I got this written up last week, I happen to have it with me right now, so... Here it is. Enjoy! Also, be sure to check out the Tainted Cube post I made last week, because I'm about to put up my thoughts for the next NGE bit.
Oh, and while I remember. This is a new story, from my Haruhi fatesplit.
Time is a tricky business. No, not quite in the same way that calculus is, or a game of chess, or come to it quite the same way that anything else is tricky at all. Some refer to it as the fourth dimension, oftentimes failing to understand that it has dimensions of its own. Time passes, and once gone remains gone forever. Moments flicker by unnoticed, unwanted, but gone for good. It marches ever onwards, into the future, into tomorrow and never, ever the past. For one man stuck in his office cubicle with naught to do but watch the second's hand on a clock, a single minute can feel like an hour. For another man playing his favourite game that same exact minute can pass by unbidden. Time is a mysterious thing, different for all people, ever changing, ever moving forward.
So, is it any particular surprise that a great deal of fiction is devoted to the idea of time travel? It is an impossible dream by any measure, surely. To see the past! To meet with those responsible for shaping the world into the form it might ultimately take! To witness history! To answer questions about the past that never made it into the history book! Think of the debates that could be settled. Think of what we could learn about ourselves, about our past, perhaps even about our own future! Time travel is the dream… An impossible dream. A reach just that much too far for us to grasp. But as stated above, it hasn't stopped us from thinking about it.
Time is a tricky business, and most writers realise that. What would occur, for example, if a man were to travel into the past and kill his own grandfather? Would the universe march on, unheeded of the deceased? Would it cause a temporal paradox that would rip the universe asunder? What about if someone took an invention into the past and showed it to the inventor, thus providing him or her the ability to invent the device in the first place? If this was done then where did the original idea come from? Freshly sprung from the future, an idea without beginning or end. A different sort of paradox, though one that can be considered far less dangerous than the first.
And what if a time traveller were to learn of their own personal future… then took steps to evade a particular event they knew for certain would occur? It is a similar kind of paradox to the first mentioned, the infamous grandfather paradox. There are many such considerations one must enter when the issue of time travel inevitably arises. Since we are aware of the inevitable truth that Mikuru Asahina is most definitely a time traveller, it becomes clear that such issues are known about. How to swim upstream in the flow of time. What the likely consequences would be if any of the above paradoxes were to manifest. Perhaps even questions that we might not have yet considered. Can time itself survive such beatings? Can the universe live through something like this? The answers do exist, and here they are given just as Mikuru Asahina herself might have done so.
The true nature of time is CLASSIFIED INFORMATION, which means that when a paradox occurs, all that happens is CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. This obviously leaves a terrible mess, as all the CLASSIFIED INFORMATION gathers into one place, forcing all nearby humans to CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. It is particularly dangerous to be within ten miles of the CLASSIFIED INFORMATION if one has consumed dairy within the last hour. This did puzzle researchers for some time, until the CLASSIFIED INFORMATION theory was developed by CLASSIFIED INFORMATION, with help from CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. The theory was, according to gossip, inspired by a visit to a zoo where a gorrilla CLASSIFIED INFORMATIONed a tire left in its cage, then ran around in the cage looking just like a CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. This rumour has been neither confirmed nor denied as of this time, but people do like to have a good laugh about it. In any case, should a temporal paradox occur it mightn't end the universe but it would still CLASSIFIED INFORMATION. Which, really, is not a fun way to start your morning even if you happen to like the flavour of CLASSIFIED INFORMATION.
So there you have it. Kind of makes you feel a little bit silly for not realising the simple, easy-to-grasp truth about the nature of time travel. Right?
… No? Oh. Fine. Obviously a more visual example is required. Something strange that happened to Mikuru Asahina one day. Something she would most certainly not forget in anything remotely like a hurry.
No matter how that might simplify matters so very much.
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In a strange way, sleep is a rather primitive form of time travel utilised by every human most nights of their lives. Lie down. Close your eyes. Open them again. Hey, what do you know, it's hours later! Kind of a shame it only works one way.
The room itself wasn't nearly as… shall we say futuristic as it might have been. Mikuru was a child of the future, and keeping in mind the rate of technological advancement it's rather reasonable to assume that she grew up in an environment full of gadgets that we've yet to even dream of. Which makes sense, really, because if we could dream of them we'd probably have them already. That's just how fast technology is growing these days. As a side note, this makes writing science fiction quite a lot harder than it used to be… In some ways. In others it becomes, rather peculiarly, easier.
It makes sense that none of the doubtless eminently useful, supremely advanced and ingenious technology were here after a few moments of thinking about it. Used to these gadgets though she may be, Mikuru Asahina was in the past with a mission. Part of that mission involved making friends. And there was a risk, no matter how small, that those friends might pay a visit to her house one day. Therefore, the only gadgets she could take with her were the ones that were quite literally essential for her mission and those were disguised so that only she would know what they even were. Even if they were stolen and cracked open, these particular gadgets were designed by people with budgets that would bankrupt many countries to contend with such contingencies. Asking them to do that for her equivalent of a handheld console might be a little much, you know?
Most of the room was taken up by a bed. That much she was able to take with her from the future, because the design of beds is one of the key areas that hasn't received much improvement between our time and hers. Much in the same way as deodorant, washing powder or toothpaste hasn't actually changed much at all (regardless of what advertisements might tell you) there's not really much to improve upon here. This is an invention that has fulfilled its purpose for a long time and pretty much anything else you could say about it is a stylistic choice. In this case, Mikuru Asahina went for something that was big, fluffy, comfortable and soft. I have to emphasise the last of these. It was so soft that if you were to blindfold an explorer, and have him set foot upon this mattress, he would briefly believe he had set foot in quicksand. It was covered in a big frilly quilt with flower patterns and cute pink little bunnies frolicking within the field embroidered all over it.
And lying on a pillow in the middle of this rather large bed, there was Mikuru Asahina beginning to wake up. If an observer were to rank the cuteness of Mikuru Asahina's awakening, they would probably throw out whatever old scoring scale they were using and invent a new one. The girl greeted the new day with a warm smile and a biiiiig stretch, mumbling to herself as the dreams from the night before began to fade from her thoughts and she reasserted her ability to tell fiction from reality. Well. At least as well as any human can reassert their ability to tell fiction from reality, but the point is hopefully made. She would rub the sleep from her eyes with the back of her hand, cover her mouth moments before the yawn occured, open her eyes mid-yawn…
Then completely freeze in place.
Then make a noise rather a lot like a cat trapped in a washing machine. Then twitch rather violently as she looked around the room.
All around her, redheaded girls rose their heads, smiled to greet the new day, stretched, mumbled to themselves, covered their mouths, yawned, opened their eyes and froze in place. One was next to Mikuru on the bed, specifically on her left. Another was on her right. Another still lay peacefully at the foot of the bed, providing Mikuru with an adequate explanation of why her feet felt like they had something on them. And there was a last one rising from a makeshift bed upon her desk chair. All five looked at one another with widening eyes and panic rising in their heart. Their breathing pace quickened rather rapidly and as one they all let out a single, unified sound.
"EH?!" they loudly exclaimed, albeit in a helplessly adorable manner.
1: To begin with, Mikuru tries to call home base to receive instructions.
2: Same as above, but to no avail. Either something is blocking the signal, or something terrible has happened to the future!
3: There's a knock at the door. Who could it be?
4: Hold on, first thing's first: Figure out which of them has temporal seniority. Turns out, none of them do…
5: Something else
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