Time Split

 

Everyone had been accelerated through time. Almost.

There was still a drag on the system. Some had split. Their echo had gone through, but some part of them remained behind. At least that was what they figured out eventually.

Time was moving forward from the beginning and end of the splits at the same time. The fast forwarded time was about three years of memories, but it happened in an instant.

They weren’t broken, but they weren’t quite normal either. They got new memories from the past as the bit left behind did slightly different things than the sped up version did.

It wasn’t a lot of individuals, and it was hard for them to convince people it was real and not just a side effect. At least until they interacted with others. Not much stood out, but there was the odd twinge that made them harder to remember than before.

There wasn’t any plan to connect to the past, but it was possible. That was because it wasn’t really the past, but a different track of ‘now’ that had less memories.

They isolated ones who didn’t make the first jump completely and tried bringing them through again. It seemed to work. If only they could identify everyone.

As they reached back through to the ‘past’, scanning and pulling, the underlying space-time became stretched and frayed.

Those who were still split began loosing their connection to the new memories adding an urgency to the work.

Except they weren’t. Things had simply drifted far enough that they didn’t link to the new thoughts without stimuli.

Bits of electronic messages appeared in the fast forwarded time, from the other space-time. Computers would register the old date for the data, but also not have them in recent backups.

It was as if the device had to be working to complete the connection. They traced that particular inconsistency to the AI that was managing the experiment. It was trying to keep things logically consistent, but still add ‘new’ information as it arrived.

Those still divided continued drifting away from their past selves as choices over the three years strayed farther and farther from the first run through. They often requested that the AI turn off ‘updating’ their other self’s work, as the memories became harder to reconcile.

Others though, went the opposite route and were glad to have another version of themselves to work with. Some even jumped ahead a second time, to have a third point to branch from.

Without a large group doing so the Second Leapers found the experience a bit disorienting, with extra memories, but people still acting like they did before they jumped. They could sometimes predict behaviour, as that was mostly what the AI was doing, but were just as often wrong.