Time-travel troubles?

[Ireth]

This might seem more of a sci-fi question than a fantasy one, but it isn't. The human characters in Summer's Pawn are in Faerie against their will, with the promise that they will be safely returned to their world after they fulfil the terms set out by the Kings of Faerie. The resolution of the story involves the humans being brought back to Earth on the day they were first taken away; they wish to return to a point in time some minutes before their arrest, to avoid having to deal with the enormous mess made by the Fae who had arrested them in the first place.

I might go the Harry Potter route, and have the returned humans try to avoid their future selves until time passes to the exact moment they were taken into Faerie, at which point the timelines would converge and the future selves of the humans would disappear, as in the movie of the third HP book. This may or may not be awkward; on the one hand, the future humans will be inside a house when they vanish, so probably no one would notice them doing so. As for the present humans, they'll be outside the house while they wait for time to pass.

What complicates the issue is that none of the humans know at exactly what time the Fae arrived to arrest them, or how long it took for the Fae to drag the humans out of the house and into Faerie after breaking down the front door. At least one of the humans has a watch, which stopped the moment they entered Faerie, but that only tells them what time they crossed the border between the worlds, not when the Fae initiated the arrest. What are your suggestions on dealing with this?

 

[ThinkerX]

Hmmm....

Apart from the violation of physics?

The ask to be returned an hour before the watch stopped.

As to effects....hmmm...

1) Their old selves vanish, which means all of their experiences in Fae vanish as well. From their POV nothing happened.

OR

2) This splits the timeline somehow.

 

[Ireth]

Hmmm....

Apart from the violation of physics?

The ask to be returned an hour before the watch stopped.

Okay, but what do the present selves do during that hour until the convergence?

As to effects....hmmm...

1) Their old selves vanish, which means all of their experiences in Fae vanish as well. From their POV nothing happened.

OR

2) This splits the timeline somehow.

1) I don't want that to happen, since that would also delete all of the character development the humans went through in Faerie, and if the rest of the story plays out as planned, important things will happen after they get home that they'll all need their memories intact to fully understand.

2) Not too sure about this route either -- it seems like a sequel hook, but unfortunately I don't plan on writing a sequel. I've dealt with splitting timelines in RPs, and it's a major headache.

 

[ThinkerX]

Well...one wonky idea, though it gets into interesting metaphysics:

They 'replace' their old selves. They remember everything that happened, but any injuries sustained while away are gone. What they have physically is whatever they had at the time returned to.

Or you could just ditch the time travel bit and have them deal with the consequences. (The fae lied, in other words).

 

[Ireth]

Well...one wonky idea, though it gets into interesting metaphysics:

They 'replace' their old selves. They remember everything that happened, but any injuries sustained while away are gone. What they have physically is whatever they had at the time returned to.

Kinda like Narnia, then, only with not quite so drastic differences between the times? That might work.

Or you could just ditch the time travel bit and have them deal with the consequences. (The fae lied, in other words).

I can see the Fae doing that, honestly. XDD Buttholes that they are. Though I was really hoping to let the mortals not have to clean up broken doors and windows on top of everything else they've just gone through, hence the whole reason behind this post. They had enough to deal with last time they came back from Faerie at the end of the prequel. XD And considering the tone of the ending that the story seems to be working its way toward (hint: it's not exactly happy), I think they deserve a break.

 

[Devor]

I might go the Harry Potter route, and have the returned humans try to avoid their future selves until time passes to the exact moment they were taken into Faerie, at which point the timelines would converge and the future selves of the humans would disappear, as in the movie of the third HP book. This may or may not be awkward; on the one hand, the future humans will be inside a house when they vanish, so probably no one would notice them doing so. As for the present humans, they'll be outside the house while they wait for time to pass.

I don't know about the timing issue, but I think you should cheat. Time travel often causes more problems for readers than anything else.

By cheat, I mean completely cut the chance of a paradox all together.

Your past selves, and the events directly surrounding them, are on a fixed and permanent lock. While your characters can interact with most of the past, your past selves are (at least, from the present perspective) surrounded by a "magic bubble" in which things move automatically and cannot be changed. They could, for instance, be talking to someone minutes before that person walks into the bubble, becomes part of the time lock, and greets their past selves.

I mean, you could do a lot of things. But time travel causes so many problems. This "cheats" and makes it easy.

 

[Ireth]

I don't know about the timing issue, but I think you should cheat. Time travel often causes more problems for readers than anything else.

By cheat, I mean completely cut the chance of a paradox all together.

Your past selves, and the events directly surrounding them, are on a fixed and permanent lock. While your characters can interact with most of the past, your past selves are (at least, from the present perspective) surrounded by a "magic bubble" in which things move automatically and cannot be changed. They could, for instance, be talking to someone minutes before that person walks into the bubble, becomes part of the time lock, and greets their past selves.

I mean, you could do a lot of things. But time travel causes so many problems. This "cheats" and makes it easy.

Okay, I think that makes sense... but what'll happen to the present selves when the past becomes the present, as it is wont to do, or if the present selves enter the time lock with their past selves?

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

The timing at least I can help with. Many watches have calanders in them, even old wind up ones. And if one of these stopped at the moment they were taken, perfect. So the date and time shouldn't be that hard to work with.

As for the other part, why do they have to return to the same physical location? Say they arrive somewhere else, e.g. another city so that there's no chance they could get back to their home before they were due to be arrested. It may be a sort of cheat, but it doesn't have to be, and it can be woven into the story with something about the fae being tricky little beggars who should never be trusted, and now they have to find passports etc. Also you could link the two events and the one time. So say just before they were taken they heard the phone ring, but were too slow to answer. Now shift the clock forwards, and the call was made by one of them trying to warn them to run before they were arrested, but it was a payphone and he didn't have the coins so he had to call collect and the operator wouldn't wait any longer for someone to answer.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[ThinkerX]

I can see the Fae doing that, honestly. XDD Buttholes that they are. Though I was really hoping to let the mortals not have to clean up broken doors and windows on top of everything else they've just gone through, hence the whole reason behind this post. They had enough to deal with last time they came back from Faerie at the end of the prequel. XD And considering the tone of the ending that the story seems to be working its way toward (hint: it's not exactly happy), I think they deserve a break.

If the passage of time is 1:1 between fae and earth, then your intrepid heroes are away from home for however long they were in fae - a good few weeks, in other words. Maybe a relative of theirs shows up during this period and does some housecleaning/fixing up?

 

[Ireth]

If the passage of time is 1:1 between fae and earth, then your intrepid heroes are away from home for however long they were in fae - a good few weeks, in other words. Maybe a relative of theirs shows up during this period and does some housecleaning/fixing up?

There is no fixed correlation between time in Faerie and on Earth; if you don't know exactly how to move between times to get to when you want as well as where, you can spend an hour in Faerie and come out 70 years later, or spend ten years in Faerie and come out a week after the day you went in. Faerie basically does whatever the heck it wants -- or whatever is dramatically appropriate, in other words.

 

[ThinkerX]

Ok...your goal is to have them come back to a place that is 'untrashed', be it before they left or shortly thereafter.

So...cheat. They come back after they left (avoiding time travel paradoxes) - and their place is untrashed...no explanations given, leaving them to wonder *who* fixed it up...or why. Let them ask the questions, but don't give them answers. Preserves a bit of mystery for the next book.

 

[Ravana]

The ability to travel into the past is inherently paradoxical. Pretty much the only way around that is to ignore it.

There's no reason your travelers have to be able to return to a time before they've left… you can simply say that isn't possible, even for the Fae to accomplish. Alternately, they might be able to accomplish it, but may not be willing to do so, for reasons of their own–such as the negation of whatever it was they wanted the characters to do in the first place: it would screw up their timeline as well, by erasing the initial event. This may not lead to the resolution you want, however–in which case you're stuck accepting the paradox. (Your characters' wishes have nothing to do with the matter: you're their boss, after all. )

They could be returned within moments of the time they depart, to a different location, from which point they have relatively greater freedom to attempt to resolve any outstanding matters in some other fashion. Or they could be returned to any other future time they consider convenient, including decades after everyone's forgotten about whatever mess was caused. Or they could be dumped right back when they were, and get saddled with the cleanup, whether they want to be or not.

Barring any of those, you're stuck deciding for yourself what happens when time travelers erase events. It would probably be a lot simpler, and cause fewer headaches, to say that the Fae threw in a magical repair service gratis.

Splitting timelines is the biggest cop-out in the universe: apart from the massive violations of basic laws of thermodynamics–an entire new universe created out of nothing, simply because one event is different?–if it's possible for events to generate new timelines, this renders all actions and choices ultimately meaningless… no matter what you do, there's another universe created in which you didn't, or failed. Not the most ennobling of resolutions.

As for the watch: why does it stop? If it's a spring-wound one, it should go right on functioning normally… it doesn't know anything about correlations between worlds, only that its spring still has tension in it or not. In other words, it perceives the passage of time the same way the characters do, regardless of world. If none of the characters thinks to check the watch until later, they're stuck making their best guess as to when they left. But if it doesn't continue to work, then neither should anything else that functions on the principles of springs… like, say, bows. If it's digital, and you've decided electronics don't function in Faerie for whatever reason, then the watch won't merely stop keeping time, it won't display anything whatsoever.

 

[ShortHair]

Is it possible that your characters have picked up some magic during their time in Faerie? Specifically, a spell or item that lets them disguise themselves? That could lead to some awkward (or humorous) moments when they encounter their earlier selves, who of course don't recognize their later selves.

 

[Ireth]

Ok...your goal is to have them come back to a place that is 'untrashed', be it before they left or shortly thereafter.

So...cheat. They come back after they left (avoiding time travel paradoxes) - and their place is untrashed...no explanations given, leaving them to wonder *who* fixed it up...or why. Let them ask the questions, but don't give them answers. Preserves a bit of mystery for the next book.

That would work, except that there won't be a next book.

The ability to travel into the past is inherently paradoxical. Pretty much the only way around that is to ignore it.

There's no reason your travelers have to be able to return to a time before they've left… you can simply say that isn't possible, even for the Fae to accomplish. Alternately, they might be able to accomplish it, but may not be willing to do so, for reasons of their own—such as the negation of whatever it was they wanted the characters to do in the first place: it would screw up their timeline as well, by erasing the initial event. This may not lead to the resolution you want, however—in which case you're stuck accepting the paradox. (Your characters' wishes have nothing to do with the matter: you're their boss, after all. )

That is an excellent point. Several, actually. XD

They could be returned within moments of the time they depart, to a different location, from which point they have relatively greater freedom to attempt to resolve any outstanding matters in some other fashion. Or they could be returned to any other future time they consider convenient, including decades after everyone's forgotten about whatever mess was caused. Or they could be dumped right back when they were, and get saddled with the cleanup, whether they want to be or not.

Out of those, the last suggestion would be best. Having them return decades after they left would be bad. What would people think had become of them in the meantime? They might not have a home to come back to -- it might have been torn down in the inbetween years, or have someone else living in it by now, which would cause even more hassle than any of the other ways it could go.

Barring any of those, you're stuck deciding for yourself what happens when time travelers erase events. It would probably be a lot simpler, and cause fewer headaches, to say that the Fae threw in a magical repair service gratis.

Indeed.

Splitting timelines is the biggest cop-out in the universe: apart from the massive violations of basic laws of thermodynamics—an entire new universe created out of nothing, simply because one event is different?—if it's possible for events to generate new timelines, this renders all actions and choices ultimately meaningless… no matter what you do, there's another universe created in which you didn't, or failed. Not the most ennobling of resolutions.

Yeah, true. :/

As for the watch: why does it stop? If it's a spring-wound one, it should go right on functioning normally… it doesn't know anything about correlations between worlds, only that its spring still has tension in it or not. In other words, it perceives the passage of time the same way the characters do, regardless of world. If none of the characters thinks to check the watch until later, they're stuck making their best guess as to when they left. But if it doesn't continue to work, then neither should anything else that functions on the principles of springs… like, say, bows. If it's digital, and you've decided electronics don't function in Faerie for whatever reason, then the watch won't merely stop keeping time, it won't display anything whatsoever.

My reasoning behind that is that Faerie mucks up modern technology, as you said. That's a good point about digital watches; I hadn't thought of that.

Is it possible that your characters have picked up some magic during their time in Faerie? Specifically, a spell or item that lets them disguise themselves? That could lead to some awkward (or humorous) moments when they encounter their earlier selves, who of course don't recognize their later selves.

The humans haven't spent nearly enough time in Faerie to have picked up any magic of their own. They would have to have been there for hundreds of years, during which time they would have become partly Fae themselves. There are no magic items they'd be able to use for a disguise; the illusions and disguises the Fae create for themselves are cast of their Glamour, which is inherent in their very being. They cannot work such magic on mortals.

 

[Steerpike]

Personally, as a reader I'd prefer to have them come back and have to deal with the situation they left behind. Having them come back a few minutes earlier in time strikes me as a bit of a deus ex machina with respect to those conflicts, and I think I'd be likely to view it as an easy out by an author who didn't want to deal with the issues the characters encounter on their return.

 

[Ireth]

Personally, as a reader I'd prefer to have them come back and have to deal with the situation they left behind. Having them come back a few minutes earlier in time strikes me as a bit of a deus ex machina with respect to those conflicts, and I think I'd be likely to view it as an easy out by an author who didn't want to deal with the issues the characters encounter on their return.

That's a very good point. Though it's not so much a conflict type of mess as a vandalized house type of mess. I can see how the humans would want to not have to deal with it, as it wasn't them who made the mess -- it was all the fault of the Fae who arrested them. I'm tempted in this instance to let the Fae clean it up, as Ravana suggested.

 

[Sheilawisz]

Hello Ireth, here you have my humble opinion... I hope it can help:

The only occasion when I have accepted time-travel issues in a story, and liked them to certain point, was in Prisoner of Azkaban and in my opinion you should try to fix this that way, because it was not too complicated and did not generate too many paradoxes and awkward situations =)

Still, I did not really approve of Rowling's use of time stuff (as I call it) in Prisoner of Azkaban.

Time-travel always causes paradoxes when used in the traditional ways seen in many stories, there is really no way to get around this in my opinion... So, these are my views about Time Stuff:

If you travel to the past somehow, you would not be travelling to the past of your own universe: Instead, you would have travelled to an entirely separate universe that just happens to be a perfect replica of the past of your own world. I believe that there are no time-lines and also no way to travel to the past simply because the past does not exist.

This is why in my own stories my Mages never travel to the past- The past does not exist in their universes, but they could indeed travel to another universe that would be a perfect replica of the past.

If you want to include this time-travel characters and situations in your story, you should try something similar to Prisoner of Azkaban and try to keep it as simple as possible =)

 

[Penpilot]

First think about what kind of story you're telling and what type of ending you want. If you want the happily ever after ending with all smiles, don't over think it. It's the end all the real problems have been dealt with. This really has nothing to do with the story or plot anymore, so you're allowed to cheat a little and tie things up in a nice bow and just say they arrived back exactly when they left. No paradoxes. Nobody seeing or missing them. It's all cherries and ice cream. 'And They Lived Happily Ever After. The End'. If this is what you want, it's fine.

If you want a darker ending, you can deal with the consequences of paradox and the results of them leaving and have the end be messy to deal with. If you plan a sequel maybe the paradox is a starting point for the second book, but even then you don't have to deal with it. If you just want a happy ending, have it and leave it at that.

 

[Ireth]

First think about what kind of story you're telling and what type of ending you want. If you want the happily ever after ending with all smiles, don't over think it. It's the end all the real problems have been dealt with. This really has nothing to do with the story or plot anymore, so you're allowed to cheat a little and tie things up in a nice bow and just say they arrived back exactly when they left. No paradoxes. Nobody seeing or missing them. It's all cherries and ice cream. 'And They Lived Happily Ever After. The End'. If this is what you want, it's fine.

If you want a darker ending, you can deal with the consequences of paradox and the results of them leaving and have the end be messy to deal with. If you plan a sequel maybe the paradox is a starting point for the second book, but even then you don't have to deal with it. If you just want a happy ending, have it and leave it at that.

Well, the climax looks to be rather dark, so I think I want the ending to be a tad bit lighter to offset it, though by no means is it going to be all puppies and rainbows. They're going to have stuff to deal with in the resolution that stems directly from the climax, so letting them off the hook as far as their trashed house would be preferable. There will be no sequel, as this is the second book in a duology, but I might leave it a bit open-ended to show that yes, life does go on, and it's not all wrapped up in a big red bow when the last page is turned.

 

[Chime85]

Well there are many different ways time travel has been done in films, back to the future has consequences while Terminator does not. Why not have it so when your characters return to the normal time, they can prevent their former selves being captured in the first place?

If the Fea can send people back and forth through time, maybe they have means to hold a paradox? Wether of not they will hand this over willingly, who knows?