Rules of Causality

Document Structure

Clauses

1. Introduction.
2. Possibility of Time Travel.
3. Myths.
4. Self-Repairing History.
5. Time Travel into the Future.
6. Known Paradoxes
7. Circumstances and Intent
8. Epilogue

Caveats

This text is created solely with the purpose of educating the Fringe Society on Time Travel.

Publication Status

The "Rules of Causality" are distributed freely in the Internet. This is the first document one reads upon being accepted to work in a Time Travel agency.

Historical Details

Background

This is the first definitive document about Time Travel in the Fringe Society. It's so iconic, it's available even before it was ever written, if one believes the date stamped on the document. The date itself might've been another way to prove the point of Time Travel's existence, if this document were to be distributed in the past as well as in the future. Problem is, the document just complicated things for those who didn't believe in Time Travel.

History

Nobody knows who wrote this document, but Time Travelers believe that the original author might be already gone from reality, and now there are just various Fringers that post the text on the given date. It is believed it was written because increasing hostility towards those who claim to be Time Travelers in Fringe Society. The author just wanted to explain how it works, so Fringers would start thinking about it. The Time Travelers' reactions to these hostilities in the form of intimidation ("I'll go back in time and kill you in infancy", for example) weren't helping as well.

Public Reaction

The hostilities seized, but most Fringers started considering Time Travelers just fools with convoluted beliefs. The conflict is still there, but it's mainly restricted to flame wars in Fringers' social networks.

Read the Document

Rules of Causality

Possibility of Time Travel

We can Time Travel thanks to the Sending Stones: various objects, be those of natural or man-made origin, that help connecting various time periods spanning from half a year to ten centuries. There aren't many of them, but new ones are being discovered, and most of the Stones are documented complete with the range of possible travel. Only those who can Navigate may use the Stones, they're just simple objects for everybody else. Researching a Stone's range is a very dangerous task: by means of Travel, you end up in the Time Stream which is so gushing, I can only compare it to the narrowest parts of the Amazon river. This river comparison isn't random, by the way: Time Travel is similar to navigation by river in extreme conditions. Coming ashore in these conditions is an extremely difficult task: not many know how to do it properly, and those who do tend not to advertise this fact. Time Travel is very relative because of this: if you want to get to a date, you better be ready that you won't get anything better than the target season, or even the target year.

Myths

There is this concept that Time Traveler should end up in space, since Earth moves constantly, and it must be next to impossible to appear in the very same place upon arrival. This is a myth, the Stones ensure the Navigator and their passengers end up in exactly the same place.
Most known paradoxes also do not work. If one tries to kill their own grandfather, they won't be able to meet him, even, or perform such a feat. It usually ends in tragedy. This might be one of the regulations enforced by what we believe to be a living manifestation of Time.

Self-Repairing History

You can't travel in time and not change anything, every step does something. But the lion's share of these changes are inconsequentual thanks to history's tendency to be based on a multitude of various all-encompassing factors, and not on actions or will of one single person, for example. Killing most people in the past won't bear any long-term global or even local consequences on an event, because the victim will probably be replaced by somebody else, or the event will happen regardless, or this event will become less important, with another one rising alongside it. It is clear that killing Adolf Hitler before 1933 won't stop the Nazi party from rising to the top, since the general public mood was revanchist after the World War I, even though the politically left were also going strong in the country at the time.
By the way, these changes can be remembered only by time travellers that implemented them. Literally everybody else never know something's changed. Thanks to this little rule, there are many interesting stories being told in Time Travelers' bars, chats and messengers.
The most pivotal historical personalities and events are protected: something always doesn't allow them to deviate from what we know. It's the same as with paradoxes. We don't have real examples of somebody trying to change something pivotal, though, and this information is distributed, but nobody knows the source. There are people claiming that their firearms jammed when they've tried to murder Christopher Columbus, their swords couldn't be unsheathed, and then some angry men appeared and beat the crap out of them, mistaking our "heroes" for somebody that owed these men money. But these claims cannot be independently verified. Though, there are also claims that pivotal moments have happened. According to all available historical sources, during  the Greco-Persian wars, at some point the Greeks had only a small isle of Salamin under their control, and they could do nothing to change the course of the war the way it did. Time travel is suspected to be involved. Some scholars think that if one can face Time at one of the pivotal points in history, one can truly make some difference. All these accounts bring us to just two general opinions on how the "protected" elements of history work: either you can change something in them, or you can't.
It is known, though, that getting rich using time travel is impossible. Any items taken from history don't have real value, since the market can't comprehend the concept of time travel. Those who know about it, though, won't see value in most items except, maybe, the most rare ones. And various tests won't reveal that the item is old, because it won't be. Trying to gamble with knowledge from the future won't end well, too.
Time travelers have this superstition that Time is a living yet unfathomable entity, and they believe she has a very bad temper. One should not cross Time in any circumstances.

Travelling to the future.

Seems to be, actually, impossible. Only past is available. Now, someone can come from the future to warn you of any events, but this information will most likely end up being seriously restricted, maybe distributed only among the marginalized lovers of conspiracy theories. Or they will become the basis for the event this guest from the future tries to prevent: the predestination paradox is believed to be one of the only two real paradoxes. Or, nothing will happen: it's also a possibility. A Navigator from the future theoretically can take you to their time, but there aren't any examples of this ever happenning.

Real Paradoxes

Predestination Paradox is the case in which actions that were prompted by information from the future lead to the very event the time travelers tried to prevent. For example if you tell Louis XIV that he'll end up on the guillotine, and if you succeed in persuading him to do something about it, he'll do everything in his power to prevent that, but well inevitably miss a detail that will cost him his life. For example, he'll sign the Constitution and he'll quote it during the trial, but he won't really understand why his subjects are struggling. In this case there might be minor changes: for example, the date of his demise, or the date of the French Revolution.
Meeting yourself is possible in theory, but only in some kind of spaces that are out of time. You can't exist in the same time frame you existed in already and were aware and active. If you somehow bypass this rule, for example using video or audio, you most likely won't understand what happened, or you'll start feeling exhausted, nauseated, you won't be able to tell left from right, you won't be able to think straight, and they you'll just collapse. These reactions look natural, though they might as well be caused by Time.

Circumstantability and Intentionability

This is one of the most convoluted theory in Time Traveling Fringe. All that is listed before this is called "circumstatial time effects": the paradoxes, the self-repairment of history, the ideas about certain elements of history being protected. But there are also "intentional time effects". Basically, the rule says that "a time traveler's intentions do not reflect on the time stream until they're converted into an action". If a traveler plans to go back in time and create a cult dedicated to themselves, they won't ever be able to meet anyone from this cult until it is actually created. The cult will be in the state of flux thanks to Schrodinger's Cat Principle: it might be real, existing and worshipping this particular time-traveler, leaving information and any other kind of imprints on its environments, but at the same time the cult won't be real and existing with the traveler and those who can contact them, they won't be able to read about the cult or find out any of the imprints of the cult until it is actually created.
If the traveler somehow learns about the cult before they create it, this traveler is screwed up beyond measure, cause either somebody tries to set them up, or they've entered a predestination paradox. Time doesn't like those. In really fatal cases it might happen that the traveler will just vanish trying to cross the Time Stream. There are a lot of examples of time travelers missing in action. They are usually referred as being "weak". They've "sunk". They "didn't have the will to handle The Great Current". Or, in some cases, "They've polluted the timeline too much".
For the time travelers, the events are synchronised with themselves. Or, as they say over at the Time Travel Bars:

"You can dream about sleeping with a geisha in Meiji Restoration era Japan all you want, but you won't meet any grandkids until you actually do it".

— Time Travelers' saying

Close

Type

Report, Scientific

Medium

Digital Recording, Text

Authoring Date

December 10, 1993 | 10 декабря 1993 г.

Myth

The Dreaded Time