Time Travel & Linden's choices-Warning:Unblackened Spoil

[Bullfrog]

Imagine a sheet of blank paper and consider that the map of the Land. Then place a stack of transparent sheets on it - each of them is a moment in Time.
Place a dot with a marker on the same place on each transparent sheet; from above, you only see a dot, but if you look at it from the side, the various dots form a three-dimensional object which spans the whole stack of sheets. That is a caesure.

OK

Now move the caesure around by moving the whole stack of transparent sheets around the map of the Land. There - a caesure which roams the Land, joining together all moments in Time...

Huh? First the caesure was at position A in every moment in time, now it was never at position A, it was always at position B. I don't think that works.

When Linden arrives at Kevin's Watch the caesure is not there. As she (and we) observe, it travels toward her like a regular old twister. So, in one sense it moves through time and space just like everything else. Resolving that with "a Fall stirs together every moment which has ever existed in the place it happens to occupy as it moves around." is the tough part.

time works this way. It's like a string that grows. The start of the string well call point A, this is the begining of all things when the arch was first created. The string grows longer as time grows forward. You can't move to future that hasn't happened yet because the sting is still growing and the longest point on the string is right now this very second.

So, when Anele fell into a caesure and moved from his own time into Lind's (approximately), how long was the string? I'm sure Anele considered his own time "right now".

[burgs]

Back to the Earthblood question, and Foul specifically. Remember that Amok said without his lead, the Earthblood could never be found. So that's a power that was hidden from Foul.

I wonder if the Earthblood will come into play during this series. We're virtually assured of seeing Kevin (as all of the history of the Land comes into play here), so with such a potent power, who knows?

I have a hard time imagining this being done in four books. Well, three, now. There seems to be so much that needs to be done!

[Guest]

Let's use a perfectly conical twister as an analogy for the ceasure. If you were at the bottom of a tornado (and were a very small ant) you wouldn't see it, because it was just a point. I could suck you up though. Let's say it sucks you up and you get to the top you see an airplane flying by. The airplane gets wrecked unless it has a pretty powerful engine (like made of white gold) to get down the tornado.

So the big top of the tornado is the ceasure in Linden's NOW and the tip is at every moment in the Land's past, but not the future.

The only problem with this (well, aside from the whole rending of the space-time continuum) is that Linden calls a big caesure to waft her back to the present with the Demondim. I think SRD should have made that one invisible, even thought it drew everyone with it, therby explaining why no one in the past knew about them.

[Believer]

I think the Earthblood was, in and of itself, able to break the Law of Death -- regardless of whether the commander was the wielder of the Staff of Law or not.

[burgs]

I guess the only person that knows the answer to this is Donaldson himself, and trying to put myself into his shoes, I think his answer would be that both the Staff and the Earthblood were required to break the Law of Death. Earthblood may be powerful, but it does not govern law. The Staff does. Perhaps the Staff, in and of itself, doesn't have the power to break laws, but the Earthblood "augmented" its strength.

[ScrapOSamadhi]

I don't think the staff was necessary for breaking the law of death. Actually now that I think about it I am surprised Elena could do it WHILE holding the staff. Look what it did to Drool. I do remember the three winged bird and a comment by one of the lords that the staff could NOT have done it or been made to do it. It was that revelation which led them to conclude he had found the Illearth Stone. I think the Earthblood either obeys some (meta) law we don't know yet which the Staff had to respect/tollerate or was simply more powerful. Elena didn't consciously USE the staff in her act.

This does make some sense when we look at how the Law of Life was broken. No staff was present then, nor any Earthblood. Just a LOT of Earthpower (from the Forestal, channelled by the Krill). So, a likely conclusion is that enough concentrated Earthpower can sunder the law (no pun intended).

[burgs]

That's true. I'd forgotten about that.

Of course it makes perfect sense.

[I'm Murrin]

But apparently it would not have been possible had a Staff of Law existed when Caer Caveral died.

[Jerico]

Bullfrog wrote

So, when Anele fell into a ceasure and moved from his own time into Lind's (approximately), how long was the string? Im sure Anele considered his own time "right now"

Of course he considered it "right now", to him it was, but to the people in the future it was the past. As to how long the string was? Well it was 3000 years longer when he came out of it as far as he was concerned. But it actually was as long as it was when the Ceasure that took him began. Since I assume it was one of the first that Joan created in the hospital (about one hundred years in the Lands past).
Point A is the begining and lets say point Y is where Joan created it. Once created it went back to point Q and grabbed Anele. Time existed from Point A until point Y at the time the Ceasure was created. It fractures the string (time) and is able to enter all of the fractures.

Now only people with 'extra' earthsight can detect them. We see Stave,Linden, and Esmer able to detect them at a distance. Liand tells Linden that there apperance is mesured in years.
That they aren't seen all of the time is a tipoff by SRD that they may contain every moment, but do not exist in each moment all the time. Like you stated the Ceasure that hit the Watch wasn't there when Linden first arrived, but as soon as Anele pointed it out she saw it. It moves through time as it moves across distance.

[drew]

Talking about Linden's free will.....(a bunch of posts back)
-She didn't need to take the staff from the past, Covenant told her she needed the staff....she went back in time to find it. It was in the Wahnyn cave; why couldn't she just go back to the future (snicker) and go to the present Wahnyn cave and get the staff. But if she did that, the the staff would npt have been gone for 3000 years, and Kevin's dirt (presumably) would not have occured.
So, maybe she was wrong, maybe she didn't open the door for Kevin's Dirt by taking the staff from the past.

[bhoywonder]

SRD has introduced a whole new raft of paradoxes with this time travel thing.
There have been a number of comments made about free will and so on, and Linden's 'decision' to go back in time.
Let me put this to you:
If Kevin's Dirt was present because of the absence of the Staff of Law for several thousand years, because Linden took the Staff into the future, then Kevin's Dirt shouldn't have been present when Linden first entered the land, because she had not gone back in time "yet".
However, if it was caused because of the Staff if Law being absent, then this means that Linden did not have a choice in going back in time because it was always "supposed" to happen - precisely because it was there when she arrived.

However, quite plausibly Linden could have decided not to go back in time. This would have meant that Kevin's Dirt would not have existed and the Staff of Law would have been present in the "present time" of the book, just waiting to be found.

Also:
The nature of time travel and the nature of paradoxes necessitate the need to think in terms of parallel dimensions or realities, or else anything they did in the past COULD NOT have affected the "present" because it would already have happened (viz. Kevin's Dirt)!
For instance, there would have to be a "reality" where Linden decided not to go back in time or a reality where Findail did not join with Vain to form the new staff, or else he would not have been trying so hard to prevent it from happening. The reason that Findail was trying so hard to prevent this was because it was preventable, after all!

Of course the only "reality" that matters is the one that SRD creates!

IMHO SRD should have left time travel well alone.

He can do what he likes, of course, it's his story after all!

Comments?

[Jerico]

There is a lot of what if that confuse the issue ie. what if Linden didn't go back?
Well she did and her decision was based on the fact that she thought she already had, and that's whay the staff wasn't present when she arrived. That she would go get it in the future was something she accepted.
We don't need to bring in parrallel dimensions or alternate realities, it's already a can of worms .
I hope there is a reason for the time travel, there must be a reason.
But I'm afraid SRD didn't give us enough information to guess what that reason is. We can speculate all we want, but only he knows!!

[I'm Murrin]

Jerico: I agree. No need to argue this point round and round, and 'what if's are impossible.

People argue that there was no free will if she was predestined ot go back in time, but that doesn't work: she went back in time because the circumstances existed in which she would make the free choice to do so. It does not matter that her decision was what caused the circumstances which would produce that particular response; she was placed into a situation and her character, experience, and emotional state responded to that situation in the only way they would. If she had arrived in the Land and there had been no Kevin's Dirt, one of the reasons for her time-travelling would be gone; she wouldn't travel back, and therefore Kevin's Dirt would never had been caused. It's a paradox, yes, but one with perfect logic.

[drew]

I don't think thst the absence of the staff caused the Dirt, because if she just decided, "no, I won't go back" would the Dirt have just stopped?


Maybe, In the real past, (Before Liden altered it) someone else took the staff...she just went back to before that happened. The Whanyn were dying, from being in contact with it, maybe they only lived for a few hundred more years, and someone else took it from the empty cave, allowing the Dirt to occur.

But the question remains....where is the real staff. She took the one from year 200asb (after sunbane) but the staff must have still existed, so where is the actual staff from year 3500?
If it was in the cave all this time, did it just vanish when she took from year 200, or if someone else did something with it during that time (maybe it's under mount Thunder again) would it still be there?
Is there now two staffs in the year 3500?

That trip of hers may have been the domino that starts everything off.

[bhoywonder]

Drew - I agree that there are quite serious domino effects; I think that'll be the whole crux of the story.

Jerico - I also agree with what you say: there is perfect logic to what happens but that is my point! In one sense you are contradicting yourself - you said that Linden had free choice but circumstances dictated that the only choice she could make was to act the way she did:

she was placed into a situation and her character, experience, and emotional state responded to that situation in the only way they would.

I entirely agree that circumstances dictated that she HAD to have made the choice she did. Thus Linden had no free will!

If she DID have free will, then there would have been a reality where she chose not to go back in time, where there would have been no Kevin's Dirt when she arrived, and presumably Foul is far less strong. The Staff would not have been where it was left in Anele's cave but it wouldn't have been that far away where the Waynhim (who would be dead) left it. It wouldn't have been much of a story either!

The point I am trying to make is (and there IS only one staff, Drew) is that taking it out of the Land for several thousand years is going to have some serious dertrimental affect: Kevin's Dirt I think would have been the least of the Land's worries! Remember what happened without the Staff's presence in the Land before!!! Foul would have been made much stronger by the absence of the Staff and Linden's actions were to blame.

It's dead easy just to dismiss the whole concept of alternative realities because of the immense complexities involved but either you have free will (and alternative realities) or no free will (and only one reality). That is perfectly logical. It was SRD who opened up this Pandora's Box of piling paradox upon paradox, and I hope he knows what he's doing!

[bhoywonder]

Apologies - I may have got Murrin's and Jerico's posts mixed up, but you get the point.
And anyway - 'What if's are fun! I thought that was one of the points of this forum?

[Jerico]

We must assume that something like Kevins dirt existed before Berek discovered Earthpower. I mean you have all of these people migrating to the Land and if they could see the beauty and health of the trees why would they cut them down? They would know it was 'wrong'.
It might even be that the earthsight was caused by the Staff of Law, that in some way the original staff made it possible in the first place. Then after it was destroyed no one had it until Linden had it in the SC.
She could 'see'. Then she made the new staff and it was lost because of something she would do to 'trap it in time'. So we've reverted back to the way it was before Berek, no one can see under the dirt.

[I'm Murrin]

In one sense you are contradicting yourself - you said that Linden had free choice but circumstances dictated that the only choice she could make was to act the way she did.

Ah. Yes. I almost went into this (further contradicting myself but also strengthening my point) but though it might be a little too philosophical... I guess I'll explain.
The idea is held in my statement: "she was placed into a situation and her character, experience, and emotional state responded to that situation in the only way they would." The idea is that free will is not as 'free' as it seems. Choice is an illusion, since all our responses are dictated by our character. Any particular person that makes a choice, could never have made any other choice than they did. It's not a 'flip a coin' situation, where you could go one way or another - if a choice in the past could be repeated (and I don't mean with knowledge of having made it before), you would make exactly the same choice every time, because that is who you are - you are the person who makes those particular choices. Your life, your personality, is composed of the choices you make, and if you made different choices, you wouldn't be the same person.

[Guest]

I disagree Murrin...there have been many times that different choice seemed right and I could have made any of them. Like the donkey that starves to death exactly half way between two identical piles of hay, there are situations that can go either way. Sometimes people just need to pick one decision and go with it, even though their character, experience, etc. could just as easily have led them down a different path.

I've also been thinking of Jerico's string theory. The Raynhim disprove this theory of timelines. They can predict a call that will happen before the string has elongated. If the string is only as long as their present, they they could not forsee something that was going to happen before the string lengthened.

P.S. I think I said something like this before, but this forum is such a great find. I cannot tell you all how much I have wanted to discuss these books over the years, without finding a single person that had read them, much less appreciated them! Thank you all for the current and future, incredibly good insight into the various issues brought up by these works!

[Jerico]

urbanite roadroamer wrote:

I've also been thinking of Jerico's string theory. The Raynhim disprove this theory of timelines. They can predict a call that will happen before the string has elongated. If the string is only as long as their present, they they could not forsee something that was going to happen before the string lengthened.

They 'predict' when someone will call them. Maybe the string goes out a little farther than the exact present. I mean when Linden arrives in the Land her future self had already gone back to get the staff. Thats why it wasn't in her present.
Maybe the whole string theory is wrong. I for one can't wait to find out. If the future is already written? and that's a BIG if, then we can assume that someone like Esmer already knows how the book ends. He did tell Linden that he had been waiting millenia for her arrival