He stood on the main control room of
the TARDIS. The implications of time travel were too much for the
common mind, but then he'd never really had that problem. It was a
living being, not unlike a person.
That was the secret to Time Travel.
Not formulas or curved space-time or any number of competing
theories. Something that massaged the underlying threads of the
universe with care and intent. Not a wild spraying of exotic matter,
negative energy or gravitational disturbance. No, this was something
that required a living touch.
To take the intent of the moment or act
and stretch it backwards and forwards among the filaments. To awaken
and sleep the minds with all numbers of various fields and
disturbances so that nothing would be seen as amiss.
Granted, the device which did so was a
physical thing, and not a person, but it always had to act on human
intent. Not only the passengers, tucked away in a temporal
environment between and beyond the normal dimensions, but someone in
the environment as well. Someone to run through the various
scenarios and provide the organic buffer to suffer the inevitable
paradoxes.
These people were the real 'time
machines' - the ones with faith and love strong enough to know that
the physical laws may be suspended at any time that God
wills. The mechanical devices were only there to provide a cage and
a framework.
Special people, ones sensitive to the
world around them, but not boxed in by the conventions and
conditioning of the world around them. People who were fixed upon
the unchangable things, stars and molecules, love and courage.
There would always be ripples. Traces
of energy, dreams, unexplained emotions, the uneasy feeling that the
universe itself was just a fabrication of itself. It varied from
person to person. Even the scientists behind the project weren't
sure of all the ramifications. Still it was obvious who had been
affected and who would be permitted to travel – and not merely
observe when returned.
The travellers would always return
before the effect. The strings of the universe would vibrate at a
set harmonic. Rippling out the changes and spreading the differences
out in a chaotic but still predictable fractal pattern.
There was always ways to change it
back. Special archives were set up with the opposing structures to
the Time Machine to be resistant to the changes. These were compared
with stories and texts from the journey itself and eyewitness
accounts from the scene. Each mission would then be voted on and it
would either stand, or be canceled remotely by a mechanical pulse
left at the location.
Major changes would cause memory loss
and disorientation for a time among the selected people while the
effects settled in their heads. Rarely was one allowed to directly
change his own past, but there were exceptions made.
When the intent and desire was strong
enough, it registered on a scan of the timeline. Physical records
were unearthed and the persons in questions were labeled as
'untethered'. These were the ones who the machine found first.
People who's timelines were such a state of flux their physical
bodies in the future gave off the same radiation as the early
experiments.
It was, of course, a chicken and egg
question as to what occurred first. The interference, or the
radiation. Or at least it was to start with. Then it was discovered
that it was a natural thing first, as even those who adamantly
refused time travel interference were effected.
The pulses were eventually found to be
linked to certain brain structures. Particular synaptic patterns
amplified the effect and were indirectly the cause of the radiation.
At first it was thought that this was a genetic trait, but again, the
initial science was only half right.
Still it was enough to go on, and the
first experiments were underway...
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