Author Topic: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair  (Read 5830 times)

Dark Serge

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Okay, let's try to picture this scenario:

Chrono & Crew have defeated Lavos, it merges with Schala, and later Serge defeats the resulting creature, the Time Devourer. Years later in 2300 AD the future is bright and full of life, modernized like 1999 AD.

Someone from 2300 AD travels to 1000 AD and kills Crono before he can go to the Millennial Fair, before he meets Marle, etc etc. Lavos is never defeated and is never sent to the DBT. Schala is gone forever and the events of Chrono Cross never take place, the time period of 2300 AD is reverted to the apocalyptic state and The Day of Lavos happens as usual.

Would this be a correct canon? Crono is killed so the world still dies?

Kebrel

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2008, 09:32:21 pm »
Nope, that Crono would be a corpse but the Crono from the original time line (the one you play as) is still alive and kicking thanks to TTI.

Dark Serge

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #2 on: August 17, 2008, 09:49:26 pm »
What exactly proves that theory? I just can't make sense out of that. So you can never kill a time traveller no matter what? Because even if you kill him in your timeline, his future version is still there? Say Ozzie kills Crono on the Zenan Bridge fight. So then Crono is still there in the future to kill Lavos?

How does that make sense?

Kebrel

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2008, 10:00:51 pm »
No because of his TTI his death wont effect what happens to the time line. If you want to re-destroy the future you would have to kill Crono as hes killing Lavos, or some how travel to an older time line other then the ideal and kill him thus his effect hasn't occurred. Get BROJ or Thought they're better at this then me. :?

BROJ

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #4 on: August 18, 2008, 02:26:14 am »
I'm here! :lol:

Okay, let's try to picture this scenario:

Chrono & Crew have defeated Lavos, it merges with Schala, and later Serge defeats the resulting creature, the Time Devourer. Years later in 2300 AD the future is bright and full of life, modernized like 1999 AD.

Someone from 2300 AD travels to 1000 AD and kills Crono before he can go to the Millennial Fair, before he meets Marle, etc etc. Lavos is never defeated and is never sent to the DBT. Schala is gone forever and the events of Chrono Cross never take place, the time period of 2300 AD is reverted to the apocalyptic state and The Day of Lavos happens as usual.

Would this be a correct canon? Crono is killed so the world still dies?
What exactly proves that theory? I just can't make sense out of that. So you can never kill a time traveller no matter what? Because even if you kill him in your timeline, his future version is still there? Say Ozzie kills Crono on the Zenan Bridge fight. So then Crono is still there in the future to kill Lavos?

How does that make sense?
The overall Compendium theorum has it that, since his arrival(e.g. at 1999AD) is 'protected'(vis á vis Time Travelers Immunity), if Crono was killed in Day 1, 1000AD, he would still exit(as a Time Bastard; i.e. he is no longer ravaged by the natural effects of casuality from before he entered the gate) at 1999AD alive and well to combat Lavos─provided that no 'newer' instances of Crono have overwritten the one in question. In order to stop Crono from fighting Lavos, one would have to alter the light cone(or range of possibility) of Crono from his exit of the 1999AD Gate. What evidence do we have of this? Take a look at the Doan and Prometheus paradoxes as well as the fact that Belthasar still arrived in 2300AD after Lavos was killed to resume his research at Chronopolis─that should fulfill the onus.

At any rate, the general purpose of TTI(along with DTI and the DBT) is to serve as sort of an information preservation mechanism(or IPM for short) so that no information is lost(coincidentally, a cornerstone of Quantum Physics). Another mechanism that I believe exists is dimensional composition immunity(originally Time Adoption Theory); essentially it means that a dimension is created every time information is added to or altered/removed from a dimension externally(e.g. from another discontiguous point in time, another dimension, or the DBT) and a new timeline is created anteroactively from the point of change with the old one being preserved, such that no information is lost. The Schala paradox contributes greatly to this theory as it is said that she was 'pulled' to the DBT─that is discussed here.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2008, 02:31:14 am by BROJ »

Thought

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #5 on: August 18, 2008, 11:36:12 am »
In the words of the ineffible Doc Brown: "You're not thinking fourth dimensionally!"

Well, technically, you're not thinking fifth dimensionally, but the point is the same.

No one could kill Crono before he left for the Millenial Fair because he has already left for the Millenial fair; indeed, he has already defeated Lavos before the Time Traveler in question even left 2300AD. The problem, however, is that not only did Crono leave for the Millenial Fair in 1000 AD, (which a Time Traveler could get to) he also left 1000 AD at a certain point in extra-Time (that is, what we normally refer to as Time Error). A Time Traveler would need to be able to not only travel through Time (the 4th dimension, for the intents and purposes of this discussion) to kill Crono before he could kill Lavos, the Time Traveler would also need to be able to travel through Time Error (a 5th dimension, for the intents of purposes of this discussion).

The Crono that the Time Traveler from 2300 AD would kill is not the exact same Crono that killed Lavos. That is (one reason) why killing Crono after the fact wouldn't stop him from defeating Lavos.

However, as BROJ pointed out, if one traveled to the Time Period in which Crono actually killed Lavos (say Lavos was defeated in 1999AD and the Time Traveler went to 1999AD), then after Crono appeared there but before he killed Lavos, a Time Traveler could kill him, thus Lavos would live, and thus the future would be ruined. However, to note, this ruined future would not be the exact same ruined future the original Crono prevented; this would be an entirely new future, not brought back from the DBT, but created on the spot (like any created timeline).

Generally, we can think of "Time" as the characters experience time," while we can think of "Time Error" as we the players experience time. We can experience the effect of time travel in the game (essentially, a lower dimension than us) but to undo events that occur in our past, we'd need a higher level of time travel.

Dark Serge

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #6 on: August 18, 2008, 12:33:45 pm »
Alright, so let's say the Time Traveler appears before Crono and kills him right before he fights Lavos. The future is again destroyed by Lavos. What happens to the Time Traveler? In the ruined future his parents were never born and so he was never born. Because he was never born he couldn't have traveled back in time to kill Crono and doom the world again.

Would that be a paradox? Or would the Time Traveler be protected by TTI and live on regardless of what happens to the future after he kills Crono?

Thought

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #7 on: August 18, 2008, 01:19:46 pm »
Alright, so let's say the Time Traveler appears before Crono and kills him right before he fights Lavos. The future is again destroyed by Lavos. What happens to the Time Traveler? In the ruined future his parents were never born and so he was never born. Because he was never born he couldn't have traveled back in time to kill Crono and doom the world again.

Would that be a paradox? Or would the Time Traveler be protected by TTI and live on regardless of what happens to the future after he kills Crono?

Again, 5th dimensionally speaking, even though his parents might no longer exist in time (the 4th dimension), he was born before they didn't exist (in Time Error), so he'd be free to frolic around. His appearance in whatever time periods he has traveled to would be preserved under TTI.

Which makes the fate of Doan and Robo at the end of CT rather craptacular. They are both eternally from a ruined future.

BROJ

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #8 on: August 18, 2008, 02:41:51 pm »
Going off on a tangent; would time error be neccesary if DCI(dimensional composition immunity/Time Adoption) was taken into the factoring? I suppose it wouldn't be entirely redundant as it would, at most, serve as a sort of time stamp for the older versions of a given timeline in the DBT.
« Last Edit: August 18, 2008, 03:53:37 pm by BROJ »

MeshGearFox

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #9 on: August 20, 2008, 04:35:25 am »
If Chrono got killed, someone would've still jumped into the gate, I guess. Either Lucca by herself, one of Guardia's knights, or maybe Taban.

Killing Marle, on the other hand...

Chocobo_Fan

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #10 on: August 26, 2008, 10:40:05 am »
Yeah, killing Marle could really screw things up... Though you have to factor the Entity into this. Crono and co. weren't the ones pulling the shots; the Entity was the one guiding them through their adventure so that they could kill Lavos. (Since the Entity is the planet, and Lavos is eating the planet, the Entity wants Lavos out) Crono and co. weren't exactly special; the Entity could probably find another person to kill Lavos for it. (Though this is disproved in CC, I suppose, since in Home World the future is ruined for some vague reason)

And I don't really like the idea of TTI. It doesn't really make sense to me. It states that since time travelers have traveled through the fourth dimension, time, they transcend the laws of space-time? What? Space maybe, time no. They're simply traveling through it. You don't transcend the laws of space when you walk through space, do you? So why would time traveling allow you to transcend time? It's also very confusing and its finer points are quite fuzzy and can be twisted around a lot. It just doesn't make very much sense to me. I say that if you kill Marle before she goes to the telepod, Crono + co. can't save the world. Their "future selves" wouldn't be preserved. When you're dealing with a god-being like the Entity, however... It would probably either do something to the would-be murderer or have a different group save the world. That's just my opinion, though, and I might not be able to understand the finer points of it. I dunno.

Thought

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #11 on: August 26, 2008, 12:05:00 pm »
Two things;

1) We never see evidence in Chrono Trigger that the Entity was guiding Crono & Co. The best we have is the statement in Fiona's Forrest that the Entity might want people to observe its past, as it is remembering things before it dies. In short, the best we have is that the Entity made Crono & Co observers. By all evidence, Crono & Co made themselves participators.

2) No, TTI does not state that they transcend the laws of space-time, it merely states that they are moving in higher dimensions and are subject to the laws that govern those dimensions.

First, allow me to attempt to explain it in a very every-day sort of way. Imagine you are sitting reading a book (let us say it is The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe). Over the span of about 4 hours you could finish the book. However, for the characters, much more than 4 hours passed; years flipped by for them in what to you appeared to be mere seconds. Susan from the last chapter has no way of traveling back in time to the events of chapter 3, but for you, you can easily flip to that section. Indeed, you can effectively travel through time, from the book's dimensional perspective, precisely because you exist in a higher dimension. If a character were to time travel, they'd have to leave the book's dimension and come into yours.

But even you, the reader, are still limited in your own dimension's sense of time. Perhaps you cross out the 5th paragraph in chapter 6 and write your own. You can never go back in time and undo the marks you made, even though you can easily travel through the book's dimensional perspective of time. You would need to leave your dimension and go to a higher one to have that ability.

Thus, to be short and dirty, "time" refers to time as the average joe in the Chronoverse might experience it, but "time error" (and in turn, TTI) refers to time as we the players experience it. Marle traveled to 600AD not just in the game's time, but also in ours. The only way to undo it would be to travel to before the event in both the game and our world. As a Time Traveler in the game never travels backwards through our time, it would be impossible for them.

And now to attempt a little more abstract of an approach: the laws that govern depth don't apply to 2-D objects, do they? And laws that govern length and width don't apply to 1-D objects?

And while a 3 dimensional object might not transcend the laws of 3 dimension space, a 3 dimensional object certainly does transcend the laws of 2 dimensional space. Likewise, a 4th dimensional object transcends 3rd dimensional space, and a 5th dimension object transcends 4th dimensional space.

However, the inverse is also true. A 2-dimensional object cannot effect 3-dimensional space, nor a 3rd dimensional object 4th dimensional space, nor a 4th dimensional object 5th dimensional space. This is for a very simple reason; a square can't even perceive the depth of a cube, so how could it interact with that depth? A 3rd dimensional object can't even perceive the 4th dimension, so how could it effect it? And the 4th dimensional object couldn't perceive the 5th, so how could it effect that?

Higher dimensions can effect lower dimensions, but not the other way around. Marle traveling back to 600 AD was a 5th dimensional event that changed the 4th dimension. In order to undo that 5th dimensional event, one would need to travel in a dimension yet higher; a 6th dimension. And so on, and so forth.

When an individual travels in time, they must step outside of the normal flow of time to do so. Thus, they go from "Time" (4th dimension) to "Time Error" (5th dimension). If you want to undo something in Time Error past, you would have to step outside of the normal flow of that time. Thus, you would go from "Time Error" (5th dimension) to "Extra-Time Error" (6th dimension). And of course, if you wanted to undo that, you'd have to step outside that flow of time again and into Extra-Extra-Time Error (7th dimension). Theoretically, there needn't be an end to the number of dimensions (proposed limitations on dimensions, as per String, Super String, and M-Theory, are results of calculations on the energy in the universe; thus they limit dimensions because stuff to fill those dimensions are limited).

Chocobo_Fan

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #12 on: August 26, 2008, 05:22:36 pm »
Ohhhhhh. I see. That does make sense, now that I think about it. By traveling through time, you are operating on a fifth dimension, one that transcends time. Interesting. So Time Errors like the End of Time would be fifth-dimensional, theoretically? Thanks for clearing that up, I thought it was different. :)

So disregard everything about TTI I said before. -.-;

And I don't know about the Entity thing. To me, it did seem to be pulling the strings, to a far-off but limited extent, sort of like Belthasar in Chrono Cross. He definitely had quite the major impact on the game, no? Indeed, the entire area where the game takes place wouldn't exist if not for him. (-ish. The dimensional vortex that sucked in Dinotopolis was part of the plan; the Time Crash and therefor the creation of El Nido is accidental) Likewise, the Entity had a major impact on Chrono Trigger. However, since the whole thing is about free will and whatnot, the Entity isn't responsible for everything, but it did give Crono and co. some pretty big pushes to get them through their journey. A couple articles in the Compendium say that the Entity could manipulate Gates, or at least the time periods they connect to. The adventure wouldn't have started and even if it had, I doubt it would have gone anywhere. The planet/Entity wanted someone to get rid of the alien parasite eating it, but it could not kill Lavos directly; thus it chose Crono and co. to do that. Since it could not directly outright tell them what to do and such, it needed to use the Gates to direct them to certain time periods, so they could learn themselves.

Or I might be wrong. Chrono Trigger is quite confusing. o.O

killercactus

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #13 on: August 29, 2008, 02:20:56 pm »
Long time reader - first time poster.

This is how I prefer to look at TTI.  When someone decides to travels back through time, a new timeline is created instantly.  That new timeline begins at the time traveler's destination.  In the new timeline, the time-traveler exists on Day 1.  He has no relatives and no connection to this world - it's like time just decided to create him.  There is no guarantee that the time-traveler will be born in the future of this new timeline - that future has not yet occurred (on the Time Error axis, nor has it occured on the Time axis in this timeline). 

In fact, the future of the old timeline from that point in 1999 AD on (where he is born) is now in the DBT, and never existed.  All that is left of it is in the memory of the time-traveler.

Imagine, for a second, that some 30 year old guy does go back in time to kill Crono just before he defeats Lavos.  He appears in 1999 AD, and thus has created a new timeline.  However, when he gets there, he has a change of heart and does nothing.  As a matter of fact, he sits in one spot and does (and affects) nothing for 600 years or so, until he is born in the future.  What happens now?  He hasn't changed anything, so the new timeline is exactly the same as the old one.  Therefore, he is born and there are two of him - the infant version and the now-630-year-old adult version that traveled back in time.  But, because of Time Bastard, I think the 630-year old version would disappear the minute the infant version is born, leaving the infant version as the only version of him alive.

If he decides to kill Crono and then sits there for 600 years, he doesn't see himself being born.  The reason is because he is in a different future than the one he left, and this different future has a different past.  That different future does not include him as an infant; the old future did.  That different past includes him as of Day 1; the old past did not.  Thus, the 630-year old version of him continues to exist in the new future.  (all of that assumes this dude is some kind of immortal, and could live to be 630).

Man, that explanation was long-winded.  Someone please correct me if I'm wrong somewhere.....

Chocobo_Fan

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Re: If Crono would be killed before he goes to the Millennial Fair
« Reply #14 on: August 29, 2008, 10:14:09 pm »
Interesting... The whole concept of time travel is difficult to comprehend, though, as it does not exist. (At this point in time, anyway...) Also, it seems our spacially-oriented 3-dimensional minds can only seem to dimly grasp the first temporal dimension, but anything beyond that we cannot wrap our minds around. So it's very confusing. Interesting to discuss, though! :)

(And does anyone think that there may be more than three spacial dimensions? It is impossible to tell; squares do not even know that depth exists, yet depth exists nonetheless. Or perhaps spacial dimensions stop at 3? Hm. This is getting off-topic, though...)

But...getting back to the original topic... It seems like the pendant has a dream creature inside it, like Masa and Mune: Doreen. She never seems to inhabit any object, and in CC she appears to be standing next to Kidd while she's holding the pendant... There have been other discussions on this. The point is, I think that dream creatures are like avatars of the Entity, so Doreen seems to have started the whole thing. However! Marle is the owner of the pendant, so killing her might make the pendant not interact with the telepod, causing the first gate... However, Doreen and the Entity aren't dumb, and the Entity is basically a god, so... Perhaps someone else would pick up the pendant? (Oooh, Melchior, maybe! He'd know about Doreen, I assume, and seems to have an interest if you try to sell it to him at the beginning of the game...but that might be nitpicking) It's hard to say. :/