The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
The Leather Duster time travel theory
Griffyn612:
--- Quote from: logistics on December 29, 2012, 02:19:59 PM ---While I don't have any concrete idea of just what the figure is trying to do exactly, I get the general feeling that he is trying to mess with the past in a very circumspect way. He tweaks Harry's attitude towards certain ideas, and frankly gets him to behave differently then he otherwise would have. This sounds suspiciously similar to how Bob suggests handling time travel during their impromptu (and out of the blue) discussion on the subject in Proven Guilty...right before Little Chicago was mysteriously repaired.
--- End quote ---
I don't really support this idea, because I'm still a firm believer in the PG time-travel theories. I do like the points you've made in your theory, and will be intrigued to see if it turns out to be correct. I'm too invested in the PGtt theories to divide my attention/hopes, but I wish your theory well.
But I have to say, I'm surprised I didn't see anyone else mention this: Lash is a copy of an angel, and angels can/do exist outside linear time.
1) Lash slows down/stops linear time in WN at the end.
2) Uriel stops linear time in GS.
If Lash is the parasite, and makes her return in #15, then theoretically, then she may be able to help Dresden project a non-corporeal mental image of himself (just like she is) back in time. The problem is that the first appearance of idHarry is in FM, before Lash is in Harry's head. So I'm not sure that she'd be able to go back that far. But she might be able to take Harry back to any point after the imprint is made. Which could explain the interaction between Harry, idHarry, and Lash in DB.
TheCuriousFan:
--- Quote ---1) Lash slows down/stops linear time in WN at the end.
--- End quote ---
Wasn't that more fiddling with his perception of time rather than anything else?
logistics:
--- Quote from: TheCuriousFan on January 01, 2013, 02:45:12 AM ---Wasn't that more fiddling with his perception of time rather than anything else?
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My own take was that she was artificially accelerating his thought processes to an absurd level. Sort of how 15 minutes felt forever when you were 6, magnified a bit. That would also help to explain the danger - his body just can't sustain that level of activity too long.
Griffyn612:
--- Quote from: TheCuriousFan on January 01, 2013, 02:45:12 AM ---Wasn't that more fiddling with his perception of time rather than anything else?
--- End quote ---
Yeah, I think she dosed his brain with tachyodorphins to make his brain work super-fast. But she also says at the time (pun!) that time doesn't exist.
WN - pg403
--- Quote --- “Time does not exist,” she said, her tone firm. “Not the way you consider it, at any rate. I have temporarily accelerated the processes of your mind.”
--- End quote ---
And that was what she was doing to accelerate the process of his mind in the physical world. As a non-corporeal entity, she might be able to show him the past just as easily as the present. I think that's why she has eidetic memory: everything that existed in her past exists in her present, so recall isn't a problem.
The problems would arise that she couldn't manipulate the past, as that's probably a no-no, and she probably couldn't send Harry back prior to her seeing/experiencing everything in his mind.
The work-around for the second is that, as part of Harry and sharing his soul, she has his memories as well, and might be able to go back to that memory.
The first isn't as easy. But its assuming that such things are off limits to Angels and Fallen. Maybe by sending Harry back, but not herself, it wouldn't be a violation.
Harry Lash-Back Theory (sub-category of logistics' Time-Travel Theory)
1) Harry finds out in #15 that the parasite is Lash, who is sharing/living/feeding off of his soul.
2) They resume 2-way communications.
3) Harry has a need to go back and revisit his memories of previous casefiles.
4) Lash reveals that Angels and Fallen are non-linear, meaning they can exist and revisit any time from their existence.
5) Harry realizes that as an aggelocopy feeding-off-of/sharing his soul, Lash can exist and revisit any time from his existence as well.
6) Lash tells him its against the rules for a shadow or Fallen to go back and change the past, and that she can't visit his past.
7) Harry says that she wouldn't have to revist his past; only he would; and he promises not to change anything.
8) Lash shows him how to not only recall his past, but to actually revisit it, in a non-linear mental state.
9) Harry visits himself to piece together a few facts, and takes the opportunity to talk to himself, knowing that he can only have the same conversations over that he had previously. Hence his deeper understanding of events, as well as his reluctant knowledge of not being allowed to change things.
10) Harry then returns to the present.
Problems with this Theory:
1) Making a lot of assumptions on Lash's abilities.
2) We still have a paradox, as with all time-travel scenarios, because Harry has to recall a conversation he already had with his future self before his future self existed to have the conversation, meaning that the future self would have had to have existed in a timeline where a future-future self didn't make the trip back, which means that that first conversation would have changed the future. :o
GrandPanjandrum:
Eh...don't assume that only Angels can perceive time as non-linear. The truth of the matter is that time IS non-linear. It's a matter of wrapping your head around that. There is no such thing as "now...or present." Instead, there is past and future, that exist simultaneously. Add to that fact (under the Theory of Relativity) that traveling at the speed of light suspends time and it seems clear that time is not an absolute....it's....well....relative. Newton was wrong...Einstein was right.
When Lash sped up Harry's thinking process (to dangerous levels) in White Night...she was applying Einstein's Theory of Relativity. The faster you go, the slower time passes. This is only measurable (in human standards) at an approach to the "speed of light." Therefore, Lash sped up Harry's thought process just short of the "speed of light" because time was still passing (tick........tick........tick). Then, in Ghost Story, Uriel showed what a complete badass he was and moved Harry's speed of thought to exactly the "speed of light" because time no longer existed. Everything became suspended in Molly's Star Trek mind. He did so safely without any repercussions to Harry.
One could surmise that could you speed up your thought process beyond the "speed of light," it would result in a return to the very recent past. That's the hard way to do it. An easier way would be memory of a particular instant in your life. Harry's ability to call on his brain to recall a moment in consciousness of the past is what gives the perception of linear time. But, it is only perception. That moment he recalls can be as real as right....NOW. Of course, by the time he could shout out...."NOW," it's already part of the "past."
"No matter where your go...there you are."
Addendum: For those convinced there must be a Present...provide me with the smallest number you can think of, and I'll divide it in half.
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