not manifest itself more profoundly. Perhaps it has and we simply haven’t noticed it.'
'How’s that''
'Well, think of colors, for example. Imagine a flowing river of red. Now imagine another river that’s yellow. If they flow into one another, you’ll have an orange river. But if both rivers are red to begin with, only of slightly different hues, you might not readily observe a graphic change in color as a result of the confluence. Similarly, given parallel timelines of an almost identical nature, the points of confluence between them might not be readily apparent. Small wonder I haven’t been able to pinpoint them. I’ve been searching for dramatic fluctuations in temporal energy. Wrong method entirely. I should have been looking for anomalous inertial surge, instead. Of course. It seems so obvious, it should have occurred to me before.'
Doc, you’re losing me again.'
'Yes, well, you’re lost to begin with. But then, I’m not much better. If I had foreseen this possibility, none of this would have happened.'
'What do you mean''
'I’m the one who invented warp grenades, remember'' said Darkness. He looked down at the floor. 'I think I know now how the inventors of the atomic
bomb must have felt. It never occurred to me that i
teleporting such massive amounts of energy through
Einstein-Rosen Bridges could interfere with the
chronophysical alignments of the warps. After all, there
were already immeasurable amounts of energy involved,
I didn’t see how it could make any di erence. e e -
f ects must have been exponential.'
'Doc, you mind speaking in English' To tell you the truth, I really don’t give a damn how it happened. it happened and now we’ve got to deal with it somehow. How about concentrating on that''
'My friend, I’ve been thinking of little else.'
'And'
'And I haven’t come up with anything. Not even Mensinger would have been able to solve this one. I suspect that’s what drove him over the brink. He realized he had set in motion a chain of events that were bound to escalate out of control sooner or later. The people in the alternate timeline are faced with precisely the same problem, though admittedly that doesn’t help us much.'
'Only they’re trying to do something about it,' Phoenix said.
'Yes, well, they’re obviously concerned about maintaining their temporal integrity,' said Darkness.
'At our expense,' said Phoenix.
'I can hardly blame them,' Darkness said. 'Clearly they’re ahead of us in one respect. They’ve managed to pinpoint at least one confluence and use it to cross over into our timeline. If my supposition is correct, and the confluence point can be located by inertial surge …' He snapped his fingers. 'Of course! That’s what they’re doing! '
'What''
'The two timelines are dissimilar enough to cause instability in the temporal flow,' said Darkness, 'but the Fate Factor enters in at points of confluence and attempts to compensate, only since the timelines are not dissimilar enough to set up a crosscurrent effect that would manifest itself in discontinuities, the result is a surge in the inertial flow! We have instability due to the proximity of the two timelines, yet a stronger inertial flow at points of confluence. The greater the number of confluence points, the stronger the inertial flow. Eventually this magnified temporal inertia would have to overcome the instability, and the two timelines would merge into one!'
'You mean sort of like a timestream split in reverse'' said Phoenix, frowning.
'Not bad,' said Darkness. 'That’s a very good way of putting it. Sometimes I underestimate you. You may be a little slow, but you do learn.'
'Thanks,' said Phoenix wryly.'Butwhat does it all mean''
Darkness shook his head. 'I see I spoke too soon. Very well, let me put it to you this way: you’re faced with a situation in which you are forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. On the one hand you have temporal instability caused by chronophysical mis-alignment, bringing two separate timelines too close together and causing them to intersect as a result of the interaction of their temporal fields.'
'The confluence effect.'
'Exactly. On the other hand this confluence effect causes a surge in temporal inertia at the confluence points,* which affects both timelines simultaneously, increasing the confluence phenomenon.'
'And if it keeps happening, you’d wind up with a single merged timeline,' Phoenix said. 'So in order to prevent that, you have to do something to reduce or eliminate the confluence effect.'
'Correct. And''
'And … and if the confluence effect is a result of the Fate Factor trying to compensate for temporal instability … you try to reduce the confluence effect by increasing the instability''
'Bravo. We’ll make a temporal physicist of you yet.'
'But … that’s crazy!' Phoenix said. 'The more you increase temporal instability, the greater the chance of bringing about a timestream split!'
'Ah, but in which timeline''
'The one with the greater instability''
'Pouryourself another drink, lad. You’ve just hit the nail right on the head. A timestream split would be almost certain to overcome the confluence effect, and it could result in changing the chronophysical alignment between the two timelines, forcing them apart, in a manner of speaking. But that’s only in theory. And it’s only one possibility.'
'What are the other possibilities''
'Theoretically it could also result in three timelines experiencing points of confluence with an exponential increase in the instability factor. Then the same thing would begin all over again, only you’d have three timelines trying to achieve stability by merging into one. And in order to prevent that, you’d have to increase the instability again to a point where it would overwhelm the compensating influence of the Fate Factor, and you could wind up with yet another timestream split, resulting in four timelines, and so on ad infinitum. You’d be trapped in a situation where you’d have passed a point of no return and the only way to make it better, for the short term, would be to keep on making it worse. '
'Jesus. Where would it all end''
'You’ve got me. What’s the absolute opposite of entropy''
'I don’t know. WhaW’
'I don’t know either. Could be the Big Bang all over again.'
'So what the hell do we do'
'Dr. Darkness does not, alas, know everything,' the scientist said, sighing heavily. 'I must admit to a certain morbid fascination with all this. What an incredible opportunity for research. This could enable us to quantify
Zen physics. We could be in a position to actually observe-'
'Doc!''
'What' Oh, sorry. You must forgive my enthusiasm. occupational hazard. I’ll try to keep a lid on it.'
'So what’s the answer''
'What’s the question''
'Whatdo we do we about this mess''
'Stall.'
'What do you mean, stall' How''
'Well, since no clear-cut solution seems to present itself, the most we can do under the circumstances is to maintain the status quo as long as possible,' said Darkness. 'The people from the alternate timeline are obviously attempting to hit us with a massive temporal first strike, trying to cause a significant historical disruption that might lead to a timestream split in our own timeline. We must not only prevent that, we must strike back at them in the same way. They interfere with our history, we interfere with theirs; each of us tries to adjust for the disruptions and maintain the instability as long as possible while trying to preserve a reasonable amount of temporal integrity on both sides.'
