A thought occurred to me while thinking about quantum mechanics, Durandal's futile attempt at escaping the closure of the universe, and how the player actually did escape, according to the end screen in Infinity. We know that the closure of the universe is based on the total mass of the universe - its fate was irrevocably determined by the fundamental start conditions of the universe. (Incidentally, in the real world, we currently believe the universe will instead continue to expand, meaning that this is one way our universe differs from that of Marathon's.). But that means that, if our universe-hopping ability allowed us to escape, we must have been able to hop to a universe with different fundamental conditions.
This possibility has intriguing implications for the nature of the W'rkncacnter. Even a tiny change in the fundamental constants of our universe would completely annihilate everything we'd recognize - just slightly change the mass or spin or charge of one of the fundamental particles, for instance, and suddenly you may be incapable of having things like chemical bonds, atoms, and stellar fusion. Such a universe would just be a glowing cloud of radioactive chaos. Remind you of anything?
"...a being of such destructive power that to control it would be to control the universe...
All quarters reported the same thing: half of the sun had gone nova, but the readings from the other half were impossible. It was as if the universe had forgotten its own rules."
(Excerpted from Tfear's Report to Pfhor High Command in the Infinity Manual)
The general consensus is that we have our timeline-jumping ability because we're cyborged out with some JJaro components. That implies that the JJaro also had some ability to cross timelines. We also know that the JJaro fought the W'rkncacnter, and were approximately evenly matched. Is it possible that the W'rkncacnter are an accident of the the JJaro experimenting with multiverse travel? There's a theory that the JJaro were AIs, perhaps they too sought to escape? Or perhaps the W'rkncacnterare Jjaro from one of these alternate chaos universes, who escaped to our universe for whatever reason?
