A Beginner's Guide to Temporal Physics
Time Corps Briefing Document. Version 1.6
Copyright © 1997, 2000 Chris Halliday
All Rights Reserved
A Beginner's Guide to Temporal Physics
Time Corps Briefing Document. Version 1.6
Copyright © 1997, 2000 Chris Halliday
All Rights Reserved
Section 2: The Effects of Temporal Disruption
When someone drops a rock in the river of history, bad things happen.
Now that you understand the basic rules of time, we'll take a look at what
happens when they get broken. A word of warning. If you're going to wash
out of Basic Training, this briefing will do it. If you get through this,
you're one of us. Counselling is available on request.
Simple, relatively insignificant temporal disruptions affect all points on the timeline uptime of the point of intervention instantaneously.
This effect is known as the Temporal Tremor, and may be an indication of an approaching time wave or timequake. Temporal tremors are often pretty difficult to spot, mainly because the changes they make are so minor that even with paramemory, it's hard to pin down what's different.
An Ops Agent Speaks:
You ever lose your keys? There's the maddening thought that you know
where they are, but you can't quite focus in on it? That's what a temporal
tremor is like. The changes are tiny and usually involve the relocation
of objects or the alteration of historical records. Historically, people
have actually witnessed the relocation and alteration of items as a tremor
has intersected their time frame. Rarely is anything deleted and the changes
happen so fast that the memories of individuals with a high degree of temporal
stability are often left untouched. Ever had an argument where the other
guy swears that something you know happened one way actually happened another?
You may have experienced a tremor.
When a major temporal discontinuity occurs, it will generally manifest as a Time Wave (also known as a Changefront).
A time wave is a series of changes to the causal flow that gradually move uptime at a measurable absolute time velocity directly related to its duration in history. Though the futureward motion of a time wave may be slowed and eventually stopped by the effects of the destiny effect, its duration (and therefore its velocity) is effectively determined by the magnitude of the original disruption.
When a time wave has been created, its futureward motion will often generate other, smaller discontinuities that manifest as temporal tremors, providing some warning of the approaching change.
An Ops Agent Speaks:
These things are not nice to think about, and even worse to live
through. Last time one of these babies got as far as the formation of the
Corps was due to a major screw up in 10th Century China. We got some warning
from the tremors, and we knew we had some time before the wave hit our
point of origin, so we clocked a commando team back to cancel the thing
before it got too close. They never made it. Next thing I know, I'm back
in 'Nam, running from the Cong and trying to figure out why I've got two
sets of memories. Thankfully, we'd had a research team in the Cenozoic
when the wave hit, and the preservation effect had kept them safe and sound.
Of course, by the time they'd figured out what had gone wrong and fixed
it, I'd been dead for about a month. Sometimes paramemory can be a bitch,
but I was one of the lucky ones (see The
Rule of Death).
When a series of major temporal disruptions occur in close chronal proximity, they may result in a Timequake.
A timequake is a time wave of a magnitude great enough to trigger a series of lesser temporal discontinuities, which in turn trigger other disruptions. The displaced energy of temporal inertia adds to the force of the original wave, geometrically increasing its magnitude until it reaches Terminal Point. At this stage, the timequake can no longer be slowed or stopped by the destiny effect, and instantly affects all points uptime of the point of disruption. The new reality thus created initially has a high degree of temporal inertia, ensuring that any attempt to restore the original history has a high probability of generating massive Transparallel Resonance Effects.
When a timequake has been created, its progress uptime may generate temporal tremors in the same way as a time wave. However, it should be noted that the chronospatial disturbance caused by a timequake will always trigger transparallel resonance effects on between one and ten other parallels, as well as any bonded parallels whose contact points are affected by the wave.
An Ops Agent Speaks:
Timequakes are what temporal physicists' dream about when they've
gone to bed drunk. The only reason they don't give me the creeps is mainly
because I'm not smart enough to realise how really nasty they are. If one
of these babies gets loose, it'll just keep roaring on futureward, wiping
away history and replacing it forever. Worse, once terminal point is reached,
putting things back the way they were can do more harm than good.
Successive temporal disruptions generated at a given event-location must overcome increasing levels of temporal inertia, and thus have successively higher velocities in absolute time.
Since the absolute time velocity of a changefront or timewave is dependent on the magnitude of the original disruption, it is logical that timewaves or quakes generated by disruptions of greater magnitude will travel faster. As local temporal inertia always increases whenever a disruption takes place (see The Limitation Effect), further disruptions of a given event will necessarily be of a greater magnitude. The result of this curious fact is that all waves of change emanating from a specific location in space-time will eventually converge at the same instance in absolute time, if they are generated before the primary wave reaches terminal point. Normally the last disruption to be generated (in absolute time) is the one that establishes the new reality. Thus it is possible to cancel out the effects of an earlier temporal disruption by creating a carefully constructed “reverse disruption” or Counter-Wave, setting events back on their correct course.
An Ops Agent Speaks:
The Counter-Wave is your friend. Remember that. It's what allows us to drop the lid on the worst of disruptions without having to spend subjective months tracking every ripple in phase space. Every morning before coffee I give praise to the counter-wave.
You should too.
Each parallel has a historical baseline, to which temporal inertia will tend to return events after a historical disruption.
Once a disruption has taken place, attempts to restore the original history must be made within a period of absolute time inversely proportional to the magnitude of the disruption. If the disruption is left unresolved, the altered events become part of a new historical baseline, at which point attempts to restore the previous history will fail.
The reason for this limitation lies in the behaviour of parallels when subjected to change. When disrupted, the affected portion of the parallel begins to shift position in phase space, moving to occupy a place alongside parallels that share a similar history. When the transition is complete, temporal inertia will reinforce the new dominant history, and the previous history will be lost. Further attempts to restore the original history will produce a new reality, based on the altered event and governed by the destiny effect and the principle of temporal uncertainty.
An Ops Agent Speaks:
The bane of Corps agents everywhere. If it wasn’t for the Baseline
Principle, we could take all the time we needed to fix a disruption. Turns
out nature has us "on the clock" so to speak.
The TransParallel Resonance Effect
This allows the causal flow on one parallel to be affected by the chronospatial disturbance of another parallel.
This effect is most pronounced between bonded parallels and those with great similarities, but may also occur randomly, resonating temporal disruption to unpredictable event locations on unrelated parallels. Resonance waves may start in a number of ways. Any disruption of the causal flow on a parallel may result in the creation of a resonance wave. The resonance wave radiates across phase space, impacting with a force equal to the magnitude of the disruption that triggered it. With this in mind it may be seen that resonance waves can trigger temporal tremors, time waves, or even timequakes on impacting a parallel. Resonance waves tend to impact parallels at or near the same event location as the disruption that spawned them, often creating a similar effect.
An Intelligence Agent Speaks:
Imagine. You're an observer in a part of history that you know well. Suddenly that history starts to change by itself. People aren't doing or saying what you know they did, and the worst part is that nobody's causing it to happen. That's what happens when a resonance wave hits, and believe me, it can get pretty damn scary. Are the changes happening all on their lonesome, or have you just failed to spot the enemy?
The really weird thing about the resonance effect is the way it seems
to cause 'echoes' in a history. Let me give you an example. Suppose someone
altered the events of the general election in 1979 (AD) Great Britain,
resulting in a Labour government instead of a Conservative one. This change
triggers a timequake, and that creates a transparallel resonance wave.
The resonance wave hits the parallel next door a month or two uptime, and
suddenly their brand new Conservative government faces a massive scandal
that forces them to go to the polls again - and lose.
The event known as timeslip occurs when the chronospatial geometries of two or more separate event locations become temporarily linked, allowing passage from one to another without crossing the intervening space-time.
Timeslip may be caused by excessive degrees of any form of temporal stress, but arises only very rarely. However, when it does occur it can be hazardous in the extreme, as chronospatially displaced event entities may find themselves in hostile environs, or may themselves become the cause of temporal disruption.
Timeslip is an event of almost no duration, though it has been proved that the effects may be increased almost indefinitely by high levels of temporal uncertainty, forming a timewarp or temporal corridor. In unusual circumstances, timeslip may cause transparallel displacement as well as chronospatial translocation.
An Ops Agent Speaks:
Just when you thought it was safe to step back in the timestream, one jerk too many clocks in nearby and - squirt! - you're somewhen else. Kinda makes you wonder if God or whoever isn’t having a damn good laugh at us trying to hold the whole mess together.
Round here, extreme paranoia is an art form.
When the causal flow of an event location in hard timelock is subjected to a disruption of a magnitude great enough to overcome that timelock, the fabric of 'normal' space-time becomes distorted beyond the point of recovery. The displaced energy of timelock tears a hole in the parallel's chronoplasmic shell and ejects the affected event location and it's section of the timeline into the parachronal void of phase space. The resultant gap in the causal flow is then overwritten by events dictated by the destiny effect, while the hole is sealed by the pressure of temporal inertia and transparallel resonance.
An Ops Agent Speaks:
Of all the bizarre and terrifying things I've seen and heard about
since I joined up, this has got to be one of the most unpleasant. What
the manual doesn't do is spell out the upshot of a chronoclysm. Y'see boys
and girls, when a chronoclysm goes off, ground zero ceases to exist. Big
deal. But, because its portion of the timeline also gets sucked out to
Elvis knows where, it never did exist. We engineered one as a weapon once,
to wipe out a twenty year old enemy base in the late Jurassic. When the
light show died away, we went in, and I remember sitting to watch the sun
rise under a tree that must have been fifty years old. Five minutes ago
it had been a concrete bunker. Curious, I clocked back two years to see
the base in action. I guess I just wanted to see the enemy at work, and
maybe get to know them a little better. The base wasn’t there, but the
tree was. I still get dreams about that.
This phenomenon is thought to be a series of completely random, unpredictable disruptions that affect any number of parallels, transplanting event entities and locations between worlds. A time storm has no set duration and could theoretically continue into eternity.
A time storm could arise naturally from a combination of wave and resonance effects, when a large number of resonance waves impact a parallel at a temporal stress point (i.e. an event location in hard timelock, or a time wave point of disruption). The combined effect could cause a Terminal Disruption, destroying the parallel's chronoplasmic shell and spewing event entities and locations randomly throughout phase space. The backlash created by the parallel's terminal disruption could impact on other parallels with enough force to rupture their integrity at several points, with the same effect, creating an ever-widening chain reaction. Theoretically, it is possible that the spreading disruption could reach the critical disruption threshold, bursting the boundaries of the Omniversal continuum and triggering ultimate entropy - the end of time.
A Tech Agent Speaks:
Knowing too much about the causes and possible effects of the time storm is the primary contributing factor to the high suicide rate amongst parachronal physicists. As far as we know, a time storm has never happened (that’s why it’s called a conjecture), and we'd like to keep it that way. ‘Course, if one did happen, we’d probably never know about it until it was too late.
Sweet dreams.
This theory, largely ignored by current thinking, posited that in its original state the Omniverse was a complex and static series of events, unchanging until a meta-event of unknown origin created the first temporal tremors. These first tremors created others, which created a temporal chain reaction. Eventually the tremors evolved history to the point that it became possible for those with a sensitivity to time to see it in an entirely new way, paving the way for the discovery of time travel.
Once considered quite popular, this theory is now disregarded, mainly for its failure to provide an adequate explanation for the source of the Primal Disruption, as well as its implication that without it, temporal technology would never have been discovered. However, the theory has recently enjoyed a renaissance among more philosophically inclined temporal theorists, who have begun to equate the Primal Disruption with the gift of free will. Paul Christopher, a prominent temporal philosopher, has even gone on record as saying “the Primal Disruption was the push that set an infant creation on its first steps to maturity”. Others have likened it to the quickening of a child in the womb.
Whatever the true nature of the Primal Disruption, it is an insoluble riddle. The event itself, if it ever occurred, has long since been overwritten by other changes in the timeline. Even if it could be traced, it would be impossible to correct, as that correction itself might generate the very temporal tremors that led to the discovery of time travel.
A Temporal Physicist Speaks:
The Primal Disruption is to my colleagues and I what the Big Bang was to Cosmologists before the 23rd century. It’s an unknowable event, responsible for the meaningful existence of free will. It’s also the reason the Corps exists. Without the tremors created by the Primal Disruption, history would be a pure crystalline structure, unsullied by temporal travel. Those initial tremors, and others created by every time traveller since, are the reason behind the Corps biggest headache; the fact that someone can suddenly create a temporal disruption, when such an action was never before part of their history. This is why observers in the future can be surprised by the actions of someone in their past.
Normally, behaviour variations caused by temporal tremors are minor, kept in check by temporal inertia. Occasionally, a number of independent tremors can interact, overriding the local effect of temporal inertia. When this occurs, native decision influencing factors usually work to produce a similar event path as before. However, if an individual at such a confluence of tremors has the option to step away from those influencing factors through the use of time travel, the probability of historical disruption increases dramatically.
