Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jun 1, 2021 13:41:22 GMT
TRANSFORMERS/TENET
"Good evening, Optimus Prime."
"Hello, Perceptor. It's good to see you. Good, but... unexpected."
"Your surprise is understandable. I was living as a Pretender among humans, all memories of my robotic nature suppressed, my true identity not due to re-emerge for at least another sixteen years."
"Yes. You gave me your secret memory unlock code, for use in an emergency. And you said I was the only person who would have it."
"So you were."
"Then how is it you have regained your memories and returned to your robot form early?"
"I activated the code myself."
"How is that possible?"
"Time-travel makes much possible. I visited myself from the future and gave myself the code."
"You what?"
"Let me explain chronologically."
"Please do."
"I awoke this morning as Professor Percival Torn, scientist friend of the Cybertronian Autobots here on Earth. I was eager to get up and hurry here to my laboratory to begin analysing the as-yet unidentified technology grabbed by the Omnibots in their recent raid on the Space Mafia warehouse where they had hoped in vain to find one or more of our missing, deactivated comrades. This device here was part of it..."
"A small, portable structure with two doors, eight feet high, side by side, separated from one another by a transparent barrier."
"Yes. It turned out to be a time machine, of sorts."
"Who built it?"
"It has yet to be built. Time Warrior examined it earlier this afternoon and is convinced it is human tech from the future."
"From the size of its doors?"
"Among other more subtle clues to its origin, yes."
"And you used it? That was an incredibly dangerous thing to do!"
"Not really. Once you've been visited by your future self, the safest thing by far for the integrity of the space-time continuum is for you to time-travel accordingly and close the loop."
"Hmmm. Go on with your story."
"Well, I had still not worked out what the thing was when suddenly it activated itself. (You can switch it on from either side, it seems.) Moments earlier, I had inspected the structure's interior, and it had been empty. Then both doors opened simultaneously, and two copies of me - of Professor Torn, that is - stepped out."
"Two?"
"Yes, and one of the copies was walking backwards."
"You were visited twice at the same time, by your future selves?"
"No... It's not a time-jump device. It doesn't teleport you from one time to another. All it does is let you make a temporal u-turn."
"A what?"
"It inverts your entropy. You enter through one door and walk out through the other, and as far as you're concerned time has suddenly switched direction. The me that was walking backwards was a future me moving backwards through time. From 'his' perspective, he was actually walking fowards into the time machine, and it was the rest of the world that was going backwards. The me that I perceived as walking forwards was the one who had been walking backwards after he had entered and exited the machine, to begin moving forwards through time again."
"And he explained all this to you?"
"Yes. The me that walked backwards out of the machine went and took a seat by the room's east wall. The me that walked forwards out of the machine greeted me and told me that he was me from forty minutes hence, by my personal timeline. He instructed me on how to work the machine, and he gave me the code to unlock my Cybertronian memories, so that I would not feel the compulsion to breathe whilst inverted. Then he took a seat by the room's west wall."
"And what did you do?"
"What else could I do? Twenty minutes after the arrival of the two 'copies', I switched on the machine and entered it through Door A. As I approached the machine, the 'copy' of me sitting by the room's east wall got up and walked backwards towards Door B. I entered the machine first. I exited through Door B, and found time reversed. I had now 'become' the so-called 'copy' of me who had previously appeared to me to be walking backwards! I saw my former self walking backwards out of Door A."
"And you went and sat by the room's east wall."
"Of course, I had to. I observed my past and future selves having a conversation in reverse - a conversation that I remembered recently being a part of. Then, after twenty minutes had passed, I got up and headed back to the machine. My future self walked backwards towards Door A. I entered through Door B, exited through Door A, and became my future self, travelling forwards through time once more."
"And you instructed your past self as to the nature of the time machine, gave yourself the memory unlock code, and went and sat by the room's west wall."
"Precisely. I watched my past selves enter the machine - one walking forwards, the other backwards - and vanish from existence. And now there's just one of me, with forty minutes of extra memories, having taken a little round trip through time to have a conversation with myself."
"Fascinating. And your knowledge of the machine's workings, and of the memory unlock code, were essentially created out of nothing. You gained this knowledge simply by receiving it from your future self, and then going back in time and telling yourself. What is preventing you from acquiring all kinds of unknown secret information in this manner?"
"I'm not entirely sure, but there do appear to be limits. It occurred to me to travel back in time and tell myself the locations of all the lost Autobots. I waited, and waited, and nothing happened. I can't go back and tell myself their locations until my future self visits me and gives me that information. But it hasn't happened. Time Warrior has a theory that a time-loop conversation can only be used to reveal information contained within the time machine and its user. The nature of the time machine was a secret contained within the machine itself. The memory unlock code was a secret locked away in my brain. So I wasn't creating information from nothing when I revealed those things to myself. But the locations of the missing Autobots aren't here in this laboratory."
"All right. That makes some kind of sense. So after you'd completed your round trip, making two u-turns in time, you returned to your Autobot form. You called in Time Warrior, to help you understand this technology better. And then you called me - despite knowing my views on time-travel - to let me know you were back to being Perceptor."
"Yes, and to put a proposal to you. I think we may be able to use this... temporal turnstile - to find and reactivate our missing comrades."
___
Godbomber hovered over a rarely trafficked portion of the eastern Atlantic Ocean, just outside the territorial waters of the New British Isles. The weather was stormy, and most human vessels would be avoiding the area just now.
Directly below Godbomber, Seaspray bobbed on the ocean surface, enjoying the choppy conditions. His passengers were less keen, and as soon as they had confirmed they were in the correct location, Jazz and Bluestreak disembarked and descended to the relative calm of the ocean depths. On board Godbomber, the three Autobot Sparkdashers prepared to carefully lower the Turnstile.
Bluestreak and Jazz found the Autobot stealth shuttle exactly where they had hidden it following the battle of Stansham Castle, more than 150 years earlier. They knocked on the outer hatch, and its current, temporary skeleton crew of Landfill, Quickmix and Scoop unlocked the airlock to admit them.
"Is the place properly prepared?" asked Jazz.
"Exactly as Optimus specified," reported Landfill. "We'll install the Turnstile right here on the bridge, and there are a variety of spare Micromaster bodies in the next room, so whichever Autobot finds it can downsize easily enough before using the machine."
"This is crazy, you know," said Quickmix. "I accept that one of the deactivated Lithones woke up spontaneously decades after the passing of the cosmic virus, so it's certainly possible that one or two of the lost Autobots might wake up of their own accord at some point in the distant future. But why would they come here?"
"It's a long shot," sighed Jazz. "But many of the lost Autobots know this ship is hidden here, and its location is within Metroplex's computer files. So if one of Metroplex's crew wakes up, thousands of years from now, and finds himself drifting in space with hundreds of deactivated comrades, what's he likely to do?"
"Return to Earth?"
"And if we're no longer here - if there are no more human Matrix-bearers on Earth in the distant future - how is he going to bring his sleeping crew back to life?"
"By travelling back in time to an era when there were Matrix-bearers on Earth - to our era."
"Nobody but the Autobots knows this ship is here. Nobody will disturb it once we're gone. It will rest here, as it has for the last half century, waiting for one of our lost comrades to come to it, searching for hope. And they will find hope here - a message from the past, a human time machine, a means to carry the brain modules of the dormant Cybertronians back to our era, where our human Matrix-bearers can do their thing and return them all to life."
"It's more than a long shot, Jazz," commented Bluestreak. "And if they do find this place, and use the Turnstile as per our instructions, they may have to experience and survive thousands of years of history in reverse before reaching our time."
"I know. But since Perceptor made the suggestion, how can we not offer them this chance? How could Optimus say no to him, when saying no could condemn hundreds of our fellow Cybertronians to an eternity of shutdown?"
"How long will we have to wait, to know if we're getting arrivals from the future?" wondered Scoop.
Jazz shrugged. "I suppose any Autobots travelling back through time will re-invert as soon as they think they've reached a time when there are friendly Matrix-bearers to help them. Could be tomorrow, could be a hundred years from now. We just need to set things up, get out of here, and put it out of our minds."
THE END?
"Good evening, Optimus Prime."
"Hello, Perceptor. It's good to see you. Good, but... unexpected."
"Your surprise is understandable. I was living as a Pretender among humans, all memories of my robotic nature suppressed, my true identity not due to re-emerge for at least another sixteen years."
"Yes. You gave me your secret memory unlock code, for use in an emergency. And you said I was the only person who would have it."
"So you were."
"Then how is it you have regained your memories and returned to your robot form early?"
"I activated the code myself."
"How is that possible?"
"Time-travel makes much possible. I visited myself from the future and gave myself the code."
"You what?"
"Let me explain chronologically."
"Please do."
"I awoke this morning as Professor Percival Torn, scientist friend of the Cybertronian Autobots here on Earth. I was eager to get up and hurry here to my laboratory to begin analysing the as-yet unidentified technology grabbed by the Omnibots in their recent raid on the Space Mafia warehouse where they had hoped in vain to find one or more of our missing, deactivated comrades. This device here was part of it..."
"A small, portable structure with two doors, eight feet high, side by side, separated from one another by a transparent barrier."
"Yes. It turned out to be a time machine, of sorts."
"Who built it?"
"It has yet to be built. Time Warrior examined it earlier this afternoon and is convinced it is human tech from the future."
"From the size of its doors?"
"Among other more subtle clues to its origin, yes."
"And you used it? That was an incredibly dangerous thing to do!"
"Not really. Once you've been visited by your future self, the safest thing by far for the integrity of the space-time continuum is for you to time-travel accordingly and close the loop."
"Hmmm. Go on with your story."
"Well, I had still not worked out what the thing was when suddenly it activated itself. (You can switch it on from either side, it seems.) Moments earlier, I had inspected the structure's interior, and it had been empty. Then both doors opened simultaneously, and two copies of me - of Professor Torn, that is - stepped out."
"Two?"
"Yes, and one of the copies was walking backwards."
"You were visited twice at the same time, by your future selves?"
"No... It's not a time-jump device. It doesn't teleport you from one time to another. All it does is let you make a temporal u-turn."
"A what?"
"It inverts your entropy. You enter through one door and walk out through the other, and as far as you're concerned time has suddenly switched direction. The me that was walking backwards was a future me moving backwards through time. From 'his' perspective, he was actually walking fowards into the time machine, and it was the rest of the world that was going backwards. The me that I perceived as walking forwards was the one who had been walking backwards after he had entered and exited the machine, to begin moving forwards through time again."
"And he explained all this to you?"
"Yes. The me that walked backwards out of the machine went and took a seat by the room's east wall. The me that walked forwards out of the machine greeted me and told me that he was me from forty minutes hence, by my personal timeline. He instructed me on how to work the machine, and he gave me the code to unlock my Cybertronian memories, so that I would not feel the compulsion to breathe whilst inverted. Then he took a seat by the room's west wall."
"And what did you do?"
"What else could I do? Twenty minutes after the arrival of the two 'copies', I switched on the machine and entered it through Door A. As I approached the machine, the 'copy' of me sitting by the room's east wall got up and walked backwards towards Door B. I entered the machine first. I exited through Door B, and found time reversed. I had now 'become' the so-called 'copy' of me who had previously appeared to me to be walking backwards! I saw my former self walking backwards out of Door A."
"And you went and sat by the room's east wall."
"Of course, I had to. I observed my past and future selves having a conversation in reverse - a conversation that I remembered recently being a part of. Then, after twenty minutes had passed, I got up and headed back to the machine. My future self walked backwards towards Door A. I entered through Door B, exited through Door A, and became my future self, travelling forwards through time once more."
"And you instructed your past self as to the nature of the time machine, gave yourself the memory unlock code, and went and sat by the room's west wall."
"Precisely. I watched my past selves enter the machine - one walking forwards, the other backwards - and vanish from existence. And now there's just one of me, with forty minutes of extra memories, having taken a little round trip through time to have a conversation with myself."
"Fascinating. And your knowledge of the machine's workings, and of the memory unlock code, were essentially created out of nothing. You gained this knowledge simply by receiving it from your future self, and then going back in time and telling yourself. What is preventing you from acquiring all kinds of unknown secret information in this manner?"
"I'm not entirely sure, but there do appear to be limits. It occurred to me to travel back in time and tell myself the locations of all the lost Autobots. I waited, and waited, and nothing happened. I can't go back and tell myself their locations until my future self visits me and gives me that information. But it hasn't happened. Time Warrior has a theory that a time-loop conversation can only be used to reveal information contained within the time machine and its user. The nature of the time machine was a secret contained within the machine itself. The memory unlock code was a secret locked away in my brain. So I wasn't creating information from nothing when I revealed those things to myself. But the locations of the missing Autobots aren't here in this laboratory."
"All right. That makes some kind of sense. So after you'd completed your round trip, making two u-turns in time, you returned to your Autobot form. You called in Time Warrior, to help you understand this technology better. And then you called me - despite knowing my views on time-travel - to let me know you were back to being Perceptor."
"Yes, and to put a proposal to you. I think we may be able to use this... temporal turnstile - to find and reactivate our missing comrades."
___
Godbomber hovered over a rarely trafficked portion of the eastern Atlantic Ocean, just outside the territorial waters of the New British Isles. The weather was stormy, and most human vessels would be avoiding the area just now.
Directly below Godbomber, Seaspray bobbed on the ocean surface, enjoying the choppy conditions. His passengers were less keen, and as soon as they had confirmed they were in the correct location, Jazz and Bluestreak disembarked and descended to the relative calm of the ocean depths. On board Godbomber, the three Autobot Sparkdashers prepared to carefully lower the Turnstile.
Bluestreak and Jazz found the Autobot stealth shuttle exactly where they had hidden it following the battle of Stansham Castle, more than 150 years earlier. They knocked on the outer hatch, and its current, temporary skeleton crew of Landfill, Quickmix and Scoop unlocked the airlock to admit them.
"Is the place properly prepared?" asked Jazz.
"Exactly as Optimus specified," reported Landfill. "We'll install the Turnstile right here on the bridge, and there are a variety of spare Micromaster bodies in the next room, so whichever Autobot finds it can downsize easily enough before using the machine."
"This is crazy, you know," said Quickmix. "I accept that one of the deactivated Lithones woke up spontaneously decades after the passing of the cosmic virus, so it's certainly possible that one or two of the lost Autobots might wake up of their own accord at some point in the distant future. But why would they come here?"
"It's a long shot," sighed Jazz. "But many of the lost Autobots know this ship is hidden here, and its location is within Metroplex's computer files. So if one of Metroplex's crew wakes up, thousands of years from now, and finds himself drifting in space with hundreds of deactivated comrades, what's he likely to do?"
"Return to Earth?"
"And if we're no longer here - if there are no more human Matrix-bearers on Earth in the distant future - how is he going to bring his sleeping crew back to life?"
"By travelling back in time to an era when there were Matrix-bearers on Earth - to our era."
"Nobody but the Autobots knows this ship is here. Nobody will disturb it once we're gone. It will rest here, as it has for the last half century, waiting for one of our lost comrades to come to it, searching for hope. And they will find hope here - a message from the past, a human time machine, a means to carry the brain modules of the dormant Cybertronians back to our era, where our human Matrix-bearers can do their thing and return them all to life."
"It's more than a long shot, Jazz," commented Bluestreak. "And if they do find this place, and use the Turnstile as per our instructions, they may have to experience and survive thousands of years of history in reverse before reaching our time."
"I know. But since Perceptor made the suggestion, how can we not offer them this chance? How could Optimus say no to him, when saying no could condemn hundreds of our fellow Cybertronians to an eternity of shutdown?"
"How long will we have to wait, to know if we're getting arrivals from the future?" wondered Scoop.
Jazz shrugged. "I suppose any Autobots travelling back through time will re-invert as soon as they think they've reached a time when there are friendly Matrix-bearers to help them. Could be tomorrow, could be a hundred years from now. We just need to set things up, get out of here, and put it out of our minds."
THE END?
