this is why time travel stories always make my head hurt...

[ratcreature]

I've been thinking about the ST:AOS timeline. Presumably it is like the TOS reality until the Kelvin is destroyed by Nero. But when I thought about that, how do the timetravel events work that have various future crews (from the regular timeline) interact with the past pre-split? Like how did the events of Star Trek: First Contact happen in the AOS reality? I mean, which version of the future characters have now ended up in the past? Or am I approaching this wrong? This makes my head hurt.

Comments

[soshoni.livejournal.com]

That's a... really interesting question. I hadn't even thought about that.

I found your journal because you made a really insightful comment about the reasoning for Spock's marooning Kirk in a thread and I wanted to get to know you better.

Here's my take on it.

So what was originally hurting my brain over this one is the fact that I was viewing the timeline as a fork. Like so. With the red dot being the point in TNG with First Contact and the grey path being their trip back. Which would mean that once events reach that point in the alternate timeline, they'd go back to the same point and brains would explode.

(http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc267/Soshoni/mybrainisbroke/?action=view&current=first.jpg)

But, if instead of viewing it as a fork, but as the creation of a *parallel* timeline, brains don't have to hurt.

(http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc267/Soshoni/mybrainisbroke/?action=view&current=second.jpg)

Thus, when events finally do reach that point in the alternate timeline, if they do go back, the timeline simply exists for them, like with Schrodinger's cat it doesn't matter until that point. If things change enough in the new timeline that they don't have to, well, it stays like the above one. But if they do, then we have this.

(http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc267/Soshoni/mybrainisbroke/?action=view&current=third.jpg)


Yes? No? Maybe?

[ratcreature]

But wouldn't in your model timetravel changes mean a split with a creation of a past and a future as a whole for all timetravel? Would something like the grey path even exist?

[soshoni.livejournal.com]

For a moment I got all pissy with the website for not e-mailing me that you'd replied and then realized of course it wouldn't, because I'm not actually *on* DW, lol.

So, in my models, time travel changes only result in the creation of a parallel timeline if significant changes are made, whereas in First Contact, the point was that they prevented those changes from being made, preventing the creation of an alternate timeline. They preserved the timeline, keeping that last model and the grey line accurate.

Now, if they hadn't prevented the changes, we'd have something that ended up looking like this. In the terminal timelines, there are no red dots because there was no human civilization to make the attempt at time travel.

(http://s216.photobucket.com/albums/cc267/Soshoni/mybrainisbroke/?action=view&current=fourth.jpg)

Yeah?

[ratcreature]

I think my problem lies with that I just can't imagine how something like "significant change" would be quantifiable in a way that would work within whatever scientific equations would govern the timetravel, and how/when the extra past would manifest if it doesn't with the timetravel event somehow splitting the universe, but only once "ordinary" actions happen that will have huge consequences down the line. I guess for any of this to make sense I'd need some kind of multidimensional brain or something, LOL.

BTW, with an OpenID account you get notification emails if you want to if you confirm an email address for the account (obviously if there's no email associated nothing can be sent). At least when I didn't have a DW account yet and commented with OpenID I still got mail.

[soshoni.livejournal.com]

Brilliant, thanks for the heads up on the notifications deal.

Sorry I couldn't help make it make sense! Then again, if some random person with MS Paint and internet access could make time travel make sense, we'd probably be living in a much more interesting world.

Hope I didn't confuse you too much more with the extra past bit. My whole deal with the extra past not existing before the time travel, it very well might exist before the time travel, but it's not interacted with until the second time travel, so it's existence can't be 'proved' one way or another.

Anyways, you might see me pop up around your journal every once in a while in the future if you don't mind. And I hope your rat gets better and that it's not anything serious!

[ratcreature]

I don't think anything could have made me more confused than before. The visualizations certainly help, the other idea with an image to explain things I've seen is that timetravel wouldn't create forks nor entirely different realities, but changes sort of "ripple" in all time directions, altering everything, or if the timetravel manages to be of the internally consistent kind the ripples would be there but the actions cancel each other out like in an interference pattern or something like that, so that the future and past away from the incidents wasn't changed.

You are very welcome to check my journal. And thanks for the well wishes for my rat. I'm just about to go drop him off with the vet for the operation, so I hope he'll get through that okay.

[soshoni.livejournal.com]

Just thought of this, but technically I should have a red dot symbolizing Nero and a grey path to the 'beginning' of the AOS continuity. Just kinda pretend it's there.

[medie]

The way I've heard it explained is that it's like throwing a rock into a pond. The ripples go out in all directions. Therefore the involvement of future crews in the past never happens. First Contact, for example, plays out like it originally did. No Enterprise D because the Borg never went back to try and stop it.

Which doesn't mean that it won't happen. If, in theory, Starfleet still meets the Borg in the 24th century, Wolf 359 still happens, the Borg still lose every contact they have with the Federation and the Fleet, and come to the same conclusion, it might be a similar Enterprise D that goes back, or it might not be the Enterprise D at all. It might be some ship we've never heard of with a crew we don't know.

The implication from the movie is that time is trying to fix itself, coaxing people and events into a semblance of order like its original self. Therefore it might be able to resolve itself so that it is a similar crew, if not a virtually identical one, that goes back.

All in all, omg the brain breaking involved *G*

[ratcreature]

So the past changes along with the future all at once as the universe changes, sort of simultaneously sideways all points of the timeline adjust due to some meddling timetraveller interfering at some point? Do the memories of people auto-realign? Aaugh. *sounds of brain breaking*

Clearly we are not meant for multidimensonal thinking. I feel like a flatland square or something.

[liviapenn.livejournal.com]

I totally saw someone write up a meta about this but I can't remember who-- seperis, maybe? Anyway, yes-- and it's kind of a clever way to explain away any changes to the timeline that *can't* be explained by Nero's incursion. Like, why does Sarek have blue eyes and Amanda have brown eyes instead of the reverse? Clearly it's because Nero changed Kirk and Spock's destinies which means that now, when this new rebooted Kirk and Spock go *back* in time to the 1950s or whatever, they do things slightly differently and that causes changes to ripple *forward*. :D

[ratcreature]

I think I even read that meta... was that the one that also talked about Vulcan being different die to the earlier revelation of the Romulans?

But yeah, there is a sort of handwavy elegance to this explanation as long as you don't try to follow any causality too closely.

[lazar-grrl.livejournal.com]

Something to think about: When Enterprise-C came through a rift into the future, thus creating the universe where the Klingons and Federation were at war, the Tasha Yar from that universe went back in time with the Enterprise-C and lived out her life in the main universe, even though she was dead in the main universe and the universe she came from ceased to exist (or was no longer the main universe, or whatever).

Going by that, the crew from First Contact no longer exist (or only exist in the main universe, or whatever) except for that time period where they travel to Earth, meet Zefram Cochrane, etc., because their timeline has been trimmed from existence except for that past loop.

It's a big bowl of timey-wimey stuff. A plate of four-dimensional spaghetti thrown at the wall.

[ratcreature]

Though isn't the First Contact scenario different? I mean, it would not be their own timetravel event that makes their universe impossible. Augh.

I suppose I just have to assume that there is something in the ST universe(s) that causes the overall gestalt of events to stay similar and makes sure that things stay internally consistent as the inhabitants perceive it, in that certain connected events change in tandem across times and then the overall timeline of the AOS universe might align itself somehow.