Story: Tomoyo's World -Part 1- World Turned Upside Down (chapter 7)

Authors: Risa Kaijuu

Back to chapter list

Chapter 7

Title: Chapter 6

Chapter 6



Thursday July 27 9:40am Tokyo time.

They had a half hour until the plane left and Tomoyo continued to plan what she needed to do, which brought up a question immediately. "How far back in time should I go?"

"You will return to last Sunday at about five in the afternoon. This is consistent with the threads that lead to success. "Why can't I just go back to before Sakura was kidnapped? Or even before she went to Hong Kong?"

As far as I have been able to tell, if you go back to any point other than last Sunday at five PM, Sakura will almost certainly die, and likely you will as well. There are a limited number of threads of reality that include Sakura being saved, and they all require you to enter the time stream last Sunday at five PM. So you have to tell the card to take you back to that point and then use your time wisely."

"When I return to the past will I be in the same place by Hong Kong?"

"No, not at all. Since you are returning to a period within your own lifetime, only your spirit will go back, and you will find yourself in your own body wherever you were at that point in time. It is far more difficult to go back bodily to before you were born."

"So I will have to fly back to Hong Kong again!"

"Yes, indeed. The thread involves you flying back there. It appears that Sakura died around midnight, Tokyo time, Monday night."

"You said you read the future to pick this way of saving Sakura... So can't you tell me more about what I will find when I go back?"

"What I did is to look at the probable outcomes for many different courses of action on my part. Which, I may add, was VERY difficult and time consuming. I fortunately I did find a small set of threads that had a high probability of saving Sakura and Hong Kong. But unfortunately I didn't get much in the way of details on just how you are going to do it. My vision was very murky after we part. This is likely due to the law that makes events which are determined by strong Magic to be unreadable with Magic. All I know is that you will most likely manage it somehow. You are very smart, resourceful, and have a lot of Magic power. Now all you need is to believe that it is possible and that you will find a way to do it."

"Isn't there anything else you can tell me about my future?" Tomoyo was for the first time, sounding a little scared.

"Well, there is a delay between the time you leave me and the time you use the Return card. So you should probably expect some sort of a problem, but what happens during that period is completely blank to me. All I can say is that you will probably be able to use the Card and go back. And the period just before Sakura is killed is another blank. That's really all I have." he shrugged. "I'm sorry I can't help you more."

After this very limited help, Tomoyo couldn't think of anymore questions to ask, so she just just sat and thought about what was happening. And she found herself tormented, thinking about all the death and destruction that was probably still going on as they sat there in the airport and waited. In fact however, the cards rage was nearly spent. Only Fiery was still going around and burning things here and there. So when she thought of something to ask, she did. "You said that some things were destined and some weren't? Why are some events destined?"

"I suppose you could use gods to explain that. But if that doesn't satisfy you, I think it's because that event is necessary for things to turn out the way they are suppose to. If that makes any sense. The future is sort of fixed. Which is why we can read it. Anyway, I have been working on trying to understand Magic and how it changes reality by using modern mathematics and physics. And in the process I've worked out, what I think is a very interesting visual model of reality. Would you like to hear it while we are waiting?" he asked hopefully.

"Yes, very much!"

"Okay, you had some statistics and probability in your math classes haven't you?"

"Oh yes. I thought they were very interesting."

"Good. So the future can be described as a collection of events each of which has a probability curve associated with it. This is grossly simplified, but bear with me. So if you combine these curves and extend them over time, they form a very distorted surface. This surface can be visualized as looking rather like a complex canyon. The bottom of the canyon represents events that are nearly certain to happen. Their probability approaches one. The further away from the bottom you get, the higher the sides of the canyon are until they approach a probability of zero. So, of course the actually path day to day events take is normally somewhere around the bottom of the canyon. But people do have free will. And the power of their spirit can make things happen that wouldn't otherwise. So when you try really hard to do something difficult, you are in effect, pushing reality uphill. And Magic is just a stronger way to push the path of reality uphill. But it is still limited. No one is powerful enough to push reality in any direction they want. The sides of this valley get really steep and high when you get too far from the normal path at the bottom. And events that are destined, sit in a very narrow channel with very steep high sides. So to get to the other side that event has to happen."

"But what makes something 'destined'?" Tomoyo still wanted to know.

"I believe it is because the event is necessary to keep all the paths going the right way so they will in time get back to the main channel. This principle seems to be one that is a basic property of reality. Does this make any sense to you?"

"Yes, I believe so. But aren't there very different paths that the future could take depending on something someone does?"

"Yes indeed! Reality is MUCH more complex than the little model I just described but surfaces of N dimensions are impossible to visualize. My little simplified model is just a way to picture some of the characteristics of reality. Anyway, there are in fact a huge number of interlacing canyons that we can push reality into, and these can change the future in what appear to be very large ways. However, as I said earlier, all the side canyons will eventually come back to the main channel. So no matter how you push events around, if you go far enough into the future, it will have not made any major difference. And this is how we can have both free will and destiny."

After pondering this for a while she thought of another question. "I expect I will remember this future after I use the Return card, but who else will?"

"That, I do not know for sure. I don't have a clear understanding of just how the Return cards works. But if it is anything like Time, how much memory any person retains of before the card is used is related to just how close the person is to the one using the card and how involved they are with the events, as well as how much Magic power they have. So in this case, you will be sure to remember everything, and I probably will remember as well. I suspect that Sakura will also remember but that is a guess. And I have no idea about others." By the time the discussion wound down, the fasten seat belts sign came on for the decent into Taiwan.

Back to chapter list