Good God, what is wrong with people?My cough has turned bloody, but at least my fever's mostly gone and I can keep something down, now. Water, mostly, of course, but still.. it's a start. Dave would probably tell me I'm an idiot.I've hit a dead end in my research. The equation is resulting in imaginary numbers, strings of questions, and yes/no. Thankfully, I've found other pursuits to distract myself when I'm frustrated like this. Alternate timelines within a certain dimension are possible, aren't they? I'm beginning to believe so. People have left and come back and they
remember things. That means their knowledge of events that occurred here were carried back to their own dimensions. Knowing that, how could that
not change their perception of their world, the people they know, and their own existence? --But then, that's the point, isn't it?
There's a theory of time travel that I think is interesting. It goes something like this: a future that's already written is unchanging. After all,
were you to travel back in time in order expressly to change the future, it's inevitable that you yourself may be changed; a paradox, and therefore an error in reality. What if the change you create is so great as to write yourself out of existence? Does the change even occur, then, without you there to create it? Thus, it's proposed that reality has a kind of self-defense it might use in such an instance. --Those that
do said travel and write a change into their future, as well as said changed future, are split off into a branching timeline, whereas the original goes on unimpeded.
If that's so, how many dozens of versions of the same world might there be in some dimensions? Surely others in other places have discovered time travel at some point. Cameron, for instance, is living proof of that.
And how depressing is it, if this is true-- the people the traveler loves, the reason he or she risks time to begin with, aren't changed, after all. Rather, an identical, alternate copy of of those people and things is created. You may never again see
your mother/father/wife/husband/brother/siste
r/child/etc, but instead another version of that person.
It's a bit chilling.
Mantis brought me some sort of cold-medication, so between that and my runaway thoughts, please ignore anything that doesn't make sense. It makes sense to me, which I suppose is really the important thing. And typos. Ignore any typos. I'm really rather too tired to go back and fix them.
Perhaps I'll fix them later.
.. Probably not, though.