?, Moon Cell, 2044
"Hmm…"
I walked around the projected model, unable to form a concrete decision.
"Every time we reach the fifth grail war, he dies, so far with no exception. It would stand to reason, then, that this is a location of one of those time-locks…"
Zooming in on the model, I pinched together the cluster of branches and tied them together with a band at the time of the fifth Fuyuki Grail War.
…That is, all but one branch.
"But then where does that leave us?! Our fifth Fuyuki Grail War matches with other branches in part, but none of those branches show any signs of the Moon Cell existing! Then the branches that do…"
I spun the projection around, focusing on another cluster of branches I'd tied together, a bit further down than the previous cluster.
"All the ones where we have proven the existence of the Moon Cell lack even the fourth Fuyuki Grail War, the leylines drying up all the way back in 1970. I fail to see how this divergence in the Earth's mana supply can't be one of the so-called time-locks, but then…"
…But then where does that leave us…?
Are we a divergence of the 1970 branch cluster? Possibly, but then where did we break? What was the point of our divergence? The year 1970? But wouldn't that break the lock, leading to that… what did Atlas call it…? Theoretical Pruning Phenomenon? Something like that, at any rate…
"…Our diverging point must be prior to that then, no? It has to, seeing as we have the fourth and fifth grail wars…"
…
"…Unless my understanding of the tree is wrong? The more I look at what we know, the more we don't fit the model. Yet we're still here, so it's not that we've deviated from where we should be, per se… If we don't fit the model, and we're not wrong, then…"
Then the model has to be wrong.
"…Perhaps it's not even one tree then? Not just multiple branches, but rather whole trees of time? Could be used to explain the divergence between the lines with and without the Moon Cell, but not the lines which diverge at the third Fuyuki Grail War…"
Then… branches upon trees, rather than branches upon a singular tree? Admittedly possible, but… why would there be multiple whole trees of time?
"…It has to all connect at one point at the bottom end. If the Root truly serves as the beginning, then all of time, regardless of how one visually depicts it, must be singular, uniform, at least at the point of the Root."
At the very least, we know all the timelines we have observed with the key divergences are all parallel to one another.
…Wait, but then-
"Could we split all parallel worlds; consider them all separate trees? From there, all branches would simply be the adjacent worlds within the respective parallels. That…"
…That actually fixed some of the time-lock issues I was having, if one decided to visualize it all in such a manner. Couldn't guarantee any of it all actually shaped up in such a fashion, but…
"It does make visualizing the Fuyuki lines, Trifas lines, and Moon Cell lines much cleaner though" I set about splitting the original projection into the new three separate trees.
Cleaner, yes… I couldn't deny that the projection now looked cleaner overall, now that I was working off of three trees of time, rather than one. However, it still left two branches, two strands of time, unaccounted for.
"Our timeline" I muttered, flicking the tip of the projected strand back and forth, "and this timeline…"
The timeline I'd been trying to study for months now. The timeline I referred to as-
"The Bleached Earth timeline…"
Two outliers. Two timelines which never fit my model, no matter how I shaped it, for very different reasons.
"At least our timeline runs adjacent with aspects of both the Fuyuki lines, and the Moon Cell lines. Either we are a divergence from one of these two trees in a far more radical way than the thus observed adjacent worlds of the same tree, or we are a branch on a separate tree. I suppose either way we could be at risk of pruning. Really, all of these timelines could be though, considering we can't see into the future of timelines…"
I turned my focus entirely on the other out of place timeline.
"What the hell happened to you, though? Unable to observe your past, unable to punch through the storm veils raging on the surface in the present, which never went beyond the year 2018… Is that what it looks like, to be pruned from a tree of time?"
Sliding through time was one thing, but the probes couldn't simply slide through the storm veils. It was as if all of time itself had been erased from the line, save for the very present point which they always emerged at. All that remained on that bleached Earth were what we assumed to be five pockets of something, guarded by walls of vicious storms we'd come to call the storm veils.
Five pockets... There were seven of them, originally...
Caster had theorized that hopping through void space could get the probes past the veils, but… well, hopping through void space short distances was difficult enough as is. Doing so in a parallel world, from the Moon Cell in ours…
"And the war starts in a couple of weeks…"
If only we'd had more time! The new probes wouldn't be ready within a couple of weeks, and once the war started, it'd likely be a good year or so before my position within it was stable enough that I could take a few days off; see the results of the latest probes. Would they work or not? Was the timeline in the process of being pruned, or was something else happening entirely? Not knowing the answers to such questions would drive me insane with imagined possibilities; would have to hope the war would keep me busy enough.
If only we'd had more time…
"Heh" I couldn't help but chuckle at the situation.
Here I was, trying to figure out the timelines of parallel worlds, the very rivers of time itself, and yet… time was progressing to quickly towards the future, for me to be able to map out it's past.
"Ah well" I sighed, reluctantly saving the new layout of the model before shutting down the terminal. "Time for me to focus on the game. Though first… maybe a week vacation back on Earth. Won't be able to go back for a long while once the war starts, and I did want to explore Germany a bit more…"
A/N
Last of the Prologue posts, and the last post before I dip for the weekend! From here I have no idea when the next post will be, so... apologies in advance if it happens to take a while xD
