Re: Confusion about the storyline


	/-/S'pht-Translator-Active/-/

Re: Confusion about the storyline

Posted By: Forrest of B.org Date: 1/10/05 7:33 p.m.
In Response To: Re: Confusion about the storyline (Steve Levinson)

: If we do accept the concept of multiple timelines, then I believe that
: there is only one true timeline. I particularly like the concept so
: beautifully laid down in the Star Trek TNG episode "Yesterday's
: Enterprise". Not all altered timeline plots in Star Trek are so neat,
: but this one really hit it right. Basically, a rift in space caused the
: Enterprise C to be propelled into the future at a very critical juncture
: to, extremely coincidentally, meet up with the Enterprise D. With the loss
: of the C at the wrong time, all of history was altered and, as a result,
: the Federation was losing a war to the Klingons - a war that had claimed
: 40 billion lives. The episode then revolved around sending the C back
: through that rift to correct the past. Once the C was returned, the
: timeline was corrected and it was as if the events of the altered timeline
: had never occured. However in subsequent episodes we later encounter
: remnants of that altered timeline - things that were different on the
: returned C that affected small parts of history. It was as if the altered
: timeline were a loop - it branced off when the C disapeared and looped
: around back onto itself when the C was returned. This is somewhat
: plausable - if you accept the existence of time travel. But if you accept
: time travel, then you're left with the disasterous scenario of the current
: plot of Star Trek Enterprise with it's temporal cold war. The bottom line
: is that if time could be altered, we would ultimately destroy it
: altogether. Thank God only the Jjaro possess such technology!
The concept of "erasing" timelines is nonsensical, though. What that "Yesterday's Enterprise" episode is actually doing is no different from what I'm suggesting Marathon Infinity does. The event which propelled the Enterprise C into the future was a part of the "original" timeline which lead to the disasterous future from which they came. However, that timeline lead to another event which brought the Enterprise C *back* in time, and as all time travel to the past does, caused a branch in the timeline. This does not make it the same as if the first event had not happened! It is nearly the same, but as you said, there were minor differences. If sending the Enterprise back in time had negated the disasterous future, then that future would not have existed for the Enterprise to be sent back from, and the Enterprice C would simply have vanished when the first time-travel event happened, and... you've run into a causal paradox.
If the C vanishes into the future, that disasterous future happens, which directly contradicts the negation of it's existence. It can't both be and not-be in the same way. Which is why modern quantum mechanics operates off the "many worlds" interpretation - they DO both happen, in alternate versions of reality. If time travel is possible, a person travelling back from one future can go back and alter the past and make a new timeline where he was never born, which is seemingly a paradox, until you consider that he WAS born in another timeline, and travelled to this one from there. In his original timeline, when he went back in time, he simply vanished. That timeline may continue on without him, and it would be impossible to get back to that exact timeline via time travel alone, though he could possibly get back to a nearly indistinguishable one where an alternate he had also just vanished into the past.
I like to use the idea of divergent paths in a thick wood to illustrate this best. Everybody understands the idea of time as a line, and Marathoners particularly the metaphor of "the path" of time that we walk. But we're walking a path which, at every step, branches off into infinite other paths. That gets hard to visualize, so simplify it down to just a bunch of paths branching off from each other in the woods. You come to an intersection: Do you turn left or right? Say you turn right. You go down a bit and find a sign saying "Ha ha, if you had turned left, you would have been lead to [money/power/whatever], but too bad, this is a one-way path and you can't go back". We face this scenario all the time, but imagine time travel is possible. Now you can walk off the path, and beat a new path back through the woods to the intersection, and this time, turn left to the gold, riches, whatever it is down there.
If you hadn't taken the right path first, you wouldn't have known that to turn left would lead you to great things. There is of course the chance that you might have turned left at random, but say you're the kind of person who always turns right at intersections; you wouldn't have turned left if the right-path hadn't lead you to know of what lay down the left-path. And if anybody had been walking the right-path with you when you beat your way into the woods, all they know is that you just stepped off the path, and they'd keep walking (or perhaps, if they could, step off after you).
By Mark's interpretation, the absence of the W'rkncacnter just makes no sense. Yrro trapped a W'rkncacnter in the sun, the Pfhor blew the sun up, and... at what point was there no longer a W'rkncacnter trapped in there? Why in this timeline wasn't it released? Because you trapped it in another timeline? That's like saying because I walked down the left path and found gold and riches that all my friends who walked down the right path now have gold and riches too. Not unless they too could step off the path and go back and turn left instead.
By my interpretation, our Cyborg went down a path, found the road lead to a deadly drop off a cliff face, got dragged off into the woods and put back on an earlier path, where he took a different route only to find the same cliff face devouring that road too, and so on and so on until he finally found a road that didn't lead over the cliff, and continued walking that. The alternate paths/timelines didn't cease to exist just because he went back and walked others, though they "came to an end" at the point where they went off the cliff (the W'rkncacnter release). To those who walked the "final" path right off the bat, these other timelines are non-evident, except that some valiant hero came from out of the blue and acted on knowledge he couldn't have had to prevent catastrophe in the nick of time. But to everyone on the other paths, they just walked off the cliff.
You are right, that this introduced some big literary problems, but not the ones that you mentioned. The big problem it introduces is, why bother to stop someone from changing the past if it doesn't affect your past, present or future? In Eternal, they have more than just time travel capability; they can travel into the past, create a new timeline, and then bring all the people left in their timeline straight across to the new one. Their timeline would still exist, devoid of any Humans, but the Humans have reason to create a new timeline to move into. But then, why do we, Marcus, care about going into the path to stop Hathor? What can she do that will change the future we came from?
Nothing. Ultimately all our efforts to stop her from changing the past mean nothing as far as "fixing the future" goes. It all stems from our misunderstanding of the temporal mechanics of it all. Even Leela makes reference to this at one point, saying in effect, "We could do this, or not do this, but whichever one we choose, some other version of 'we' will do the opposite in another timeline, so we might as well do what we in this timeline would do if there weren't multilinear considerations".
But ultimately, the point of all this time travel is moot. Fixing the past, fixing the future, all means nothing from a perspective outside of time, objective to it. Everything that can happen does happen. But Leela explains that there is another reason, aside from anything inside the universe, to bother tampering with time: just to make some sense of it all. In this tangled web of every concievable possibility, what is real? What matters? This is the problem that those Outside face, and the two approaches to it differentiate the W'rkncacnter from the Jjaro. The W'rk still care for some reason about life inside the universe, about making it what they want and fighting stupid temporal wars... it's like religious wars, everybody wants to have their own version of reality be THE version of reality and stomp all over everybody else's, overlooking the fact that you can have your own view on the world and let others have theirs, too.
The Jjaro don't care if the W'rkncacnter act petty and conquer one timeline or another, just so long as there exists *a* timeline where they don't. More importantly, the Jjaro are seeking a "causal tautology", a timeline which loops upon itself, to serve as an anchor, a basis for looking at the rest of the timeline. (Think of it as how logical tautologies are the only logical thing except from proof, because they prove themselves - they are definitions - and from these core definitions we can form a basis of understanding everything else).
So in there, you have your One True Timeline still, but it branches out into others, and others branch into it, and it does not exist in a vacuum. The events of Marathon 2 clearly are not such a timeline, because the W'rkncacnter was released; ditto most of the timelines witnessed in Marathon Infinity. At the end of Infinity, however, we have a timeline where, at the very least, the W'rkncacnter wasn't released, which is better than nothing.

[ Post a Reply | Message Index | Read Prev Msg | Read Next Msg ]
Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Confusion about the storyline bad brains 1/9/05 9:29 p.m.

Re: Confusion about the storyline Forrest of B.org 1/9/05 10:10 p.m.

Re: Confusion about the storyline K-chi 1/10/05 4:22 a.m.

Re: Confusion about the storyline Steve Levinson 1/10/05 3:09 p.m.

Re: Confusion about the storyline Forrest of B.org 1/10/05 4:04 p.m.

Re: Confusion about the storyline Steve Levinson 1/10/05 6:23 p.m.

Re: Confusion about the storyline Forrest of B.org 1/10/05 7:33 p.m.

Long time travel philosophy post! Head hurts! *NM* ukimalefu 1/10/05 8:19 p.m.

The Philosophy of Time Travel Forrest of B.org 1/10/05 9:28 p.m.

What does time travel have to do with philosophy? *NM* Purple Penguin 1/11/05 6:12 a.m.

You can philosophy about time travel. *NM* ukimalefu 1/11/05 7:16 a.m.

What does epistemology have to do with philosophy? *NM* Forrest of B.org 1/11/05 7:17 a.m.

Philosophy is the search for truth. *NM* K-chi 1/11/05 9:18 a.m.

When you can't prove it and it's speculation. *NM* Adam Ashwell 1/11/05 10:22 a.m.

You can't prove that proof is ever possible. Forrest of B.org 1/11/05 11:23 a.m.

Re: You can't prove that proof is ever possible. blake37 1/11/05 11:51 a.m.

Eh? *NM* Forrest of B.org 1/11/05 11:57 a.m.

Re: Eh? blake37 1/11/05 11:59 a.m.

Re: Eh? Forrest of B.org 1/11/05 12:40 p.m.

Re: Eh? blake37 1/11/05 12:56 p.m.

Re: Eh? Forrest of B.org 1/11/05 1:16 p.m.

Re: Eh? blake37 1/11/05 2:23 p.m.

Re: Eh? Deathmonger 1/11/05 1:46 p.m.

Re: Eh? Forrest of B.org 1/11/05 2:20 p.m.

Re: Eh? Yossarian 1/11/05 2:38 p.m.

Re: Eh? Forrest of B.org 1/11/05 3:14 p.m.

Dayyymn. Fobo has mad logic skilz, yo. [/wigger] *NM* Deathmonger 1/11/05 3:43 p.m.

I'm writing a paper on epistemology & ethics *NM* Forrest of B.org 1/11/05 4:00 p.m.

Re: that explains alot *NM* blake37 1/11/05 4:22 p.m.

Re: Eh? Yossarian 1/11/05 4:57 p.m.

Re: Eh? Forrest of B.org 1/11/05 6:46 p.m.

Welp, I'm satisfied. *NM* Yossarian 1/12/05 3:36 p.m.

I get it! I get it! K-chi 1/11/05 5:42 p.m.

And we're very proud of you too ^_^. *NM* Adam Ashwell 1/11/05 5:43 p.m.

Now, what was the thread originally about again? *NM* Reiginko 1/12/05 3:43 a.m.

Re: Confusion about the storyline Andromeda_5[Kilo] 1/11/05 10:59 a.m.

Re: Confusion about the storyline ukimalefu 1/11/05 4:55 p.m.

[ Post a Reply | Message Index | Read Prev Msg | Read Next Msg ]
Pre-2004 Posts

Your Name:
Your E-Mail Address:
Subject:
Message:
: The concept of "erasing" timelines is nonsensical, though. What : that "Yesterday's Enterprise" episode is actually doing is no : different from what I'm suggesting Marathon Infinity does. The event which : propelled the Enterprise C into the future was a part of the : "original" timeline which lead to the disasterous future from : which they came. However, that timeline lead to another event which : brought the Enterprise C *back* in time, and as all time travel to the : past does, caused a branch in the timeline. This does not make it the same : as if the first event had not happened! It is nearly the same, but as you : said, there were minor differences. If sending the Enterprise back in time : had negated the disasterous future, then that future would not have : existed for the Enterprise to be sent back from, and the Enterprice C : would simply have vanished when the first time-travel event happened, : and... you've run into a causal paradox. : If the C vanishes into the future, that disasterous future happens, which : directly contradicts the negation of it's existence. It can't both be and : not-be in the same way. Which is why modern quantum mechanics operates off : the "many worlds" interpretation - they DO both happen, in : alternate versions of reality. If time travel is possible, a person : travelling back from one future can go back and alter the past and make a : new timeline where he was never born, which is seemingly a paradox, until : you consider that he WAS born in another timeline, and travelled to this : one from there. In his original timeline, when he went back in time, he : simply vanished. That timeline may continue on without him, and it would : be impossible to get back to that exact timeline via time travel alone, : though he could possibly get back to a nearly indistinguishable one where : an alternate he had also just vanished into the past. : I like to use the idea of divergent paths in a thick wood to illustrate this : best. Everybody understands the idea of time as a line, and Marathoners : particularly the metaphor of "the path" of time that we walk. : But we're walking a path which, at every step, branches off into infinite : other paths. That gets hard to visualize, so simplify it down to just a : bunch of paths branching off from each other in the woods. You come to an : intersection: Do you turn left or right? Say you turn right. You go down a : bit and find a sign saying "Ha ha, if you had turned left, you would : have been lead to [money/power/whatever], but too bad, this is a one-way : path and you can't go back". We face this scenario all the time, but : imagine time travel is possible. Now you can walk off the path, and beat a : new path back through the woods to the intersection, and this time, turn : left to the gold, riches, whatever it is down there. : If you hadn't taken the right path first, you wouldn't have known that to : turn left would lead you to great things. There is of course the chance : that you might have turned left at random, but say you're the kind of : person who always turns right at intersections; you wouldn't have turned : left if the right-path hadn't lead you to know of what lay down the : left-path. And if anybody had been walking the right-path with you when : you beat your way into the woods, all they know is that you just stepped : off the path, and they'd keep walking (or perhaps, if they could, step off : after you). : By Mark's interpretation, the absence of the W'rkncacnter just makes no : sense. Yrro trapped a W'rkncacnter in the sun, the Pfhor blew the sun up, : and... at what point was there no longer a W'rkncacnter trapped in there? : Why in this timeline wasn't it released? Because you trapped it in another : timeline? That's like saying because I walked down the left path and found : gold and riches that all my friends who walked down the right path now : have gold and riches too. Not unless they too could step off the path and : go back and turn left instead. : By my interpretation, our Cyborg went down a path, found the road lead to a : deadly drop off a cliff face, got dragged off into the woods and put back : on an earlier path, where he took a different route only to find the same : cliff face devouring that road too, and so on and so on until he finally : found a road that didn't lead over the cliff, and continued walking that. : The alternate paths/timelines didn't cease to exist just because he went : back and walked others, though they "came to an end" at the : point where they went off the cliff (the W'rkncacnter release). To those : who walked the "final" path right off the bat, these other : timelines are non-evident, except that some valiant hero came from out of : the blue and acted on knowledge he couldn't have had to prevent : catastrophe in the nick of time. But to everyone on the other paths, they : just walked off the cliff. : You are right, that this introduced some big literary problems, but not the : ones that you mentioned. The big problem it introduces is, why bother to : stop someone from changing the past if it doesn't affect your past, : present or future? In Eternal, they have more than just time travel : capability; they can travel into the past, create a new timeline, and then : bring all the people left in their timeline straight across to the new : one. Their timeline would still exist, devoid of any Humans, but the : Humans have reason to create a new timeline to move into. But then, why do : we, Marcus, care about going into the path to stop Hathor? What can she do : that will change the future we came from? : Nothing. Ultimately all our efforts to stop her from changing the past mean : nothing as far as "fixing the future" goes. It all stems from : our misunderstanding of the temporal mechanics of it all. Even Leela makes : reference to this at one point, saying in effect, "We could do this, : or not do this, but whichever one we choose, some other version of 'we' : will do the opposite in another timeline, so we might as well do what we : in this timeline would do if there weren't multilinear : considerations". : But ultimately, the point of all this time travel is moot. Fixing the past, : fixing the future, all means nothing from a perspective outside of time, : objective to it. Everything that can happen does happen. But Leela : explains that there is another reason, aside from anything inside the : universe, to bother tampering with time: just to make some sense of it : all. In this tangled web of every concievable possibility, what is real? : What matters? This is the problem that those Outside face, and the two : approaches to it differentiate the W'rkncacnter from the Jjaro. The W'rk : still care for some reason about life inside the universe, about making it : what they want and fighting stupid temporal wars... it's like religious : wars, everybody wants to have their own version of reality be THE version : of reality and stomp all over everybody else's, overlooking the fact that : you can have your own view on the world and let others have theirs, too. : The Jjaro don't care if the W'rkncacnter act petty and conquer one timeline : or another, just so long as there exists *a* timeline where they don't. : More importantly, the Jjaro are seeking a "causal tautology", a : timeline which loops upon itself, to serve as an anchor, a basis for : looking at the rest of the timeline. (Think of it as how logical : tautologies are the only logical thing except from proof, because they : prove themselves - they are definitions - and from these core definitions : we can form a basis of understanding everything else). : So in there, you have your One True Timeline still, but it branches out into : others, and others branch into it, and it does not exist in a vacuum. The : events of Marathon 2 clearly are not such a timeline, because the : W'rkncacnter was released; ditto most of the timelines witnessed in : Marathon Infinity. At the end of Infinity, however, we have a timeline : where, at the very least, the W'rkncacnter wasn't released, which is : better than nothing.

If you'd like to include a link to another page with your message,
please provide both the URL address and the title of the page:
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:

If necessary, enter your password below:
Password:

Problems? Suggestions? Comments? Email maintainer@bungie.org
Marathon's Story Forum is maintained with WebBBS 5.12.

Confusion about the storyline	bad brains	1/9/05 9:29 p.m.
Re: Confusion about the storyline	Forrest of B.org	1/9/05 10:10 p.m.
Re: Confusion about the storyline	K-chi	1/10/05 4:22 a.m.
Re: Confusion about the storyline	Steve Levinson	1/10/05 3:09 p.m.
Re: Confusion about the storyline	Forrest of B.org	1/10/05 4:04 p.m.
Re: Confusion about the storyline	Steve Levinson	1/10/05 6:23 p.m.
Re: Confusion about the storyline	Forrest of B.org	1/10/05 7:33 p.m.
Long time travel philosophy post! Head hurts! NM	ukimalefu	1/10/05 8:19 p.m.
The Philosophy of Time Travel	Forrest of B.org	1/10/05 9:28 p.m.
What does time travel have to do with philosophy? NM	Purple Penguin	1/11/05 6:12 a.m.
You can philosophy about time travel. NM	ukimalefu	1/11/05 7:16 a.m.
What does epistemology have to do with philosophy? NM	Forrest of B.org	1/11/05 7:17 a.m.
Philosophy is the search for truth. NM	K-chi	1/11/05 9:18 a.m.
When you can't prove it and it's speculation. NM	Adam Ashwell	1/11/05 10:22 a.m.
You can't prove that proof is ever possible.	Forrest of B.org	1/11/05 11:23 a.m.
Re: You can't prove that proof is ever possible.	blake37	1/11/05 11:51 a.m.
Eh? NM	Forrest of B.org	1/11/05 11:57 a.m.
Re: Eh?	blake37	1/11/05 11:59 a.m.
Re: Eh?	Forrest of B.org	1/11/05 12:40 p.m.
Re: Eh?	blake37	1/11/05 12:56 p.m.
Re: Eh?	Forrest of B.org	1/11/05 1:16 p.m.
Re: Eh?	blake37	1/11/05 2:23 p.m.
Re: Eh?	Deathmonger	1/11/05 1:46 p.m.
Re: Eh?	Forrest of B.org	1/11/05 2:20 p.m.
Re: Eh?	Yossarian	1/11/05 2:38 p.m.
Re: Eh?	Forrest of B.org	1/11/05 3:14 p.m.
Dayyymn. Fobo has mad logic skilz, yo. [/wigger] NM	Deathmonger	1/11/05 3:43 p.m.
I'm writing a paper on epistemology & ethics NM	Forrest of B.org	1/11/05 4:00 p.m.
Re: that explains alot NM	blake37	1/11/05 4:22 p.m.
Re: Eh?	Yossarian	1/11/05 4:57 p.m.
Re: Eh?	Forrest of B.org	1/11/05 6:46 p.m.
Welp, I'm satisfied. NM	Yossarian	1/12/05 3:36 p.m.
I get it! I get it!	K-chi	1/11/05 5:42 p.m.
And we're very proud of you too ^_^. NM	Adam Ashwell	1/11/05 5:43 p.m.
Now, what was the thread originally about again? NM	Reiginko	1/12/05 3:43 a.m.
Re: Confusion about the storyline	Andromeda_5[Kilo]	1/11/05 10:59 a.m.
Re: Confusion about the storyline	ukimalefu	1/11/05 4:55 p.m.



	Your Name:
	Your E-Mail Address:
	Subject:
	Message: : The concept of "erasing" timelines is nonsensical, though. What : that "Yesterday's Enterprise" episode is actually doing is no : different from what I'm suggesting Marathon Infinity does. The event which : propelled the Enterprise C into the future was a part of the : "original" timeline which lead to the disasterous future from : which they came. However, that timeline lead to another event which : brought the Enterprise C back in time, and as all time travel to the : past does, caused a branch in the timeline. This does not make it the same : as if the first event had not happened! It is nearly the same, but as you : said, there were minor differences. If sending the Enterprise back in time : had negated the disasterous future, then that future would not have : existed for the Enterprise to be sent back from, and the Enterprice C : would simply have vanished when the first time-travel event happened, : and... you've run into a causal paradox. : If the C vanishes into the future, that disasterous future happens, which : directly contradicts the negation of it's existence. It can't both be and : not-be in the same way. Which is why modern quantum mechanics operates off : the "many worlds" interpretation - they DO both happen, in : alternate versions of reality. If time travel is possible, a person : travelling back from one future can go back and alter the past and make a : new timeline where he was never born, which is seemingly a paradox, until : you consider that he WAS born in another timeline, and travelled to this : one from there. In his original timeline, when he went back in time, he : simply vanished. That timeline may continue on without him, and it would : be impossible to get back to that exact timeline via time travel alone, : though he could possibly get back to a nearly indistinguishable one where : an alternate he had also just vanished into the past. : I like to use the idea of divergent paths in a thick wood to illustrate this : best. Everybody understands the idea of time as a line, and Marathoners : particularly the metaphor of "the path" of time that we walk. : But we're walking a path which, at every step, branches off into infinite : other paths. That gets hard to visualize, so simplify it down to just a : bunch of paths branching off from each other in the woods. You come to an : intersection: Do you turn left or right? Say you turn right. You go down a : bit and find a sign saying "Ha ha, if you had turned left, you would : have been lead to [money/power/whatever], but too bad, this is a one-way : path and you can't go back". We face this scenario all the time, but : imagine time travel is possible. Now you can walk off the path, and beat a : new path back through the woods to the intersection, and this time, turn : left to the gold, riches, whatever it is down there. : If you hadn't taken the right path first, you wouldn't have known that to : turn left would lead you to great things. There is of course the chance : that you might have turned left at random, but say you're the kind of : person who always turns right at intersections; you wouldn't have turned : left if the right-path hadn't lead you to know of what lay down the : left-path. And if anybody had been walking the right-path with you when : you beat your way into the woods, all they know is that you just stepped : off the path, and they'd keep walking (or perhaps, if they could, step off : after you). : By Mark's interpretation, the absence of the W'rkncacnter just makes no : sense. Yrro trapped a W'rkncacnter in the sun, the Pfhor blew the sun up, : and... at what point was there no longer a W'rkncacnter trapped in there? : Why in this timeline wasn't it released? Because you trapped it in another : timeline? That's like saying because I walked down the left path and found : gold and riches that all my friends who walked down the right path now : have gold and riches too. Not unless they too could step off the path and : go back and turn left instead. : By my interpretation, our Cyborg went down a path, found the road lead to a : deadly drop off a cliff face, got dragged off into the woods and put back : on an earlier path, where he took a different route only to find the same : cliff face devouring that road too, and so on and so on until he finally : found a road that didn't lead over the cliff, and continued walking that. : The alternate paths/timelines didn't cease to exist just because he went : back and walked others, though they "came to an end" at the : point where they went off the cliff (the W'rkncacnter release). To those : who walked the "final" path right off the bat, these other : timelines are non-evident, except that some valiant hero came from out of : the blue and acted on knowledge he couldn't have had to prevent : catastrophe in the nick of time. But to everyone on the other paths, they : just walked off the cliff. : You are right, that this introduced some big literary problems, but not the : ones that you mentioned. The big problem it introduces is, why bother to : stop someone from changing the past if it doesn't affect your past, : present or future? In Eternal, they have more than just time travel : capability; they can travel into the past, create a new timeline, and then : bring all the people left in their timeline straight across to the new : one. Their timeline would still exist, devoid of any Humans, but the : Humans have reason to create a new timeline to move into. But then, why do : we, Marcus, care about going into the path to stop Hathor? What can she do : that will change the future we came from? : Nothing. Ultimately all our efforts to stop her from changing the past mean : nothing as far as "fixing the future" goes. It all stems from : our misunderstanding of the temporal mechanics of it all. Even Leela makes : reference to this at one point, saying in effect, "We could do this, : or not do this, but whichever one we choose, some other version of 'we' : will do the opposite in another timeline, so we might as well do what we : in this timeline would do if there weren't multilinear : considerations". : But ultimately, the point of all this time travel is moot. Fixing the past, : fixing the future, all means nothing from a perspective outside of time, : objective to it. Everything that can happen does happen. But Leela : explains that there is another reason, aside from anything inside the : universe, to bother tampering with time: just to make some sense of it : all. In this tangled web of every concievable possibility, what is real? : What matters? This is the problem that those Outside face, and the two : approaches to it differentiate the W'rkncacnter from the Jjaro. The W'rk : still care for some reason about life inside the universe, about making it : what they want and fighting stupid temporal wars... it's like religious : wars, everybody wants to have their own version of reality be THE version : of reality and stomp all over everybody else's, overlooking the fact that : you can have your own view on the world and let others have theirs, too. : The Jjaro don't care if the W'rkncacnter act petty and conquer one timeline : or another, just so long as there exists a timeline where they don't. : More importantly, the Jjaro are seeking a "causal tautology", a : timeline which loops upon itself, to serve as an anchor, a basis for : looking at the rest of the timeline. (Think of it as how logical : tautologies are the only logical thing except from proof, because they : prove themselves - they are definitions - and from these core definitions : we can form a basis of understanding everything else). : So in there, you have your One True Timeline still, but it branches out into : others, and others branch into it, and it does not exist in a vacuum. The : events of Marathon 2 clearly are not such a timeline, because the : W'rkncacnter was released; ditto most of the timelines witnessed in : Marathon Infinity. At the end of Infinity, however, we have a timeline : where, at the very least, the W'rkncacnter wasn't released, which is : better than nothing.
	If you'd like to include a link to another page with your message, please provide both the URL address and the title of the page:
	Optional Link URL:
	Optional Link Title:
	If necessary, enter your password below:
	Password: