Nothing -- Nowhere -- All Out of Synch

 

** Note: I found this post in my "drafts" section from a few years back, and I don't recall writing it at all. Perhaps it was part of a larger project that I had abandoned, and forgot about, but it's a little weird considering the subject matter. At any rate, please do enjoy but proceed with caution...

It was the best of timelines, it was the worst of timelines. A cursory glance at the world around us leads one to think that things really ought to be better but, then again, perhaps it all could be a lot worse. Beyond that, if one thinks about time and timelines too much, it can really drive one mad. The current writer knows this all too well, having been obsessed with the concept all his life.

As a child, I became acquainted with the ideas of Einstein and time travel. Books like The Time Machine by H. G. Wells and pop culture representations in Back to the Future or Star Trek filled my mind with possibilities, questions, and the unnerving sense that there was, had been, and always will be some manner of inter-dimensional jiggery-pokery going on. If time travel were possible, it was already happening, as far as I was concerned- because a future event such as its discovery would simultaneously be a past event and a current one, as soon as anyone attempted the feat.

The inherent paradox of time travel, of course, is that any change to the past would have dramatic and unknowable effects on the future, which would be the present from which the traveller had come in the past. (You can see already how muddled and confusing this all becomes...) So if an event were to have been going to happen to allow a traveller to travel back in time to prevent said event and thus prevent him having been going to do that, the hypothetical traveller would be caught up in paradoxes and tense issues. This has been dealt with humorously in shows like Futurama, where Fry solves the "Grandfather paradox" by becoming his own grandpa, and in the Simpsons when Homer accidentally turns his toaster into a time machine.

More recently, it seems that the old time travel tropes have become supplanted by ideas about the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics, developed by Hugh Everett. We see this in comic books and the movies based on them, which is a convenient way of dealing with divergent stories written at different times throughout a property's long history. The aforementioned Star Trek has done this as well with its reboots, and the idea that bifurcated realities exist independently of one another seems to be generally accepted by audiences. One wonders, though, if such splintered timelines ever overlap or bleed into each other. Perhaps that might account for all manner of high strangeness, and weird phenomena such as the so-called "Mandela Effect", which is deserving of its own post someday. (**Note: I did eventually write about the Mandela Effect, and you can read that here.)

But if every decision we make has alternate decisions that could have been followed, deriving from them a different outcome, each continuing along in its own distinct universe, what's the point of even knowing that? How does it benefit us to know that there are alternate timelines in which we're millionaires, or living in another country, or even ones in which we were never born at all? A sobering way to think about it is, how many universes are there in which you died before making it to the age you are now? Is there a way to look at these other probable universes? Or contact them? What would happen if we did? Ultimately, is time itself even real, or is it- as Einstein suggested- a very persistent illusion?

One way of achieving a level of timeline mischief, if William S. Burroughs is to be believed, is the "cut-up" method. There are accounts of him "cursing" a cafe by recording sights and sounds within the establishment, and playing them back while there- thus pulling the timeline apart within the place. Making a local fall out of synch with itself, one supposes, has dramatic effects on the very existence of it. It's interesting to consider that we live in an age wherein anyone can record any moment in time with a device they keep in their pocket; these moments can be played back where they are recorded, or elsewhere. They can be shared on social media, and viewed anywhere in the world. We can summon up footage from a decades old TV show in an instant, stream on demand a movie from years ago, or watch concert footage at a whim from musicians who have long since passed beyond the veil. Everywhere, all over the place and all of the time each of us is cutting up and spreading the splits across all time and space, and it is only accelerating.

Time may be an illusion, but the grey hairs that become more and more prominent on this writer's chin steadfastly assert that it is very much a reality I must contend with. Often, time feels short, and it feels like some thoughts and words need to be written, spread around, and considered for reasons that are unclear. One never knows where one's work will end up, when it will be most relevant, or to whom. Perhaps some future reader will benefit from this meandering rumination, or perhaps even some enterprising traveller from the past will read it while visiting his or her future. And perhaps, in some alternate timeline, this would have turned into a book rather than a blog post- and the me of that timeline would get published, sell many copies, and secure his future.

There are so many avenues to pursue that perhaps a more in-depth investigation is in order. For instance, does the practices of magic effect these timelines? Could it be used to travel between them? What of free will? If there is indeed only one timeline, could it be endangered by mucking about with its structures?

The best we can do is move forward conscientiously, and try to do good. One can never know how events will unfold, or how interrelated our every word or action is with everything else, unless we are standing somewhere outside of time- Nothing-- Nowhere-- All Out of Synch.