Grrl Power #504 – Rollback
Krona’s problem is that she can’t google “time loop” and see how other reality hackers have approached it. There’s no GitHub for what she does. Amusingly, there are a lot of stories of early games back in the day turning out how they did because the programmers just didn’t know what how to do what they wanted.* In Krona’s case, experimentation may not be a great idea – but for all she knows the universe has a killer error handling routine.
The “spells” she comes up with are difficult to test, and she doesn’t know how to make a universe in a box to play around in unlike some people. Chances are she’ll have to stick to smaller tricks for a while.
*I just watched this cool video of a GDC presentation by Peter Molyneux where he talks about one of the major game features of Populus (it was an amazing game you young people) where you could elevate the ground, all arose because he couldn’t figure out how to program the AI behavior when the people reached the edges of the land. Also that Molyneux, game industry luminary, got into making games because someone mistakenly gave him a bunch of Amigas. Watch the video it’s pretty interesting.
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Krona has got to make sure that they dont get Krono Triggered and cause massive changes to the space time continuum that could either harm or destroy the timeline.
You cheeky devil.
“But the future….refused to change…..:Lavos Shriek:”
Well only because he is stubborn and refused to move out of his swamp. Plus, of course, having the invaluable help of Donkey.
::looks up form his bucket of turnips::
Eh?
::hooves through his datebook::
Uhm.. be right back…
::nonchalantly trots out of the room::
Ask me about mucking with temporal mechanics for fun and profit…
Krona should talk to Dabbler. She probably knows an entity that knows an entity where manipulating time is part of their sthick.
So Krona just has to produce a 1m x 1m x 2m blue box (on the outside anyway) that is really just a 4-dimensional interface for a much more multi-dimensional object. Where it was originally, well, just hope that the original operator has some trouble building another one, but when he is finished, he is coming to get his original, at the time and place of his choosing.
Doesn’t that mean that the bad guy may still have some of Sydney’s blood?
The stolen blood was probably restored along with Sydney. The more important question is if Sciona still has knowledge of them or if she was reset as well.
Telling Sydney she has three resets is more of a concern.
or more of a challenge, from Sydney’s viewpoint.
Had. The loop has been disabled.
Key word: probably
As far as we know the reset was triggered by Sydney’s panic/stress. She may not have been cut at all.
Probably not. Krona’s “trigger conditions” included the stress level that Sydney had from the threat of being drained. Krona’s “checkpoint” is likely to have triggered before Sciona actually cut Sydney.
You are forgetting the first (or the second) thing Sydney did when re-appearing on the roof: she checked her chest, not her wrists
Either option is equally plausible, in my opinion. Normally I would default to assuming that Sydney was not harmed, due to the comic avoiding the more gory options, where possible. However Sydney herself put it back in play with her tombstone ‘achievement unlocked’.
Your counter is good supporting evidence for her having been stabbed, in the chest, out of shot. But, equally, Sydney could have just done that in anticipation (if she was starting to do that before the reset) or in relief (if after it). Plus, of course, her continual play-acting means the tombstone has no particular significance, for resolving this.
Therefore I am happy to use whichever one suits a particular argument best. Likewise I will not object to anyone using either option. However I might choose the opposing option, if it supports a retort I wish to raise for some other reason.
Always viewed it as DaveB not showing the gory bits, not that there wouldn’t be gory bits
She could not have been checking her chest before the reset as Sci-fright would have still been holding both of her wrists
True on both points.
Unlikely to have Sydney’s blood, but might still have Pixel’s.
Agreed, but doing the math to prove this is a darned sight more complicated than it at first appears. When you factor in all of the arguments that have been raised to date. It made my head hurt, halfway through, so I stopped. Dogs is not good at temporal maths.
I did invent a unit of measurement in the process though, due to the unknown elements involved. The Occam!
*wags tail in the path of an equilateral triangle*
In addition to easily calculated results (for instance where we can make a judgement call that either option is equally likely) we need to weigh some arguments with an Occam rating. The base value being one. Then doubling for each unknown step which must be added to support a proposed outcome.
The Occam value is a weighting of normal statistical results. Per the following example:
Options A and B and E each have a 2 in 9 chance of occurring respectively.
Options C and D and F each have a 1 in 9 chance of occurring respectively.
Options A and C have an Occam rating of 1 respectively (i.e. they have no unknown complexity to add).
Options B and D have an Occam rating of 2 respectively (they each add one unknown argument that A and C do not have).
Options E and F have an Occam rating of 4 (having two unknown arguments more than A and C).
Giving a weighted result of:
A: 2 in 9 (equal to 8 in 36)
B: 2 in 18 (equal to 4 in 36)
C: 1 in 9 (equal to 4 in 36)
D: 1 in 18 (equal to 2 in 36)
E: 2 in 36
F: 1 in 36
Option A therefore being the most compelling of otherwise equally probable outcomes. But we can compare the relative merit of the others too. Mathematicians probably already have a unit for this, and use some weird non-arbitrary logic to calculate it. Well good for them. :-P
I shall stick to the Occam because it is cooler!
So, there’s a 15 in 36 chance of none of the above options happening? (8+4+4+2+2+1=21. 36-21=15)
Bookies results often do not add up to a nice 100% figure. They are only concerned with the relative odds of the bets in question, and how they compare to one another (principally, in their case, to ensure that any losses from one particular result can be made up by earnings from the other bets).
Likewise the final set of figures are not attempting to come back to a 100% figure. What they are doing is providing an easy comparison of each ones merit against the other.
Plus, of course, some other result, which has not been considered, may actually be the correct one.
Given how often Dave catches us all unawares, I would actually put my Yorpie Snax™ on that result!
Pixel seems REALLY pissed off about this for no particular reason, considering it just saved her life. I mean, arching an eyebrow suspiciously and wondering out loud if it’s a good idea is one thing, but she’s furious. I wonder if her parents were killed by a temporal singularity while leaving a movie theater.
It might have saved her life, but it might have messed up reality at the same time, which could have much more dire consequences than one life being lost.
So far, we’ve seen no reason whatsoever for her to think that’s possible. The only reaon the audience now thinks it’s possible is because Pixel does. So I assume she had some terrible experience with a time-travel artifact which will be revealed later.
In a well-paced story it would be revealed four issues later, because you shouldn’t explain a character’s past until the audience cares about them in the present. But knowing this author it will be revealed in about two pages.
‘So far’ are dangerous words…
Sure, that’s what you say now, but when reality goes out to lunch due to improper use of time travel, we’ll know who to blame.
As someone pointed out on page one, her specialty is artifacts; some knowledge of how those artifacts can bone time and just how bad that can get seems very reasonable to me.
Indeed, if anyone is going to get hyper-agitated about messing with time, having it be the person who studies artifacts actually makes quite reasonable sense to me. Monkey’s paws and all that sort of thing.
So Krona needs to do a little debugging on her “Checkpoint” code.
Debugging: The act of removing errors from a program.Programming: The act of putting them in.Well it looks like she needs to get the algorithm right first…
problem is that if she’s a good programmer, she’s aware of the pattern “Best is enemy of the Good”. or as it used to be stated: The first 90% of the project takes 90% of the time. The last 10% takes the other 90% of the time.
She’s writing alpha level code on the fly. I wrote a Perl script in the middle of the night one time to fox a problem on a server, and came ‘back ti ‘fix’ it a month later. I couldn’t quite figure out what I did because it was mostly duct tape and baling wire. Rewrote it in a proper language…
Are you saying that Perl is a write-only language?
(Wouldn’t surprise me – I know of several.)
Always thought Pearl’s a Singer o_O
Only obfuscated Perl. Perl is great for what is does well, and it has C beaten hands down for text manipulation. But it’s a slow language and I use it only for fast scripting of small (as in short line count), one-off tools.
I’m pretty sure I make the same “oh, s**t” face as krona when I’m at work. Nothing ever goes as planned when you mess with someone’s universe.
Yup. Sounds just like the kind of local reset that I mentioned in a comment in monday’s strip.
I wonder if they’ll suffer a “Tracey Times Two” problem as well.
When editing the universe, and the error message “Abort, Retry, Fail.” comes up, -always- choose retry. Please.
If someone chooses abort you won’t care, actually.
And if someone chooses “Fail” – welcome to the real world, folks!
Just so long as it does not inspire a BSoD, then we are all in trouble.
Krona, did you forget to reset your variables from last time you used that macro? *looks left and right pretending to know what he’s talking about*
totally called the local nature of the time loop :D
I’m having a cookie.
I like Krona. Fallible but honest about it. Oh and voluntarily limits godlike-powers and is aware of her own mortality. Cute doesn’t hurt.
*wags tail amiably*
So, just out of curiosity, how much longer will we be in this flashback?
You mean the one where they were playing a superhero RPG?
I’m sure Dave forgot about that by now, or intentionally will have flash forwards etc from here on to annoy those that still remember that :P
Anyway there is no end in sight on that one…
Actually, DaveB has described the first few pages of the comic as a “flash forward” right from the start. I doubt he’s forgotten that, since he’s the first one to point it out to us. So I would think that the option to “insert another flash forward” being on his table is more likely.
;)
This is like, still Sydney’s first week of being a superhero.
About another month, oh, you mean real time? Considering how long it has taken us to go four days, will let you figure out four weeks (or was it four months?)
So sometime in the early 22nd century?
Please, oh please let the last panel of this flashback post on April 5, 2063. Oh please.
I’ll settle for anything during or after 2151, though…
Is that when the repayments on that giant pile of carrots you bought will be payed off?
::grins::
Google the date and follow the breadcrumbs that lead the the second year, leading back to David’s comment.
::wiggles his ears nerdily::
Do you like Klingon opera that much?
Or are you referring to one of their most skillful playwrights travelling back in time and translating his works into English?
You don’t know what you’re missing until you’ve heard it in the original Klingon.
Maybe krona is a bozhman brain, like in the story “Funny Business”… but on a smaller scale
Exclude or include? If the loop was local you’d have to include the time from the first loop for Max to be right on time.
You know…I like Sydney and everything…but I really wouldn’t mind having Krona as protagonist from now on.
Called it.
What?^^
Wow. I had it exactly backwards.
She’s not a time-traveler playing at being a reality hacker. She’s a reality hacker playing at being a time-traveler.
This is hilarious! We all knew things were gonna go back to the status quo somehow, but I never imagined it would happen like this!
Well-played, Dave. Well-played.
So. Wait. Am I correct in assuming that *everyone in the universe* remembers the loop and that Krona has *never tested this code!?*
Not quite. The loop only happened in a limited area. Only people at “local” range experienced it.
To an outside observer, perhaps they would have seen Halo et al suddenly repeating events. However, we run into the next problem: Who saw it? Who else was there who witnessed it without being affected by the time loop? It thus becomes a question of access to knowledge and understanding of events. Who even knows it happened, much less what happened within it?
As for testing the time loop, I’m sure Krona has used it before. Perhaps her past uses even resulted in it triggering. This is indicated by her dialogue. HOWEVER, these particular consequences/effects/limitations remained undiscovered UNTIL NOW.
Explain Maxima’s checkin.
My theory is Krona has extensively checked her code, but never tested it, since testing it involves deliberately DYING, and if the code is somehow flawed, she only gets to fail that experiment once.
Maxima checked in now instead of when she’s supposed to because Maxima also remembers the loop. It’s just she’s been standing around outside a different building with less stuff to find, so she didn’t notice any changes when the loop was reset.
When Krona says the “The loop is… LOCAL!?” she’s not stating a fact. She’s rambling to herself as she realizes the implications. In the very next panel, as she checks her code given this new perspective, she says it’s not a loop at all, let alone a local one.
Krona dialed back the clock on the entire universe. Whatever scoping she did to make sure it was “local” didn’t do what she thought it did.
Probably the only ones in the universe who don’t remember the loop are the local folks, I.E. Krona and Pixel and 1/5 of Harem. Because they’re the ones Krona explicitly programed not to remember.
This is why you always run your test cases, Script Kiddies!
Realistically she could test it with different triggers eg saying “LOOP NOW” or something.
whistle the twilight zone theme to start the loop. whistle the X files theme to trigger the loop back.
Sydney explained Maxi’s checkin checkup: time has progressed as normal outside the local checkpoint AOE
If Maxi remembered the Loop (or refresh or what the hael it was), then she wouldn’t have said “All teams check in.” she would have shouted, from right beside Krona’s ear “WHAT DID YOU DO?”
What Guesticus said.
Krona assumed the time loop was *total* in effect, as in ALL reality looped. It didn’t. The effect was actually and factually local. This creates a time difference between those in and outside the loop. Halo and others repeated events but time passed normally beyond the range of the time loop.
Let’s say Max was supposed to check in around 15 minutes after Halo and the others arrived at the warehouse. Krona starts the effect. Pixel goes in. Around 10 minutes later, Halo and the others are worried. She goes in, discovers Pixel and Sciona. Time loop triggers, bringing Halo and others back to the start. However, for Max and the rest of the universe 10+ minutes had still elapsed. Max checks in.
Outside Loop: – – – – 5 minutes – – – – 10 minutes – – – – – 15 minutes/Max calls
In Time Loop: – – – – 5 minutes – – – – 10 minutes/loop triggers – – – – – Back to start
To those inside the loop, it seems that Max is calling early or unexpectedly. Nope. She’s calling when she’s supposed to.
Oh… I’ve figured how/why Harem remembers what happened in the loop despite only Halo being supposed to remember. :-) More specific than simply being an unforeseen quirk of Harem’s powers interacting with Krona’s reset macro, here are the exact mechanics of what happened:
1. Harem shares all experiences with all her other bodies. She’s “quantum-synced” with them all at once even as each body is doing its own thing, has its own sensory data, thought processes, and experiences.
2. So it turns out the time loop effect is LOCAL…
=. When the reset occurred, the memory of what happened was wiped out from the Harem there with Halo, Krona, and Pixel. Indeed, it “never happened” to the LOCAL Harem. However, the events and experiences had ALREADY BEEN SHARED with the other bodies even as they were unmade from the local Harem. Upon resetting, the memories that the local Harem didn’t have were restored by quantum-sync with the other bodies.
It’s like getting my hand cut off, then having it restored to prior condition. The hand is fine and unharmed, but I still remember the pain.
So why does Maxima apparently remember watching the boring no-activity area she’s been watching for an amount of time that includes the loop?
It’s a purely local reset. Events between the checkpoint establishment and the trigger are unwound. However, time has continued outside the locality, and triggering the effect brings the locality forward to re-sync with universal time.
Again, since Harem was both inside and outside the bubble, she both remembers and does not remember the events.
I believe they never actually reported the situation to Maxima.
No, but if the Goof Troop ended up being at the Hot Spot, that means that where ever Maxi is, is the no-activity location
Your phrasing is telling. “… why does Maxima apparently remember…”
She *doesn’t* remember. She’s just checking in (“All teams check in.”), and at the appointed time (“… if you exclude the time we spent in the first loop, she’s probably right about on schedule”).
STEAM EXECUTIVE: “Why do we have a spike in searches for ‘Populous’? Thousands of them, in one day! It isn’t even a P.C. game!
Release the internet monkeys! Fly, fly, find out why!”
I’m guessing because some guy on 4chan or somethingawful went “hey, think we can get Populous on Steam just by slamming google with searches?” “That sounds like a laugh. I’ll get my botnet.”
Populous was so damned awesome….
Whelp. Pick your poison:
https://www.giantbomb.com/populous/3030-6210/similar-games/
Or if you want your fix for free:
https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/552793
Yes Populous is a PC game, and while its not on Steam it is on GOG.com https://www.gog.com/game/populous
now, how to determinbe how ‘localised’ the time warp is?
plant a few fence at different interval, Chrona ‘save’, then topple the fences, activate a checkpoint. check wich fence are still up… easy.
Except that we know physical matter always gets reset, so all the fences will be back up.
You’d need to get some people, place them next to each fence post, and ask them whether or not they remember you toppling their post.
My theory is Maxima is very far away from the Mars Warehouse, and she apparently remembers the time passing, so you’d need an awful lot of fence posts.
If you don’t get a lot of chatter on the coms saying “why so early?” it’s safe to assume they all have the same perception of the passage of time that Maxima does.
Actually, I think the fence thing would work, provided the bubble is only a few blocks in size, like it seems to be. If you knock over every fence, eventually some will be outside the bubble and NOT be reset.
Sounds like firejuggler‘s intent
Krona had an incredible amount of dialog in this page. I can’t recall the last time a non Sydney character spoke so much. I’m raising my opinion of her from ‘side character’ to the level where I put Dabbler/Max at.
New theory: It’s possible “LOCAL” is a value built into the programming language Krona is using. Local could mean “Earth” or “The Universe” and Krona has always just assumed local meant, like, 20 feet or line-of-sight or something.
Notice how she never specifies any numbers, she just keeps saying things like “local” and “very limited.” I think she’s blowing smoke. She assumed she knew what the words on her screens meant. But it’s all based on guesswork and experiments.
Sounds more it’s the other way around: Kronachrome believed it meant, at the minimum, the entire planet, but it only means 20 metres (line-of-sight is completely unreliable as a unit of measure)
I smell an op power being written out
Better than an op character being written out.
Seriously, though, the timeloop routine literally just got commented out. :P
I really wish a series that tackles time travel would have a experienced veteran character like Dabbler who just walks over and snacks the silly out of someone before explaining that they aren’t a God so nothing they do is unforseen by the universe or powerful enough to “break TIME/SPACE”.
OMG Amo’s suck in a LOCALIZED TIME LOOP! :P
And who is Dabbles to do something like that? For all we know, Kronachrome is a god who simply can’t remember being a god
I really wish a series that tackles time travel would have a experienced veteran character like Dabbler who walks over and snacks the silly out of someone before explaining that they aren’t a God so nothing they do is unforseen by the universe or powerful enough to “break TIME/SPACE”.
OMG Amo’s suck in a LOCALIZED TIME LOOP! :P
I’m not sure if the DR. would approve of her wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey shenanigains…
So far only those who have mastered time can understand it and generally didn’t mess with it unless some other bounder had already done so. Mucking about with the temporal sequence even locally can set up and imbalance that will right itself through tho whole of the temporal fabric as far as time extends. Entropy shall not be ignored and yet Stasis Boxes do. A place were even Brownian motion has ceased.
In the Primeval set of world lines something had started the anomalies and something else can stop them. But was it a who or a what that did it? Space-Time-Vug anomalies are not casual or expected in temporal physics as it is known now. Some are till working like in Australia where an orange creature that is described as a dinosaur of the therapod variety shows up eats cattle then leave three-toed tracks and vanishes once again.
“Australia where an orange creature that is described as a dinosaur”
He has been hanging out lately in South Carolina.
https://weather.com/science/nature/video/orange-alligator-stumps-bystanders
There’s also an orange creature that some people describe as a dinosaur, in the White House.
Australian cryptid
Burrunjor
Description:
• Bi-pedal
• 25 ft tall
• Two small forelimbs
• Orange in color (feathers?)
• Leaves three ft 3-toed tracks
• Eat full cows
This cryptid is located in Arnahmland, Aboriginal country. Near a tall ridge, next to a skinny lake in the center of the sightings and attacks. 150,000 kilometers in area.
Pop. of 20,000 people as of 2008. Sounds like an anomaly point where animals from another time period to hunt then return which is why you never find much except footprints.
• Bi-pedal – CHECK
• 25 ft tall – Less than an order of magnitude different, CHECK
• Two small forelimbs – CHECK
• Orange in color (feathers?) – Close enough to hair, CHECK
• Leaves three ft 3-toed tracks – … um keep an eye on news footage .. if any is allowed
• Eat full cows – likewise for future dining coverage
How many of them are there?
During our two expeditions in 2010 and 2011, organized by IRD and Foundation Liambissi, we observed twenty individuals in the caves. Almost all of them could be captured by Matthiew Shirley, who measured them, took samples, marked them and released them. Are they different from the outside crocodiles ?
They look very close to the Dward Crocodile, (Osteolaemus tetraspis), however, they differ by several points. They are broader, almost blind, and their skin is orange-coloured, which has never been observed in the dwarf crocodile from the exterior. têtes de crocodiles.
The biggest captured specimen was 1.70m long. This length is very high for the species and the crocodile must be very old. We observed several individuals more than one meter long.
Our hypothesis to explain their orange colour is a chemical attack of the skin. They live permanently in a eau croupie dans laquelle fermentent les excréments de chauves-souris. L’odeur est d’ailleurs presque insoutenable. (For some reason this last part is in French.) The orange is some kind of chemical staining though the one in Georgia was more totally covered and intensely orange.
It is because (as far as I can tell*) it stems from an expedition to Gabon, which is a French speaking country. Because it is talking about unsavoury subjects (bat guano and the smell) the language switch might just have been to protect any delicate ears. And, if any did understand, there is always the fallback, for foul language, to say ‘sorry for my French’.
Apologies to any froggy readers, no insult intended.
* The site where I picked up the additional information is a paranormal forum. Anything which is not scientifically peer reviewed I normally ignore. It does claim to be from a national geographic author however. Sadly, I could not find anything there to back it up. Mind you most of their stuff is behind a paywall, so that is not too surprising.
But it does have pictures, if you do not mind a dubious source.
Or perhaps “time” isn’t looping at all. The persons involved in the checkpoint just got “rubber banded” back to their initial relative position without any sort of loop at all. So Sciona is down there in the basement wondering where her blood bags went.
Did anyone else notice that Krona’s “hacking grid” has the same number of sections and the same colors as Halo’s orbs? Both have some of the most varried and versitile powersets in the entire series, both are unique within the series, etc., etc. It is almost like they are the different manifestations of the same overarching power.
Speculate wildly. You are welcome.
You mean: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet ? It is called the colour wheel.
Yes, it had been mentioned when the Reality HUD first showed up
It has been mentioned a few times on various pages where she showed the interface.
I’m not sure if I only thought it or also mentioned it, too but I too have wondered if Krona’s and Sydney’s abilities are rooted in the same source, which is reality altering abilities. From what we’ve seen so far it seems the orbs are different from known magic, technological, and other abilities.
given the fact they can breathe, Gravity is stable, and they’re within radio contact
safe to say it wasn’t a time loop, but a reset to location, and previous personal state.
but that means that Sciona, knows they’re there and they have precious little time
before the villain either attacks or makes an escape.
in panel 5, shouldn’t Halo be saying ‘Well, if you _include_ the time spent on the first loop, she’s probably right on schedule.’?
that’s what clued Krona in that the loop was localized.
Wait, I can understand Sydney getting too distracted to report, but why hasn’t Harem said anything to Maxima yet? Isn’t relaying information a big part of her job?
If the bubble is local, what happens if someone was walking through the edge of the bubble when it reset?
I don’t think she knows the range of the bubble yet, or it might even be personal temporal field based, only those in the initial range were affected. This could mean the villain just saw them poof away, and now has an overlapped memory of two equally valid short term timelines, one where they were down there and one where they weren’t. She will likely be forced to accept one as valid and the other imagined to correct for the paradox.
if it is a bubble, changes are you’d have a bio-force bridge, if they are in contact, affected, if not, blink, blink, everyone looks to blink about, anti-paradox normalizing makes them accept one reality as true and ignore the conflicting information. Be surprised how easily the passive mind accepts things presented to them as real.
Wait, how has she not noticed this before? If she’s looped at all, wouldn’t abnormally long passage of time in the outer world be rather evident? Like, even if she’d never used it near the eight-hour limit (at which point you’d get pretty obvious stuff like “It’s suddenly afternoon now”. Or even “Hey, why is it still night?”) wouldn’t her phone clock get out of sync? Or, in the case of a self-adjusting clock, it would turn back it’s own time for no reason from her perspective. Or, just people saying “Where have you been” when she thought she’d reset everything.
she put an eight hour limit on it, but it sounds like she’s never had cause for it to happen that long, or possibly at all before. She may even have only tested it in minutes…and anyone who thought they were going to be late to work only to find they are ten minutes early can attest to, clocks are seldom all in synch with on another in regards to minutes.
the catch up equilibrium thing could also be an excuse, the same effect that causes people to rapidly age and die in faerie stories when they lived in the Timeless Lands or outside their native time for so long. When introduced back into their native timeline, the local time infiltrates and equalizes their time with the rest of the world. Watches and such would be caught up, but if its only minutes the body likely won’t notice unlike the decades or centuries normally seen in this trope.
Like Rick Cook said in his Wiz Biz novels (where ALL wizards are reality hackers ), you don’t want to be caught inside an HMC or EOI error. (Halt, Melt, and Catch fire; Execute Operator Immediately.)
…Well, that’s interesting to know. (Sad that Fable wasn’t as good as promised.)
And…the checkpoint is promptly rendered too dangerous to ever use again…without warning.
Self-imposed limits. A safe haven for every bad superman story. “Its not power inconsistency, he was just holding back in a fight that determined the fate of a multiverse.”
Here it sounds more like it is a self-imposed safety measure though to prevent things getting too bad.
“He could have settled the fight with one punch, he would also have removed the guy’s head from his shoulders doing that though.”
Ah. There we go. My apologies for the harsh views of this piece, but that is the problem with this format, we can’t hurriedly read forward while going “WTF!?”
So… doesn’t work the way she thinks it does, it’s a localized time bubble which means technically they are now out of sync with the rest of the world, which could definitely have… consequences.
So, in the end it does become a one time resurrection. Although, honestly, kind of a cheap way to use up this trick. But meh, that’s small potatoes.
And in the future she may find less potentially space-time fracturing ways to use this trick.
Oh, I think Sydney meant to say “if you INCLUDE the time we spent in the first loop” that way the however long it was before (half an hour say) is included in the time flow, then Max is on schedule.
Chroma must not be that observant, or just never used it much, because she should have noticed that while her watch said 8:30 am, it was actually noon.
Unless the “catch up” chrono-defense field rule in in effect.
Where one’s personal field if its part of the great world field is put back out of synch, a means of correcting is for the greater field to infiltrate and quickly, possibly unnoticeably, “catch up” the local field via a kind of temporal equilibrium. It being only minutes the body likely won’t feel anything when it happens, but machines like a watch might seem to “blink” and just be the further time…unless the Paradox observation is in effect, but you see that more for reality space distortions than time, although time in that concept would be easier (cause the mind to simply accept the strangeness as normal…like a dream, unless one’s will is strong enough, but even then only if they feel they have cause to notice if anything is off).
-example, just substitute time for space.
someone measures a sidewalk it comes to 120 feet, but then they walk over the yards, its only 100 feet, there is 20 feet difference because one of the houses doesn’t exist in the overall reality (magic house), and is only noticeable if you approach it from a certain angle *the yards where the connected grass roots under the ground form a bio-force bridge into the distorted zone*. But approach from the sidewalk and you just see the two houses on either side with no space between them (no bridge).
but the Paradox observation makes both real depending on where the observer is, so they just shrug it off and make some mental excuse *like ground curvature or something* and continue on with their lives.
The problem is you cannot separate time from space since it is together. Time you might say is the situation or gradient by which space exists. Paradoxes can only exist if there is only one time line ;and not a near infinite number branching off to fulfill all possible and probably outcomes can be satisfied. If you go just by the math and by human experience. (And somehow traveling opposite the entropic flow which isn’t listed as impossible by the various equations used. Just damnably difficult. Energy and all that.)Though that is problematic as they are only anecdotes and not studied experiences in alternate time. Wish I was a physicist and mathematician. Also add to the fact that our own neural system makes us unable to view things objectively unless we are psychopaths who have no emotional empathic connexion to anything but their own selves.
There are ways to achieve the latter, without lacking emotion. Those with hyperphantasia would have no problems with imagining such things. Objectively or passionately as may be required.
*wags tail, in a timeless manner, hyperphatasically*
Good point. Although, like now, Krona may set a checkpoint just prior to any activity she considers risky. As such only a short time may have ever passed in any use. In this case Sydney commented that ten minutes had passed, when she became concerned about Pixel’s absence.
Not at all, it allowed a very dramatic change of pace, from a quiet recon, to a deadly encounter with an arch villain and then a wholly credible escape (Sciona was draining her blood, so it is unlikely Sysney would have died instantly). This served drama very well in the story.
Plus this aftermath is teaching Halo serious lessons about the potential abuse of powers of this magnitude. Whether it sinks in, is another matter, but it certainly will be memorable, so hopefully. This all goes to character development, for both Krona and Sydney. Not to mention giving us more insight to Krona and Pixel.
Finally the power has not been lost. Krona has just made very clear that she will not use it for the moment. Clearly once she has been able to analyse the power more, and get help and advise on how to use it safely, then she can utilise it again.
For now though it does stop the potential endless suggestions of ‘well we know doing this will be dangerous, but the team can get Krona to set a checkpoint’. It is not available for the time being. Not until it is convenient to the plot again, sometime in the future.
Plus, the very simple case, of Kronachrome not being part of Archon and only teaming up when Council concerns meshes with Archon’s jurisdiction
Ah temporal mechanics, a fun and oddly common feature I use in my series…which aren’t about time travel but rather groups and beings that traverse the multiverse including alternate timelines of the same worlds (mainly Earth).
I could go on about the concept of the Archaetype gravity zones, localized/personal temporal fields, fragmented time that rejoins and considers both paths equally valid.
-which would be the easy out in this situation. As it was short term, and localized to a handful of individuals. Reality could simply regard both events as equal, like a river that splits and rejoins, from the next point on though the combined events will both exist and everyone involved of consequence have memories of both events…this would mean most likely the villain too should remember catching them, then they aren’t there, and they are back to where they were before it started or have an overlapped memory.
which is a simple fix, not like the big headache I gave myself by having a demon lord get so possessive of her summoner that she later sent the soul of one her “pets” in hell back in time and to a different Earth than that “pet’s” origin so it is the reincarnated soul of the summoner and had been all along so the summoner ended up also being the soul-pet of the demon lord.
*only anti-paradox being that a soul has little impact on a timeline so it was more a slight shakeup than any kind of split. But also brings the connections between them into question.
Interesting. Though to me any “devils, demons and other entities” are all just alien. Since in many of these dimensions are just pathways to other stars in other galaxies and some in other times. Though parallels are known, just harder to get to than simple time travel if you wish to force it. There are weaknesses all over the place, but invisible to our narrow range of senses. Think Primeval, but without the light shows that things and people can go to and fro at certain times which may explain some creatures coming and going but never found. Would also explain some people “out-of-place” as poor time travelers and even alternate worlds. NO light show or feelings of being shifted in some ways. You might say their souls moved over and with that all the kindred souls shift to the next body like its previous host. Why some people find unaccountable changes in their bodies from time-to-time. Certain things don’t add up, someone you hear about dying and then later they seem to die again. Though it is easier to just put with poor memory than anything else. Nothing big changes just small things like business signs or you speak with someone you know and they attribute something to you that you know is wrong. Speak with them later and they say they never said it! The list is long of misplaced people and even misplaced places that come-and-go as do people.
You make some interesting points.
It is a bit hard to keep track of it though, being all in one block of text. I avoid the term ‘wall’ as your post is relatively short (certainly compared to a lot of mine). But if you compare it to Rhuen‘s above, it is harder to follow, despite being shorter.
Don’t worry about making your overall post longer. Readability is the more important, and throwing in a few paragraph breaks can help that a lot. Especially if most paragraphs contain related points or breaks occur at natural shifts in a chain of thought.