Doctor Time - Definitions

Doctor Time sat in his office at the University of Time on Mars. He wasn’t quite sure when it was, the building kept the professors moving back and forth through the years to study various anomalies and phenomenon.

In fact, if you didn’t have to go out much, you could schedule yourself to do it yesterday, and it would happen. You’d get a slight bit of confusion and a double set of memories for the day. You’d concentrate on the more valuable set and the information would simply find a place in your mind.

The trick was living through enough dull days that you could afford to have a few swapped out from time to time. At the moment, his primary memory of yesterday was fairly uneventful, so when a University message appeared to warn of a double paradox, he immediately got ready for a swap out.

He found his favourite chair, his sonic pen – a kind of scanner, voice recorder, broadcast/receiver device, lock picker and note taker all in one – and sat down. He put in the request for the swap.

He looked at the clock on the wall. 12:15. Then a moment later 12:35. The sonic pen was sitting on his desk and the start of some notes was on the paper in front of him. He only lost twenty minutes syncing himself up. He thought back to the day before. Or what he could remember. It was a bit of a fog. Instead he looked down at the papers in front of him. It seemed to be the notes from yesterday’s class – An introduction to Time Phenomenon – the start of a story – and a video file, narrated by himself. The file was about 15 minutes long and it’s name suggested it covered a combination of the story and the notes on the class.

It began.

Jade had been wanting to review double paradoxes as well. He had loan of a TimeShip – the Impossible Lightning and was going over the basics with the class. 

 

“A single paradox is simple enough. Go back in time, do something that prevents you going back in time in the future and you’re in a loop. You’re in the past, but you can’t be – you can’t be, so you don’t stop yourself, so you are again. You end up living both possibilities simultaneously, until something breaks the loop. Usually a second time traveller ...”

Jade interrupts “First a Controller in a Tower would notice the loop happening, and send a Null Pulse to break you out of the loop. Making you forget what you did to get into the loop...”

“But that doesn’t always happen” said Doctor Time, then remembering who he’s dealing with “It shouldn’t happen. Or rarely happens, but only if there’s extenuating circumstances”.

-- Doctor Time pauses the video and looks at his sonic pen as it flashes red, it resumes the video itself as if it’s programmed to keep the thought going --

Jade laughs as the Doctor flusters. “No offence taken DT.” she smiles again. “Double Paradox though”

“Ah right. If a TimeShip like this one, happens upon two different paradoxes in rapid succession, the two event chains can have an effect on each other. That allows more random and as of yet, unexplainable, things to happen. ”

“What kind of things?” asks a first year student.

Doctor Time beams, “Time arcing, paradox filaments, countable loops, time fractures..”

The class glazes over listening to all the unfamiliar terms. Doctor Time pauses. “Jade, could you take a few time doors to check on the notes and coordinates of those classes? I’ll stay here and try and analyze the readings.”

Jade vanishes through a doorway with a white crackling energy around it.

“Where – when – did she go?” asks the same first year student.

“Ah,” says Doctor Time, “confusingly, it’s neither, at least nowhere set in stone. Time doors happen between places where specific events happen. If it happens to be on a TimeShip or here at the University, it can happen any time. You have to lock onto a particular signal or alert to pinpoint when it is in relation to other events, which could also be moving.”

Doctor Time finishes wiring the ships output to the main screen. “You see here” using his Sonic Pen to point a laser at the screen “is when we are now. Looking at the readout of the double paradoxes. In Vanilla time – that is, time where nothing particular out of order happens, after this class, for the weeks and years into the future – I’ll finish studying the phenomenon and teach classes on it. For each of the classes, I’ll broadcast the event signal and the University can make Time Doors that go to it.”

“Can you take your own class, to find out what you say?” asks the inquisitive student.

“Probably, possibly? But at some point you have to do the grunt work. You can’t watch yourself, then teach the class. It’s in a different iteration. No bootstrap paradoxes, the knowledge has to come from somewhere.”

“What if you try anyway?”

“You try and activate the class beacon and it isn’t the same class signal, you don’t show up to your own teaching, and instead you mechanically just say exactly what you heard, give or take. You can’t answer any follow up questions because you don’t know anything beyond what you’ve heard.”

Jade appears back in the doorway, having heard the last few minutes before jumping back.

“Each iteration has a number of time travel events. This is kept track of in a Fractal Integration Matrix. It basically means that every event has a counter that can remove the paradox, knowledge has a source, every cause has an effect, and every effect can domino around so that everything is triggered. Only a certain number of time jumps can happen in a given iteration before ... well, before the Universe explodes.”

“Does that mean we shouldn’t Time Travel frivolously?”

Doctor Time shudders. “Oh no, that’s not the point at all. There’s an infinite number of iterations, you just have to be able to close out the previous one before you can clear the board with a Null Pulse.”

“What do those do again? You mentioned them before.”

Jade answers “It’s like a reset switch. It tracks down TimeShips and the Paradoxes they create and cancels out all the unbalanced effects, source-less information and untriggered memories. Unfortunately it also means that unless something unique survives the Null Pulse, you could get caught in a Time Loop.”

“Why is that?”

Doctor Time checks a few readouts, trying to determine if he’s in a loop right now. He pulls out his sonic pen and presses a couple of buttons. It glows green.

He gets to the question. “Time and events want to resolve themselves. Various tidal forces shape events and push them to certain outcomes. Having two Time Travellers interact produces a point that attracts like a magnet. If the conditions for moving past that point don’t present themselves, like having a double paradox move them past it slightly differently, they get drawn back to that point, after their memories are wiped.

“How would you even know?”

“Usually, someone gets deja vu, after doing something over and over again, with only minor variations. The TimeShips can cause minor fluctuations on their own, which Time Towers can detect.”

“Couldn’t you check the counter at any time?”

Jade answers “You can, but unless you know when you started the counter, and why, you don’t know what it’s in relation to. It’s a mapping aid. Loops can be lifetimes long, or only a few minutes. TimeShips tend to destabilize loops shorter than that.”

“If you’re mapping, what are you trying to find?”

Doctor Time peers at the filaments echoing between the paradoxes. His Sonic pen beeps slightly to let him know there’s a question. That’s the problem with day swapping, you always feel like you’re supposed to be somewhere else, doing something different. A small arc leaps from the outer hull of the ship and zaps Doctor Time. He looks confused for a moment and seems to remember where and when he is.

“Mapping, yes. There’s filaments that arc between Time Ships, Paradoxes, Loops and any kind of Temporal activity. They can represent unbalanced energy or fissures in time, or even people or events that need catching up. Some of these can fracture time, or seed paradoxes.

Jade gives him a look that means – Not quite right, but not wrong either. “First time through?” She says. He lifts up his Sonic Pen. -Green- -Red- -Green- goes the light. It means he’s trying to join up from another time direction.

Jade touches a point on her hand and seems to wake up slightly. She notices a stack of data pads in her hand. “Oh right. The handover.”

She watches as Doctor Time looks confused at the notes in front of him and asks for iOi.

/Click-Whirr-Click/ - “A day swap and a paradox filament exchanging memories? Okay. Class dismissed.”

The room clears and it’s just him and Jade.

“Captain Time at your service!” he says, while checking out his costume and sonic pen. He seems like he’s been plucked from series of dull days at Time Police and set loose on the world.

Jade smiles. “So that’s where that energy ended up.”

Captain Time looks around, weighing in his mind the balance between reckless and fun, and precise time navigating.

“Shiny” he says looking at the Recovered Lightning, the TimeShip just re-named by iOi.

“Incoming TimeQuake” says the University PA system. “Expected Arrival, tomorrow. 12:15 – 12:35”

“Iteration 23” says Jade. Unconcerned.

“I’d hate to be me tomorrow though” says Nathan.

“I wouldn’t worry about it” says Jade slyly. “You end up recording this and giving yourself a mystery.”

Captain Time enters the TimeShip and... --The video ends abruptly but the audio continues--

Doctor Time, or rather, Detective Time has a case. What happened to ... me?

--

Nathan looks around his desk, trying to sort out what bits of his mind he still has access to. He can remember a bit of Time Theory, and a bit about Piloting, but mostly as abstract concepts.

His senses seem a bit sharper, like he can tell what’s been changed from one Time Interference to the next and how long it’s been different. He looks at his sonic pen and unlocks a memory of changing a few of it’s functions in the time between 12:15 and 12:35.

He goes back in time to shortly before the class, and sets up the recording equipment so he can capture the video. No need to cause another paradox.