Lore Book Revelations

[Cilia]

See? That's the stuff I mean. The confusion is real. How did we save ourselves? How was he summoned if the summoning we saw was only Alex transporting to the past? Who was the original summoners/creators of Primal Alexander? It makes no sense, because he had to already exist in the future to become a legend in the past...

EDIT: Not expecting an answer, as I understand ( I think) that its a temporal paradox, but it explains my point of why I don't like time travel in echos. Only rarely does time travel make logical sense, and the Alex story really destroys the suspension of my belief.

It's a causal paradox, specifically a bootstrap paradox.

As I explained earlier, the only way to make heads or tails of it is to assume there is a "Zeroth Loop" that we cannot observe where, say, the Auri treasure hunters really did summon Alexander, and the Illuminati later independently "refurbished" him, leading to the events of the raid. The Illuminati shoot the Auri treasure hunters in their confusion, and Backrix loses his footing, his journal tumbling to the ground without Schrodinger's influence. Past Quickthinx gets ahold of it. We genuinely proved ourselves worthy to Alexander, and after her sacrifice he takes pity on Mide and Dayan, releasing them in the distant past. With the knowledge of Alexander, his tale is passed down in the Hotgo tribe as legend until near-past Mide and Dayan try to summon him - however the time loop is now in effect, meaning Alexander now has to exist as a fixed entity in time. To this end he creates Schrodinger / Shanoa, an automaton cat he acts through that will nudge events to keep the loop perpetual.

In other words, the "Zeroth Loop" is a genuinely alternate timeline that may no longer exist because Alexander is self-observing. Since it exists outside of our ability to observe, such as it is, it's anyone's guess what the "Zeroth Loop" really was like and by extension how and when Alexander first came into existence. (This is all highly hypothetical, mind.)

Except for the "Zeroth Loop," we're all just actors on the stage, unwittingly performing the same worthless comedy show for eternity. And even if we did know, we still couldn't perform anything but that same worthless comedy show. Exactly when or how Alexander was first summoned nobody knows for sure since the "Zeroth Loop" cannot be observed by us, but the events surrounding Alexander are the way it had - well, has, I guess - to be... Can't turn out any other way.

I'm probably getting way more involved than you asked for, and for that, I apologize.

Side note: the Echo is not time travel, it's just the ability to dive into others' souls and view their memories.

So who wants a simple and easy-to-comprehend story? Not me! I LOVE time travel!

I'm not a fan of it in particular, but I do enjoy how it makes me think. Usually it's just "bad guys are doing bad things, go stop them!" Here I'm having to actually think... if only a little. The first BlazBlue game ran heavily on a similar setup, and Sonic 06 had a big one as a part of the story, so it's not really anything new to me.

[Grayve]

*snip*

While fascinating, that only raises more questions. Specifically, if there is at least one 'alternate timeline', does that not mean there are more? And how does an 'alternate timeline' differ from an 'alternate dimension'? While I don't mind time travel stories, they need to establish the rules they work under, and stick to those rules. The Alex tale does not do the former, as far as I can tell. Did Alex kill (or let die) millions of alternate lives and worlds to calculate his results via alternate timelines? Did the WoL die over and over before the true ending happened? (if there are answers, please tell me... its questions like these that make me shove Alex into 'fun fights, but ignore the story' in my brain, unlike the rest of the games story.

And, yes, I know the Echo isn't time travel. Viewing the past is fine, but doing so and not being aware what you are viewing is the past is not. It only confuses the narrative, at least to me. Maybe playing through the events (of 1.0) made sense, but reading about them only makes me confused. Also, Echo with in an Echo just... makes even more confusion.

[LineageRazor]

I don't consider so-called "bootstrap paradoxes" to be actual paradoxes. To me, a paradox has to produce an irreconcilable impossibility, such as inventing a time machine to go back and kill yourself before you invent a time machine. If we assume time travel is deterministic, there is no need for a zeroth timeline where the loop hadn't been established yet; the loop is and always was part of the timeline. You can think of it like a roller coaster with a big loop that takes you back to the same spot before continuing on. The roller coaster was built with that loop in place. There was never a time when the loop wasn't there. There is no cause that is "canceled" by its effect, or vice versa, which is what would cause a true paradox to arise.

One might protest that this allows for things to pop out of nowhere - and this IS the case. Star Trek IV provided an example of this with the chemical formula for transparent aluminum; the formula was never truly discovered, but instead handed off from time travelers to individuals in the past. Or one of my favorites, the short story "All You Zombies" by Robert Heinlein, in which a man

is revealed to be his own parents. Yes, both of them - true hermaphrodism is involved.

The fact that this man is human at all is pretty much nothing short of an amazing coincidence - but not impossible.

All this said, though, as I noted in my post above, in the specific case of Alexander there MAY be a zeroth loop as Cilia describes, since it is implied that Alexander can both see and access alternate timelines. The deterministic time travel model does not apply here.

While fascinating, that only raises more questions. Specifically, if there is at least one 'alternate timeline', does that not mean there are more? And how does an 'alternate timeline' differ from an 'alternate dimension'? While I don't mind time travel stories, they need to establish the rules they work under, and stick to those rules. The Alex tale does not do the former, as far as I can tell. Did Alex kill (or let die) millions of alternate lives and worlds to calculate his results via alternate timelines? Did the WoL die over and over before the true ending happened? (if there are answers, please tell me... its questions like these that make me shove Alex into 'fun fights, but ignore the story' in my brain, unlike the rest of the games story.

Alexander's storyline stays fairly vague as to what its rules are, and I think that it was a wise choice to make, as most writers tend to be sloppy and Back-to-the-Future-ish and by keeping things vague they reduce the probability that they wind up contradicting themselves.

As for multi-timeline murder - while it is stated that Alexander pondered many possible futures before settling on the one that wiped himself out, I don't think that necessarily means those timelines actually occurred. It all depends on whether there's one "true" timeline and whether all the other timelines aren't "real". I think this is the implication made by the game because, otherwise, Alexander's choice is meaningless. He could make whatever choice he wanted, and all of the other choices would occur anyway, in the other timelines. No, in this game, the choice matters, and Alexander's decision picked between the myriad potential timelines and settled on one to be the real timeline. The other potential timelines never occurred; Alexander may have viewed them and seen the potential consequences, but since he didn't actually do the actions required to make them a reality, they didn't happen. You could insist that the act of observing those potential timelines DID cause them to be real, at least for the duration of the observation, but then that's an argument that you'd need to apply to ANY precognitive in any other fiction, as well. That prophet that predicted a terrible future that the heroes must now work to prevent? All those people died because the prophet existed to observe them dying! Best to kill any precognitive before they have a chance to observe the future, eh?

As for alternate dimensions versus alternate timelines, in many works of fiction they are treated as one and the same. I'm hesitant to make the same assumption here, though, given the whole "Thirteen reflections" deal. I've seen a lot of discussion on the Thirteen reflections in the Lore forums that seem to imply that these other worlds are alternate dimension counterparts of the main world, and that would suggest that Alexander's machinations are something different. Safer to assume, I think, that the Source and all Thirteen Reflections are chugging along on a single timeline together. Changes made by Alexander to the timeline primarily affect the Source (since that's where he's sitting), but could theoretically cause changes to the Reflections due to the fact that certain individuals (mainly Ascians) on the Source are capable of traveling to the Reflections.

[Cilia]

The thing with Alexander is that he is an observer - he is capable of dealing in possibilities, or more specifically, making possibilities real. However, since our Zeroth self was somehow able to pass his Divine Judgment and for some reason Zeroth Alexander sent Mide and Dayan back to the past, that now means that we can never fail to pass Divine Judgment and defeat Alexander Prime. Everything in the loop is now perpetual and certain - everything from Mide and Dayan being spat out by Alexander, to his sealing himself outside of spacetime, will always happen. (This is why Quickthinx' arrogance is so entertaining; for all his blustering, he can never win. Only Zeroth Quickthinx had a chance, and we're still around, so obviously he didn't succeed.) Or at least, that's all our limited ability to observe time can see.

The bootstrap paradox doesn't explicitly state that something is self-causing or causeless - just that the cause of something cannot be temporally discerned. Hence, the introduction of a Zeroth timeline that set everything into motion. To use the roller coaster analogy, while the coaster itself always follows the same causeway, the blueprints can be changed - the Zeroth timeline is essentially that. Once it is built, though, it can't be changed - or, we run through the same motions for eternity within Alexander's causal loops. Granted this is just a hypothesis, but time travel isn't real anyway.

Now, "are there other timelines?" Well... maybe. As reasoned above while we cannot discern Alexander's origin, he must have one. The Zeroth timeline would be the only one, unless Alexander chooses to observe another possibility. So we don't die over and over trying to beat him, because our Zeroth self already did so - meaning we will always win and Quickthinx will always lose. Can't turn out any other way. Countless worlds and possibilities won't be erased because they didn't exist to begin with - they were just that, possibilities. As we know, however, Alexander determined the only possibility worth observing is one where he does nothing outside of his immutable temporal loops and then seals himself outside of spacetime.

A different timeline has different things happen at different points in time - the further you get from "time zero," the more warped it gets. A different dimension, on the other hand, is fundamentally different - think "replace water aether with fire across the globe and vice versa." Not because of anyone or anything's machinations, but just because that's how it is.

Have I analyzed Alexander's time travel implications thoroughly enough to get the Rise lyrics yet?

[ZhaneX]

Finally got my copy of the Lorebook! Have to say, I think one of my favorite entries is the character profile for Koh/Noah. Loved the bit about their contrasting personalities, and how Noah's something of a party girl; something which utterly horrifies Koh when she wakes up the day after one of Noah's drunken escapades.

Certainly not the immediate impression one gets when you talk to her for the weekly Crystal Tower quest.

[Fenral]

I was more impressed by how, in spite of the sheer volume of unmarked spoilers and obituaries (including one for Mide, who technically isn't dead), most of the Crystal Tower story isn't documented at all beyond the broad strokes (the Tower was sealed, the end). It's probably not because of that catman-loving jerk who used the lore itself to shoot holes in the logic required to make that ending work, but I can't help but be curious as to what the ground rules were for documenting details like that.

And that comment about G'raha singing the songs of his ancestors gave me a mental image of him singing "Eternal Wind" (or really any of the old FFIII vocal arrangements) that I really want to see in game...

[Grayve]

While I appreciate the time Cilia and Lineage took typing those replies, I am only more confused then I was when this started.

[Cilia]

While I appreciate the time Cilia and Lineage took typing those replies, I am only more confused then I was when this started.

Well, the sequence of events that played out in Alexander are easy enough to chart out. Exactly how or when Alexander came into existence, though... well, I can throw out complex quantum / metaphysical explanations as much as I want; at the end of the day, Alexander's time and place of origin are things we simply cannot discern.

Put simply, the ultimate answer is: "/shrug"

Side note: Mide is dead, from our perspective at least. She is born in the relatively near past, but lives out the rest of her life and dies in the distant past. She died before she was born. When you move forward and backwards through it, time is all about perspective...

[Fenral]

But she didn't die at twenty and six, unless it was birthing an entire clan of lizard babies all at once that got her in the end...

[Zojha]

While I appreciate the time Cilia and Lineage took typing those replies, I am only more confused then I was when this started.

Well, I just crack it up to: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AWizardDidIt

It's meant to be a fancy story, not make causal sense. It's clear the author wanted an alexander creation-solution loop and the fact it cannot causally come into existence like that has to be handwaved.

The issue typically arises with time travel because people (including scientists) often think of time as something akin to space, that one could move around in. Something that exists separately. Time however does not "really" exist, it's an artificial construct we humans use to explain sequences of motion/movement. It's an abstract concept like many math objects. That's also why time has to be relative, as motion is relative.

As such, travelling in time requires one to go to a different point in the sequence. And that can be achieved two ways: Either remain in stasis until things around you have moved further (aka travelling into the future) or moving every single bit of energy in space (including one's own) back to the exact same point and state it was previously - rewinding the world or travelling back in time. That's all still a forward motion - or as we humans like to say, the rewinding happens "after" the original motions and the rewinded events happen after that.
And that's where "the wizard" comes in: He says "screw you" to all that and pretends the rewinded events are the actual original motions instead of a rewind while at the same time, inserting a copy of the time traveler in its later state into the rewinded world in addition to the rewinded version of the time traveler. That's where it all falls apart and paradoxes are bound to happen.

What should happen is that the person either is rewinded like everything else and an infinite coil (not loop) is played in which time "ends" for all participants with the time travel (as the rewind makes the future the past, anything past the time travel is just a repeat) or the person is not rewinded and consequently, no previous version of him exists in the new rewinded world (Since he himself did not get rewinded) and he can do different decisions than previously.