Time travel

[Ascendancy]

Philosophical look at the One Power time!

Given that time is a Wheel, and bound by other physical properties than what we equate with time today, and that balefire has effects on time, I ask you this...
... do you think it is possible - and if so, how? - that the One Power can be used for time travel?

[Nick Trano]

Perhaps some world of dreams portal shit if you were to morph the area around you and then hop through? We know you can get to a different mirror of your universe through ter'angreal, as well.

[Jaxen Marveet]

I dont know about this one. If balefire is strong enough it can take you back in time because it's physically destroying the pattern which then has to be rewoven. If you were to jump back 100 years, your presence could change the 100 years' worth of pattern in between the two times, which means alternate weavings. For alternate weavings to occur, the previous weaving would have had to been replaced....*brainexplodes-eyepops-twitch-thud.

[Aria]

don't for get that the pattern is always being written and rewritten as we make decisions, that's what the portal stones are right? Different decision we made creating a different pattern.

I think it's possible. Balefire erases time. The portal stones take you different timelines, and even the ter'angreal in Ruidean gave you glimpses of the past and the future. So time travel, in theory should be possible. You may not return to the same timeline you were in but possible.

[Michael Vellas]

Yeahh, I'm thinking it would be highly unlikely to actually time-travel in the traditional sense. The 'real world' wouldn't be affected, it would probably splinter into a mirror world and you'd be screwed trying to get back to the 'real world'.

Balefire doesn't exactly time travel, it erases things so they didn't happen. Of course, in effect it is kinda time-travel-y, but the essence of what happens is just erasure, and balefire causes all sorts of chaos with the Pattern.

Anyhow, more to the point, it may be possible to do so - although I doubt it would be anything more than something like the columns Rand goes through - but it would either get that person completely lost in alternate worlds or have major repercussions on the world.

If we are talking about using it in the story, I'd prefer to avoid the mess altogether, but something like a max 10min journey into the past to change something once or twice might be alright. Beyond that it would get too complicated.

[Connor Kent]

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.

[Oriena]

No. I don't think the WoT universe works with time travel at all - at least not backwards. Especially with the whole pattern, weaving, wheel symbolism. Going backwards would just break everything. Going forwards, though. Time travel of a sorts I guess, but as Connor points out, you don't end up in your own past.

[Aria]

I do agree with Mickey V that it would be messy to do in game.

[Elias Donovan]

Not possible. if it were possible, there would be more evidence in the books.

[Ascendancy]

TBH I wasn't suggesting using it in-game, at all. That's a can of worms I do NOT want to open. haha!

I was more curious about what the dimensions of time travel would be in a wheel of time universe as opposed to what we currently believe is our own.

I think the idea of time travel forcing a sudden emergence of an alternate-reality mirror world has legs. Getting back to your own "real" world would then be a matter of traveling between mirror worlds, which would obviously be quite difficult.

I don't think tel'aran'rhiod would be the key. Agreed there.

You know how Saidar and Saidin differ in the construction of Gateways? Perhaps you could warp the pattern in a way that forces it to shift "on the loom" so to say? Assuming the "loom" is the current time point, going backward would probably be easier than forward, into something that hasn't been woven yet. Then, if you did that, the concept of Rand in the columns, where he saw the past but was not able to interact with it, might be the result.

I think my eyes just glazed over....