Tuesday, July 27, 2021

Microstory 1677: Structural Integrity

The Whrwehs discovered pretty easily that time travel was impossible. It wasn’t something they wanted to do, but they needed to research it, in case there was anything they needed to do to prepare for someone else using it against them. They were pleased to know that the timeline would remain intact, and that they did not have anything to worry about. Unfortunately, this rule only applied to their universe’s proper physics. Anything that can interfere with them from the outside can do so at any point in time, which is a sort of loophole to any time travel limitation. It’s kind of why bulk travel wasn’t ever part of nature’s plan. People were never meant to crossover, for any reason. Anyway, one of the ways to travel the bulkverse once came upon this universe to ask the Whrwehs for help. The Transit lacked sufficient power sources, and needed to purchase some from a world they knew was advanced enough to spare some extras. Luckily for them, the Whrwehs agreed to help. All they needed in return was a quick little trip to the past to retrieve a historical figure. He predicted the way that they would one day live, but it was more like he made it happen by showing people how much more efficient and peaceful it would be. They didn’t want to change anything about their history, but they felt that this man deserved to see the fruits of his labor. He deserved to live forever, in a healthier world, which he was instrumental in creating. The mission did not go well, and it appeared that the only way to fix the issue was to return him to his rightful place in the past. He apparently would not be able to live in the future. It’s a perfect example of how bulk travel can cause more problems than it solves...by avoiding paradoxes.

Let’s use Salmonverse as an example. When a time traveler goes back to the past, and makes some change to the timeline, it alters the course of future history. The universe compensates for this by adding a new layer on top of the old one. If it’s a parallel reality, then they will coexist, but if the universe can’t support them both simultaneously, then the old reality will collapse, and it only have to worry about the new one moving forward. The universe we’re talking about today does not work like that. It can’t support new realities at all, not even by collapsing the old timeline. Any alteration that someone makes using bulk travel technology will have an impact on the entire universe: future, present, and past. The physical structure of the brane actually transforms to account for the change. So while other forms of time travel only begin to take effect at the point of divergence, bulk-based time travel can have an effect in both directions of time. But if the past has been changed, then the future that caused the change doesn’t exist, and technically never did. So when the crew of The Transit went back to remove Mizakh Bordalajner from his deathbed, they weren’t just removing them from his future, but all of time. This disrupted everything. It made it so that Bordalajner never existed at all, and since he was such an important figure in history, this ended up having massive repercussions for all of reality. You might call this a hole in the fabric of spacetime, but it was more like pulling a thread, and never letting go. A domino effect took hold, and humanity essentially fell apart under the constant threat of a paradox. The only way to undo this was for the crew to return Bordalajner to his deathbed, and let him die. Then the question remained, if they were unable to fulfill their promise to the natives, how would they pay for the power systems that were already on board their vessel?

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