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Chapter 29 Preview
Thanks .

Carol

you need to update your TOC. It only goes to 14...

James

I always forget that...

Off to do it now...

Carol

Edit - is through 16 now . More coming...

thank you.

Oy! There's got to be a way back somehow! All of these timelines are confusing.

Welcome to my headache, Karen . Again, I hope it all makes at least some sense by the time I'm done...

James - It's all caught up now .

Carol

Carol, I can't help but feel that I'd be so much more affected by this if I had any clue what was going on... Part of it, of course, is my fault for not having read the original epic and another part of it is probably that I stayed up too late last night (my homework was not particularly brilliant but I did get it all in on time) and my brain is fuzzy today... but I'm losing track.

Though I did wonder about paradoxes, and how could they go back to their lives when it's the result of them telling their earlier selves things, when they don't remember being those earlier selves getting the advice?

I guess I'll continue not-reading the story and see if I figure things out at some point...

PJ

I'd write a FDK if I could see the keyboard. But right now I'm very dizzy...
Maybe when my head stop spinning...

Time travel sure is a dangerous thing. Maybe this is why it wasn't invented yet. Or it *was* invented but after infinite problems somebody from the future came back and told the inventor to *not* invent it. But if it wasn't invented, future-person couldn't have come back. And if he didn't come back, time travel *was* invented and there you go again. Dizzy, anybody?
Andreia /feeling slightly loony after trying to figure it out.

Okay, now my head's spinning. I never saw alternate LnC coming

So, they're going to spend the next 6-8 parts on how to fix their timeline? Or not fix it? Poor Lois has to go back to a life without her mother/sister/brother?

And I think Tempus knew fully well what he was doing. Or, well, he tried to by making LnC1 destroy the lives of LnC2

Michael

Now I know how Ozzy feels. "Sharon, I'm so confused!"

Seriously, I was pretty confused there towards the end, and I had to go back and reread. I think I know what Lois and Clark are going to have to do to get back to their own lives, and that worries me. Argh, Tempus!

Guess I agree about the confusion. Usually I prefer one set of Lois and Clark over two sets of them, let alone six(?). Ah well!

But I loved the preview. I really want Lois to sit with her mother and to be held by her like a little girl.

Ann

Hmmmmmm.

Either Tempus was smarter than I gave him credit for, so he DID fix it so they can't change events other than the car accident.

OR - Time travel is a lot more complicated than Tempus or Lois and Clark realize. (Don't forget, Tempus USES time travel, etc. but it was Wells that invented the machine.) So in this case, ANYTHING they change will create a new reality with a new Lois and Clark.
Therefore, if they go back and recreate the car accident, they will see a new Lois and Clark at the end, rather than get their lives back.

So I guess, Tempus really would win. Divorce and remarriage laws, anyone?
I still don't see how they will able to survive without their boys, though, even if they do have OTHER KIDS.

I'm reminded of the first book about not-exactly-time-travel that I read, which made an incredible impression on me. It was Gregory Benford's Timescape from 1980. The story is set in 1998, which of course was the future from 1980's point of view, and the Earth is on the brink of an ecological collapse. What has happened is that a certain strain of ocean-living bacteria has mutated so that it can live on a certain kind of toxins that humanity has dumped in the ocean. The bacteria thrive and spread exponentially, making the oceans erupt in huge 'bubbles' of rust-colored bacteria infestation, forming yellow clouds in the sky as ocean water evaporates, and raining down onto the earth as bacterial precipitation.

Desperate scientists try to save the Earth. They conclude that it is too late to combat the bacteria and save the oceans. Instead, their only hope is to actually try to send a message to the past and try to persuade the people of the past not to dump so many toxins in the oceans, thereby changing the course of history.

The scientists have sort-of-tamed Albert Einstein's hypothetical particles, the tachyons. Tachyons move faster than light, and they can never slow down below the speed of light. Therefore the tachyons might actually carry a message into the past, since it is hypothesized that we would actually travel to the past if we could move faster than light.

One extremely memorable one-liner from Gregory Benford's book was this. One person wondered why, if scientists could control tachyons, they could not build a spaceship of tachyons that could carry humanity to safety in the past. The scientist answered, 'How do you propose to get on a spaceship that is flying past you faster than light?' How indeed?

So the scientists were going to send a message, Morse code-like, into the past, with the help of tachyons. Another extremely memorable one-liner from the book was when the scientists were trying to aim their tachyon message beam at the right place. They were actually aiming it into the sky, otherwise it wouldn't reach the Earth's past! One astounded civil servant asked the scientists, 'You mean the past is in the sky somewhere?' And you know, the answer is yes. The past is in the sky. The reason for that is that the Earth, along with the rest of the solar system, is continually moving through space. We are not in the same place in space now as we were thirty years ago. If we want to send a message to the Earth thirty years ago, we will have to send that message into the the part of the sky where we were at that time. (Which means, by the way, that there is more to time travel than meets the eye, and you would actually have to travel in space as well as in time, if you want to visit the Earth of the past.)

Back to Gregory Benford's book. The scientists are successful. They do manage to send their message to the past, and the people of the past heed the warning and save the Earth. But guess what? This doesn't save the people of the future, those who sent the warning to the past. Instead the timeline splits in two, one timeline where the Earth is saved, and one where it plunges, unstoppable, into ecological collapse.

And it really makes excellent sense that the timeline would split in two. If the situation in the future was not absolutely desperate, the people of the future would not be desperate enough to try to send a message to the past. So if the people of the past receive a message from the future, then the situation in that future has spiralled out of control. And if the people of the past heed the warning from the future and save themselves, then the people of the future are nevertheless doomed, otherwise they wouldn't have made it possible for the people of the past to save themselves... it makes your head hurt, no?

So I wonder how many timelines we are going to end up with here, Carol!

Ann

/waves/

As for the paradoxes... I have explanations ready - we'll see if they work .

As for the dizzy thing - believe me. BTDT. Hopefully by the end of the thing it'll be explained well enough.

As for Ann's timeline question... There are 6 at the moment.

1. OTOH original time line
2. UP new time line [when E/L/D didn't die - where they wake up Christmas morning] - Clark married to Lana, Lois engaged to Joe
3. Lois dies on the way to the cabin
4. Lois/Joe married with a daughter
5. Lois/Clark separated with only Christopher
6. Lois/Clark with C/Nate and E/L/D alive - this is what they wanted for themselves but when they got there there was already a Lois and Clark there...

Does that help at all?! Will there be any more? Ah, RAFO!

Carol

Wow! Super-Wow! still reading it, enjoying it and looking forward to more.

Although I'm a bit worried after reading Clark's "we'll stay here."