Bernoulli and Time

“I don't get it, that should have changed something.” The professor sighed. It was common for first year students of temporal studies to have an overestimation of the butterfly effect and not take into account it's opposite – the Bernoulli effect. Not strictly opposite, but for all intents it was in this application. A small change in a certain direction will be 'corrected' out by a differential created by non-changes. Time, at least the manipulation of it, was forgiving.

In order to effect a proper change, a certain amount of deliberation was necessary. A matrix of changes that are self-reinforcing has a better chance to succeed, but just as likely to collapse as well. Mastering the right amount, type and severity of disruptions was more of an art than a science, but after a certain amount of testing, and detective work, there was a foundation that could be taught.

Refocus Year

The year was rapidly approaching ^()) - with the prevalence of time travel though, it was more of a signpost than a inevitable date. Still, in a sense it was unavoidable. Past that marker, things were organized for a different epoch, another refocus. It was his job to go through the branching timelines, to pluck the best ideas from each and help consolidate the results.

Time travel itself wasn't uniform yet. Vehicles were different, of course, but on a level deeper than aesthetics too. Each has it's own way of anchoring itself in a stream of time that could be called 'fluid' at best and 'chaotic' at worst. The AI associated with each craft would draw on similar timelines to stabilize the one it was in, as well as contribute to how each reaction would branch. Care was taken to not disorient either people in the timeline or the visitors to it, though this could be overridden at the users request. Such disregard for the fail-safes would be rumored to produce time loops, paradoxes and other things of that nature. The truth was less spectacular, as momentary disorientation was usually the worst side effect.

Certain nodes could be amplified to cause an influence on parallel timelines, ensuring, or as least improving the chances that similar events or inventions would occur – providing a similar catalyst helped to shape lives and inventions to compatible outcomes. While the results and methods would differ, the end results could be intertwined without much trouble.

It was a check-in day. He took his organic pouch drive up to his colleague's time machine. It was obviously used to dealing with devices of higher capacity, as it filled his to 12, indicating it has exceeded it's normal capacity and was being encoded with a more efficient algorithm. The gel inside foamed, then glowed as it downloaded the data. He went through two more pouches that way before his colleague handed him a different type of storage vacuole - “Try this.” This one had the gel aready foamed before use and had no trouble downloading the rest of the data from the craft.

Organic (?) Storage

In his pockets were a number of hand sized clear bags of gel. Actually the first one was only the size of two finger joints, although otherwise similarly only 1/5^th full of the clear substance. In the center of each vaguely football shaped container was a black liquid filled pill, which reoriented itself as if neutrally buoyant in whatever filled the rest of the device apart from the gel.

As he neared the gel bags to the machine he obviously intersected some kind of near-field communication. The gel in the bags started foaming and the black pill counted upwards with a glowing white, thickly rendered number on it's side. As it counted up to 10 – taking about 3 seconds, the gel filled the entire container, and began glowing. This was unusual, as the substance was usually inert and the black pill likewise shone a bright '12' before signaling the extended capacity of the device had been filled to capacity.

His friend offered another device, this one a little more opaque and the gel inside already white, as all of his carried devices were not sufficient for the entire download.