Chapter 6
The Universal Collaborative for Temporal Insight
"We see a little over nineteen million discrepancies in the timeline starting in Earth year 2016." Hanar delivered this news with a neutral expression.
The Doctor swallowed hard and tried to appear as unaffected as Hanar seemed for Peter's sake.
"That many? That's a lot of territory to cover. What else have you learned?"
"Well, most importantly, the timeline disruption seems to be contained to planet Earth. We did a concurrent timeline comparison between the true timeline and the one reported by your humans. We also sampled timelines through the temporal mainframes of over two hundred populated planets in the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies and compared those to the true timeline. There were no discrepancies except for on Earth."
Ghianna seemed to sense the Doctor's thirst for more information. "The humans identified discrepancies in macro events – primarily in political and military occurrences. That's not surprising. Macro events are more common across a diverse sampling of people with disparate experiences. Such a disparate group would not notice the thousands, even millions of micro events that actually contributed to the outcome they experienced at the macro level."
"Give us some examples, Ghianna," Romana primed. Ghianna blushed a little and the Doctor surmised that Ghianna was no stranger to feedback about her tendency to come across as an egg head.
The younger time lady used a keyboard to pull up a graphical representation of a chronological series of events, where each event was a blue rectangle with a number.
"Let's take a look at event 78900-b. This was the French election of May 2016. On the true timeline, the En Marche! candidate won the election. On the corrupt timeline, the National Front candidate won. That event didn't just happen randomly." Ghianna touched the event on the screen and a vast chart of other rectangles connected by lines displayed. While most of the rectangles were blue, a few of them were red.
"These are all the micro events that led up to that outcome. There is still a nearly infinite number of variations that can occur at the micro level and still result in the same outcome at the macro level."
Ghianna touched one of the blue rectangles. The screen displayed images and text, and a hologram video appeared and played silently just above the console.
"Cool!" Peter exclaimed, watching the hologram video. The video showed three candidates standing at a podium on a stage. A moderator asked a question, and a young male candidate answered. The facial expressions and body language of the other candidates conveyed surprise, amusement and vindication.
"In this example, on the true timeline, during the final presidential debate leading up to the election, the candidates were asked a question about how they would address unemployment. The National Front candidate's answer was poorly delivered, resulting in significant loss of base voters. On the corrupt path, that question was not asked due to time constraints. While that micro event was a definite departure from the true timeline and did contribute to the outcome in a small way, it did not play a significant role. Whether or not the question was asked, on the corrupt path, the outcome was the same.
"However, there is a finite number of micro events that fall on the critical path that led to the macro event. These events had to happen the way they did, or the outcome would be different. One of the audits we ran was a series of simulations using different variations of micro events to see which ones effected the outcome. That helped us identify the events on the critical path."
"Hey, that sounds sort of like a Monte Carlo simulation. I know about those. They're really cool."
All heads turned towards Peter.
"Monte Carlo simulations are a kind of computer algorithm that use repeated random sampling to find numeric results," he explained. "The underlying concept is to use randomness to solve problems that might be caused by preceding events. It's basic probability modelling. It's used in math and physics, but I can see how you're using the same concept here to determine the probability of those, um, mega event thingies."
The boy blushed alarmingly and avoided eye contact. The Doctor surmised he spent a lot of time and energy hiding his intelligence and innate geekiness.
"You're right, Peter. That's very good. Events on a timeline are basically math. All of time and space is math. But you're twelve years old. How could you know anything about Monte Carlo simulations?"
"Well, I'm in the accelerated math and science program in school. Mr. Pink showed us one day. The Monte Carlo method is also used to run investing scenarios and predict gambling outcomes. We spent an afternoon playing poker and using a spreadsheet to run Monte Carlo simulations. Don't worry, we used fake money. Monte Carlo is a big casino back on Earth. Or it was, anyway. That's where the name came from."
The Doctor's hearts skipped a beat. He felt the other time lords in the room picking up on his surprise.
"You had Mr. Pink as your maths teacher?"
"Sure. He was cool."
"So, you went to Coal Hill School, then."
"Uh huh."
"Why didn't you say anything when we stopped off at Coal Hill before we left Earth?"
"I dunno. It didn't seem important. I didn't know why you wanted to go there. It was levelled. Everybody died. I missed school that day, or I would be dead, too."
"We'll talk more about this later." Peter looked solemn. The Doctor reminded himself that this was a boy who had undergone extreme trauma and likely had difficulty opening up about the past. Tread carefully, Doctor. This boy may be more than he seems, but he's still a boy.
Romana got the focus of the conversation back on the time audit. "Anyway, Ghianna, I think we understand how you arrived at your findings. Hanar, can you tell us definitively what went wrong in the timeline, and whether it can be repaired?"
Gianna stepped away from the console to give Hanar access. He typed on the keyboard and the monitor showed a set of twelve red rectangles.
"As I mentioned earlier, we identified a little over nineteen million discrepancies on Earth's timeline between the year 2016 and 2025. The good news is that the majority of these are a knock-on effect from a much smaller set of primary discrepancies. Each of these twelve discrete events have a series of sub-events leading up to them."
He tapped the first red triangle. The monitor showed a split screen with images and text in Gallifreyan on each side of the screen. Some of the images and text on the right had red borders.
"The left side of the screen shows the event and the sub events leading up to it on the true timeline. The right side shows things that went differently on the corrupt timeline."
The Doctor stepped up to the monitor to study the content. He summarized it to confirm his understanding and also for Peter's benefit.
"So, in this case, the event was the United States democratic presidential primaries, which took place between February and June of 2016 and culminated in the selection of a democratic candidate for the election on 8 November. This must be where things went awry and caused the progressive candidate to win the election rather than the nationalist candidate.
"That's correct," Hanar confirmed.
"So, let's see what went wrong." The Doctor studied the two timelines on the monitor, tapping rectangles to see the details of the differences.
"It looks like there were three candidates going into the beginning of the primaries, which started on 1 February with the Iowa caucuses. On the absolute timeline, Martin Shaw, a centrist candidate, withdrew when he did poorly in the caucus and received no delegates.
"I see here on the corrupt timeline that Shaw did not withdraw, choosing instead to hang on and see how things went in the next caucus. He did well enough in the New Hampshire caucus to stay in the race and took delegates away from the more conservative candidate in the next two primaries, thus widening the margin between the conservative and progressive candidates."
Peter yawned.
"The next set of states had their primaries all on the same day, called "Super Tuesday." 11 states all had their contests. Shaw did not pick up enough delegates to continue, so he withdrew once all of the state tallies were in. Although he withdrew, he did manage to take enough delegates away from the conservative candidate that it seems to have destabilized her campaign from there. The progressive candidate capitalized on the situation, and thus became the democratic candidate for presidential election in November of 2016. Did I interpret this correctly?"
"Basically, yes," Hanar confirmed. "Mind you, there are scores of sub-events that weren't on the critical path that also contributed to the outcome. If one were to go back and try to repair this part of the timeline, the right place to start would be at the Iowa caucus on 1 February.
"The goal would be to find the least intrusive way to ensure that Shaw withdrew, and then make sure the remaining candidate picked up the number of delegates they achieved on the absolute timeline."
The Doctor uploaded the audit onto his sonic. Peter snapped out of his stupor now that the "boring" part was over.
"So, Doctor, we could go back in time and convince this Shaw guy to drop out after the Iowa voting thing,"
"Caucus," the Doctor primed.
"Right. The caucus. After that, could we fast forward to where the results for those other candidates get announced to make sure everything's cool?"
"If everything went right, yes, that's how it works," the Doctor confirmed. "But as Hanar mentioned, there are lots of other things going on in the timeline. When we take any action to correct the timeline, we could inadvertently affect some of those other things and cause ripples that affect the outcome."
While the Doctor was careful to say "we" he had no intention of allowing Peter to participate in the timeline corrections. While the boy was obviously smart and would likely make a good companion, bringing him along would only increase the risk of causing ripples. Possibly tidal waves. There was also that curious coincidence connecting Peter to Danny Pink and Coal Hill School.
"Sure. That's the Bootstrap paradox, right? Like in Back to the Future?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Never mind. It's just an old American movie. The main character goes back in time and accidentally meets his mother. Only he doesn't know it's his mother. Anyway, she's pretty hot and they end up going out. Because his mother falls for him she never hooks up with his father. That means in the future he's never born. He spends the rest of the movie trying to find ways to get his parents together and fix the paradox."
"Well, there are a lot of different types of things that can happen. Bootstrap paradox is one of the most well-known. When we go back to fix these discrepancies, we have to be very careful. This time audit will help us keep track of events and also verify we haven't done more harm than good."
Romana cleared her throat. The Doctor felt his stomach clench. He suspected he knew what was coming. I knew this was way too easy, he thought.
"Nobody is going anywhere. Especially you two. Doctor, Gallifrey may be gone, but that doesn't change the fact that you are a person of interest in this major timeline corruption. Normally, you would be escorted to Gallifrey while the enforcement side of the Collaborative conducted an inquiry, possibly followed by a trial.
"Under these circumstances, you are confined to Sagacity for the foreseeable future. Your TARDIS is grounded."
Two armed guards entered the laboratory and took up positions next to the Doctor.
"This is a little extreme," the Doctor spluttered. "You don't know that I have anything to do with this situation. I'm the one that brought it to the collaborative!"
Romana smiled.
"And we thank you for that. I will initiate the inquiry right away. While we'll do everything possible to expedite it, you will likely be here for a while. You and Peter can stay in your TARDIS, if you'd like, or choose beds in the Academy dormitory, it's up to you. In your spare time I think you will be an important mentor to these students."
The Doctor could feel excitement and warmth coming from Erdith, Hanar and the others.
"Your TARDIS also has a wealth of information that will be valuable in conducting the inquiry. I have already initiated an upload of her databanks."
"I don't know what to say, Romana. This is unnecessary and invasive. I just want to find out what caused this and repair the timeline. The corruption could be from an alien incursion – Earth is certainly a magnet for those. We can't leave Earth's timeline in tatters. If you'd only let me go back and investigate. Human lives are in the balance. People are dying. Please. Let me help."
"Doctor, right now we're outside of space and time. That means you and your human friend can stay here as long as necessary and still go back in time to correct the errors if you're cleared of any wrongdoing after the inquiry."
"And if he's not cleared of any wrongdoing?" Peter asked. Romana did not meet his gaze. Perhaps she recognized his status as a hostage to the situation and felt badly. The Doctor couldn't feel any sentiment from her at the moment. Once again, she had shut him out.
"We'll determine that after the inquiry as well. I suggest you both relax and get settled in. Doctor, you will meet with the Academy students after the morning meal tomorrow."