Time is pretty complicated, and time travel makes it more complicated. There
are those who don’t see linear time, or who have no use for it. Some can go
back, some can skip, some can slow it down. Some can enter spatio-temporal
dimensions, or even spatial dimensions. Some universes take this to insane
levels, like Salmonverse, or parts of the Composite Universe. But there is
one general constant, and that is that time still does move forward, one
second...at a time. It’s just certain people that are manipulating it, or
moving about in some weird way. You can probably kind of see where I’m going
with this, and it’s that this universe today is not like that. If you’ve
read enough comic books, or listened to/watched soap operas, you’ll notice
some funny things going on. One particular superhero was a high school
sophomore when he was introduced, and even though later stories could take
place after decades, he’ll still be a sophomore. Or maybe they show him in
college, but a new writer will come on board, and want to go back to those
high school days, and no one in the story will acknowledge these
discrepancies. It’s called the sliding timescale, and it’s generally used to
maintain the general concept behind a character whilst being able to
introduce real-world developments, such as technological advancements, or
topical global conflicts. Superhero A didn’t have a cellphone when his first
issue came out in the 1950s, but he does in the 2020s, even though he would
be an old man by now, if not just dead. The point is that this is done for
practical reasons. The artists want to keep the story going, and they want
to keep revisiting the same characters, but they don’t want to be stuck in a
particular time period, and they don’t really want anyone to die...at least
not permanently.
Fickleverse is like that, except it’s real, and the residents are fully
aware of it. They’re so aware that it doesn’t even seem strange to them.
Time does not flow linearly, and it does not flow at the same rate—or even
always in the same direction— for everyone, and this doesn’t generally
bother them. Some children stay young for an extended period of time. Others
will age too fast, often because some profound moment in their lives has
transformed them into a different person, which only the illusion of the
passage of time can meaningfully express. For some, they’re still driving
around in petrol automobiles, and not presently cognizant of the fact that
people in the next town over have hovercars. There are some other
consequences too. In other universes, shows and movies will cast actors to
pretend to be their character, but something will change, and that role will
have to be recast. That will happen in fickleverse too. Your daughter might
not just age before your eyes, but may even become a completely different
person overnight. She’ll have the same name, and she’ll believe she’s your
daughter, and you’ll believe she’s your daughter, but you will notice that
she’s not the same daughter you had yesterday. You’ll just accept this, and
you’ll love her just as much, because that’s how the world works. The
interesting part about this, and how it pertains to the bulkverse, is that
it’s unclear how time will affect a visitor, so it’s best to just avoid it.
The Ochivari, in particular, can’t make heads or tails of how it works, and
what their environmental potential is. Can the world be saved? Are the
humans destined to destroy their Earth? When time can go in reverse as
easily as it moves forward, there’s no way to know what has happened, let
alone what will happen. So they just leave it be, and chalk it up to a
hopeless cause.
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