text/video; un: silverrose

[fionnuisce]

Okay, we've well established twice now since I've been here that Zodiac's public relations are abject shit.

I don't know if I can help anyone who might need it after the latest shitshow, but I can try. Attached is a brief summation of my professional opinion on Zodiac's statement on past lives as well as an explanation of parallel timelines as I understand them--the same principle may well not apply in every other universe, for all I know. If you'd prefer not to listen to a mage talk his head off about arcane concepts, then feel free to ignore this; I've included it as a video file for precisely that reason.

Otherwise, the half-baked class of Lord El-Melloi II is in session.

[The attached video displays a man in his late 20s, hair tied back and sunglasses sitting on his head as he lights a cigarette. Anyone around Kaisou University has probably seen him around, or at least heard him coming--the cane isn't very inconspicuous. One might wonder how he's holding the phone a couple feet away with both hands occupied, but the faint glow of a thin wire coming from somewhere around his right wrist might have something to do with that.]

Let me cut straight to the point. 'Is Zodiac's statement plausible?' I'm sorry to say that it is, however- [He stressed that word pointedly, green eyes focused sharply on the camera.] -there may be--no, there absolutely is more to the picture we have yet to see. I recognize that the idea is...alarming, to say the very least. And I don't know if anything I can offer will be of help in that regard. So I want to give clarity the only way I can, and leave myself open to whatever questions are within my ability to answer. Which may not be many, but it's worth a shot.

[He sighed a faint cloud of smoke, thinking for a few seconds before continuing.]

'Those lives or those worlds ended in some fashion', they said. This does not immediately necessitate that one's past life met with a sudden dire end or that the world one remembers was subject to the same. Such is only a possibility, one of countless such paths. In my world, timelines are known to diverge like branches from a tree. [He gestured vaguely with one hand, lit cigarette leaving a thin trail in the air.] I am not a scholar of this specific field, but I make a habit of studying things I probably shouldn't. As such, I only know that sometimes, these branches do necessitate...'pruning' is the term, though that sounds a little too harsh given the subject at hand. But such a thing is only for the most distantly divergent from baseline--that is to say, I would assume that for every one of those exist an unknowable number which yet continue.

All this to say: the statistical probability that the worlds you remember are gone is-- [He paused briefly, a trace of concern on his face before he shook it off in favor of professionalism. (Sorry, Elliot.)] --so small as to be impossible to measure. The probability that the lives you bear memory of ended abruptly or violently...while I see no reason to assume the worst, that is not something I can measure. I have no doubt that countless iterations of me have died or worse; that's down to what kind of people you were or are.

[he is extremely wrong, but he's got the spirit]

...And if I can be perfectly honest, I think that needs to be the priority above all else. To understand one's self is already a daunting task; to reconcile it with the knowledge of who one may have been, I can't even begin to imagine how insurmountable a task that must appear to be. I don't envy any of you, and I can only offer very little in the way of help.

I wish you luck in discovering what you will, strength to contend with whoever you were, and resolve to determine who you are.

Comments

un: timaeusTestified

[timaeus]

[That's a lot of analysis and theorizing, which Dirk is totally into. Normally. But this is a weird situation he's found himself in, so while he does listen and absorb it all to mull over privately, he's just gonna...go off topic.]

I've seen you around campus.
What class you do teach?
Assuming you do in fact teach, anyway.
I'm admittedly jumping to conclusions here.
It's possible you're just an older student with a professorial air, or an entirely unaffiliated creep that just likes hanging around college students.

[fionnuisce]

I just started teaching chemistry this semester.

I'm aware that I'm a little younger than most teachers, but I assure you I'm qualified.

[timaeus]

Relax.
I was calling you old, if anything.
Older than the standard college student, at least, but I'm aware some people pursue higher education later in life and attempted to be open-minded.
Anyway, is that strictly chemistry, or are you using it as a cover for magical shenanigans like brewing potions and shit?

[fionnuisce]

I'm 28, just for the record.

And I am teaching normal chemistry. If anyone wanted to learn alchemy as best as I could teach them, however, they'd only need to ask.

[timaeus]

Which is older than the standard college student.
So I'm not exactly wrong.
Just pedantic.

[fionnuisce]

A little pedantic.

The point stands that I’m not stalking anyone or trying to burn the building down.

[timaeus]

You'd be a pretty bold criminal to just say otherwise outright.

[fionnuisce]

You'd be surprised how often some people don't quite realize when public networks are bad places to talk about committing felonies.

audio: un: coffeelvr4ever

[robopriest]

[A lot to think about, here. Time to be a good student.]

So, Professor. I have a question. If those lives didn't end badly...how were they reincarnated into us? Is the guy I remember still alive?

audio

[fionnuisce]

I said they need not have ended badly, not that they didn't end. Unless remembered otherwise there's nothing that says one didn't live to one hundred and die in their sleep, just as the same as nothing says otherwise.

[robopriest]

Aw.

[He thinks about what he remembers, what he read, and wonders about what sort of fate a man like that would have.]

Well, a guy like that...either dies in a fiery end, or really does live to be a hundred. Guess we'll never know.

[fionnuisce]

You're right--in your specific case, it's hard to say. I can't see it being easy to deal with a member of the Church, but stranger things have happened.

[robopriest]

...He was fighting weird vampires. Or at least one. Named after some clown.

...An..."Apostle"? Maybe that did him in.

[fionnuisce]

...Oh, fuck that. Dead Apostles are above my pay grade and out of my league. I barely even know anything about them past 'the kind of thing the Church trains literal assassins to handle'.

[robopriest]

Oh, boy. Ohhh, boy.

[THAT BAD, HUH...]

Guess that's why he was a metal man. Living weapon and all.

[fionnuisce]

That would be a reasonable explanation. I'm not exactly up to date on my vampire lore outside of fiction, but I'd guess it would take some heavy artillery to deal with.

un: ChannelingLightning

[codenametesla]

So, this is only tangentially related, and I apologize in advance if these are the wrong questions to ask, but I got curious:

Do you think there is any relation between the parallel timelines people are getting memories from and those depositing whole people from instead? It doesn't seem the people showing up from other universes are dying or whatever... at least not always if my own experience is anything to go by, but is there overlap? Is there some parallel timeline where I'm not gone at all, and everything kept going as it was?

[fionnuisce]

An excellent question, if one I can not answer conclusively.

If I understand correctly, you're asking about a situation where Isekai A and Kaisou Native B were from/had memories of the same timeline of a specific world. I would personally estimate the odds of that to be infinitesimally small, but that does not make it remotely impossible. So, let's operate on the assumption that such is exactly the case.

It would be best to ask B in that case what they remembered of A, if and when they remembered anything of them at all. If in their memories A never mysteriously vanished for whatever stretch of time, then there are two possibilities: either A is another iteration from another timeline after all, or time between our universes and this one is so goddamn convoluted that it would seem A had never left at all.

I admit that last hypothesis is biased by my own wishful thinking, but I think the logic seems sound enough all the same.

[crystallinememories]

Apologies for jumping in, but I know at least one person seems to have 'returned' to their world, at least in terms of memory acquisition; he fell into a coma-like state on this side, and when he awoke he recalled events from his own world as though they had happened with no break in between.

Of your two proposed theories, that would align more with the time one, though it is not out of the question that each time sometime like that happens another timeline is created.

[fionnuisce]

Either of those does sound plausible. There's no reason such an event wouldn't itself cause an offshoot, but there's also nothing I can think of to argue that it definitely would.

[crystallinememories]

I do also know that in the world I am 'from', the flow of time is different between worlds and it's rather inconsistent. It is entirely possible that that would not apply outside of that universe, but I am inclined to view this all more from that perspective. Though, that could just be wishful thinking as well.

[fionnuisce]

It's sensible to view it in terms we understand. As I said, I'm no scholar of Second Magic--a lot of this is conjecture on my own part. I haven't the faintest idea whether time flows the same or differently along parallel worlds, or if time even matters in any sense when viewing the whole metaphorical tree from outside of it.

[crystallinememories]

Unfortunately, it is likely impossible to know for certain. Time seems to flow roughly equally in most of the gates, but they only arrive when they're so closely aligned with this world as to cross over... at least, to the best of my understanding.

There may be some way to look into it, at least. I'll think on.

[fionnuisce]

For now, it very well may be true that none of us have enough information to make a clear conclusion. Which is unfortunate, but unavoidable. There's nothing for it but to continue observing and scratch together what little objective knowledge we can.