text; un: kurikame

[timemachine]

your thoughts on time travel and alternate worldlines/timelines: GO!

bonus points. what are your experiences with them, if you've had any, and what are your favorite time travel theories?

Comments

un: vivelafrance

[ringlette]

It is a truly interesting concept! The history of a planet should be revisited in my opinion, although I am against every sort of attempt to change anything unless it is for the sake of a better future. Messing with the timelines can be extremely dangerous if we don't tread carefully!

As for my esperience, I used to be... well, I still am in an organization specialized in finding Singularities, which are distorsions in the timeline that were never registered in history. Certain people usually grasped control of those Singularities for selfish gain, others had the worse purpose of extinguishing humanity as a whole. We were tasked with the duty of destroying those Singularities so human history could flow regularly, preventing a disastrous extinction.

It was a tense but fun adventure! At least until I was pulled in here!

[timemachine]

it is dangerous to change anything, as even the smallest changes can affect others in a large scale. not to mention, messing with history has the potential to activate the grandfather paradox, say if you went back to in time to kill someone who was infamous. their children could have been a blessing to this world that we may not know of.

or if we stop an invention that we need.

though i've never heard of these 'singularities'. can you elaborate more? it sounds like it's something we haven't heard of because your job is to stop these irregularities, from the sounds of it.

[ringlette]

You have a point. I dread to imagine what would have happened if my parents or those generations before them were wiped out. That would be terrible, but then again I would not be feeling much at all as an entity that did not exist...!

Singularities... well, it is complicated, but I will try an example! Say that you, someone from a past century, one day obtained a super powerful item called the Holy Grail that let you do whatever you wanted to your surroundings. That item will dig a hole in the timeline, and in that hole you are now able to create distortions that will cause irregular changes in human history the further you use it. If we do not stop the process in time, you and the Grail will lead the humanity to its extinction!

The Holy Grail should have never existed in that time period. Such a dangerous item is the one catalyst to all irregularities that happen in the timeline. Once we get the Grail, the Singularity is destroyed as a result, and it is more or less like removing a tumor - or an annoying pimple, depending on the danger level of each Singularity.

[timemachine]

Holy Grail? please don't tell me this is one of those references to that stupid visual novel everyone's been talking about.

[There is indeed a knock off of fate/stay night in her universe...]

i digress. so just by using this grail it causes distorted timelines. that sounds more fantasy than science, unfortunately. but it's also a good lesson on why we shouldn't mess with time, if we assume these grails did mess with time-- it would only lead to the fall of man.

[ringlette]

What visual novel? It is very much real in my world... well, some people that exist are indeed what you would call fictional, but... it is complex and I don't feel that trying to explain would shed enough light on it.

[ Fate/ lore is impossible to keep up with and she'd rather not go there. ]

That is right. Such power should never fall into the hands of the greedy and evil. It is why we of Chaldea work hard to avoid such terrible scenarios.