Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related Time travel story idea... does it work?

I came up with this idea yesterday... not that I'm gonna start writing it anytime soon, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

Tempus goes back in the past and changes something which, in a chain-of-events sort of way, results in a non-Utopia future. H.G. Wells discover this, but what Tempus did is such a minor detail that he can't find what it is. The solution is not to tell L&C what to avoid because even if one little event has been changed, things tend not to go as originally planned. So the only solution is to find out what Tempus did and reverse it (with L&C's help, of course).

What do you think? Makes any sense? Does it work with what we know about time travel etc.?

Thanks,
AnnaBtG.

Yes, it's possible. There's a lot we don't know for sure about time travel. Certainly, there's the possibility that one small change down the road can end up having a big difference (actually, that's been the basis for quite a few fics over the years), and if it's done right, then yeah, it might be hard to pin down where the change happened to anything less than a few years.

Paul

It works, Anna. I've got an outline for a rather confuzzling time travel fic that I'm still figuring out...

Laura

Centuries ago when I was in junior high we had to read a short story in which you could take time travel vacations of going back into the past and hunting. The premise was that they scouted it out before they took you so that you killed the animal just before it died anyway. However in the story it was very important that you remain on this marked path because if you changed anything terrible things would happend. Well in the story the "hunter" became terrified of the dinosaurs they were hunting and ran through the forest off the designated path. The guide went crazy because in doing so he killed an insect. The hunter couldn't understand the big deal until they returned to their time and found out it had all changed because of 1 insect dying a million years before.

It is based on the idea of the ripple effect. In the large scheme of things a lone insect seems like nothing. But it would have reproduced and had many babies. Now with those not existing other animals are effected because all those babies won't reproduce. Plus they would be in the food chain for others to feed on which can lead to famine, disease, war.

So if you believe this and I do which is why I couldn't figure out why Tempus could do all this messing around with Superman and wind up even being born in the future. So your idea has plenty of merit.

Thanks, FoLCs.

Now, if I only find some time for it...

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

The story Kmar is referring to is "The Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury (I think). The problem with this (and with all 'change the past to change the future' stories) is that you then have made one or more events in the past dependent on a future which hasn't happened yet.

Confused by that last statement? Wait, you haven't heard the good part yet. If Tempus, for example, goes back in time and kills Clark as a baby in Schuster's Field, Utopia doesn't happen, and the chain of events that causes his parents to meet is also broken, therefore he doesn't exist, and he can't be there to expose Clark to Kryponite, so Clark grows up to be Superman and marries Lois and the result is Utopia and Tempus gets bored and goes back in time --

Ouch. My head hurts.

There are a couple of ways to get around that loop in causality. The first is the most obvious, that our universe is actually a determinist universe and there is no free choice for anyone, we're only playing our parts, and any individuality we think we feel is an illusion.

Me, I don't like that one. Besides, it would mean that all my imaginations are a product of natural and mechanical processes, not my own sparkling wit and vivid thought processes.

The second obvious way is to postulate a "branch" universe created by the change in the timestream. This theory says that every choice made anywhere at any time has a possibility of carving out a new path of reality, and that every choice we make in fact does create a new reality.

I'm not real fond of that one either, because no one has shown that there's room for an infinite number of parallel universes in our reality. It's a wonderful fictional concept, but not many scientists embrace it. (Some talk about it because they can't think of any other theory that fits their world view.) But it's the theory that seems to fit the alt-Superman worlds in the actual show and in a lot of the fanfic on this site, and if you were asking me directly, I'd advise you to go with this one.

For more information (assuming you want to subject yourself to it), just type in "chaos theory" in any search engine.

Hope this helps the discussion.

But we could suppose that the new chain of events doesn't affect *everything*, right? Tempus would have made sure to alter the past in a way that would not affect his own past - or present, for that matter...

(Just trying to find a way around it...)

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

And another question...

Wasn't there some kind of 'team' dealing with problems in timelines or something like this? When would they interfere?

Thanks,
AnnaBtG.

/me wonders if Andrus will show up to help explain things...

Yes, Anna, there was a team from Utopia who showed up in "Lois and Clarks." As for when they'd show up, whenever you feel like it, pretty much. Most FoLCs probably won't think of them if you don't mention them, or, if things turn out okay without them, you could just say they knew that things would work out and didn't want to interfere unnecessarily.

If you do need them to show up, they'll try to do so at the time when they're most needed. It's up to them (and you) to determine when, exactly, that is.

As for what Terry was saying, there are a variety of options.

You can have one single universe which can be changed by time travellers. The travellers are outside of the timestream when the changes take place, and so are unaffected. Tempus existed. He went back in time to change things. Now Utopia doesn't exist, so the man who would have become Tempus (if he's even born) will not grow up in the same way. Tempus still exists, however, because he separated himself from that future when he went back into the past.

There isn't really support for this theory in L&C canon, though, because in Tempus Fugitive, Tempus threatens baby Clark. Future Clark starts to fade, even though he also went back in time. Tempus, however, does not start to fade, which, really, is kind of confusing but can probably be explained in some way or other.

There is, however, canon support for parallel universes. There's the Alt-Universe, and there was mention of an infinite number of others.

To explain this theory, I suggest listening to Doc Brown's mini lecture in Back to the Future, Part II. Basically, it goes like this...

A given timeline is linear.

A-----B-----C-

Stuff happens at point A which leads to stuff happening at point B which leads to stuff happening at point C. Time marches on at a steady rate of one second per second (unless you're travelling at close to light speed, but that's another matter), and life as we know it goes on.

Now, though, let's say there's a time traveller. He leaves from point C and goes back to point A. For him, A, B, and C have all happened already, but for everyone else, point A is the present and points B and C are just possibilities that haven't happened yet.

Now, our time traveller changes something in point A. This can have a major effect, no effect, or anything in between. It depends on what the change is and how important you think every little detail is.

If you think a butterfly can flap its wings in South America, thus causing changes in the air currents which cause other changes which start to work off each other, causing ever larger changes until you eventually end up with a thunderstorm over Europe, then you believe that even a small change can make a difference. In that case, going back in time and stepping on said butterfly will very likely cause a large change to the future.

If, on the other hand, you think that the weather is a large system affected by a huge number of variables and that whatever a butterfly can do will just be damped down by larger currents, then you believe that it would take a large effort to make a change (if a change is even possible) and going back in time to step on a single butterfly won't make any noticable difference at all.

In between those two views is a whole range of possibilities, and, since I have no personal knowledge of any actual time travellers, I can't tell you where along that range the truth lies.

You, however, are more or less free to determine where the truth lies for your story's universe. (Just remember that we did see some rules established in Soul Mates. You and your readers may or may not care about that.)

Now, let's get back to our time traveller. He went from point C back to point A. Then he made some changes to point A. We don't know what difference, if any, that will make.

One theory says that any changes he made were, in fact, already made before he left, so that when he goes back to the future, he'll just wind up right back at point C. That can make for a cool story, where you explain to the reader just why that change had already happened and why he didn't know about it before he left. It does kind of narrow your choices, though.

Another theory (Doc Brown's), says that making any change will result in the creation of a new timeline.


A----,,,,B,,,,C,,
........\___B____C'__

(The periods are there because the boards delete extra spaces. Ignore them as best you can. The commas indicate the old timeline, which may or may not still exist in another universe.)

Here, because of the changes, there's a new future. Shortly after point A, the time traveller's changes cause things to happen differently. From there, history will write itself out along a new direction, leading to a new future with B' and C' and so on. Whether or not the original point C still exists in some parallel universe is up to you. The thing is that to anyone other than the time traveller, the timeline now looks like this...


-----A---B'----C'--


They don't know there was a branching. They don't know that things were supposed to go to B instead of B'. They just know that after A, what happened was B' and then C' and so on.

What happened to the time traveller is up to you. Generally, convention says that he continues as he was. For him, history looks like this:

A----B-----C-- ~ A---B'----C'--


He lived through A, B, and C (or, at least A and B were established history for him), went back in time at point C (causing a personal discontinuity which I've denoted with a ~ ), and is now living in a new timeline. This means that when he gets to C', he'll be older than when he left at point C, because he'll have lived through A, B, and C in addition to A, B', and C'.

Other theories say that, since he wiped out point C, he no longer exists, either, and the universe, thanks to his changes, will simply continue down the new track without him.

It's up to you to decide what works and what doesn't. As long as you stay consistent, you shoul be fine.

And don't worry, even professional authors have written things that, to me, make no sense. It can be hard to avoid it. Just do your best, and know that your readers are willing to give you some leeway because they can't say how things should work, either.

Paul

These time-travel theories are fascinating. Thanks, Paul!

I guess I'll have to follow the theory that fits the story best And, well, we'll see how it progresses

Thanks again, everyone
See ya,
AnnaBtG.

This theory matches with what we saw in Tempus Fugitive. Remember that Clark said his parents had always told him they saw a light in the sky just before they found him? When he went back in time to stop Tempus, he found his baby self had landed way too early in the day, and as a result, Clark made the light for his parents to see. So the change that he made was a change that had already happened in his present.

That's true, but the show wasn't consistent. Otherwise, Tempus wouldn't have been able to threaten the timeline in that very same episode by almost killing baby Clark. Also, in Soulmates, L&C did make changes to the past that impacted the future.

Paul

So maybe some changes are meant to happen and some aren't...

See ya,
AnnaBtG.