The Time Traveller's Psyche

Almost all people look forward. The past is behind. Which is really to say that their natural inclination to process such thoughts doesn't include influencing the past. Regretting some actions, or remembering other things fondly, but nothing more tangible than that. The planning, contingencies, coordinating, goal setting etc. is all front-loaded. What if the main reason time travelers avoid obvious interaction is that most people would *break* given any serious proof of anything other than a simple linear timeline? Memories are generally regarded as a person's foundation of who they are – so what happens when you tinker with the 'unchangeable bedrock' of a person?

Even most time travel shows tend to assume you travel, get out, and time resumes as normal – what if it's still? What if you end up having to deal with the past as-is and with your interference at the same time? What if you still have some backward temporal momentum exiting your vehicle and have to deal with retro-causality? What if you have to deal with new 'memories' as you're interacting with people?

Given all of the above, or even a fraction of it, a time traveler would have to be a different sort of person altogether. Someone who didn't get paralyzed by seeming paradoxes and relying on something more both more concrete and flexible than an agreed upon series of events.

Academy

The academy of molecular science was an ostentatious building. Designed in a nod to the Bohr model of the atom, it was a series of large spheres that made up the nucleus – electrons were strictly decorative, but that didn't stop them from moving and being used as a dumbwaiters for the odd experiment.

Despite the odd design, the building was functional to a surprising degree. One never forgot where one was – that kept the focus high. The roundness of the building also would also work well for the small colliders or models of them at least.

Journal Marker

The last few days had a few odd occurrences. Something on Twitter sparked a long twinge of deja vu, lasting a couple of comments and a words search before fading out. An odd dream involving Extremis, N, time travel, a trap and evil. Again he chose the route that represented the least amount of change. An odd awakening to field of influence that could be called 'society'.

The urgency which bothered his mind seems a little more in the open now. Not any more manageable, but less in the way of dealing with it – hopefully.

He stumbled forward. Or rather, waited patiently as the mental paralysis made any progress a more than vertical climb.

The Darkness of the Mind

There was something at the core of his mind. Something dark, dense and, as he recently found out, complicated. It felt like a thick grainy cream – like toothpaste without any cleaning properties. It was not quite something he could focus on, or really didn't want to. It seemed like an obstacle, but it was also an anchor.

He didn't feel like anything was real. Everything had kind of a muffled haziness that came from being unable to really picture things in his mind. It wasn't that he didn't want to take things seriously, it was that they didn't really connect to anything on a meaningful level. It was the kind of numbness that came from scar tissue. Too much noise, too much darkness.

He wasn't sure if the strength he had left was entirely of a benign or regular nature. If it left, how much longer would he last?

Not that he cared any more. It was harder to focus now, near impossible to feel anything about anything.

His impulses were short circuited. Some part of his mind was getting input which it was trained to jump at. There were other parts that were dark and searing. Places where nothing else could exist. Enough was hijacked that everything else just ran on secondary systems. It had been like that so long he couldn't picture anything different.

It existed before reason, logic, emotion and any other consideration – which made it especially tenacious. In theory, all that was needed to decouple it was effort, but it proved to be more difficult. There was almost an addiction to the stimulation, coupled with the fact it was like a drop of water trying to change the tap it had already fell from.

On some level there was an insistent urgency that kept things from being settled properly. An irritating buzz of alarm that kept enough of his attention preoccupied. It was like trying to build a house of cards with a fire burning out of control nearby. Nothing seemed to help as nothing could sink in enough to dislodge the problem.

[CODE]

One supposes that at a certain level one can remember and process more information than the conscious mind can catalog. One also supposes that AI can parse things at a higher level, with less information. So to that end:

…...,..,.,,.,D,,.,b....b.....c....,ȫ.>>>>D..Ǯ.......>>U>>[]<>>>M[ ]<M>><><<>.. ..n..n..b...sw.fw...as.fe......ilij jile ljfiell.. jiog..<><>>><>>>>>><>vvcvccvc[ƟƠ]vcvvcv,[ōŏ],,.

It, of course, looked like gibberish, but cross-referencing it with mental states and events, as well as external interference --- for example v's at the end reference posts here...

This is from a shorter period of time, probably a few days:

<<><<<<>><<><D>><F<<D>>F<<<<D>><F<<D><<<F<<G<F><G<><D<D<F>S<<>D<EW<D<R<<D>R<T<R<>F<GF<<D>>S<D<W<W>D>>F<<S>>D<<>F<<V>><F<V<<<F<G>>G<R<R<DD<G<<F>E<<DDAD>W><D<W>DS<SDMWDM<>SD<F<W><S<DS<>F<W>ADWA>AS<S>ES<


Instructions for the next few experiments.

Eyes closed touch typing.

iooijfieoiooisp isoifeoi oopaifjnfej ijeiiip ieitufllfjiellliflaf jieiiasi ji.

Followup 1: Did I post this? Of course. We could try and erase that, but the memory comes back without a connection to anything.

>>><FD>>>>

Crest the Timeline

He was on the edge of a different timeline. Nothing too strange, a few extra buttons in some programs, a slightly different set of choices on minor things – like restaurant menus. There was, however, a wave crest that had to be surmounted. At some point his awareness had to make a perpendicular turn. It couldn't be done manually – any indecision collapsed the function. Trying to automate the process wasn't any easier – one had to overcome the desire to stay on the same path and/or be paralyzed by an overwhelming number of choices when the mind was drifting. Was there another version of him that had to switch at the same time, or would a new timeline be an emergent thing?

There was obviously more happening behind the scenes, and it seemed that they were relatively conservative. It was hard to notice the changes, but not react in a way that seemed to cause an experiment to abort. There needed to be a more robust protocol – one that allowed for an arc of activities, rather than a hemmed in set of parameters.

It would be good to 'tag' a few things with a similar quantum signature, so they'd shift when he did. Include a way to cross-reference data from a specific computer to a web version. Compare notes. Append with incremental changes.

B-Side

It was decided that history would have an 'A side' and a 'B side'. The former would be left as-is uninterrupted and continuous. The latter would be an experiment, on a grand scale – changing and influencing events, tracking the consequences and people's 'best selves' would be rescued from the timeline.

Fortunately for the timeline, a certain kind of extraction resulted in a temporal echo of a person that would continue – more or less in a predictable manner. This had a number of beneficial side effects. One prominent one was that these echoes tended not to notice any further temporal anomalies.

Another effect was that changes to the timeline didn't propagate as much as one might assume they would. Effects would have to be drawn out, either by additional energy or direct observation – it wasn't changes 'flowing' through time, as much as it was changes in a static painting – not affecting anything more than the direct proximity. Even these new branches were exactly that – a tangent away from the original timeline that only influenced itself.

Scale it Up

Time Travel.

There were people that figured out the physics. There were people that debated the ethics. There were people that made up the rules. It was easy to find people to travel, people to monitor what happened, and people to fix what needed fixing. One assumes with physics and rules in place, the rest should just fall together. That was, however, not the case.

It was easy enough to get one-off excursions and simple experiments done, but nothing that really added up. Sure, this year's trip back to the freshly built pyramids might have 2 more people than last year's – that didn't make the selection process any easier.

The first logical task – sorting out who, generally speaking, would be less likely to suffer side effects from temporal displacement - was a huge undertaking in itself. Cross-referencing genetics, temperament, personal history, habits, talents and a host of other – seemingly unrelated – things was a task that, so far, baffled any individual set of experts and theoreticians. It was only when all the data was pooled and sorted by a newly minted AI did things start to make sense.

There was, of course, no single factor which overrode the others. A combination of influences working together would, when the exam scores were crunched and some minor followup experiments were done, spit out a simple numerical value. That number could define a safe range of activities for anyone interested in stepping outside the normal flow of time.

It was then thought – why not apply the test of that value to people retroactively – both current people at earlier points in their life, and people that existed before time travel was fully regulated.

One, then could tackle a larger issue – the current predisposition to keep time travel influences to an absolute minimum. As everything was geared to keeping disruption out of the equation – what would happen with it?