Reverse Time interaction with Forward Time

[SagaLore]

For years I have wanted to write my own science fiction novel. Since middle school I have had several ideas - one I've been thinking about again. It has to do with dimensional teleportation and time travel...

Without giving away details of the storyline, there is one technical part I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around.

Let's say that due to a lab experiment, a person is transported 24 hours into the future. However, instead of remaining in the future and existing in a normal time frame, their time trajectory is reversed. So this person's perception is that everything around them is going backwards - light, sound, movement, etc. While everything else is viewing this person as if he is going backwards. So that means that as soon as he is transported 24 hours into the future, you can see him, because 24 hours have past for him. Then you can follow him for 24 hours back to where he started, which ends up being Time Zero for him. Make sense?

Now at first I was going to have him interact wit the forward timeline, and relative to others watching him, some very strange things would happen. Like for example, he was hungry and picked up a piece of fruit and ate it. But to them, they're seeing the bites of fruit come out of his mouth and reassemble into the whole fruit until it's put back down where he got it from. Problem is, that is impossible, because then that fruit never existed 10 minutes prior, which means he never could have picked it up to eat it in the first place. Very odd paradox.

So I have decided that when matter is in reverse time, it cannot interact with normal matter. Even though it is there - you can't move it or change it. Great, that fixes the paradox, but then anybody in reverse time would die rather quickly - because the same would apply to air molecules, and he wouldn't be able to breath them or even move around because he would be encased in it.

So the work around this would be that experiments could only be in a vacuum... or some type of suit that emitted a field would have to be built that allowed reverse time to interact with normal time without incident...

Ideas?

 

[OdiN]

Oh man...I've never read or seen a movie where time travel is handled well. Good luck.

Okay so if he is transported into the future 24 hours, but progresses backward through time until he arrives when he left, then he never really left in the first place - only the people in the future would have observed him. The trip would be instantaneous for all of the people there.

Also the person that was transported should be able to view himself as he progresses after he returns. Basically he takes his trip, does his thing, comes back and then occupies the same time in the next 24 hours that he already occupies because of his transport...but not quite. He would be able to observe himself after he got back, but during his trip he would not exist yet.

Let's break it down into a 4 minute trip. The first minute he arrives at minute 4. His other self is at minute 0. Second minute he is at minute 3 and his other self at minute 1. Third minute he is at minute 2 and his other self also at minute 2. Fourth minute he is at minute 1 and his other self at minute 3. Then Minute 0 and other self at minute 4.

Now...they cross paths at minute 2. This is where it gets interesting. The one in reverse, since he has not progressed from minute 0 to minute 2 yet, is only observable by the one moving forward in time from minute 2 until minute 4 where the reverse one dissappears.

This is assuming some sort of continuity between the two times and that there can be actual interaction between these two times, which I don't think there could be....and now the more I think about it the more I'm not quite sure if this would work or not. Thanks for making my head hurt. I will have to think about this more...interesting concept. Basically there are so many assumptions that have to be made about the progression of time and timelines that not everyone would make the same assumptions.

And geez...now this is just getting way too complex to explain. I think that it should be simplified so as not to cause multiple exploding head syndrome in your readership.

 

[Wahsapa]

doesnt sound like it can work

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: OdiN

Now...they cross paths at minute 2. This is where it gets interesting. The one in reverse, since he has not progressed from minute 0 to minute 2 yet, is only observable by the one moving forward in time from minute 2 until minute 4 where the reverse one dissappears.

You'll have to look at it this way - to Forward Guy, the past has already happened, and to Reverse Guy, the future has already happened. So the instant he has transported 24 hours into the future, you see him there, regressing to Time 0 for him. He's walking/moving backwards, if he speaks it is backwards. Cause/Effect, Action/Reaction also seems to be in reverse, but that is where the paradox starts...

So let's look at Reverse Guy as if we're Forward Guy. He is rewinding - he seems to pick something up, then put it down somewhere else. Now in RG's reality, he did the opposite. Now the question is - if he could pick something up at Point A, and place it at Point B (where in his timeframe he picked it up the first time), how did it get to Point B in the first place for him to pick it up there? That brings me back to my exmaple of the fruit - he can't eat it, because in the perception of FG, the fruit had not existed until after the guy un-ate it. 😕

 

[OdiN]

Originally posted by: SagaLore
You'll have to look at it this way - to Forward Guy, the past has already happened, and to Reverse Guy, the future has already happened. So the instant he has transported 24 hours into the future, you see him there, regressing to Time 0 for him. He's walking/moving backwards, if he speaks it is backwards. Cause/Effect, Action/Reaction also seems to be in reverse, but that is where the paradox starts...

Well actually to FG the past AND future have happened. He has already been to the future and backward through time, now he is just going forward through the same time frame. To RG the future has happened...but he wasn't there to observe it and can only observe it in reverse....so he watches the future rewind basically.

So let's look at Reverse Guy as if we're Forward Guy. He is rewinding - he seems to pick something up, then put it down somewhere else. Now in RG's reality, he did the opposite. Now the question is - if he could pick something up at Point A, and place it at Point B (where in his timeframe he picked it up the first time), how did it get to Point B in the first place for him to pick it up there? That brings me back to my exmaple of the fruit - he can't eat it, because in the perception of FG, the fruit had not existed until after the guy un-ate it. 😕

Well I look at it this way...if he picked something up in the future from Point A, he would have to be altering its movement in time. It would no longer move forward in time, but backward like he is. That's why it doesn't seem like he could even properly interact with the other time. But you are overanalysing the fruit thing I think.

It's not that the fruit did not exist until RG un-ate it. The fruit existed in the future which FG has not reached yet. Again this is why I think that the two time periods could not interact. Basically FG is seeing the trip of RG unravel, or rewind.

The problem is that if RG ate the fruit that existed in he future of FG, the fruit no longer exists in the futre of FG because RG ate it before he himself became FG. So I think that FG would see RG "un-eat" the fruit, and upon putting it down the fruit would dissappear just as RG would (assuming that's the first thing he did upon arriving in the future). RG is basically changing the future through interaction.

This would get complicated. Let's say he moved a table from Point A to Point B. FG would see him move the table from Point B to Point A, but upon arriving at Point A, the table would dissappear and be at Point B again - assuming that RG can interact with the time properly. The problem is what if people watching him do it are standing in Point B. Obviously two things cannot exist at the same point in space-time. What would happen to the person standing there? You could say that well when RG put it there, there wasn't anyone there so there won't be in the future.

This shows a problem with interaction. If he moved something to Point B it stays there through the rest of the future. FG can see him move it, but does the object actually move or is it like an echo - we see what he did do to cause the real object to be at Point B where it is now, but he doesn't actually move it in FG's point of view. So we have the object at Point B, which stays there while RG shows FG how it got there (even though he already knows)...but nobody from FG's time can interact with RG because what he's doing has already been done so all you can interact with is the object at it's final destination - Point B.

So basically RG could change the future, the future would remain changed, but you could see how he changed it (in reverse) and at the end of his movement through time, all of the things that he interacted with would snap back to where he left them.

So lets say that RG went forward in time to kill someone....of course why would he do that...how would he know he wanted to kill someone in the future but let's just ignore all that for the moment.

He goes ahead 24 hours, and halfway through his journey he shoots a guy. FG would see the guy "un-die" and the interactions between the guy and RG. The guy he shoots would countinue up until his interaction with RG causes events to happen. I think that he would still die, but he would be dragged backward in time with RG. So you get to the point where interaction first occurs and the guy he kills would dissappear and no longer be a part of that timeline. How this would affect someone I do not know.

Maybe there are no interactions, maybe he just comes up and shoots him and that's it. So you see him un-die...well at that point forward time is rewinding for the guy who was shot. He's "brought back to life" so to say because he already existed in the future even though he was killed in the past. That's where problems creep in...and my brain starts hurting again. I tend to be way overanalytical as well.

Anyway...thoughts are a little disjointed but...let me know what you think.

 

[SagaLore]

If RG is interacting with forward objects, and the only way around the paradox is that as soon as he begins interacting with them they become reverse objects - then you really get into a pickle when you consider the atmosphere around him, and just by breathing he would start a chain reaction throughout the world that reverse time on all matter.

I think the only solution is that Forward and Reverse can't interaction, and can only be mere echoes of each other. That means RG needs to be in some kind of suit supplied with air. That also means we face another problem with simple standing in one location - without interaction, he would simply fall/float through the earth and just wander around the universe until he died... it would be like a hologram without substance. So instead of a suit, he will need a vehicle with some kind of reverse time propulsion system... but then you have to consider light - would RG be able to see forward time? Would FG be able to observe RG? Without interaction, no - these two time phases would exist completely separated from each other except for the fact they coexist within the same space.

 

[OdiN]

And again...being able to explain this in a simple manner understandable readily by readers presents your most complex problem I think.

 

[SagaLore]

Originally posted by: OdiN
And again...being able to explain this in a simple manner understandable readily by readers presents your most complex problem I think.

Doesn't matter, by the time it is turned into a movie, it is going to be a love story action flick with cool special effects and very little to do with the original story. 🙁

😉