It begins:
I've spent my life adventuring through all sorts of places and times. I discovered that there can be no time paradoxes, not becuase everything works out neatly like common sense would dictate, but because of PARALLEL UNIVERSES.
Parallel universes: OK, here's the deal. Anything you "change" in time travel (which is impossible to begin with) creates a branching off of the thread of reality and spins off as a line into it's own future (also impossible). Now, the problem is this: not only do these futures all run more or less parallel to each other, but every conflict and every possibility that is unrealized in any one existence ALSO branches off into its own time thread in which it WAS realized (Clearly, very impossible). This rather clutters up reality to the point that it is no longer a thread, or several threads, but is, in fact, a fabric. The upshot of all this is that if you can travel through time, aside from the normal forward-through-time-at-one-second-per-second, you can create your OWN PERSONAL REALITY by bringing your favorite things to times in which they don't belong. Just make sure you start at the future and work your way backward, or all the technology gets lost or never invented. Also, by the time you get to the very beginning of time, all the changes that you've made have all made separate universes, and you'll finally be left with one that works based on the broken rules that you've screwed up in all the others because those are now the finalized set of rules or something (Any sane person will tell you that that is not only confusing, but Really, Obviously Impossible). Bearing all that in mind, I created my own Universe (Breakfast at Milliway's, anyone?).
I spent some time with the Skimmer, one of my future selves with the sneer-like scar and an older version of The Stegosaurus, fighting the Skolg forces deep on the furthest rim of the Arnais Territories. I've been Tiger hunting from a howdah on the back of an African elephant imported to India, because I'll be damned if I'll ride one of their small-eared tiny tuskers. Besides, where would I find room on an INDIAN elephant for my punka wallah? Someone needs to fan me, and by God, if there's going to be imperialism one might as well enjoy some political incorrectness. I helped Cortez wipe out those pesky Aztecs, and centuries earlier, helped the Egyptians navigate all the way to Central America so they could teach the Mayans about Pyramids. I fought in Goblin wars and went drinking with trolls in secret bars under forgotten bridges. I suppressed a Rat uprising, and then later successfully started one. Mine has truly been a good life.
It is forty years from now, but by my personal timescale, and thanks to all of the amazing technology available, I am thousands, perhaps millions of years old, and dying along with the dying sun of my dying earth. All that is left on this planet are packets of creepy forest that break up immense Alaska-sized patches of desert. Hauntingly beautiful, those deserts are riddled with canyons and crevices, and painted with striated burgundy mesas and cut with arroyos. Rogue Tyrannosaurs and rangy, hoary Suchomimuses lurk the canyons. Cowboys settle small outposts and ride their bizarre mounts form every time period through the dusty trails. Greta Von Großer-Busen and her cabal of Zeppelin-going Lesbian Air-pirates (now long since tempered by my tender ministrations, ka-wink) patrol the skies and make sure that the populations of vulture-bats doesn't interfere with the landing of the few space transports that still come through this benighted sector. AN old manor house on a hill in one of the pocket forests overlooks the compound of laboratories adn garages that encircle it, as well as the surrounding deserts.
This is the setting for the Final Battle. This is the time and place of my great, and final Triumph.
To be continued...
Parallel universes: OK, here's the deal. Anything you "change" in time travel (which is impossible to begin with) creates a branching off of the thread of reality and spins off as a line into it's own future (also impossible). Now, the problem is this: not only do these futures all run more or less parallel to each other, but every conflict and every possibility that is unrealized in any one existence ALSO branches off into its own time thread in which it WAS realized (Clearly, very impossible). This rather clutters up reality to the point that it is no longer a thread, or several threads, but is, in fact, a fabric. The upshot of all this is that if you can travel through time, aside from the normal forward-through-time-at-one-second-per-second, you can create your OWN PERSONAL REALITY by bringing your favorite things to times in which they don't belong. Just make sure you start at the future and work your way backward, or all the technology gets lost or never invented. Also, by the time you get to the very beginning of time, all the changes that you've made have all made separate universes, and you'll finally be left with one that works based on the broken rules that you've screwed up in all the others because those are now the finalized set of rules or something (Any sane person will tell you that that is not only confusing, but Really, Obviously Impossible). Bearing all that in mind, I created my own Universe (Breakfast at Milliway's, anyone?).
I spent some time with the Skimmer, one of my future selves with the sneer-like scar and an older version of The Stegosaurus, fighting the Skolg forces deep on the furthest rim of the Arnais Territories. I've been Tiger hunting from a howdah on the back of an African elephant imported to India, because I'll be damned if I'll ride one of their small-eared tiny tuskers. Besides, where would I find room on an INDIAN elephant for my punka wallah? Someone needs to fan me, and by God, if there's going to be imperialism one might as well enjoy some political incorrectness. I helped Cortez wipe out those pesky Aztecs, and centuries earlier, helped the Egyptians navigate all the way to Central America so they could teach the Mayans about Pyramids. I fought in Goblin wars and went drinking with trolls in secret bars under forgotten bridges. I suppressed a Rat uprising, and then later successfully started one. Mine has truly been a good life.
It is forty years from now, but by my personal timescale, and thanks to all of the amazing technology available, I am thousands, perhaps millions of years old, and dying along with the dying sun of my dying earth. All that is left on this planet are packets of creepy forest that break up immense Alaska-sized patches of desert. Hauntingly beautiful, those deserts are riddled with canyons and crevices, and painted with striated burgundy mesas and cut with arroyos. Rogue Tyrannosaurs and rangy, hoary Suchomimuses lurk the canyons. Cowboys settle small outposts and ride their bizarre mounts form every time period through the dusty trails. Greta Von Großer-Busen and her cabal of Zeppelin-going Lesbian Air-pirates (now long since tempered by my tender ministrations, ka-wink) patrol the skies and make sure that the populations of vulture-bats doesn't interfere with the landing of the few space transports that still come through this benighted sector. AN old manor house on a hill in one of the pocket forests overlooks the compound of laboratories adn garages that encircle it, as well as the surrounding deserts.
This is the setting for the Final Battle. This is the time and place of my great, and final Triumph.
To be continued...