The Beginning of Time Travel

[Zarathustra]

A question occurred to me while reading the GI for another issue. How could the Insequent become so proficient with time travel as a race, if it's relatively new?

From the GI (I've trimmed down both the question and the answer):

Jon Webster:
If time travel is possible, why can't any number of characters who desire ultimate destruction, like Kastenessan, LF, or Roger just go back in time and change the course of history, which would destroy the arch of time?

If Time itself, and the whole structure of Law, weren't already under attack, time travel would not be possible (except, one assumes, for the Elohim, who have no interest in destroying anything). (12/05/2007)

So the current attack--I assume he means Joan's creation of caesures--is what makes time travel possible for every other being except the Elohim? That means that time travel has only been possible for 100 years, or however long caesures have been present in the Land.

But then how was the Vizard able to move super-humanly fast? How was the Theomach able to "slip sideways" in time? These two Insequent lived long before the first appearance of caesures. And the Theomach seemed not at all surprised about the fact of time traveling Roger/Jer/Linden. In fact, he intercepted them, even though what they were doing was apparently impossible in his time.

Does this make sense to anyone else? Doesn't it seem that the Insequent have been bending the Law of Time for much longer than LF's current attack upon it?

[Vraith]

I'll have to think about that some, look at some things...
For some reason I've thought for some time that it was only moving BACKWARDS through time that was impossible before stuff started getting attacked/broken...
But I no longer recall WHY I've thought that...

[Dondarion]

The Insequent are obviously a very mysterious people, each with his own unique purpose it and must fulfill.  If I recall, each knows the other's purpose, and act as kind of a check and balance.  If something goes wrong, their names can be spoken, and they can be killed that way, or lose power, or something.   So I think there is a keen accountability in what they say and do and commit to.  Very controlled.  Each has a special gift, including moving sideways in time (Harrow, Ardent) and apparently time travel (Theomach, Mahdoubt?).  But I don't think they could ever use these abilities to thwart history, since they are so connected to their purpose, and since other Insequent keep it all in check.  I agree it would be inconsistent to say that it is only due to the attack on time that time travel is even possible, and yet the Insequent have been doing it.    But could it be that "the structures of law" ... "under attack" include the Laws of Life and Death, which were broken, and consequently made all this possible, and so the Theomach, who I think was around at Berek's time, is thus able to come to Linden's time, and then take them back?  Or am I remembering it all wrong?  Just some off the cuff thoughts on a good question.

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

I was going to say that maybe the Insequent were created by someone from the Last Chronicles time period who took advantage of the Falls to go deep into history, but if that were true, it seems as if the result would've made so many ripples that the LC time would have unraveled before it was woven together in the first place...

So IDK. Whatever the explanation would be, the "wan mimicry of wild magic" stuff would be liable to be related to it.

[Zarathustra]

... could it be that "the structures of law" ... "under attack" include the Laws of Life and Death, which were broken, and consequently made all this possible, and so the Theomach, who I think was around at Berek's time, is thus able to come to Linden's time, and then take them back?  

That might work for the time period after The Illearth War, after Elena drank the Earthblood and brought dead Kevin back to interact with the living. As far as I know, that was the first broken Law. (It was also what was so horrible about Covenant's "bargain" for Elena to bear the weight of his inaction, forcing her to make such an extreme choice. All of this has been Covenant's fault from the beginning.)

However, the Theomach certainly lived many centuries before this. And I think the Vizard was from an even older time period (though perhaps his superhuman speed wasn't time travel).

[Mighara Sovmadhi]

To wax excessively metaphysical, space and time exhibit a sort of symmetry that might allow for the Insequents' "wan mimicry of wild magic" as a function of this symmetry, i.e. the Insequent can do to the "Arch of Space" (supposing such a thing) what white gold can to the Arch of Time. Throw in the Insequents' oracular powers and maybe what they did was anticipate wild magic ("anticipate" being taken half in the sense of Kant's "anticipations of perception" theorem).

[hurtloam]

To wax excessively metaphysical, space and time exhibit a sort of symmetry that might allow for the Insequents' "wan mimicry of wild magic" as a function of this symmetry, i.e. the Insequent can do to the "Arch of Space" (supposing such a thing) what white gold can to the Arch of Time. Throw in the Insequents' oracular powers and maybe what they did was anticipate wild magic ("anticipate" being taken half in the sense of Kant's "anticipations of perception" theorem).

That's quite intriguing. The Feroce make people or things remember their past and experience it or become it as if it were present. A pool of toxic slime "remembers" that it was once hurtloam (couldn't resist!), and Covenant and Branl experience it as such. Maybe the Insequent have sort of a reverse memory, in which they "remember" a future, in this case, that white gold will be part of the Land and be used for various powers, and then experience themselves having such powers -- in particular, the Ardent's power of transporting things and people through space, or the Mahdoubt's ability to send them through time.

[Dondarion]

I like to think of time in the Land as the Creator might look at it. A huge white piece of paper with stick figures moving along a timeline. The main characters are the stick figures on the page. They can only see right where they are on the page. But the Creator (and perhaps the Insequent via a special gift) can see the whole entire page, past present and future. The stick figure characters are in a 2 dimensional world, whereas the observer of the whole page is in 3 dimensions. The linear beings cannot conceive of anything beyond their own dimension. Now, if the true characters in the Land are in reality part of a 3 dimensional world, then the Creator (and the Insequent to a more limited degree via this gift) must be operating in a 4th dimension, which the main characters (and the reader) could not conceive, but must nonetheless accept on faith that it' is real. It works for me at least.