A stable loop

[Claincy he/him]

I've been thinking about time travel a bit lately, probably a result of spending too much time watching Dr Who and 12 Monkeys. Anyway, I was thinking about my ideas on how time travel might work and found myself thinking the explanation in the form of a short story. So I wrote it. *shrug* I haven't really gone through and edited it so there are bound to be plenty of issues but it's approaching 3am and I felt like sharing it anyway.

A stable loop (google doc)

[theuntaintedchild he/him]

I'm totally reading this when I get off of work. XD

 

[Quiver he/him]

Time travel is one of my favorite tropes.

It's definitely the sort of thing I would need to read a few times to wrap my head around though. And -full disclaimer- probably does't help that one of my favorite visual novels is a time travel story, so I will, inevitably, compare back to that. Also, the fact that I am dumb, meaning I need to read it through a few times.

[Hemalurgic Headshot he/him]

I like this. Koren is likeable in a nerdy way. Upvote

[StrikerEZ he/him]

This is really cool. I've always liked the idea of time travel, and how it is, in my opinion, impossible. At least, traveling back in time can't be possible. I like how you worked the explanation, but I'm still personally in the belief that traveling back in time is impossible, as no matter what, whatever reason you go back in time for will never have existed if you stop/caus/etc it, so you never would've gone back in time in the first place.

Forward time travel, however...I can see that as more possible. Of course, you wouldn't be able to return to your original time period, again because of my explanation above.

Anyway, sorry for slightly derailing things, I really did like the story. I love time travel stories, even if I don't think they'd actually ever be possible.

[Claincy he/him]

Thankyou all 

@Quiver Which visual novel is that?

@StrikerEZ I think one of the prevailing theories is that once you build a time machine you will only be able to go back as far as the point where you built it. Personally I don't have strong theories on whether time travel is possible or how it would work. I think if time travel backwards is possible this might be a reasonable theory, but I don't really know Mostly I just think it works well narratively.

[Quiver he/him]

21 hours ago, Claincy said:

Thankyou all 

@Quiver Which visual novel is that?

Steins;Gate. Which is kind of one of my favorite stories period at this point, so I have strong feelings

[Claincy he/him]

13 hours ago, Quiver said:

Steins;Gate. Which is kind of one of my favorite stories period at this point, so I have strong feelings

*Quickly Googles* Hmm, sounds interesting. I might check it out at some point.

[Quiver he/him]

37 minutes ago, Claincy said:

*Quickly Googles* Hmm, sounds interesting. I might check it out at some point.

You... probably don't want to get me started on that series, because I WILL GUSH FOREVER.

On topic though... do you plan on doing anything more with this stable loop idea?

[Claincy he/him]

41 minutes ago, Quiver said:

You... probably don't want to get me started on that series, because I WILL GUSH FOREVER.

Heh

Quote

On topic though... do you plan on doing anything more with this stable loop idea?

Not for now, but possibly later. I dunno if I'll write this out to a longer story but I do have ideas on the backburner for a time-travel based rpg which would use the concepts outlined in this. When I get to that I might expand on this narrative as well, but I'm not really sure yet *shrugs*.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

Know I'm really curious... will they make a stable loop or not...  Great job!

[Claincy he/him]

On 5/3/2017 at 3:24 PM, Kingsdaughter613 said:

Know I'm really curious... will they make a stable loop or not...  Great job!

Thanks!

To be perfectly honest I don't know. If I decide to expand on the narrative at some point I might work that out

[18th Shard he/him]

Excellent job, I really enjoyed it. The mechanics seem fairly self-consistent, which is something that always irks me about some time travel stories when they fail to do so, like the Cursed Child. I also liked the math analogies, as those made it make sense to the rest of us. I don't envy trying to set up a situation that succeeds, I tried to think of one and can't get one that is super satisfying.

Maybe he gets Korel to go back in time, injects his sister with the cure, but ensures that no one figures out its Korel until later. This causes Torran to go to Korel to thank him, at which point Korel realizes he never did so in his life yet, and Torran asks Korel to go back in time and give his sister the cure.

Would that work?

@Claincy

Edited May 5, 2017 by 18th Shard
tag

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

He could write himself a letter telling himself what to do. This way he will always do it.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

6 hours ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

He could write himself a letter telling himself what to do. This way he will always do it.

Ah, but you see. If he does actually do what the letter tells him too, he never would've wrote the letter in the first place, because he wouldn't have needed to.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

That's the idea. He writes a letter explaining what happened and what he has to do. Now he will always follow the directions in the letter and send the letter back to himself - but he will never write the original letter. It's a stable loop, like the one described in the story.

[StrikerEZ he/him]

4 hours ago, Kingsdaughter613 said:

That's the idea. He writes a letter explaining what happened and what he has to do. Now he will always follow the directions in the letter and send the letter back to himself - but he will never write the original letter. It's a stable loop, like the one described in the story.

True...but if he never wrote the original letter, then he never writes the one that he tells himself to write.

As much as I like reading about time travel, logically explaining it doesn't work, in my opinion. No matter how you do it, if you go back in time and change something, you never would've had a reason to go back to begin with, so you never changed it.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

Yes, but a stable paradox does work in the story, so the letter should work.

[Claincy he/him]

@18th Shard That's possible. The difficulty with that approach (to be fair, the difficulty with any approach) is the shear number of variables it creates. Ensuring that Torran found out that Korel had saved his sister at the right time such that he meets Korel and convinces him to go back with the cure could be difficult. Things get more difficult if his sister's sudden recovery impacts the search for a cure, which it might or might not.

A letter could work, but would degrade over time leading to an unstable loop. To avoid that you would want to make a new copy of the letter in each loop. You would also probably want to include some details about the cure just in case you effected it's development.

Another possible route could be to go back and cure her, but make it look like she died and keep the events as close to the original timeline as possible. Getting her to stay in hiding until after Torran goes to Korel, so as not to disrupt the sequence of events.

In general the aim would be to minimise the changes you make so as to limit the ripple effect as much as possible.