PaRARGdox 18
Deja Vu?: So yes, Ambrosia has a kind of time slip power. She can go back up to one minute within her timeline and change things. Sort of like her own “Groundhog Minute” but with a single loop! To her, things happened; to others, things didn’t happen. Her fellow cadets know so she doesn’t have to explain much to get them to listen… even if they’re not 100% sure if she’s for real or pranking them. Her hopped into brain has to spend about half a second reconfiguring new memories from the minute she’s just experienced – a short sharp jab of pain. There’ll be more on her, how her power works and the possible chronological (and psychological) consequences of it later.
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Huh. They were fine. All hail time traveling!
A blue box, 1m square at the base, 2m tall, with the words Police Box at the time, fades into view behind our group, while producing a pulsing, grinding sound. The door opens and a man and woman steps out. He is staggering a little; she is holding on to the door frame.
Man: Doc, that was a rough landing, even rougher than usual.
Woman: Someone did a micro-jump through space-time just as we were going by and that destabilized the time-stream at a critical point as far as our travel was concerned; dropped us right out. If we had been in a slightly different place in space-time when that micro-jump happened, we would not have noticed anything at all. As it is, I better check how things got damaged when we hit that pot hole in space-time.
[ A tall young black man staggers out of the box ]
Young man: Sorry, about the mess back in there. My stomach …
Woman: That’s okay. I put a mop bucket in the closet beside the hall to the library.
Ambrosia: That didn’t happen last time.
lol
Oops, in the first line “with the words Police Box at the top,” and at the end of the Doctor’s line: “I better check how much things got damaged…”
I have not heard the term “time slip” before, I think. From where is that?
Also, at one minute, I wonder how much damage limitation she can actually bring to the Rarg invasion moment.
Time slip popped out of my own brain – that’s not to say I might not have heard or read it somewhere before. But if you think about time loop scenarios, the person isn’t so much as travelling back in time, they’re slipping back within their own body. In this case, their body is the time machine.
On a side-note – when I was working on this it made me wonder if we don’t all have the ability already but it is limited to one or two seconds and we only have partial memory and no real control of it… this might explain deja vu!
It’s not like she’s first one with such ability either. Of course Cris Johnson in Next could see TWO minutes … with two exceptions.
@HKMaly – yes, although his ability was precognition, hers is actual time slipping. It’s not about to happen, it happens but she has the chance to slip back and stop it.
Is the difference even verifiable? I guess other people with time-related powers could notice …
True, although maybe telepaths could too?
I’m all for creating new terms when they make sense, which I think applies here.
Interesting theory about deja vu, but at least when I experience that it always seems like I’m vaguely reminded of a memory that is not only partial but also from a long time ago. And once or twice I’ve actually been able to identify a past event that is in some specific way similar to the one that triggered deja vu. On the other hand, also once or twice, it seemed that I could entirely rule out such past event thus the “memory” seems to be either fabricated or straight up from the future. But brains are complicated and I have far too little knowledge of how they work to make much sense of it all.
Don’t worry experts in the field also have far too little knowledge. Remember that if our brains were simple enough for us to understand them, we’d be so simple that we couldn’t. (Emerson M. Pugh) We do however know that brains cheats a lot when remembering – it’s totally possible to convince someone (or yourself) he remembers something which didn’t happened.
So not quite the Quantum Leap effect either.
With a bit of a mind flip
You’re into the time slip
And nothing can ever be the same
You’re spaced out on sensation
Like you’re under sedation!
It’s been around for at least several decades. An online dictionary says the origin is in the 40s, w/o sourcing. I think that refers to de Camp’s Lest Darkness Falls, which I read many years ago, but barely remember now. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says that de Camp uses the word “timeslip” to describe what happened to his protagonist in that story. Wikipedia shows some film and literary references to it in the intervening years since.
Useful to know, I figured it hadn’t uniquely come out of my brain!! š
Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’
Into the future
Or the… um… “pasture”(!)… as in this case š
In Marvel vs. Capcom 2 it’s the name of one of Cable’s supers. I think that’s the only other place I’ve heard it.
She should set up some kind of codeword to use with colleagues to avoid the time-wasting ‘Are you future Ambrosia?’ rigmarole. Just say ‘Swordfish! Everybody out now!’ would save a lot of time.
That wouldn’t prevent pranking. Unless it’s someone else thinking the codeword and only telling her if it’s serious.
That’s a good tactic, they should use that!
Now I’m thinking her codename should be Swordfish!!
Perhaps Conundrum or Paradox. Hmm, you already have Paradoximan, so maybe not that second one.
Interesting. Normally, Magellanverseās time travel follows the multiple universe interpretation, like in Avengers Endgame (though Grace beat Marvel to it by over a decade). I take it that Ambrosiaās time travel is the more conventional in-place variety, where the new timeline overwrites the old one?
Essentially yes… there’ll be more discussion on how/why in several more pages after a few other scenes.
Interesting! I already have a guess… physical time travel requires the timeline split as a form of paradox resolution, but only sending back a mind into its own past body doesnāt get on the timelineās radar enough to trigger the normal response. Technically future Ambrosiaās mind is a paradox but, itās just āinformationā as opposed to a physical time traveling presence.
So –
“Physical time-travel: 1 MĢ Credit, with pragmatic pricing available – contact your Local Reality Administrator. Information is usually sent at a discount. Contact your LRA for details.”
Grace Iām gonna be a pain for a second. Suppose if you will, that some villain travels back from the future and lands right in front of Ambrosia, and within 5 seconds kills a friend of hers. Technically two timelines now existāthe āoriginalā, and the āalteredā where the time-traveling villain has made a mess of things. 15 seconds after Mr. Villainās arrival, Ambrosia tries to use her power to go back a full minute so she can make sure she and her friends are not near where this guy will beābut one minute ago is 45 seconds before one timeline split into two. Her power, per your words, is restricted to one timeline, so she would only be able to go back 15 seconds, right? Itās already been established in Bad Karma that single-timeline chronal powers, e.g. precognition, are disrupted by the presence of time travelers, so the idea of Ambrosiaās power being effected as well is not much of a stretch. Of course, you will never have to answer this Iām story because in the storyās current timeline, the future doesnāt exist yet, so no time travelers beyond Ambrosia herself.
Maybe? Logically that makes sense, as much as anything about time travel can! It’s an intriguing possibility but unlikely to get tested out, at least that way, in this story!!
No offense RedZone or anyone else, but the theory of multiple timelines for one universe has been kicked around long before Grace or Endgame.
DC had Zero Hour (among other events) that was explained as while there was still only one Universe after the Crisis, there were many alternate timelines.. A distinction every reader saw right through quickly.
Marvel also had two versions of Vance Astrovik. One where he became an astronaut, got sent to the 30th century, found Captain America’s shield, and then traveled back in time to stop himself from going on the trip… and one version where he listened to the first version and eventually became Justice of the Avengers…
As to the power, I like it. Milestone’s Flashback had a similar power, except she rewound time by about 3 or 4 seconds. Just enough time to alter a single, critical, thing like preventing someone near her from getting blasted by a shotgun.
Characters like this aren’t used enough, mostly because they’re really tricky to use.
I think RedZone did raise an interesting concept though – can Ambrosia with her non timeline rupturing power slip back past a rupture in the timeline caused by another time traveller? No answer at this time!
She’d have to time it (no pun intended) perfectly to have her 1 minute jaunt be enough to get her past (another unintended pun) the rupture.
After that, it’s all wibbledy wobbledy author decisions about exactly what she can and can’t change or effect in regards to the timeline rupture.
Be really interesting to see, but it could also be disastrous for the comic if the plotting is off by even a little bit.
There was a character with a similar power on the show Mutant X. She was much more powerful, as she could choose to go back any amount of time her own timeline, and she could also send one other person back the same amount of time. Of course, she couldn’t move forward, so she could get “stuck” in the past. She hated her power as she never seemed to be able to change things the way she needed to…
Can only go back a minute… but once she’s done that, could she just do it again immediately? daisy chain her power to go back further back? I’m guessing that if it’s even possible it would make the “short jab of pain” a lot worse…
Also, I wonder what happens if one were to try to go back “a minute” in a place where time is warped. Like, say, inside a singularity…
Nope, she needs a bit over one minute to recover! She can however do smaller slips, ten seconds, thirty seconds, etc… but still needs to work on her accuracy.
How did they even find her? Did she just walk up to a Magellan recruiter and say “Hi! I can time-travel!” How do you prove that to someone? How do Magellan applications work?
Demonstrating you can do *something* won’t be hard, and a good telepath should be able to determine the veracity of your claims. Applications — š¤·āāļø?
You could also ask her to go back in time to warn you about a chain of events you’ve set up. Like a tea cup falling over on the other side of the room. Then you ignore the warning and wait and see if it falls.
Haha, now Iām imagining the tryouts from the Mystery Men movie…
Well, there’s one more character who has a restraining order from all casinos and betting offices.
With minute? Unless they are simply afraid she will get better without telling anyone, hardly any betting could be cheated with just one minute. Casinos, probably yes, it might be possible to let her play in way minute wouldn’t help but too complicated.
Two games that come to mind would be Blackjack and Baccarat. Each hand is usually less than a minute, so any time she loses, she could jump back and make a different choice.
Pit boss (calling the security office): Please check player 4 on Blackjack table 3. She looks like she is winning too often.
Gambling Surveillance Officer: Thank you. We’ll review her plays.
[ Give it a few minutes to review the surveillance camera recordings ]
Supervisor: So is she card counting?
Examiner: No. I’m card counting and she is making calls that go against the count and she still wins. Take a look here. She has 18 and the dealer is showing a 7; standard strategy and card counting say to hold, but she hits and gets a 3, so gets 21. The dealer has 15, hits and gets 20. Everybody, but her, loses. I’m not sure what she is doing, but its not card counting. I wonder if she is working with the dealer. Try swapping out the dealer.
Supervisor: Hey, what was that? It looks like she was about to hit, then there is that small shake of her head and she stands instead. Does she do that a lot?
Examiner: I hadn’t noticed that before, but I think I saw her do that before a couple of her wilder winning plays. [ Rewind ] There, and there. I think you may be on to something. Do you think there is some technology in play here?
Supervisor: Maybe, but I switch the dealer anyway and send some people to talk with her.
World Poker Tour commentators:
“Phil has Jack-Queen suited and calls. Ambrosia, our new chip leader, has a pair of kings and reaches for some chips.”
“I would expect her to 3-bet in this case. Wait, she’s hesitating and … [ flabbergasted ] she folds a pair of kings?! 4 hands ago, she bet big on just a pair of sevens.”
“Yeah, but how can you forget how she flopped that special 2-pair on that hand: 2 black sevens in her hand and 2 red sevens on the board. Went all-in and managed to triple up.”
“But that was then, this is now. I am dumbfounded by this play. I just don’t get her thinking.”
“Marcus folds and so does Joanne. Daniel is in the big blind and raises with a pair of aces. To the flop!”
Oops. Re-reading what I wrote about a year ago, I just realized that if Daniel raised, then betting would go around again as everybody else raises, calls or folds. Then to the flop. So really, Daniel had to call before we go to the flop.
Oh. She has “extra time at [her] disposal.”
That’s a neat hint that didn’t sound like a hint the first time.
What’s next for those four???
Ken Spence reaming them out, at least the boys?
Another question raised is how old Ambrosia is. Does her body age, or just her memories. If memories what is the age of her brain vs. the rest of her.
Just her memories. Her brain has to absorb an extra minutes worth of data, it only takes a second but does cause a short sharp headache that likewise lasts about a second. She’s pretty used to that now!