Time Travel

Although I do have every intention of leaving Easter eggs in my first story arc, I have no intention of actually using time travel but I already have rules for it. As per usual for fi-sics, the rules of storytelling dictate the rules of fi-sics; and this is definitely fi-sics. I have no science to back up these rules but equally there is no confirmed science yet that would break them. To me they are key to a good story and that is it. I believe that multiverses where everything happens and does, and you can meet yourselves, renders everything pointless. It doesn’t matter if you lose, or die, as another you will win and live. Pointless. A good story needs believable jeopardy.

Equally, I’m not ruling out alternative realities, providing they are causal, i.e. you go back and change things. The worst sci-fi TV series' that want to keep going purely for the money, but can’t keep the same cast, has at the beginning of the new series, the main character go back to the start and fundamentally change things so we can have a new cast. What this actually does is render the previous five series irrelevant as those characters battles and development in effect never happened. It’s a killer and every series that I’ve seen do this has lost the last of its fans as it wiped out its history. The other way, and I'm thinking 'Sliders', where as the ratings drop and the cast leaves and they are killed off in episodes for dramatic effect. Yes, you got one episode to have more impact, and jeopardy is more believable again, but if you kill off your original cast then actually why are they even sliding anymore? 'We're trying to get home'. No, you left your home by choice. All those who wanted to go home never got home. What a lovely story. I'm certain the writers were just trying to pay the mortgage by the end of that show and fair enough.

The way to do it right is be causal and one of the best ones, and full credit to them, was the Star Trek reboot with the films. They don’t wipe out all the past, the past is actually the result of all the decisions and adventures of all the characters. Only Spock travels back but his situation was built onto everything. In effect the new Kirk is the continuation of the old Kirk, it is in a way a future, and you can see this if you take Spock’s perspective. That Spock had the past that led him there. Back in the original series, the new Kirk was in Spocks future. It works and it works very well. I’m actually going to call this the second line/loop but more on that later.

In my rules you can modify characters personalities as they are formed from different events, and even use the butterfly effect and say a different sperm fertilised an egg, changing a person fundamentally, yet remaining the same. Future you can have come back and cause you to go back in time, however the catch being that the first time, someone else must have set you on this loop. You cannot have self-creating closed loops, as it defies cause and effect, although you don’t have to explain in your work that the first time someone else triggered the event that looped a character. I would advise leaving clues as to who or what it was. Also, you don’t have to stay in loops. Think like a programmer and add a counter to exit. Once the loop is created nothing new can happen, so if I was trying to save the day I’d send back a list of ideas on a bit of paper and a counter. The instructions would be as follows.

Look down the list of ideas. Do the first one that isn’t crossed out.
If it fails, cross it out and send back in time this bit of paper.
If all ideas are crossed out, add a mark to the top margin of the paper. Travel as many kilometres as there marks on the paper.
Think of a new idea.
If your idea fails, send it back.

With this, each loop is counted and therefore changes the distance traveled by the individual on each occasion. This makes every loop unique where everyone and everything within the loop would otherwise behave like the first loop. The new environment may trigger a new idea. The key thing is that each one of these loops is a counter that can be applied to anything. Only when the loop exits does the counter get reset.

Finally, each universe runs until the end. This is my compromise to the multiverse, so if you go back in time, all that you left behind, keeps on going. Ultimately it will get overwritten like a tape, but it does run until completion. As it gets overwritten it is rendered irrelevant, so you can cut to the new universe, however, it does mean that an individual can be chased back in time. They may leave first but if you go back and destroy them or undo their bad work you can put things right. This means two things.

You can and will have ‘legacy’ people from other loops.
If someone goes back in time and stops themselves before they travel back, the universe doesn’t loop. The traveling back triggers the rewrite so all that happens is the universe follows the new, second line to conclusion but the person born in the second line remains in the universe and has the legacy person from the first line. Had he shot his other self then he just unnecessarily murdered him. Both can travel back to a third line and have three selves but their own personal lines obviously continue and they therefore both age. An army can be created this way.

The final rule. You can only travel up and down time on the current line as it’s the only one in existence, and not therefore back down the old lines as they have been rewritten. You may choose to ditch this rule in your writing but I won’t. Any line not in existence is a dimension and I will refer to any jump across lines as dimension shifting.

A final note on the time lines. If line one has someone who travels back and changes things just a tiny bit in year 2400, then in time line 1’s future, in 2500 someone does another change, then you can directly apply this event to time line 2. In effect there are 4 branches of time.

Line 1: both time travellers go back but no one ever arrives. People on this line /in this dimension think that time travel doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter. This line happens but is erased.
Line 1.2: Traveller 2 is on line 1 so traveller 1 never arrived, only left. The line follows traveller 2 so line 1 traveller 2 arrives in line 1.2, a branch from line 1. This line happens but is erased.
Line 2: Time follows traveller 1 from line 1 who arrives, then leaves. Traveller 2 is yet to leave and does leave but never arrives. This line happens but is erased from the moment traveller 2 leaves line 2 (but not before)
Line 2.1: Time follows traveller 1 to line 2, then time follows traveller 2 on line 2 to line 2.1. Bother travellers arrive and leave the same line. This line happens and remains. This is reality.

So if you are not the traveller, things will not change for you, they will remain the same, but what you left will be erased. The erasure is the key to the keeping a single time line but as the original line happens and is replaced, you can argue that there is a multiverse, but if so, it’s not the infinite multiverse, just what we create. The reason I’ve chosen to have each created line run out to the end of the universe, is so that a criminal can be chased by the cops. One of the problems I see in films is that the rules change. If a criminal goes back and changes things for the worse, then, as it’s already happened, the change should be instantaneous. We now have the option of the cop choosing to go back on line 1 or discovering the early arrival of the criminal on line 2.

The problem now however, is that the cop can only go back along their own timeline. If they go back to even one second after the arrival of the criminal then they haven’t changed lines, as on her timeline the criminal didn’t arrive to change things. So, she would have to back to just before the criminal arrived (actually the most sensible course of action, surely this is obvious but bad writers make bad logic on purpose to create drama). However this restricts the story teller so I propose the use of a machine tuned to a temporal frequency.

Imagine the multiverse as a cuboid with a line going directly from one corner to the opposite corner. This is the real universe, just on this line. Orientate the cuboid so the line of the universe goes straight from left to right. This is the starting frequency line of loop one. My fictional scientists would call this frequency 1. It has the four dimensions, x,y z and time. I would probably show the code 128:255:0:Date. It would be a universal constant. Anytime anyone measures it, it is the same. Each time a time traveller goes back; they alter the past and shift the frequency. As they follow cause and effect the shift won’t happen again. So in my story of a criminal going back in time, I’d have the scientists have a special machine used to tune in the time travel date that scans the frequency. This machine would be called a Temporal Scanner and it would be able to pick up radio waves. It would also have a big fat metal crystal like the old crystal radio sets. The scientists would dial back the time component, watch some 60’s news, dial it back some more until the frequency dial would suddenly blip a new frequency then settle back to 128:255:0. In seeing the blip they’d know the time and date the criminal went back to. When they dial forward again they see the frequency change to the new time line. Maybe 129:240:0. They will be able to dial forward, back to the present day and watch the news. They’d see Stalin in charge of America or something and realise they need to act. Using this device they can target a specific time on either timeline and send the cop there to save the day.

Whether you want the characters to work out the code to know where they are or if they have the ability to dial forward I leave to you. If you do dial forward I’d have the frequency of now start shifting on them.

Colour

Green is the colour of time travel and it tends to manifest in green flash of light.
CMYK 0,500 0,000 1,000 0,000
RGB 128 255 0
HEX #88FF00
Feel free to change the colour as the temporal frequency changes. I’m going to head towards blue for the good and red for the bad.