AN : Hello, everyone. I was watching some Doctor Who (in order to take my mind off the grim darkness of the far future with something more optimistic – although when you really think about it, the Whoniverse is possibly even more fucked up than Warhammer 40000), when the idea came to me : what about time-travel in Warhammer 40000 ? Then I remembered several allusions to it, read a bunch of sci-fi articles about it, and before I knew it I had written a two-pages dissertation on the subject myself. All that remained was setting up the narrative frame for it, for which I used good old Inquisitor Markus Terkarch, who my regular readers will recognize from previous short stories.
This isn't exactly a story per say, since there isn't a narrative and it's very short. It's more like a piece of fluff for the universe, and I will understand if you don't like it, since it's not very Warhammer-like. But I thought it would be a waste to let it linger on my computer though, and I will be damned if I am the only one shuddering at the implications of time-travel in universe with rules as grimdark as Warhammer 40000. Anyway, it only took me a couple of hours to put together, so don't worry, it didn't put back anything more interesting.
On that subject, I am back to working on the next chapter of the Forsaken Sons for now. As usual, if you have a suggestion for a short story, leave it in your review or send me a PM. I read all suggestions and have a list of them, and sometimes something clicks and I can't stop until I am finished (like with Perfection Betrayed). You never know if your idea will be the next one !
Zahariel out.
I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to Games Workshop.
Access to this file is reserved to Ordo personnel with an Ultima-level and above clearance only. Unauthorized consultation will be met with immediate elimination under Extremi Deletion protocols, and a subsequent purge of all known associates, through excommunication, extensive interrogation, and effacement from all Imperial archives of all included in this list, regardless of position and/or date of last contact with the culprit.
Thought for the day : 'Ignorance is bliss.'
Preamble :
The Inquisition is a realm of intrigues and paranoia, built on secrets. It cannot be otherwise, for we fight an eternal battle for the soul of all Mankind, and there are many truths in this galaxy that only the strongest will can bear. The masses of Humanity cannot be trusted with the knowledge of the countless horrors that inhabit our galaxy, for they would panic and destroy themselves if they were aware of even a fraction of it. To know of the xenos would tempt some to try to tract with them, exposing their souls to their lies. To know of the Dark Gods and their agents would bring those foolish enough to believe themselves capable of deceiving them right into their hands. Both of these have billions of examples in the Inquisition's archives, and while many have met their rightful punishment at the hands of the God-Emperor's servants, there are billions more still roaming free, and more joining them each years.
But there are secrets that must be kept even from the most stalwart mind, truths that must remain hidden even from those with absolute faith in the God-Emperor's power. Because for all the threat they pose, the previously mentioned cases can still be fought. You can kill the xenos-lover and burn the heretic, and the armor of contempt and the shield of faith guard your soul from the corruption of both. But the possible threat mentioned in the following text is not so easily banished. The mere knowledge of its possibility can bring even the strongest-willed to their knees, trembling in fear and horror. And that is considering the fact that the text specifically mention that this threat has already been erased, and that its return is made impossible by the very principles that allowed its existence in the first place !
I myself was introduced to the following text in my third century of service to the God-Emperor. It was during my one and only joint operation with an agent of the near-mythical Ordo Tempus, when I fought against a cult of the Changer of Ways on a world that had once been home to members of the forgotten race of the Old Ones. What the heretics sought to achieve, I will never know, but my colleague assured me that their failure was of the utmost importance. Together, we succeeded, and before he (or she, I never saw the face hidden beneath the hood) sent me this singular text as … I do not know. Perhaps as a way of thanks, perhaps to test me, or perhaps to punish me for a perceived failure on my part during the operation. As I sought more information on the Ordo Tempus, I learned that many of my colleagues had gone mad and taken their own lives as they discovered more of its activities, leading to the shroud of secrecy that covers it.
I now record the text into Inquisitorial archives, with the highest security my rank allows me to enforce. Even if you possess the clearance to read these words, I urge you to reconsider going any further. My nights are still haunted by what follows, and I wish dearly I could remove such knowledge from my mind.
Emperor guard you. Emperor guard us all.
Inquisitor Markus Terkarch, Ordo Hereticus
When thinking about whether or not time travel is possible, our ancestors on Old Earth were often faced with a quandary : if time travel was possible, then where were all the time travelers ? Several answers were presented : that time travel could only bring one to a point after it had been invented, that the time travelers were very careful not to reveal themselves so as to preserve the timeline, or that time travel only became a reality in the timeline after it had been first designed, and that they lived in the timeline 'before', so to speak, its invention. But there was another theory, only whispered about in dark corridors by philosophers and scientists alike, both terrified that it may be correct : time travel is possible, but we – and by we, they meant every living creature in the universe – will ever invent it. The current timeline is one entirely free of time travel, but it wasn't always so. A word of warning, fellow Inquisitors : tense use will get even more confusing from this point forward.
Consider then the First Timeline. Time flows linearly, with civilizations rising and falling while technology slowly advances. Then, at some point, time travel is discovered. At first, it is used very carefully, its existence kept a secret. Fear of potential consequences lead these first time-travelers to be very cautious not to alter history They are mere visitors, tourists of a sort, motivated more by curiosity than any ambition.
But inevitably, perhaps a thousand years after turning on the first time machine, perhaps the very next day, someone slips. The first major change in the Timeline appears, but the time-travelers still remember the original Timeline and want to restore it. It seems simple enough to accomplish : go back to the divergence point, and set right what once went wrong.
Except that the other time-travelers, those issued from this Second Timeline, don't want their own history to be rewritten. Perhaps some truce is established, some compromise made. But then there are the idiots and the criminals who got a time machine one way or another, wanting to use them to get rich or carve their own empire in the past through the use of future technology. Both of the previous time-travelers factions hate them, but they can't stop all of them, and new Timelines are formed, each with its own population of native time-travelers. Things escalate as time-travelers from the far future keep enhancing the average technological level of their peers. Finally, outright war erupts between the time-travelers of each Timeline. Dozens of factions, each wanting nothing more than go home, even if few could ever hope to restore the precise sequence of events of their own Timeline, all engage in a conflict across time and space.
Turning points of History are turned into battlegrounds, including the actual battles that shaped the course of destiny. Entire armies are displaced through time to fight in antique battles, where swords of iron face laser pistols. Complexes are built in Pre-History, to raise entire generations away from the influence of other time-travelers before sending them all to fight and die in the same battle ten millennium later. Advanced technology grants the time-travelers extended lives, but it does very little for their mental health. As most time-travelers see ten Timelines come and go each relative day of their existence, they have no attachment to the people living in them – no longer seeing them as 'real people'. Every faction grows increasingly more ruthless – every new Timeline is a bit darker than the one before, as are the new time-travelers it spawns.
At some point, the time-travelers of the First Timeline are all dead, but it doesn't change anything. As more and more ancient history is manipulated, new sapient species appear, and they too invent time-travel. Evolution itself turns into a battlefield for the time-travelers, because for their Timeline to win they need their species to exist first. Alliances are made and broken while more and more Timelines burn. The ultimate evolution of each species, with technology beyond imagining, join the battle to exist. The world itself is destroyed several times, and these destructions undone.
Add then in space travel, and alien species become involved as well. Seeking allies, time-travelers introduce the technology to other planets, and the process repeats there too. Soon, galactic empires are what the time-travelers fight for. Every moment of time and space is burning as billions of time-travelers wage war all over the Timeline. All cultures touched are turned, for the sake of existence, into militaristic nightmares to make even Cadian Governor-Generals pale in horror. Civilizations aware of time-travel despair, knowing that their entire existence will be/is/has already been wiped out, their only legacy the time-travelers they have raised. Time-bred abominations brought forth from the darkest Timelines are unleashed on unsuspecting time periods. Many time-travelers try to flee the war, but it inevitably finds them and drag their hiding places into its burning jaws with them.
Then, word begins to spread among the time-travelers : a rumor about a way to end the war forever. Maybe, if one was to go back to the very beginning of the universe, when Time itself was yet unborn … Maybe then he could end the madness of the war, and win it forever.
Panic spreads inside all factions at the possibility. They are not certain that this rumor is true, but cannot afford to risk it. Every time-traveler sets up his own device, destination : the Beginning, to settle the universe's Timeline once and for all.
None of them return. Whatever technology empowers and protect them, the Big Bang, as our precursors from Old Earth called the event that birthed the cosmos, renders them all to nothing. Time-travel is wiped out of existence before Time itself properly exist. A new Timeline begins from scratch, and no one will ever know how it differs from all those which came previously. Let us call this a Source.
But what prevents the above scenario from repeating itself, with the Source taking the place of the First Timeline ? Absolutely nothing. It does repeat itself, over and over again. Until, by sheer coincidence, a Source appears in which time-travel is never invented, from the birth-cry of creation to its end, untold eternities away. This is the Final Timeline, where no one can ever truly know the future, and the past is written in stone with the hand of destiny itself.
And this, my fellow Inquisitor, is where we stand. We are the inheritors of a reality where science alone cannot break the walls of time, and the Warp only seems to do so, but instead creates naught but time loops instigated by daemons and powerful emotions traveling back to give birth to themselves.
We of the Ordo Tempus are keepers of what little time-related tech the Imperium possess : imperfect devices granting us a flawed insight in events yet to come, that may or may not happen. The scientific principles behind the apparels are sound, but something prevents them from functioning as they should : the will of the Timeline itself, protecting its own. It is suggested, in the works of Aleb Onerox, that the existence of the Warp may be the reason for it, as its streams too exist outside of time, blurring past, present and future together and making it impossible to get a precise fix. In that way, the Immaterium may actually protect us from horrors of a different kind that the ones inflicted upon us by the malevolent forces lurking within it, but no lesser in scale.
Still, the threat remains that all of Mankind's works could be undone by a time-traveler journeying to Terra in the days before the coming of the Emperor with a cyclonic torpedo. All of the above is still only a theory, albeit an educated one. This is why me and my colleagues must remain vigilant : it is still possible for the Neverwar to erupts once again, and if it does, then the conflicts raging across the galaxy now will appear insignificant and puerile.
