Resolved?: Following the spluddy deaths of Edderkoppen and Healing Hans (see page 7.136) H’Airport and Paradoximan finally sort out their ethical, theoretical, and philosophical quibbles… Rochelle (finally!) presses on with her mission!
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Next update: Wednesday, January 17, 2022: Meatball surgery…
The story so far…
[1] Wannabe
[#] History
[2] Great Leap Forward
[3] Daze
[4] Bad Karma
[#] Gifford: Hero [back soon]
[#] Buying the Stairway to Heaven
[5] Worst Fieldtrip Ever
[#] Redux: Gola Beh
[6] Lock(e)down
[#] The Things That Matter
[7] PaRARGdox
Tales from the MagellanVerse…
Olga & Brelvis
Dr Spooky & Otto
The Olaf Mystery
Legacy
Crossoverkill [a crossover!]
Magellan stuff
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Won’t it just create a new timeline?
Meaning this one still grinds its way down to destruction, but a different one splits off with better odds for survival?
Come to think of it, given my flawed understanding of branching timelines, wouldn’t there already be timelines like that out there?
All this plan would do then, is create a new timeline where there’s an Ambrosia with knowledge of the bad timeline, who can warn Magellan and thus make changes, and various mystics and hypertechnologists would know there’d been a big temporal disturbance.
And the multiverse continues to branch off possible timelines from there.
That’s why they need Paradoximan. He can resolve the branching timeline stuff, in theory.
One, as far as anyone knows, Ambrosia’s powers don’t create branches. She actually winds back the clock for everyone but herself. These events will not have happened at all.
And getting Paradoximan on board is entirely TO prevent such a timeline split.
That would be the case, but Paridoximan’s Paradox power will allow them to actually erase the events of this timeline up to several hours ago, rather than make another branch.
I wonder, did those dark scientists or Magellan ever check whether Ambrosia’s temporal power places any sort of strain on the time-space continuum?
Because yes, desperate times, desperate measures, but it’d be a shame if Rochelle’s plan works, only for it to punch a hole in reality for existence to drain out of into oblivion, or the Great Old Ones to come crawling in through.
Meh, if the GOO does come through a hole in reality then they might at least smack the rarg botties and tell them to stop being such poopyheads.
They’d probably devour them along with everything else.
Spank first, noms later. Everything in proper ordnung.
…finally…
Rochelle doesn’t even bother to keep it to herself. I think her exasperation has reached new levels.
I don’t really get Paradoximan’s qualms about all this. It’s not like the classic scenario of “cover up your own weakness by going back in time and warning your past self so you can get the girl/boy you like”. It’s literally “just die to the Rarg or do something… ANYTHING to create a different outcome”.
Why does Paradoximan have a bunch of what looks like joysticks’ D-pads on his costume?
Why indeed? 🙂
Oh, you…😒
🙃
Summarizing Magellan’s time travel rules…
1. If a being or object physically travels to the past, a new Universe branches off whilst the old one remains unchanged.
2. Even if the being/object only travels back 60 seconds or less, a branch is still created because there are now two of the same being/object in one universe, which is a paradox that can only be resolved by branching
3. If a being’s consciousness travels back in time to an earlier version of their own body, AND the leap is 60 seconds or less, then a new branch is not created. The moment the consciousness arrives in the past, all of the timeline after that point is erased and overwritten. There are not two instances of one person in one place, so there is no paradox to resolve.
4. If a person’s consciousness travels back in time to their own body by more than 60 seconds… by this point, enough of the timeline has solidified that the travel is still paradoxical, and so a new timeline must be created.
5. Paradoximan’s power basically allows the paradox to persist rather than having the multiverse auto-resolve it. Therefore, he can cancel rule #4 in a single instance, allowing someone’s consciousness to travel back more than 60 seconds and overwrite the timeline rather than splitting it.
Yes, very well summarised! 😁 Although… point 5 is theoretical at the moment…
Grace, what would Paridoximan’s power be used for under normal circumstances? Here, he’s a plot device.
Well, previously we saw him paradox a missile into non-existence… http://magellanverse.com/comic/ipsofacto/
It looks like a potentially very potent ability, in that he could accomplish many different effects with some imagination – and time.
I forgot about this scene! This power is pretty cool. It’s not a magic wand at all, he actually has to use logic to make the paradoxes work. So he’s basically coding out loud in real time.
I just thought of something: what if Ambrosia’s power has allowed her to travel back more than 60 seconds every time she’s tried, but it always creates an alternate timeline, so in this timeline she just thinks she was unsuccessful? Basically, in the splitting of the timeline, this also causes a split in her consciousness, one that goes back, but the primary timeline keeping her primary consciousness as well.
That feels a little outré for this comic, but we know there are parallel universes *that’s how Hans’s power works*, so your idea could be an explanation for them.
Spence asked that question at the beginning, but it was then established that consciousness-only time travel of 60 seconds or less does not create parallel universes. See the summary of Magellan time travel rules above
AM talks about 61 seconds: This timeline continues to exist as it was AND a new timeline spawns where she was successful.
… she slips back two hours… but totally forgets about the intervening two hours… so everything plays out exactly the same as before until… she slips back two hours… but totally forgets…