The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Time Travel in the Dresden Files
morriswalters:
Time travel to change an event breaks cause and effect and thus creates a paradox. Bob in PG and Vadderung in Cold days. Bobs specific example is.
--- Quote ---Bob sighed. “Okay. Temporal studies 101. Let’s say that he hears about your car being stolen. He comes back to warn you, and as a result, you keep your car.”
“Sounds good so far.”
“But if your car never got stolen,” Bob said, “then how did he know to come back and warn you?”
--- End quote ---
Vadderung states in Cold Days that time has inertia, and events that have happened have a tendency not to change. And that attempting to change them instead creates a new branch. Vadderung's example is if Harry goes back to kill Eb, either he fails or he succeeds in which case he is never born.
Vadderung says that it is far easier to shape the future than to change the past.
So the rules are these.
1. The past can be changed but only at the risk of the Butterfly Effect.
2. Paradox causes reality to branch at the point of Paradox.
And the future can be modeled statistically in the Dresden Files. This is established at the end of Small Favor with the Archive.
Any comments? Additions?
didymos:
We know Merlin did it to create the wards on Demonreach:
--- Quote ---“Merlin didn’t build the prison five times,” Bob said. “He built it once. In five different times. All at the same time.”
I felt my brows knit. “Uh. He was in the same place, doing the same thing, in five different times at once?”
“Exactly.”
Butcher, Jim. Cold Days (The Dresden Files, Book 14) (p. 173). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
--- End quote ---
No idea how he pulled it off.
g33k:
--- Quote from: didymos on February 28, 2020, 04:32:41 PM --- We know Merlin did it to create the wards on Demonreach:
No idea how he pulled it off.
--- End quote ---
n.b. FIVE times. 5 = penta.
It's not just a ward, it's a temporal pentacle.
He did a sort of "bilocation" thing, except 5X as a "pentalocation," and he didn't pentalocate across space but across time.
So he did it "once", but he did it "simultaneously" in five different times.
Except of course English has no way to SAY something like that, so my prior sentence was literal nonsense.
morriswalters:
--- Quote from: didymos on February 28, 2020, 04:32:41 PM ---We know Merlin did it to create the wards on Demonreach:
No idea how he pulled it off.
--- End quote ---
Think about the tree limbs coming from the ceiling of the room where Harry wakes up 1000 or so feet beneath Lake Michigan. The prison doesn't exist in reality.
Now think of a helical spring with a pentagram tipped so that each point of the star touches a different point on the spring. The star would have to be stretched but when looked at from above would form the ideal pentagram. As you walk along the spring you move through time. The spring is helical in time.
Here's how it works in a spooky horror novel. You ride up to a tower on your horse. There is a door. As you enter, there is a hallway, you go right and take a walk around the tower till you come back to the door. When you exit the door the horse is dead from starvation. A month has passed. The tower is in all times at the same time. But every time you walk around the tower you are moving through time. Is that clear as mud?
That's one way to picture it.
Yuillegan:
Are we just establishing what we know so far?
If so that about covers it, although I think it is worth also mentioning the WOJ about the multiverse.
I.e. that EVERY time a choice is made (by a mortal), a split (exactly like the branches created at the creation of a paradox) is made diverging into two timelines: one where the choice was made, one where it wasn't made.
So one imagines that plays into how I person COULD potentially alter their own timeline. From my limited understanding of physics, in the many-world theory, a person who went back to change their own timeline (for example like Bob's example of the person who warns another of their car being stolen) wouldn't cease to exist as such. Rather the person would continue in one timeline where they had succeeded in warning the person so their car wasn't stolen, and one where they failed and the car was still stolen. But in the first branch they would still have to go back in time, which would either create a time-loop or they would no longer be in sync with their own timeline. They would effectively be inhabiting someone else's universe. Which gets really depressing when you think about the fact all the people they had known would be in their old universe, and while these people would be effectively the same they wouldn't ACTUALLY be the same (unless I miss the mark, or Jim has another explanation).
Dark is a reasonable tv show about time travel from a physics POV although it has it's own issues, but it is closer than most.
I like your explanation Morris about how Merlin was able to be in five times at once.
The thing to remember is that while we like to separate time and space, from a physics perspective they are incredibly linked and so often we say space-time as the overarching phenomena. To my mind, Merlin Emrys was in the same physical spot. But that spot was made up of five different "layers". Looking at it from anyone Time Point it would merely appear he was in the one spot. But were you able to see all five Time Points, you would see him in all of them at once, making the exact same movements (rather than going to each time separately and working magic). In fact I think this would be the only way to do what he achieved.
Interestingly, it is the state of being I think the Angels of the Dresden Files exist one (to varying degrees - I am unsure of how Denarians experience reality hampered as they are). Uriel doesn't necessarily need one million bodies/avatars (although I suppose he could do it that way) to be in one million different spots in space-time. He could potentially just exist in enough dimensions that it wouldn't be possible to measure him in all those places, limited as we are to 3 (or 4...there is debate). Jim sort of confirms this when he talks about how the Angels only show up as a whispered presence so they don't squish the sandbox, only inserting a tiny part of themselves into a point in reality. Which is probably the case with Ferrovax and the higher immortals, although who knows.
But I am getting off topic here, apologies.
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