track thinking outside of the linear timeline box. However, we are probably dealing with millions of parallel universes and millions of parallel time streams all separated by frequency and geometric variances.
I see where you are going with it, you have been watching Fringe. That is a cool show. The truths they are showing you in plain site on that show is not an exact representation of the story line. They are showing you that parallel time streams do exist, then wrapping it up in a nice science fiction story. They have known about this ever since they started mucking around with Project Phoenix and Project Looking Glass.
These parallel time streams are anything from mildly different so that you can not even perceive the difference. Or they can be radically different to the point where a nuclear war has happened in them. Kind of like the scenes in the movie Constantine where he visits the parallel reality where everything has already been wiped out.
There are some, myself included, that have come to believe that we actually shift timelines each time we make a decision. I think when you are dealing with parallel universes that are polarized towards the negative then you are actually talking about a different type of parallel world. My take on this can be seen by looking at the page on my web site called
"Multiversal Logistics of G vs. E"