TIME TRAVEL AND PARADOX


FOREWORD
Time Traveling in Game Mechanics is almost impossible. The truth is that in the Paradox Campaign, Time Travel is more often than not a plot device by the GM. To formulate the outcome and to play out events that were once already played out is difficult on a GM, let alone the players. That is not to say that it hasn't been done by players and more often NPC's, but rather that it's an exception rather than a rule. What follows is an attempt at a plausible explanation of what happens during Time Travel, and what are the possible outcomes that may occur when you change history. No rules are presented, what follows is an interpretation of one aspect that makes Paradox a decidedly different Amber campaign.

A. CAUSE AND EFFECT
Changing history can be reduced to this one very simple principal. Understanding this is the key to understanding 'paradox' as it relates to time traveling.

Every event that takes place has a reason for it. Cause A leads to Event B, and the two can not exist without the other. It is a disruption or a change in either of these two factors that leads to a paradox in the space/time fabric. If you're reading this and wondering why such matter of fact statements are being so carefully explained, then you're likely to be jumping to some rather large conclusions as to what happens when paradox is entered into the time streams.

To use an easy example, let's examine a situation as simple as a baseball breaking a window. The batter hitting a little too hard sends the ball shattering though the neighbor's window. Using some means of traveling through time, we prevent the batter from swinging. Ergo the ball is never propelled through the window. Ask yourself this, does this just indicate that the window won't be broken? If you answered yes, then you're jumping to a conclusion and missing the chain reaction that is paradox.

Your perception may be that the window isn't broken, but when the present moment actually comes, the window will be in such a state that the universe will indicate that it should break. That is paradox- an effect without a cause. Yet windows do not break for no reason. That is because the Universe will absolutely not tolerate true paradox. It will destroy itself before true paradox can actually exist. Barring it's own destruction it will react in a variety of ways to remove the paradox before it can actually take place. This may have every appearance of being an intelligent if not contrived response. This is illusion. The self correcting nature of the Cosmos is involuntary, but will go to any depth to complete it's correction.

In the example above, the reason you were told not to jump to a conclusion is that you do not necessarily know 'how' and in what form the Cosmos will remove the paradox. To suggest that the window will not be broken and history re-written is a possibility, but not necessarily the correct one. There are other possibilities.

B. CONSERVATION OF ENERGY
When a paradox is about to occur, depending on the circumstances, the self correcting phenomena may or may not necessarily appear to take place. The reason for that is that Universe must rearrange itself to prevent the paradox from taking place, and will do so in one of two ways. Either instantly or over a period of some time. In either scenario, this requires energy. Something somewhere must compensate for the effort it takes to prevent the paradox.

Let's return to our earlier example. We travel back in time and prevent the window from being broken. In the original timeline the window was broken, and series of chain reaction events followed it. The owner had to call someone to replace the window, or go to a hardware or glass cutter's shop. Then the effort to replace the window had to be made. Whoever fixed the window had to make time available from their schedules to do that, altering whatever events they may have otherwise done instead. Do you see? A multiple of other corrections will have to be made in order to 're-write history.' To juggle and rearrange those events requires energy. Ultimately this invokes another cosmic principal that is similar to the conservation of matter and energy. The Universe will employ as little expenditure of effort as it can. Typically the self correction phenomena can be broken down to two types of responses; a fluid time response, or temporal change.

C. FLUID TIME
The comparison to time as a river is where this term originates. A single reed or stone will not suffice to turn a river from it's course, the river simply flows around it. This illustrates the fluid time response.

Not every alteration in the timeline changes the whole of the Universe. Contrary to what fans of the Twilight Zone may think (from one of it's classic episodes), moving a few stones is not going to change civilization. Small changes can be made to minimize and avert big changes. Theoretically, even the act of going back in time itself is a change. However to borrow and pervert an expression from existentialism, if a tree falls down out in the woods does anyone really care? Fluid time rolls around such insignificant details and keeps the majority of events on track, and in some cases depending on local conditions it will resist against major changes.

Sometimes however, a temporal change taxes the Universe to a much greater degree. Let's use John F. Kennedy, late President of the United States, as an example. Were we to travel back and avert the gunman who fatally shot him, this would introduce a fairly substantial change for the history of Shadow Earth. When the self correcting phenomena kicked in, it could react in two different ways. It could rewrite all of history from that point on, or it could make a smaller change to prevent you from making a much larger one. That phenomena where the Universe appears to fighting against any change introduced is essentially the fluid time response.

In the case of John F. Kennedy, if you prevented one gunman from killing him, it may be a change to have another gunman kill him instead, but that may still require less energy than altering history to where he remains alive. Thus if it's not the Mafia, then it's the KGB, or Hoover, etc., so long as someone kills him. If on a cosmic scale, it were less taxing to allow him to live and rewrite history, then the Cosmos would abide with it.

The Terminator movies are both studies in timeloops and fluid time responses. As with the case of timeloops, philosophers can argue that the Terminators have always traveled back in time, and always will throughout Eternity looping from the past to the future. However if you operated on the premise that there was an original timeline where no Terminator came back in time, when they did for the first time they successfully made a temporal intervention yet failed to make any great changes in the timeline. Did the Terminators have unbelievably bad luck, or were they being foiled by fluid time responses? Chances are the Universe could abide by their presence in the past, but not with the great changes they intended to create. They were trapped in a timeloop, and caused to create the future they hoped to prevent. The timeline was changed, but not nearly as much as was intended by the robotic intelligence's.

Thus a fluid time response can have sometimes have a very compelling sensation of seeming like fate or destiny. The critical difference between a fluid time response and a temporal change is that the former is a reaction designed to introduce as little change as possible, for all purposes it's a 'defensive' reaction. It is the natural force that sometimes thwarts would-be temporal interventionists. Unlike a temporal change, the effects of a fluid time response can usually be evidenced immediately.

D. TEMPORAL NEXUS POINTS
One could argue that with a force as powerful as fluid time operating to minimize all possible changes in the timeline, how are any alterations made at all? The answer is that the relative 'strength and integrity' of a given timeline is stronger in some areas than in others. To return to our 'river of time' metaphor; sometimes the river is shallow, and sometimes it's not a river at all but a rather small creek. At these conjunctions where the river of time is not as strong or powerful, significant changes can be introduced with less resistance.

Usually a place and time is what we would define as a temporal nexus point, however one can argue that an entire person can be considered a nexus point.

How do these 'weak' or 'stress' points come into existence? This has only been hypothesized, but current conjecture suggests that an abundance of time travel, whether it led to temporal changes or not, can promote the occurrence of nexus points.

Another hypothesis regarding their creation, points to temporal changes elsewhere that create a strain on the whole Cosmos, even in places not related to where the temporal change took place. Remember we said that energy was required to patch up the holes where paradox attempts to enter the time stream? Temporal nexus points, which a weakness in the timestream, may be the side effect of the Cosmos having to stretch itself to cover some other deficiency. It could be likely that the 'toll' of displacing that energy to repair damage elsewhere could result in the weakening of other points that are may be susceptible to change.

Classic instances of temporal nexus points in the Paradox Campaigns are Clarissa, the Grove of the Unicorn during the Infection Wars, Celia's London in the 1950's.

E. TEMPORAL CHANGE AND WHEN IT TAKES PLACE

When fluid time is not enough to minimize an alteration, and paradox must be averted then what we commonly think of as 'changing history' takes place.

Interestingly enough, a temporal change is not always immediately evidenced when it occurs. We're not sure at this time why that is, but there seems to be a definite pattern to it. Temporal change and a fluid time response are both 'alterations' in the timeline, but the fluid time response happens immediately at the 'present moment' relative to the change introduced (remember it's a defensive and minimizing phenomena). The temporal change begins to take place in the 'future' relative to the moment the alteration took place, and work it's way back to the incident.

Let's give a few examples in and out of the Paradox Campaign. If one remembers the original 'Back to the Future' movie (part I) Marty McFly intervenes (accidentally) with the meeting of his mother and father. Now Marty didn't immediately vanish as time and space rearranged itself.. No, those changes were being made in the future relative to where Marty currently was at, and moving backwards towards the moment the change took place. This phenomena is erroneously called a 'Paradox Wave' (which is not a technically precise term as true paradox can not exist).

Another example is when Urda accidentally disrupted the twin blood curses that were part of Clarissa's convoluted history. Her entire line didn't immediately vanish, but it was starting to...

F. TIMELOOPS
Timeloops are those curious circumstances when time travel has become an accepted part of the timeline, so that the events or persons involved in the timeloop do not create paradoxes, but in fact prevent them from happening.

To use our example of the Terminator movies; the Terminator Robots come back in time to prevent their eventual defeat. They fail in this, but the act of coming back in time leads to their creation in the first place. The Universe has now changed so that should they be prevented from making their temporal intervention it would create a paradox. That is opposite of what is the normal situation where the intervention may lead to paradox.

Timeloops are perilous things, for once set in motion, they must continue to be kept in motion or paradox will certainly arise. Unfortunately their very nature also makes them prime temporal nexus points.

An example from the Paradox Campaign; Celia is the most famous and widely known example of someone in a timeloop. Having left the future at some point, she returned to the ancient past to live out a parallel life with her younger self. She is removed from the timeline by the Drake, while her younger self makes the same journey to the past. Thus for all of eternity, younger Celia will pass by her older counter-part. To demonstrate that these timeloops are delicate things, recall that the Drake (in the guise of Broceliade Drake) for some undisclosed reason has substituted herself as Celia's mother, using it's supreme mastery of the art of Paradigm. Fluid time has seen that Celia herself has remained unchanged by this, nevertheless the ancestry has been altered in that line. Celia (the older version as she is commonly thought of) is now past the point of the loop, and her future remains untold.

G. TIMECRASH
Timecrash is the proposed destruction of the Universe due to the event of a paradox. Experience has shown that it is possible to stress the fabric of the space/time continuum to the point that fluid time is unable to counteract a paradox, and that no alternatives exist for a temporal change to occur. It also is used to describe an event that prevents some key event that the Cosmos requires to happen for it's own integrity.

The 'Clarissa Loops' are an example of a timecrash waiting to happen. Former Queen of Amber, Clarissa is in a series of timeloops, the events of which are mandated by the Universe. So riddled is her timeline with temporal nexus points that any disruption at all could have disastrous consequences.

H. UNUSUAL HYPOTHESIS AND STRANGE EFFECTS
Not every idea we have regarding time and it's relative dimensions in space lends itself to easy categories. Here is one hypothesis that doesn't lend itself to easy categories, and one event from the Paradox Campaign that also defies easy explanation.

1.) When one talks about time travel in the Paradox Campaign, usually where the Player Character is at is considered for the to be the 'present'. Yet some scholars have reputed if it is even possible to travel to the future. After all is the future not yet undecided? If those events have not yet occurred yet, then how do we really know that they have even taken a definite pattern.

If they have, then that brings to mind a model of the Universe where everything yet to occur is waiting somewhere on some form of phantom backstage, ready to walk out when the 'present' arrives. The time traveler going to the future is actually going behind the 'curtains of the Universe's metaphorical stage' and looking at the props and actors yet to be introduced. This doesn't always set well with even the least scholarly Logicians.

One attempt to explain this is that from our perception we 'think' we are living at the present moment, but in reality we are living in the past. That sometime far forward, perhaps billions and billions of whatever measurable unit of time you wish to use, there is the true present. And that we are all just living in the past relative to that true present moment, and no form of time travel will go before that single solitary 'present' moment of creation. We believe that we are experiencing the present, but that is an illusion of our senses, because we have a tendency to think of as time being relative to ourselves.. Not perhaps some natural cosmic phenomena. This is called the "Creation Barrier", because it suggests that each moment of the Universe is being created one moment at a time, and nothing exists prior to that.

2.) In one particular episode in the Paradox Campaign which should be treated separately, a strange event took place. Some unknown event took place that initiated a temporal change and a consequential paradox wave. This change would have certainly have removed several key persons from Amber's timeline, which is crucial to the integrity of the Universe. Perhaps by a rather strange reaction to fluid time, these individuals began to merge with other family members, hiding within their aspects in an attempt to avert their erasure. For example; Celia was hidden within the aspect of Fiona, Urda was hidden within an aspect of Dworkin, Jacob hidden within Oberon's aspect, Raven within Caine's, etc..

Again, we can guess that this was a fluid time response, but not one ever noted as ever happening before in the known history of the Universe. This is still a hot topic of debate by logician's everywhere.

J. TEMPORAL INTERVENTION IN THE GAME
Knowing all this information and putting it to some practical use within the Paradox Campaign is a challenge, even to the author. We know that it has happened on several occasions, but only Tony knows to what depth and to what degree. Here are a few known instances of temporal intervention that someone may know about..

1.) The Clarissa Loops- Blessed and cursed with some knowledge of future events, Clarissa appears to be living out existence in more than one loop. This is complex that even the author can not quite explain it to it's fullest. We can almost see where Fiona gets her diabolical nature from her mother, as Clarissa is responsible for more than one terrible deed that has affected the Amber family. Yet objectively Clarissa is bound to her misfortune to preserve her own life and to maintain some unknown end result that is for a greater good. The crux of Clarissa's conflicts is their lack of perception of this, or the nagging sensation that there may be another means to an end than what Clarissa has sometimes chosen. She is loved by few, misunderstood by some, and disliked or hated by almost as many.

2.) Celia - Born the daughter of an amnesia ridden Corwin in 1950's London on Shadow Earth, Celia has gone back in time and lived through out the period before Corwin had his memory loss, with a silent agreement with some members of the family not to reveal to her younger self the truth.

3.) Darthene's Rescue- At the first sighting of Nikolas, Jacob's grandson arrives to aide Andelia and Jacob in rescuing Darthene.

4.) Battle for Morganthe (a.k.a. the Time War)- in a bold experiment to determine the location of Corwin, Jacob used a process to scry into the past to determine who had abducted his Grandfather from the infirmary (prior to Corwin's exile to Earth). First he performed this in the kitchen to see who had drugged the food, and noting that it appeared to be Mandor of Chaos (or someone assuming that form) and Eric. Moving to the actual infirmary there he observed Kireyas and Eric moving Corwin's body. At that point however Kireyas somehow sensed Jacob's efforts and saw him in the future spying on him, and blocked the scry. Immediately after that, he was summoned to Rebma where he was told that Morganthe was murdered by an assassin who tried to make it appear to be suicide, and who may have used Andelia's form to do it. Thinking that Kireyas was the shapeshifter responsible along with the other deeds, he time traveled to the past and replaced Morganthe with a double who was poisoned instead. The true fate of Morganthe has yet to be revealed publicly.

5.) Current Events- are not to be revealed at this time, but it does appear that Nikolas has returned to continue his meddling in his own past.

K. CHANGING TIME IN SHADOW
As a general rule it is easier to change time and history the farther from reality you are, particularly in Shadow. Shadow is weaker, and more prone to having a greater number of nexus points in it's timeline. After all, it is just a Shadow, and it may not affect the whole Cosmos when one examine the larger perspective. That is not to say that paradox will be allowed, it will not.. But fluid time is less likely to come into play in such areas. The ability to 'Control Destiny of a Shadow' would give one the ability to 'shore up' or create these nexus points.

When one starts to encounter fluid time, it's a sure sign that the area is of greater significance. Yet, if that is the case, one could argue why have so many potent changes happened near reality? That is because the actions and presence of many there cause the nexus points that override fluid time.

Unlike the inherent 'reality' that is added to a Shadow by real people, such individuals can either add or remove nexus points. This may depend on many factors, including their actions, and subconscious thoughts. If one were to be truly fond of a shadow and not wish it to change, that shadow may over time build quite a resistance to temporal intervention. If Clarissa spent a lot of time there, it may be ripe with nexus points.

L. SENSING THE CHANGES
As mentioned elsewhere, many NPC's or characters with the Advanced and Exalted Paradox Logic abilities can sometimes search or even intuitively sense for these temporal disruptions. This is left to the discretion of the GM, but bear in mind that fluid time responses creates a much smaller fluctuation than a temporal change. A large scale temporal change that involves 'reality' will be hard to miss as the paradox wave moves through rearranging things. The 'real' people and places that are involved, the greater the disturbance.

AFTERWORD
As I mentioned in the beginning, there were no rules or guidelines for Time Travel in Paradox. There simply isn't any. If broken down to the simplest way to put it, if one attempts to change history, and it fails due to fluid time, it's because Tony wanted it to fail for the good of the story. If you do change history, it again is because Tony thought it would be good for the story. What you have just read, is not so much the letter of the law, but an attempt to put forth some ideas to make sense of this aspect of the game. Time Travel in game mechanics is simply too chaotic an ability to be allowed to be used indiscriminately. It has to be doled out, and used as a plot device sparingly, but that doesn't mean we can't try to understand how it works. Consider this writing for your amusement, or for your imagination. In any case, thanks for reading it.


Contributors: Jim Groves (shroudling@aol.com)
Editor/Webmaster: Scott Olson (sdo@nospam.visi.com)
Gamemaster: Tony Pi (cpi@po-box.mcgill.ca)