04-25-2014, 08:30 AM
Time travel doesn't "feel" very WOT-like. That said, there are a couple of things I thought of.
We know it cannot use T*Roid because RJ stated that the world dreams has a different time flow forward (speed) but that it never works backward. This was in response to the the question of whether Guidal Cain was Olver. Specifically, Guidal was in T*Roid with Birgette when Nynaeve briefly saw him. At that same time, Olver (though not yet introduced) was a child in Cairhien. So RJs answer indicated that the weird time effects didn't allow for Nynaeve to speak to Guidal "in the past".
Of course, it does lead to the question of whether the pattern and time are separate. Space-time is a single thing, both parts of a whole. Our theories of time travel and wormholes and the time dilation affect (not a theory) are based on those truths. In a world were time is a wheel how do those things apply?
The worlds of "if" seem to be parallel universes, but are they real in the sense that Rand-land is real? The washed out world Rand and co visited was very unlikely, implying some sort of statistical ranking of probabilities. The effect was noticeable. If that was the case, lets say you found a way to go back and change things to something unlikely. Would you find yourself in Randland-prime in a washed out state? Or are you just "jumping" universes?
But time is a wheel. To go backward, you could go forward. What if you used the principles of speeding up time that they used in the Ways (from studying the worlds of "if"). You'd have to jump ahead a full turning of the wheel, but you could get to the "past" that way. Of course, each age has minor variations, so that the "past" you find is not "your" past.
Gah! My head hurts.
We know it cannot use T*Roid because RJ stated that the world dreams has a different time flow forward (speed) but that it never works backward. This was in response to the the question of whether Guidal Cain was Olver. Specifically, Guidal was in T*Roid with Birgette when Nynaeve briefly saw him. At that same time, Olver (though not yet introduced) was a child in Cairhien. So RJs answer indicated that the weird time effects didn't allow for Nynaeve to speak to Guidal "in the past".
Of course, it does lead to the question of whether the pattern and time are separate. Space-time is a single thing, both parts of a whole. Our theories of time travel and wormholes and the time dilation affect (not a theory) are based on those truths. In a world were time is a wheel how do those things apply?
The worlds of "if" seem to be parallel universes, but are they real in the sense that Rand-land is real? The washed out world Rand and co visited was very unlikely, implying some sort of statistical ranking of probabilities. The effect was noticeable. If that was the case, lets say you found a way to go back and change things to something unlikely. Would you find yourself in Randland-prime in a washed out state? Or are you just "jumping" universes?
But time is a wheel. To go backward, you could go forward. What if you used the principles of speeding up time that they used in the Ways (from studying the worlds of "if"). You'd have to jump ahead a full turning of the wheel, but you could get to the "past" that way. Of course, each age has minor variations, so that the "past" you find is not "your" past.
Gah! My head hurts.