Salmonverse is the messiest, most complicated, most dangerous universe that
I’ve ever seen. It’s not dangerous because a bunch of demons are trying to
kill you, like Adverse, or because of unpredictable base modifications, like
you’ll find in Bladopodoverse. It’s dangerous because far too many people
are capable of time travel and they travel through time far too often. With
almost no regulation, this doesn’t just get complicated, though. It also
leads to death. First of all, you have to understand that, since there are
very few parallel realities in this brane, every time someone time travels,
they’re technically killing billions of people. The act itself will collapse
the timeline, and send its inhabitants into oblivion. Travelers justify this
in a few ways. Many of the people who collapsed with the timeline they just
came from exist in this new timeline as well. They will move on with their
lives, and not worry about what might have been, unless there’s some other
psychological reason for them to worry about that, in which case, the time
travel isn’t relevant or necessary. Some people will never have been born,
sure, but again, their once-loved ones will never know what they’re missing.
There’s also the fact that reality itself is constantly springing and
collapsing timelines. I’ve mentioned microrealities, which exist for
fractions of a second, and are destroyed once true reality takes shape.
There are people in those microrealities—duplicates of everyone who existed
at the moment—and have just as much potential to survive as their
counterparts. And this is happening all the time, in every universe, even
the ones that don’t allow general time travel. But that’s not the same
thing, because no one is doing that on purpose. Time travelers, on the other
hand, are deliberate actors. Well, not all of them, I suppose. The
universe’s namesake, salmon are controlled by the powers that be, but the
accusation still holds. It’s just that blame must be shifted from the
traveler themselves, to the people in control. It’s still happening, and
timelines are still collapsing.
This is not a criticism of Salmonverse, or its residents, or the time
travelers. It’s not even really about the people whose timeline collapses
when a new one is created. It’s just not a good place to live if you want to
make sure that you have a future. Anytime someone goes back in time, and
changes something, everyone’s life is at risk. Their entire existence is in
jeopardy. Sometimes it’s a timeloop, and everything they do is inevitable.
When it’s not, though, even the slightest alteration—and I mean, on the
quantum level—creates a new branching timeline. It may not have been their
intention to change something, but it will, and they can’t stop it. Lots of
time travel fiction involves doing your best to not make any changes to
history, but again, unless it’s a timeloop, their efforts are pointless.
History will change, even if they stand in one place until they catch up to
their own present, which they won’t. Reality is also a lot less binary than
people think. Stopping someone from dying on April 29, only to watch them
die on April 30 still means that things changed. Death isn’t stalking you,
trying to maintain some cosmic balance. If the person ends up dying anyway,
it’s not because it was their destiny, or couldn’t be stopped. It’s just a
coincidence. That’s what salmonverse is all about. Travelers are constantly
making changes, often unintentionally, but also often in the attempt to
improve something about reality. I don’t think anyone is qualified to say
whether that’s good or not, but from where I stand, time travel is just not
worth the risk.
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