Datalog #12

Time travel, the most forbidden of arts that transcends the fabric of fate itself. Time travel has been a forbidden type of magickal talent for as long as anyone could possibly remember, and that is for a very good reason. In the process of using time travel, one denies the passage of fate whenever they like it or not, and denying fate is denying the divine, the highest form of heresy. Thus, time travel was completely banned across all spheres fully controlled by Barbello, no matter how much technology advanced, but that didn’t stop anyone from trying.

The first known time-traveler was a man named Trello, who traveled from the year 5950 AF back to the year 2945 AF. He was just a mere janitor in a futuristic hotel who dreamed of greatness, and by greatness, I mean total and complete destruction of all life. He hated humanity, he hated society, and wanted to end it all. However, his dreams could never come to pass, as the entire galaxy was at peace and all threats to stability were taken care of long ago. However, one day, Trello woke up 3000 years in the past without a physical form, stuck as an empty suit of armor with the word “Kairos” marked inside his helmet. Kairos, in the first step to ensure his fated history came to pass, denied the fate set forth by Barbello and changed the course of history. While Trello was stopped by many heroes and his ambitions brought to an end, his mere presence in this part of the timeline created a butterfly effect that affected all of history.

What is the butterfly effect? It’s quite simple really. When a time traveler goes back in time, even the smallest change can cause a long series of altered events that can drastically affect the timeline. The farther one travels back in time, the more drastic the changes. This is one of the reasons why time travel is so dangerous. Even the smallest changes can cause massive problems in the timestream, like a butterfly’s wings spreading pollen across the winds. Another well-known phenomenon is known as the "grandfather paradox" where if you kill your ancestors you would have never existed, and thus couldn't have gone back in time to change history. However, in reality, this theory is completely false due to two factors: alternate timelines and time traveler immunity.

When you time-travel and change the past, you don't change the future. Instead, you yourself shift timelines to a timeline where the events you changed actually occurred, as every possibility, no matter how unlikely, is possible in the endless stream of time. You are the only person that shifts timelines, leaving behind the versions of everyone you know in your original timeline and shifting to a separate one with different versions of the people you know, but the same people nonetheless. 

`That is how time travel works, but there is one other aspect to consider: time traveler's immunity. When someone time-travels and they change something in the past, if the changes in the timestream would affect them directly it would have no effect. So even if you killed your ancestors, it would not affect you. This is all to prevent paradoxes. When someone first travels back or forward in time, they cease to exist in that particular timeline. They become free from the bounds of fate, able to travel freely across the time stream but completely disconnected from the world and its people. Even if you traveled back to your original time, you would meet an alternate version of yourself, not travel back to where you left off when you first time traveled. Once you time travel, your life will never return to normal. You will become a stranger to time, forever wandering across reality with no place to call home. This is why time travel is a forbidden art, it is a path not easily walked that will almost always lead to disaster.