Bricks in the Wall, Chapter 80: Brainstorming

[game_byrd]

Title: Brainstorming
Characters: Peter, Sylar
Words: 1,600
Rating: PG
Warnings: None
Setting: The Wall
Summary: Peter asks Sylar to be a sounding board for Peter's various crazy ideas about how to save Nathan.

Comments

[game_byrd]

wonder so hard why Sylar claims to understand time in this context (I think he's BSing for the sake of the story, "I know how things work, don't question me" even though he's wrong and I think he should realize he's wrong) - why he thinks time or the current, real 'verse wouldn't 'split.'

First off, that's what the muse told me - 'Yes, I know how time works.' On questioning it, I would say that if the Heroes verse had an understandable method by which time travel worked, then Sylar would be able to understand it. He might not fathom that time travel itself existed until Hiro showed up in Odessa and prevented him from taking Charlie's ability, because Hiro's earlier appearances could be passed off as super-speed or teleportation, but after Odessa, he'd know it was there. I think with his clock-theme, watchmaker background, high intelligence, and stated personal ability to figure things out, that he'd understand time travel if it could be understood.

The problem is ... I don't think it can be. Canon is inconsistent.

In S2, we have Hiro going to the distant past, significantly changing the past, and then returning. He meets Ando. Ando remembers both the Hiro who did not know who Kensei personally and the one who does.

In S4, we have Hiro going to his youth, significantly changing the past, and then returning. He meets Ando. Ando does not remember a Hiro who had not lived in that changed past, which makes me wonder where that other Hiro go, the one whom married-Ando knows? It would seem that our timeline Hiro overlapped the new timeline Hiro and erased him. I say erased because our timeline Hiro specifically does NOT remember Ando getting married, and many other pertinent details of his past.

So we have two conflicting cases of what happens when you change the past. In one, you blip back to the present and find that nothing has changed, because what you did to change the past was predestined. It was required for the present to exist. In the other, you blip back to the present and find that everything has changed except yourself, and that the 'you' from that new timeline has ceased to be, replaced by yourself.

No wonder he got a brain tumor!

I prefer a modified form of the predestiny version. There is one reality and one past. The present is like a big ship sailing on the ocean. It's course is dictated by the net sum of everyone's actions. As it sails along, someone with time travel from anywhere along its course in the future can jump back to the past. If they take actions that change the course of the ship, then their future will cease to be and when they jump back, so will they. Heroic ones like Hiro or Peter might see their own sacrifice as a good trade to change the course of the ship towards one where fewer people die. After all, they know their present forms will live on with better lives. If they take actions that don't change the course of the ship, then their future remains intact and they can come and go to it at will, though there's always the danger that they'll accidentally change something that will collapse their future and get them killed when they try to return.

I was going to write this into a story answer for the 'From my muse' section, but since I'd written the above with the idea that Peter and Sylar weren't romantic yet, I couldn't get my own muses on board with the switch in direction. So I explain it here.