"The lost books…"
I look around from my position halfway up the ridiculous bookcase pillars as a somewhat weathered man in a suit walks slowly into the library. The ill-fitting amulet around his neck…
Yes, that's
never a good sign. Especially in a clearly
magical library.
Time manipulation.
I can hardly complain about O'Bengh asking me to substitute for him while he takes a holiday, but that's a subject I'm either… No, I am the best person to answer questions about it. I just hoped that I could avoid it from now on. Returning to China didn't quite… Nothing was going to return me to anything approaching normal, but I'd been able to put being Time Trapper behind me.
Ah, Mandated Paul. I'd thought he got sent home, but evidently not.
I float down, smiling at the prospective researcher as he looks up an notices me.
"Hello, there."
Always fun when you can channel Obi-wan Kenobi.
"Aah, hello." He give me a mild frown as I land a short distance away. "Are you..? Cagliostro?"
"No, I'm the substitute librarian. I've no idea where Cagliostro him or indeed herself is, and O'Bengh the Librarian is taking a holiday. I'm Orange Lantern, holiday temp."
That's one way of putting it. Not having seen 'What If?', I rather suspect I',m missing some details on
who's who. Evidently there's some
differences.
He looks around, taking the place in.
"Strange."
"Oh, we're using made-up names?"
I nod.
"Yes, the whole 'introduce yourself by your codename' thing breaks down in cultures where pseudonyms aren't common. Unfortunately, that-."
Though in Maul's case, he really
can't introduce himself using his real name...
He squints. "No, I-. My name. Stephen Strange. Doctor Stephen Strange."
"Ah. Well, pleased to meet you, Doctor Strange." I offer him my right hand, and after a moment of awkward hesitation he takes it. "What can I do for you?"
So, not injured by a car accident? I take it that was the divergence involved? <reads ahead.> Okay,
yes.
"I'm… Hoping you can show me the books on time travel."
"Ah… I haven't taken an inventory, I'm-" I glance back at the books stacks, shaking my head. Being a wizard is no reason to abandon sound design principles. "-afraid. Though if it's any consolation, I used to be an atemporal being. There's not a lot about temporal manipulation that I don't understand, and I'm happy to answer your questions."
And as the Ancient One would tell you, time is
not something to be played with.
He looks at me askance.
"If you were atemporal, then surely some version of you still is."
"Oh, well spotted. But no. A version of the being I used to be is still atemporal, though since they lack my particularity they have no particular reason to help me or.. you."
Ah, yes, one of the places where English breaks down so easily... Temporal Mechanics...
He nods. "Orange… Lantern, was it?"
I take my personal lantern out of subspace. "A symbol of office and a power source. For a maltusian, it's like introducing yourself as a police officer."
Not that the rookie sorcerer would
recognise the name. Given that unless this is some form of
Amalgam universe, Maltus did not exist here...
"Well, Orange Lantern, perhaps you can help. I need a way to change an absolute point-" I wince. "-in time. Cagliostro was rumoured to have found a way-."
"There's no such thing." I shake my head. "That's not how time works. Even here."
Especially after
you got through with it...
He scowls. "I've got a certain amount of experimental data that says it is."
"Then you're misinterpreting it." I pull a couple of chairs and a table over to us and take a seat. "Tea?"
Good. Always better to explain things with a cup of something warm in your hands. If only so you can't throw a
punch as easily.
He takes a deep breath and huffs. "Look, I can find it myself-."
"Why rush?" I lean back in my chair as I take a tea service out of subspace. "You didn't come here for a way to travel in time, so presumably that thing around your neck already has that covered. Which means that it doesn't matter how long it takes. And it sounds like you are in need of background information"
Unless he thinks things work by Bill & Ted rules or similar, where time passes concurrently
whenever you are.
He looks up at the stack, then down at the table. "Fine." He pulls out his chair and sits, leaning forward with his forearms on the table. "What do you mean 'there's no such thing'."
"Exactly what I said. Time is a process. It's not a person; it can't care about anything. Nothing is just… Randomly designated as being more important than anything else. While the precise mechanism changes from parallel reality to parallel reality, it's usually just a matter of the availability and application of energy, due to-."
I mean, certainly there
might be an anthropomorphic embodiment of the
concept, but they
generally play no central part in the actual functioning of it.
"So I need to get stronger."
"So you need to stop interrupting." I pour him a cup, then reach out and pull a book from a nearby shelf. 'What I Did In My Holidays' by Twoflower. "Could you lift this?"
When all you have is an infinity stone, everything looks like a
glove... Also,
nice Discworld reference.
He regards me with mild irritation for a moment before nodding. "Yes."
"If you were much stronger, could you-" I point. "-lift that bookshelf?"
Assuming it isn't bolted to the floor or something of the like, I suppose... Might prove necessary for some of the more
lively books...
"Yes."
"Is there a level of strength you could arrive at where you could pick yourself up by your own feet and carry yourself around?"
...Does copying yourself count?

Never underestimate the craftiness (or foolishness) of a
desperate man.
That puts him off his stride, eyes moving away from me as he tries to puzzle it out.
"The human mind is designed to keep us safe from hungry tigers; it isn't easy to talk about temporal mechanics in a language originally designed for telling the other monkeys where the ripe fruit are."
Truer words have never been spoken...
"Oh-kay."
I think he's trying some sort of breathing exercise, though with limited success.
Not an uncommon reaction when dealing with
any empowered Paul...
"So then explain it to me like I'm a monkey."
"Events cause other events, and are in turn-."
"Ook, do thing, other thing happen..."
"I already had this talk."
"Why are you here? Hm? What went so badly wrong that you feel the need to rewrite time?"
Excellent, getting right to the heart of the matter. Or would it be a matter of the heart?
"I don't want to.. rewrite all time, I just.. want to save one woman."
"There's your problem. You-."
Now, when you say '
save', be
precise. There;s no room for
ambiguity in these things.
"Her death set me on this path. I can't go back and save her because if I did then I wouldn't exist."
"Nearly. Your perception of her death set you on this path."
At least Strange is smart enough to recognise the bootstrap paradox he would be invoking...
And now I have his attention.
"What do you mean?"
Reality is merely a state of mind. Change a mind, you change their reality...
"If she died and you didn't know about it, your behaviour would be unaltered. If she was replaced by a gynoid programmed to mimic her, or a shapeshifter, your behaviour would be unaltered. On the other hand, if you believed that she died…"
"I-. Would still have done everything to bring her back. Whether she was actually dead to or not."
Or even replace her at the moment of her fatal injury with a perfect quantum replica cadaver. Bam, person saved, dead body left behind. Though it leads to all other manner of
complications...
"You tried to brute force it, didn't you? That can't work. Where I'm from, causation violations can upend the entire timeline like-" I click the thumb and middle fingers of my right hand. "-that. It took me an immeasurable amount of time to recreate my own timeline. Here, things are different. Time works -mechanically works- to minimise changes, sucking energy out of the universe every time. It's easy for something like a person dying; there are all sorts of ways to die, and it's more energy efficient to do that than... Than to try and maintain a paradox as part of history? I don't even want to think about how much energy that would-."
Honestly, that works as one reason why so many '
What If?' tales in the comics ended up with lots of dead characters...
Oh.
"No, I've got it. If you moved her to a universe with a different temporal system then the two of you would be alright, it's just that the universe you left would collapse."
...Okay, let's step
back a bit here, Mr
former Time Trapper... Deleting universes should be a last resort, not the first.
"Let's leave that for plan D. So what-"
"Yes, let's."
"-you're saying is, as long as I can exist in the resulting timeline, I can save her?"
Good to see Maul has learnt his lesson about these things.
"Yes. Your problem was confirmation bias. Once you heard an answer you didn't like, you didn't consider alternate hypotheses."
"So, what, I need to fake a car crash. Get a realistic fake body. Difficult, but-."
Well, yes, I suppose you could. But that's rather a lot of work.
"Or you could just fake your memories."
"Excuse me?"

...What?
"Go back in time, explain things to whoever she is and your past self. Change his memories so that he remembers what you remember happening, and… Carry on."
He frowns. "She wouldn't see me for two years."
Well, if future you is taking her with you...
"Better than being dead. Or you could partition your mind so you could see her for a few days each month. I don't know how good you are at mind altering magic."
"I can get good very fast. And you're sure that will work?"
I shrug. "It should. Of course, there's an easy way to check, considering the nature of time travel. Are there any mental partitions in your mind at the moment?"
Well, there weren't
before you suggested this...