Vinyl continued her careful work researching the two energies, trying to isolate the wavelength they had in common with her own magical abilities. She felt certain somehow that this could be the key to finding where she came from. She could scarcely imagine it. An entire world of creatures like herself, who had never known humanity or the robots she'd created here with her Dad. Somehow, she knew robotics was totally unknown on the world she came from. Then again, it made sense when she thought about it. If everyone on the world she came from had magical abilities like hers, why would technology develop? Technology was developed so humanity could accomplish things they couldn't without it...and magic covered most of that.
So many idle musings percolated through her mind as she considered such a world, where magic took the place of technology. Did the weather bend to the whims of the inhabitants? Was the world still natural, or had nature itself been tamed? Did magic all come from within, or was there an entire magical field that could be tapped? If magic were such an available resource, what sort of fantastical wild beasts would there be? How long would it take her to take over it if she became so inclined? Could she adapt the materials she was using to keep the energies contained into an anti-magic alloy that could make her robots invincible there? How many suns did the world have, and how many moons? Was it a planet at all?
Eventually, she pushed past these idle musings, focusing on the task at hand. Thanks to a call from Roll, she now knew the two energy types to be called Justice Energy and Evil Energy. Rather descriptive, if unoriginal. Still, it made for quicker experiment write-ups as she could use the shorthand JE and EE, rather than 'the blue stuff' and 'the purple stuff'. It also didn't make her crave jelly crackers, which was a plus to her efficiency.
Identifying the wavelength had been relatively easy for her. Even the standard scanning equipment could manage it. Isolating it, however, had been far more difficult, as the available tech couldn't manage it and she was having to develop new systems just for the task. She rated it as a reasonable investment of time and energy given her plans of terraforming Mars, since it was likely that other stellar energy sources would be encountered that needed careful handling.
Unfortunately, the only energy she'd found that could be used to separate out the wavelength from the two energy sources was her own magic, and controlled tests had already revealed that the two energies could feedback through her magic into her if she maintained the connection for too long. She'd cut the connection off each time the feedback had started before it could reach her, so now most of her studies were trying to figure out how her magic worked so she could develop a device that could act as a surge protector on her horn, preventing any energies from going into her via a magical connection. Progress was...less than smooth.
She was grateful she had so many samples to work with, especially since Dr. Light had been kind enough to send any excess JE Duo gave off over to her for her research. In desperation to avoid contamination, she'd taken to dropping samples of JE and EE on top of each other and trying to separate the wavelength before the two samples neutralized each other into explosive energy release. Unfortunately, the behavior of the energies forced the sample size to be kept small. Not only was the amount of energy released during neutralization immense, if the samples weren't entirely consumed with trying to neutralize each other, any excess would attempt to corrupt the energies Vinyl was using to analyze in order to strengthen themselves. This meant she had at most 15 seconds for analysis in each experiment.
Groaning after yet another experiment ended in failure with very little to show for it, she sat back and rubbed her forehead. "Ugh..." she groaned angrily. "Why won't this just work?" In a fit of pique, she kicked the machine she was working with, careful not to kick it too hard even if it was reinforced to take what she could dish out.
"Having trouble?" Protoman asked as he came in to check on her. "You've been in here a while..."
"I know!" Vinyl whined. "Nothing I can try is working! And the only things I can think of that might work I can't try without taking risks I'm not going to take!" Groaning, she slumped over, pushing Protoman into a sitting position so she could slump into his lap. "Ear scratchies, please?" she begged.
Chuckling, Protoman began scratching her behind her ears, her favorite way of relaxing. After a time, he spoke up. "Mind if I take a look at what you've been working on?" he asked. "Maybe a fresh set of eyes will spot what you've missed?"
Vinyl thought about it for a time. "Hmm..." After a bit, she rolled over. "If I get belly rubs, sure."
Chuckling, Protoman began rubbing her belly as he established a wireless connection to her research comp to go over what she'd managed so far. "Hmm...what about this 'continuous pump' method?" he asked. "You haven't tried it yet."
"That's because of the drawbacks," Vinyl murmured softly. "It'll mean continuous generation of massive amounts of energy. If I kept it on for much more than 30 seconds, I'd run the risk of blowing up Sky Lagoon."
"So you need to find a way of dealing with the excess energy to use that method?" Protoman clarified.
"Yeah," Vinyl confirmed. "Either that or figure out a way to make a magical surge protector. But to make a magical surge protector, I need to understand how my magic works, which means figuring out how to isolate the wavelength for comparison, which needs the magical surge protector to work!" She threw her hooves into the air in frustration. "It'd be easier if someone would just invent a time machine so I could go into a timeline where I've already succeeded and bring the results back...but that would create some sort of grandson paradox or something because the act of doing so would negate the original timeline where I figured it out in the first place!"
Seeing just how stressed out Vinyl was getting, Protoman rolled her over and pulled out a hairbrush. "Brushie brushie?" he offered softly.
Sighing, Vinyl nodded. She then relaxed as he gently brushed her mane.
Least Protoman is helping... brush off Vinyl's stress a little.
Many yes
also first
Dammit
7329662 you need to remember to refresh before claiming first post
Man, it's moments like this where I'm forced to remind myself that Vinyl is still an adorable filly with desires for comfort. Too cute, man. WAY too cute.
Bootstrap is best paradox.
7329668
i did but was literal seconds off for first
7329673
or minutes you never know
7329650 -groans- that hurt
7329674 and thus the reason y claiming 'first post' is absolutely pointless,
7329711
but its fun
completely true though
At this point, a bootstrap paradox would probably be preferable the idea of the Evil Energy getting out somehow.
Because let's face it, even if you've never played a Megaman game, you KNOW that's what's going to happen.
7329650
BOO YOU STINK!!
Brushie Brushie!
Someone's been watching too much Pinkie and the Brain.
Unless the world operates on Multiverse theory, in which case that wouldn't be possible and you'd just be making different realities with almost every jump you make.
7329670 I know, right?
7329918
That only applies if you're jumping backward.
7329688 Ah. I hope he didn't rub you the wrong way. But I'm sure you can brush off these problems. I think you just need some more... energy.
7329650 *le-gasp* He's back! ...
7329999 -deadpan look- really, more bad puns
7330015 As a wise one once said, .
I read "Brushy, brushy," and my first thought is Colgate's Dentistry Ad by Animated James.
7329948 All right, so I actually looked up what a bootstrap paradox was... I think Vinyl is mixing Bootstrap with Grandfather. Bootstrap is when the reason you've learned why a thing happened is because you went into the future to find out what it is in the first place. This doesn't affect the timeline in the slightest, as that's how it's always meant to be (unless you've got Retcon Powers, but that's another story). Grandfather is when you alter the past in a way that threatens your reality, and it ceases to exist... and comes back... and ceases to exist... and comes back... and cea- alright, you get the point. Insert M.C. Escher drawing here.
visualfunhouse.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/mc_escher_origional-waterfall.jpg Then again, maybe "wibbly wobbly timey-wimey" is the answer?
7330117
Actually, considering she's talking about addressing the future, perhaps "Grandson Paradox" is more accurate?
7330144 Well, considering there's no such thing, I'm not sure that would work. Sure, you could say that your grandkid from the future could kill you in self defense before you have a child, but that's more along the lines of stopping an event from happening rather than propagating it.
7330233 It could be a grandson paradox. Take data from future you and the fact that you took it means you didn't need to make it. So it ceases... but you took it... but it ceases... but you took-
If she took future data then she never made the data she took in the first place so she makes it but she never needed to make it because she already has it but she never had it and decides to make it but with the data in her grasp she doesn't need to waste material but she has to waste the material to have data that she doesn't have... or does she have it?
7330394 Knowledge is a concept, an idea. Go into the "future", make a copy of something or memorize it, and it doesn't affect the original (unless it has exploitable feelings and is a part of a band about making music). Then go back to the "present", allow the "future" to become the "present", and you learn the only reason you learned something in the first place is because you had gone into the future in the "first" place. Thusly, rather than the event being a paradox, the paradox is the event... Homestuck can describe it better than I can.
7330408 I know what you're talking about.
7330448 Heh, there is a reason the universe there is called Paradox Space, after all.
Fundamentally bootstrap paradoxes are a closed loop with a self-creating central entity.
Which basically means 'self fulfilling prophecy, but with time travel' in fancy terms. Because the prophecy exists (and only because of that), the event prophesied will come to pass, which causes the prophecy, which causes the event, et-al.
In this case, because an object travels through time, it will eventually travel through time so that it can eventually travel through time etc etc.
The reason they fall into 'paradox' is the fact that the entity that is central to the loop is non-existent without the loop.
The time-travelling pocket watch is a common example used; a man finds a pocketwatch and carries it with him everywhere. Eventually, he travels into the past and loses the pocketwatch, where it's picked up by his younger self. The pocket watch has no point at which it was created, because the start of the loop is when it is first picked up, which is not how pocket watches come into being; nor does the pocket watch have a point where the forces of entropy act upon it, as each time it goes through the loop, it exhibits no change.
That all being said, Vinyl shouldn't be worried about a bootstrap paradox at all, as the self-created entity either exists, and therefor will cycle regardless of her concerns, or doesn't, negating the entire loop in the first place.
7330459
Except with multiverse theory, in which case there is a future timeline where she takes the time, does the research, and figures it out on her own...but the act of traveling forward in time to get the research ahead of time means the future timelines where the data was discovered no longer exist, because they can no longer happen.
7330466 Except the branch where she develops the tech can't just be cut away; In multiverse theory, each universe is unique and self contained; no matter what choice you make, it only effects which path you take. Expecting to destroy an entire reality just by skipping developing knowledge on your own is somewhat like expecting someone else to forget how to bake a cake just because they taught you how to cook it.
The universe in which Vinyl copies the knowledge of a different universe's Vinyl does not cancel out the other universe, it merely spins off a new one in which Vinyl opted to copy her notes from a different reality, rather than develop them on her own.
7330466 The thing about time travel is that there are so many potential problems with it. The only viable means I can see it functioning is the multi-dimension theory, where 'time-travel' is really just traveling to different dimensions that happen to be at different points in time relative to your own dimension. In this method, both groups of temporal paradox (the bootstrap and grandfather's paradox) can be avoided, as you aren't truly traveling through time, despite appearances.
Of course, that doesn't explain Chrono Trigger worth a darn...
7330493
It doesn't destroy that timeline...it disconnects it. And with only time travel tech, travelling forward can only happen along timelines that are still possible relative to your temporal start point. Once she takes the trip to get the data without creating it, the timeline where she creates it ceases to be possible relative to that start point...and as such, timeline jumping tech is required rather than timeline traversing.
Or in other words, travelling back and forth along your own timeline or into still possible timelines is fourth and fifth dimensional travel (X and Y axis of time grid), but in order for this to happen without creating a paradox, one needs sixth dimensional (ability to travel the Z axis of the time grid).
7330530 Forgive me, but this is all that comes to mind: The hell kind of A Wrinkle in Time bullshit is that?
In any case, I guess you can make up your own reasons for why a thing can't happen, but it seems like you're making things harder for yourself. Not too surprising, given some of your works.
7330704
I'm not saying that actually doing so wouldn't work.
I'm saying Vinyl's understanding of time travel - which might or might not be accurate to this universe - says it won't.
7330712 Oh, all right. I guess that makes sense.
Anyone else read that book as a kid? The one where some kids go on a magical adventure to defeat the manifestation of evil called The Black Thing by making "wrinkles" (wormholes that are called tesseracts for some reason) in time? They blew up a giant brain with the power of wuv? Just me? OK.
7330716
I read it. Also read the sequels. "Wind in the Door", "A Swiftly Tilting Planet"...
Fun books.
There may be a way to cheat the Grandfather Paradox:
So, Back to the Future is fairly accurate to how we think Time Travel actually would work, in that a time machine is also effectively a way to jump between dimensions: in that going back in time, changing something (even just the act of going back, and removing 'information' from your original timeline, thus altering causality), then coming back forward, is the same thing as traveling between dimensions, if perhaps the roundabout way instead of directly.
Therefore, you can retain classical causality by using your Time Machine/Dimension Hopper to travel to an unrelated worldline. That you could freely take information from the other timeline, if both pasts are mutually exclusive.
Case in point: we have an idea of how a lightsaber-esque device could be made. There's no paradox because while Star Wars in 'in the past', it's in the past of another dimension, due to that it's readily apparent that the Star Wars universe cannot also be our own, given how there's other sets of physical laws in that universe, case-in-point The Force, and the physics that allow for high-energy Star Wars devices and weaponry that, to match equivalent effects in our universe, the devices would be much more massive (ie; to blow up a planet in this universe like the Death Star would, it would take a fleet of megacraft that would basically be the main gun and engine block of the canon Death Star. Also, there's a few articles flowing around the 'Net that show how the time dilation effects of Hyperspace travel would not be how it'd work in this dimention.
Ergo, Star Wars is in another dimension, and it would not be a paradox to take information from them, as it'd be impossible for there to even be any paradox between us and them. So, you can take ideas preemptively without any negative consequences to causality.
Also, it's 3 AM and I should be asleep, so I doubt any of that made any actual sense.
7330756 I barely remember that book series.
A Tesseract is one of these: upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Tesseract.gif
It's how you draw a 4-dimentional object. If I understand it right: think of a cube changing size, and putting bars between the two superimposed images, and you'd have a frame of a tesseract; with the 'time' dimension being represented by the bars connecting the corners to themselves. upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1e/Tesseract_Mark.svg
If you could physically warp space and time like that, it mayyyyyy kinda look something like that? Depending on which end you are on (as it seems that you can NOT travel to any point before the 'earlier' end was physically made), you would see that line of space changing from what it was, ro changing to what it would be.
And thus no Quint. Then again even Capron hasn't explained him very well. I was hoping that the Archive comics would help with that, but then this "hiatus " came around.
I have an idea, use the excess energy to power a super sound system, anyone for a DJ Pon3 party?
Well, what about if she builds the time machine, and just goes forward enough to get notes? Or at least an idea? That way she doesn't really cause a massive paradox, just a small one, and speeds up her past/future a little bit?
7331241 Ummm, no.
Time travel is just too dangerous as it is, as it rips the space-time continuum and the results of that...
I don't have a clue, but it wouldn't be any where near good.
7331279 Well, what if it doesn't cause a paradox in the first place? It's possible that time travel works there the way it does as depicted in FiM, as well as Back to the Future; that is to say, there don't seem to be time paradoxes, either only different realities, or it happening regardless.
In "It's About Time," Twilight tries to warn herself, but doesn't succeed, and in trying to prevent the bad things, succeeds only in setting the loop in stone. If things truly changed, or would change, then would that not mean the time travel would theoretically happen regardless, since it's not technically changing an event, and is in fact doing the opposite?
And in the Season 5 finale, we see that Starlight's improved spell does change the course of history, in a way, but doesn't necessarily create a paradox. The only reason neither Teilight nor Spike ever seem to be involved is because they're outside the timestream due to the Tree of Harmony intervening in what's happening, likely since the Tree itself is crucial to the spell.
It seems that unless an event is being changed, then what has come to pass will, regardless, and sometimes attempted intervention only cements it further.
And in BttF, there's the whole bulletproof vest thing after Marty gets back from the past the first time around, where he thought Doc died, but since he had gone to warn him in the past, he likely already had the vest on.
Sorry, I rambled on for a while.
Another enjoyable chapter. Great job.
Megaman uses the Trunks method of time travel aka you travel to alternate universes. That explains why a Megaman from the future was so weak since even if Light had removed all his weapons systems Willy could have just give him more Dakka.
Oh come on Vinyl, don't you want to play with the wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff????? I can totally see you streaming tunes from the future to your headphones.
The simple time travel solution, send back the method, but not the results
I like how, in a website that was made for fan stories about a little girls show, we have serious discussions about the laws of spacetime.