Overheard on the Mysterious Comm Channel ((RP Global Chat))

[VileTerror]

The following is a mildly edited excerpt from a recent* conversation which took place over the mysterious comm channel which many multidimensional entities chat on:

 

       A sweetly menacing feminine voice groans slightly.  "Time travel gives me headaches just thinking about it.  How do you even *know* if you returned to the same point in time and didn't cause a branching of timelines?"

 

       A mellow masculine voice with a slight groove to his timbre asks.  "What'cha mean?"

 

       A 'voice' like the sound of an indefinite number of variously-sized tentacles mimicking spoken word replies.  "Depends.  Are you using magic, technology, or natural biological processes to travel through time?"

 

       The feminine voice elaborates.  "Well, you've seen Back to the Future, right?  How Michael J. Fox starts at Twin Pines Mall and ends at Lone Pine Mall?"  There's a brief pause.  "How do we know he actually changed the timeline when he killed that first pine tree, and not set up a divergent one which he 'returned' to?"

 

       The mellow man remarks, with a bit less mellow.  "Uh ... I got that forehead thing again but I ain't eatin' no ice creams."

 

       The feminine voice joins in the lamentation. "Exactly the issue. Pass that Tylenol-3."

 

       The tentacles 'speak' again.  "You kind of have to 'step back' and observe time from the outside in those cases.  It can be tricky."  There is a pause.  "Like . . . hmm, how to describe this in four-dimensional comprehension . . . "  Another, longer pause.  "Say that you're in a vat of yoghurt.  And you are kind of swim-walking through it.  Let's just say that you don't need to worry about stuff like breathing or yoghurt getting in to uncomfortable places."

 

       A separate and distinct set of tentacles chimes in, though somehow even a casual listener has an innate understanding that these tentacles are at once the same entity as before, but also a wholly different one.  "Since, technically, you're just yoghurt too . . . but now I'm muddling my analogy.  ANYWAY!"

 

       The original tentacles resume.  "As you move through the yoghurt, you leave a trail, but the yoghurt recoalesces behind you.  Since you've got yoghurt in your eyes anyway, it's hard to see this trail you're leaving.  And even if you got out of the vat, you'd only be able to see the surface level trails of where you were moving.  The subcutaneous trails would be obscured from your vision.  You would need some other senses to detect the trails.  And the longer you wait, the harder it would be to detect."  There is a profoundly empty pause.  " . . . that help?  I did my best."

 

       The sweetly menacing voice jokes.  "I dunno.  I was eating the yogurt."

 

       The tentacles concede.  "That's a valid response."

 

       A different feminine voice mutters, almost emotionlessly.  "Man, I'm not gonna look at yogurt the same again..."

 

       The once-mellow masculine voice seems shaken.  "I, uh ... um."  He remains silent for a little while.  "I'm just gonna go hit something for a minute."

 

 

 

*relativistically.