Myou've Gotta be Kidding Me

by DataPacRat

Interlude: Vision of the Past

Missy, older, wider, and, she hoped, just a bit wiser than she used to be, stared across the chess board at her opponent. "How goes the surface?"

Jack pushed a pawn. "More pieces are showing up, more conflict, more ramping up."

Missy slid a bishop forward. "Good to hear - in a sense."

Jack hopped a knight to the side. "You enjoy people fighting, dying, suffering?"

Missy pushed her bishop back a single square. "Of course not. But the fact that they are happening, means that I don't have to worry about too much paradox."

Jack nudged another pawn. "Would that be so bad?"

Missy shoved a rook halfway across the board. "Yes. There are worse things that can happen than even all of Equis being destroyed in the Game. I'm willing to go to far lengths to keep all the ponies, and other people, in Equestria and Equis from being killed off. I'm willing to go to even further lengths to make sure they got born in the first place. So I'm willing to stay awake, even though you woke me up early - but I'm going to try to minimize my effect on the world, outside of the effects I specifically planned for."

Jack pushed her own bishop forward again. "And... playing chess with me is 'minimizing' things?"

Missy slid her rook to the side a single square. "You already found out I exist - so unless I want to try putting the effort in, and taking the risks, of making that have never happened... I'm going to try playing this out."

Jack hopped her knight back. “What’s the worst that can happen?”

Missy pushed her rook the rest of the way across the board. “According to the main theory of temporal mechanics I’m working with; the worst worst thing is that a paradox causes the universe to be self-inconsistent, forcing it to not just disappear, but never have existed in the first place. The next-worst worst thing... A paradox could be put into effect that resonates back and forth across the timestream, forcing events to reconfigure further and further from what they originally had been, until a new steady-state timeline arises which bears only a passing resemblance to the original. If we’re somewhat lucky, at least some of the same people might still exist - but there’s no guarantee of even that.”

Jack nudged another pawn. “So - trying to get you to tell me too much about my future... bad idea. Noted.”

Missy rocketed her queen forward and sideways. “Precisely. Oh, and checkmate.”

Comments

[Salacar]

'Past' in relation to 'when' exactly?

[DataPacRat]

1064093
Mm... I'd say it's safe enough to say that it's before Chapter 60, at the least.

[Salacar]

1064143

*Glances at the chapters*

*Glares at PacRat*

They don't have any numbers!

[nemryn]

Augh time travel

[DataPacRat]

1064152
Sure they do - just look at the URLs. This interlude is chapter 61.

1064162

[Salacar]

1064173

For some reason the 'Vision of the Past' sounds a lot more like a vision of the future to me

[DataPacRat]

1064183
It could be described as that, too, depending on whose subjective timeline you're following.

[AppleTank]

1064183
Jack's past, Missy's future

[Chaos Waltz]

. . . you've read homestuck, haven't you.

[DataPacRat]

1191171
I have - though I only caught up to the most recent ones last week. But I've been playing with various sorts of time-travel since long before I ever read of 'paradox space'.

[Organized Chaos]

Of all the times when Forevermore could have commented he/she/it/they decided not to, what a shame...

[scranity]

Okay, I was only kind of understanding what the heck was happening before, due to the math, big words, logic puzzles, etc., but now I just don't get it.
Please don't complicate things further with your time and universe knick-knacks.
There are us not-so-sciencey types who want to read this too you know!
So would you kindly try to make your next chapters, even though I'm fifty chapters behind, more understandable to the rest of us?

[Gi6791]

Mango jack? That's the only person I can think of when you say jack