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You're a time-traveler, right?

How would it work if someone changed the past? Like say they stopped a war from ever happening.

[... Well.

It takes a bit for her to type this out, because she wants to make sure she explains it properly because this is both something she's not supposed to do, and something she absolutely wants to do. Sara has told her that you have to let the past lie, but at the same time, Martin had done it, for something small, so it's really a matter of what's changing.

Stopping a war, though ... that'd be tough.]

In theory, it's not possible. The way they say it back home is that time wants to happen, so if a war needs to happen then time will find a way. And honestly, a war is hard to stop to begin with because there are so many little factors that could have caused the war, so even if you think you find the one inciting incident, a different switch could be flipped instead. Basically, if you're lighting a match in a room full of gunpowder already, it doesn't really matter which barrel sets off the explosion.

Or, if you manage to avert the war, things could get much worse down the line with a different kind of cataclysmic event. Once you change the past, you can't guarantee that the future will one hundred percent be better.

[And there's a pause as she switches from theory to opinion:]

That being said, occasionally there are loopholes that time will allow. You just have to know how to look for them. And personally I'm of the opinion that if your present is bad enough, changing the past can't make things that much worse.

What? No. I'm not the one trying.

No one is trying. I'm just curious.

But someone highly motivated, they could find a loophole like that. Change the right moment and tip the scale?

[That's a lot of protesting for some curiosity.]

In theory, yeah. Find the right lynch pin to pull and everything unravels.

And it overwrites everything just like that. What happens to the people from the original timeline?

Depends. If their parents still exist and get together than they'll probably still exist but their life may be different. Some people may not exist at all. Lots of people die in a war, so the make up of couples may be different and new people may exist.

If your team were trying to stop someone from doing it where would they start?

Stop someone from erasing the war or stopping the war?

Stop someone from changing the timeline.

[Okay. Here we go.]

Usually it starts with an anachronism. We have a computer, named Gideon, who is constantly scanning the timeline to look for irregularities. It takes a while for time to set, so we have a window to go in, figure out what's changed and set things back the way they were.

Usually our timeline hiccups aren't really intentional, though, so it makes them easy to spot. If someone was traveling back in time to intentionally change the timeline, they might be able to cover their tracks to keep people like us from finding them.

So someone would need to go back with them and repair whatever they broke by setting history back on the right path.

Yeah, pretty much. Alternatively, talking them out of ever traveling back in the first place.

[There's a pause, and since these are very specific questions out of nowhere:]

Is there something you're worried about?

[ Here's the thing: she likes Zari a lot. In the way that she senses that Zari has a good heart, and that she's the sort of trustworthy, selfless kind of person who would go back in time to correct anomalies even though she didn't come from a time where time travel was the norm. That says a lot about a person. And the way she defended metahumans. That too.

But she also knows that Zari is righteous. And where this matter is concerned, she is afraid that righteousness might a) reveal something too early, b) get Zari in the middle and get her hurt. Both of these outcomes are bad. The latter more than the former. She doesn't want to believe that Thrawn would actually hurt Zari, but if Ben is right, and Zari came in between him and the Empire ...

Frankly, she's not sure what Thrawn would do. ]

I was arguing with a friend of mine about how it works. Turns out he was right.

[Rey is 100% right on both those points, and the fact that Thrawn is part of the "Empire" wouldn't earn him any favors either. But she also knows that Rey doesn't know her well enough to seriously trust her with important information, so she doesn't fight it for now.

If Rey's going to tell her, she'll tell her if and when she's ready.]

Sorry. If I'd known, I could have tried to help you win.

No, it's better this way. I'd rather not delude myself with hopes that something is simpler than it is.

[ She's done enough of that for one lifetime, or so she thinks. She can't just blindly people like Thrawn and ignore the evidence of the threat he poses to everything she cares about. Even if his ideals are ... admirable. ]

True.

[As fond as she is of simple solutions as a hacker, she knows that the world isn't really built that way.]

But he doesn't have to know what I said.

[She also isn't above cheating.]

[ Oh. She figures it out. Zari imagines that Thrawn is the friend Rey means. But no, she'd never — even now she finds herself that it is the word she reached for, however oversimplified, for Ben. ]

I'd make a poor friend if I weren't willing to admit when I'm wrong. I doubt he'll boast for long.

Hopefully you're right.

[A beat.]

But if you do need help, looking for a loophole, I was working on something for that back home.

You should be careful who you share that with.

Remember when you first joined Hathaway, and you asked if they were trustworthy? Not all of the people they hired come from a good place. You don't know what they'd do to get it from you, or what they'd use it for.

I'm aware of that. I wasn't offering it to them. I was offering it to you.

[She knows Rey comes from a place similar to her own - a rebel knows another rebel after all. She wouldn't extend that offer to just anyone, but she's all for helping to make the world a better place.]

You know hardly anything about me.

I know your world has lost a lot.

[Just as much, if not more than Zari's.]

And sometimes those things can be worth saving. And it's more of a theoretical offer than an actual offer - I haven't actually finished my program yet anyway.

What made you decide to try making something like that? What is it you're hoping to loophole?

2042.

[Her entire timeline, basically.]

The world sucks, and ... this may be the only way to try and make it better and save my family and the families of hundreds of metahumans and religious.

What if it makes it worse?

I've thought about that. But right now, I really can't imagine anything worse than a world where people are being tortured because of a quirk of their DNA and good people are having the world turn against them because of what they believe.

ARGUS wants to control the world because they think it's the only way to keep it but if you take away people's choices and their freedoms then ... what kind of world is that? Yes people make mistakes and yes there are terrible people out there but if people can't be given the choice to do better then are we really making a better world?

There's always going to be a risk with freedom, but I believe that risk is worth fighting for and changing the world for.

Why not fight ARGUS in 2042? Why not fix the world you have?

Because I've tried. I've tried everything I know how to do but I'm alone and I'm tired of people dying because of me. I'm not a leader, I can't inspire people to a cause when the legacy of that cause is just a pile of bodies.

And if we have the power of time travel, if we have the ability to save the world, then shouldn't we save it?

But it's all theory. And I haven't completed the program yet, so for all I know, 2042 is one of those fixed points and I'll have to find another way, but ... I think it's at least worth looking. I know it sounds selfish but there are so many lives that could be saved. I have to try.

Lives will be lost, too. People who will never be born. People whose lives will change, or they'll die instead.

[ She's not contesting all of it, just pointing out that this is not a 100% excellent idea. It's hard to see the same fervor and intensity of an Imperial Admiral in Zari. ]

I know. Which is why I'm looking for a loophole. A point that can be changed without history changing too much.

[And maybe there is one, maybe there isn't, but she won't know unless she looks.]

And if there isn't one, I'll find another way.

Edited 2018-02-27 16:32 (UTC)

What did you ask Hathaway for?

Answers to a different problem. My team is trying to stop this demon called Mallus. The last time we ran into him he nearly killed our captain, so I'm hoping Hathaway might have a way to give us an edge.

And Mallus has nothing to do with the problems in 2042?

Not that I know of. They seem to want to destroy all of time, not just one period of it.

[At least, that's what she's gathering from some of the very pointed anachronisms.]

[ A bigger problem than her own personal interests, then. Zari's like Finn and Poe. Rey likes that about her. ]

Can you work on your loophole while you're here, or do you need to be home for that?

I need Gideon, our supercomputer, to actually run the program, but I'm working on the code when I have some downtime. It helps keep my mind busy.

I see.
Be careful who has access to it and who you share with it. Please.

I will.

[Most of it is in her head and on her personal tablet, which never leaves her side, but she will trust Rey's warning there.]

You sure everything's okay?

It will be.

[ she believes that. ]

Thank you for your help. I find time travel is always more complicated than I was ready to consider.

Yeah, it is. Unfortunately, that's true about a lot of things.

If you have any other questions, just give me a shout. I can try and answer them.

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