Sorry I haven't posted anything on this before now. I recently became quite busy.
Here's the entirety of my previous article. Maybe we can figure out a way to combine the two effectively. I'll have some time during the week of July 5 to devote to this issue.
Oh, and if you want the OCR thread from which all the commentary came, I'll be glad to get a copy of the txt'd archive to you.
Time Crash & End of Time
The Conservation of Time Theorem states that anytime more than three people attempt to travel through time in a single party, they end up at the space-time coordinates of least resistance, the End of Time. However, when the Chronopolis Military Research Institute traveled 10,000 years into the past during the Time Crash, its inhabitants (indeed, the institute itself) did not end up at the End of Time, but rather ended up in the Sea of El Nido. However, the game does not tell us why. I posed this issue at OCR and many more questions popped up: What exactly happened to the staff of Chronopolis after they arrived in El Nido, and what are the events you witness there? What happened to the End of Time, and is the Bend of Time connected to it in any way? And where did Gaspar go, if the Bend of Time and the End of Time are one and the same? And finally, how did Ozzie, Slash and Flea (whose gender shall probably always be in question) end up in the Bend of Time?
One theory on the nature of the staff of Chronopolis is that the entire staff of the Institute is dead—or rather undead. That is, they’re all ghosts. However, as the “ghosts” we see perform actions in the physical world, this is unlikely.
Since Chronopolis had to have implemented its dimension monitoring technology after the split, its ghosts must either still have the capacity to work, or FATE is able to manipulate the physical world. I do believe the residents were alive at one time, in order to dispense El Nido's ancestor pioneers; perhaps after the first generation that came with the Time Crash, each human, after dying, simply because a shadow that we see now.
This is certainly a valid possibility. The game does state that the workers of Chronopolis eventually became the first humans to colonize El Nido. However, there is still the possibility that while some went on to colonize the archipelago, others may have stayed to continue their work. In any case, the temporal energies from the crash probably enabled them to become ghosts after they died, rather than simply fade out of existence, or something like that.
After looking through the posts, I thought of an interesting theory. Maybe they're ghosts, but not in the spiritual sense. After the Time Crash, maybe the staff of Chronopolis repeats it's actions, just prior to the accident, forced to re-live the Crash, in a plane beyond the normal time stream, infinitely (insert chills here). After all, they repeated the incident before the crash to Serge, that's apparent from all of their dialogue, and the head director with his foreboding about the experiment at the docks. And the Crash may only occur within the confines of the Sea of Eden, leaving the outside world unaffected.
I seem to remember one of the ghosts saying something about purposefully recreating the events of the Time Crash, perhaps to reverse the process. I could be wrong, but I played through that part only about two weeks ago, and I'm pretty sure about this one. Now, this could very well be a careless plothole, but if it's not just a mistake then it sort of botches the theory about everyone being forced to relive the crash (a la Groundhog's Day or Majora's Mask) by some other power, quite possibly FATE. Also, it is known that some of the original staff left to colonize El Nido. Furthermore, the staff observes the two dimensions in present times, which would not be possible if your theory is to hold true.
Now, if the staff left and was not forced by FATE to relive the Time Crash over and over again, what about the ghosts? Another possible theory is that the events of the crash or of an attempt to recreate the crash so as to reverse its effects were recorded by FATE and replayed for Serge after being triggered by Serge's entrance, or Lynx/Dark Serge's entrance. However, this also does not fit with the observation of the two dimensions.
I think that the most likely explanation is that some of the staff stayed on Chronopolis while the rest colonized El Nido. The staff that stayed, instead of dying, simply phased out of physical existance, and became the "ghosts" that we see, possibly due to the temporal disruption.
I'll go with this. If you count the ghosts, notice that there are enough to sufficiently man each machine; no extras are shown. FATE may have also opted for a skeleton crew to increase the El Nido population more quickly; notice that the desk before the entry to the main part of Chronopolis lacks a secretary.
The most viable theory for why the Time Crash didn’t send the staff to the End of Time seems to be that Lavos's (or perhaps the Entity's) gates differ from the Time Crash's mechanics.
I'm going with the nature of the Time Crash being different from that of Lavos' gates; can the Time Crash be considered such a passageway? It seems more of a reset of the timeline than an instance of travel.
Gaspar and the End of Time are two mysteries that are too closely connected to be dealt with separately. The End of Time does not make a direct appearance in Chrono Cross, but the Bend of Time appears as a very small, mostly insignificant area where you fight monsters at your leisure. The Bend of Time is very similar in appearance to the End of Time, but Gaspar and Spekkio, who lived for who knows how long (for them, that is) in the End of Time, are nowhere to be seen.
OK, this is gonna be pretty out there, so just bear with me. Perhaps the End of Time went to the El Nido Archipelago where it became the Bend of Time. The reason it would go there is to follow the massive temporal energies of Chronopolis after the Time Crash.
As for Gaspar, I think he left with the others to live out a life in another time period. Maybe he joined Belthasar in the revamped future? Or became a royal advisor to King Guardia XXI in 600 AD? I doubt he went as far back as 65,000,000 BC, but it's possible. Most likely, though, I bet he went back to the Last Village to help them rebuild civilization after the fall of Zeal.
Or he's still in the End of Time, and the Bend of Time are two separate areas. The Bend of Time may just be a temporal distortion created by the split in dimensions.
I still believe that the End of Time and the Bend of Time are one and the same, or at least closely connected. They're too similar to not be. I, for one, support the idea that Gaspar went out into the world, or possibly retains the ability to travel through the eras even though the gates are inaccessible, while the End of Time was pulled by the Time Crash to El Nido, where monsters seemed to come towards it (and how exactly did Ozzie, Slash and Flea end up there anyway?).
Gaspar probably envisioned the End of Time as being able to take on a separate function, and installed a simple keeper (the punching bag monster in the Bend of Time).
A possible theory for what happened to Spekkio is that he may have gone with Gaspar wherever he went. This would fit with the idea that each Guru had a Nu to assist him. However, a brief cameo in Chrono Cross could refute this idea.
It seems to be that way, although Melchior's lack of an assistant makes me wonder. Nus are unbelievably secretive, but I think it's safe to go along with this theory. Spekkio is quoted as the "God of War," however, in Chrono Cross.
The Bend of Time resembles End of time, and if one brings Janice to the Bend of Time, the game pops up with "The God of War has taken an interest in you." I believe Spekkio said himself he was the God of War in CT, so...nice cameo.
The only thing of any consequence in the Bend of Time is a locked door at the back. This door, which only opens in a New Game+, leads to a battle with Ozzie, Slash and Flea from Chrono Trigger. Their presence here is yet another mystery.
As for the Ozzie Crew, all I can think of is that they were homeless after 600 A.D., and perhaps discovered a gate. Ozzie might have a few time tricks up his sleeve
Well...we don't know what happened to Ozzie and crew after CT. Last we saw was him falling down that big hole after the cat jumped onto the switch. Maybe that hole was a time portal of some kind? And when you fight him, Flea, and Slash, they run away from you, usually before you can beat them. Though it seems unlikely that time travel is among their powers, it's conceivable that a resonance with Lavos interfered with it to throw them off course. After all, that's fairly late in the game, when things are coming to a head, and in 600 AD, the last major event that happened was Lavos creating a Gate to 12,000 BC after being summoned by Janus. I'd think after an event like that, teleportation magic of any kind would be thrown seriously off-kilter.
To sum up, here are the conclusions our discussion reached:
The most likely theory is that the Chronopolis Military Research Institute didn't end up at the End of Time because the mechanics of the Time Crash worked very differently from those of the gates. After the Crash, the Chronopolis staff may or may not have spent some time trying to reverse its effects and end up back in A.D. 2400, but after failing to do that (or even simply not trying in the first place), most of them went out and colonized the El Nido archipelago while the FATE supercomputer kept a skeleton crew on staff to observe time-space phenomena (such as the dual dimensions) and run the Chronopolis facilities. That skeleton crew did not die but instead phased out of this physical plane of existence, perhaps due to the massive temporal energies from the Crash, and became the “ghosts” we see there now.
The Bend of Time (which CAN be accessed from both dimensions) is probably the End of Time, which was either drawn to El Nido thanks to the Time Crash's temporal energies or had a gate directly to it established there for the same reason. Then, monsters from all over the archipelago began to flock to it, possibly because Ozzie & Co. were calling them, or something.
Gaspar: Probably went out into the world in some era, and probably took his Nu aide, Spekkio, with him.
Ozzie & Co.: After being defeated again by Crono's party, they were on the run, and either a) stumbled upon a new gate to the End of Time (or Bend of Time) or b) tried to teleport somewhere and after Magus's summoning Lavos and the events that followed directly thereafter, that teleport magic went all whacky and they ended up there. I prefer the second option, myself.
