TIME & TIED: AWARENESS

ARC 1.2 - Of Her Peers

PART 10a: TIME DOUBT 1

Carrie blinked a couple of times as Frank opened the door. He looked just as he had two days ago. She smiled triumphantly. "I did it!" she declared. "I changed the past."

"Ah! You're the Carrie back from Friday?" Frank ventured.

Carrie frowned. "Who else would I be?"

Frank shook his head. "Never mind. Come in, we need to discuss this history changing that you claim to have accomplished."

Carrie was barely able to contain herself until they'd arrived downstairs. "All right," she stated, putting down the time machine. “Sorry for not saying more on Friday, but time travel is confusing enough already without me possibly explaining things to you before I leave to do them. But now... well, okay, first tell me what weirdness you remember as having happened at school, during Friday’s chemistry class."

Frank nodded. "The fire alarm went off and the school was cleared out. Upon returning to class, we discovered that some of the chemicals in class had been spilled or mixed up during our absence. Vandalism was suspected."

Carrie clapped her hands. “THAT is what I changed,” she said. “The first time around, Julie had a plan to switch up the chemicals, to make you look incompetent." She fished the small recording device out of her pocket and tossed it onto the table. “And I have the proof of that original history right there.”

Frank blinked. "Julie planned--" He cut himself off and passed a hand over his forehead. "Never mind. Listen, Carrie, I suspected you'd been trying for something like this when you were here after school on Friday. The thing is, whatever you were setting out to change... whatever Julie's original plans were... they never happened."

“I know. Because I changed them," Carrie stated matter-of-factly.

"No! That is, you affected things, but in the end you simply fulfilled what had already taken place,” Frank countered. "And if you'll finally LISTEN to me, I think I can explain this in a way you'll understand. But Carrie... you've got to give me a chance here. At least one, please!”

Carrie stared. Frank was actually getting upset here. So much so that Carrie was finally forced to admit to a certain curiosity as to why he was so adamant about what he was saying. Add to that the fact that she would need his help with the time machine, as had been demonstrated by the fact that she hadn't been able to adjust it for her return...

"Okay, fine, throw your theory at me," Carrie acquiesced, crossing her arms. "I'm sure I can point out the flaw in it."

Frank sighed in relief. “Great! Now, the best scenario I've come up with to illustrate the fixed nature of time is the grandfather paradox. Simply put, I go back in time and kill my grandfather before my father is conceived. So, can you explain who killed my grandfather?"

Carrie shrugged. "You just said you did it."

"But now my Dad hasn't been born so obviously I don't exist and hence couldn't have done it!"

"Oh. Good point... um, someone else did it then. A time traveling stowaway."

"Assume no stowaways," Frank clarified. "I'm the only time traveller. How do you explain it?"

"No other time traveler? Well then... you shot the wrong person by mistake. Maybe you were adopted without realizing it. Or it was the right person, but you were conceived by the milkman.”

“What? Er, no." Frank frowned, and Carrie got the impression that he was becoming troubled by her responses. "See, the whole point is that it's an unresolvable paradox. There is no real answer. The only way out of it is to declare that I cannot kill my grandfather in the first place! From this, we can extrapolate an unchangeable past as--"

"No, Frank, we've established that your grandfather got killed. Someone must have done it," Carrie interrupted, unintentionally finding herself being pulled deeper into the conversation. "Thus, after you fire the shot, things will change such that - if it's not possible for anyone else to have fired the shot - the person you killed is no longer in your family tree."

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“Carrie, stop,” Frank protested. “The whole point is that I've gone back to kill my grandfather. Not someone else!"

"MY point is he WAS your grandfather until you changed history. The fact that your lineage is now different, making him unrelated, is simply your own damn fault.”

Frank rubbed the side of his head, mulling that over. "This isn't working out like I'd hoped," he finally said.

"No kidding," Carrie retorted.

"Okay, give me a second here," Frank requested. "I think the trouble is that you're trying to latch onto the multiple time tracks theory, while there's better arguments for the principle of self-consistency."

Carrie peered. "Is that so?" she asked warily. "What's so wrong with this 'multiple time tracks' theory then?”

"It doesn't flow as well," Frank stated, starting to snap his fingers. “How can I put this... aha, wait, diagrams!" He went over to his chalkboard and started erasing some old formulas. "I think you mentioned 'Back to the Future' once... ever see the sequels?"

"Yes," Carrie admitted. "I don't know that they were as good, but it was during an uneventful weekend and the first one had piqued my curiosity."

“Okay, then you might recognize this argument, it's connected to the second movie." Frank drew a straight horizontal line across the blackboard. “Imagine that this line represents time. Here's the present." He wrote a large P in the centre of the line. "This delimits the past and the future." He wrote 'PAST' to the left and a large 'F' to the right.

"Now, by your theory if I travel from this point in time..." (Frank indicated the P) "...to somewhere in the past..." (He moved to put an 'x' above the line in the past) "...and kill my grandfather, the timeline will be skewed into an alternate present." Frank proceeded to draw another line from the 'x' traveling diagonally downwards towards the bottom of the blackboard. He eventually levelled this line off at the centre and wrote 'P-prime' over it. "Results in multiple time tracks.  Follow?"

Carrie nodded slowly. "Seems fine so far."

"Right then." Frank dropped the chalk and dusted his hands. "The problem is that the me who traveled back in time came from this original timeline," he stated, pointing at the first 'P' he had drawn. “Yet if I were to return from Past to Present, it would now be this alternate primed present,” he continued, indicating the second track. "In which I discover that there is now an ALTERNATE version of me with a different grandfather. A nasty time paradox that we wouldn't get with my self-consistency theory."

Carrie shook her head. “You misunderstood me. There is no paradox if the timeline is smart enough to change things such that you don't notice any difference in this alternate present,” she pointed out. “Your alternate self could even have had a reason to leave that timeline for the past too. Perhaps becoming you in the process. So when you return to the present, you simply pick up where that alternate life left off - with no evidence of the change.”

Frank paused, looking back at the board. "Yeeeeees, I suppose," he agreed hesitantly. "But that results in a lot more temporal details to take care of. That’s... chaotic, confusing and hard to sort out."

"Hence you prefer your less chaotic theory," Carrie remarked dryly.

"Well, yes. With self-consistency, we get what I was saying before. Any changes made were fated to happen anyway!" He proceeded to erase part of his initially drawn line, the part lying to the right of the 'x' in the past. Then he erased the ‘prime’ next to his second P. "There is only ONE present. It's not an alternate. Any kinks that exist in the timeline have always been there, as a result of us fulfilling our individual destinies.”

Carrie frowned, shaking her head slowly. "But the way you're making things look now... the future itself is already mapped out too. You're eliminating free will!"

Frank scratched his head. "Well, yeah, kinda. That's the one little sticking point. But this IS the most sensible theory out of all the ones I've come across. Remember, I’ve had two years to look into this! More than that, it explains what's been happening with our time incursions thus far. For example, that crystal swan of yours."

Frank pointed to the past ‘x’ again. "Let's say that this is when it broke for you two years ago. From then on, we've been living the rest of this timeline." Frank gestured at the skewed line on the board. "Now, when we finally reached Thursday, you traveled back to break it. You didn't change anything. It had already happened; you were only fulfilling a destiny of sorts."

Carrie folded her arms back across her chest and stared at the blackboard for an extended period of time before speaking again. "I disagree. I think it's equally possible that, as soon as the swan broke, my brain changed to remember the past alteration, as opposed to the way things originally took place. What's wrong with that argument?”

"Well..." Frank began to fidget. "Well, nothing on the surface, I guess," he admitted. "But if that really is the case, then the time traveler themselves is not immune to the effects of changed time. Meaning after you change something, you'll remember only one timeline anyway. Beneath the surface, what's the difference?"

"The difference is that I could get my mother back - and even remember growing up with her around,” Carrie fired back triumphantly.

Frank gaped. He looked from the chalkboard to her and back again. “No, but... but no! You wouldn't remember making that change,” he objected. “And what if, after making the alteration, you end up in a present you find even more unbearable? You might then want to change things again - creating whatever situation you had in the first place! You're now in an endless time loop, so again, what would be the point in saving her?”

Frank turned back to Carrie, to see her glaring at him with pursed lips. This was the only warning he had before her fist came flying at his face.