Ripple In Time - Chapter 2 ..explained

I open my eyes and wince at the sudden brightness, feeling as if I had just awoke from a long nap. Overhead, I see the sun high in the cloudless blue sky. The time is about midday, and the noon sunshine feels nice and warm against my bare skin, so much so that it almost seems strange. When I look down at myself, I see why. I’m only dressed in my birthday suit, that is, I’m stark naked. Rather than feel embarrassed, however, I let out a laugh. “It work! It actually fucking worked!” I jump up in excitement, a silly childish grin across my face. The grin does not look weird or out of place though because at the moment, I am a child. Allow me to explain.

Some years ago, back in the future, so to speak, I had completed the setup for my magnum opus, a composite spell I decided to call the time ripple. It was an insanely complicated spell which had taken even me the better part of a decade to develop and implement, which was truly saying something. Not to toot my own horn, but before I had begun working on the time ripple spell, I was already by far and away the greatest mage in all of human existence. So for someone like me to need that much time, well, it just goes to show the complexities of the spell. But I digress. Returning to the matter of the time ripple, as I mentioned, it was a composite spell. This meant that it was built up of several different spells, linked in such a way as to produce a specific effect.

Without going into too much technicality, which I’m sure most people would fail to understand anyways, the time ripple was composed of three core spells which I called Distortion, Uncertainty and Calibration. Each of these were unimaginably powerful spells in their own right. They could easily rank as tenth tier spells, the highest possible tier, in their respective branches of magic. But then, that would be downplaying just how powerful these spells truly were.

This problem arises due to a fundamental flaw in the spell tier system itself. The spell tier system was designed to give mages a sense of a spell’s potency and a way to compare the relative strength of different spells. The spells I created, however, were far beyond the comprehension of the average mage. In that sense, it was meaningless to assign my spells a tier. I could have just as well called these spells one thousandth tier rather than tenth tier. In either case, pedestrian mages would have no way of understanding the true strength of my spells, just as a person has difficulty truly understanding the magnitude difference between one million versus one billion. It is a flaw in the human intelligence, the inability to understand that which cannot be experienced or physically perceived, but again, I ramble.

The first of the components, Distortion, is, as its name would imply, a spell which distorts the area in which it is activated. Specifically, it affects the gravitational fields present, and thus, it falls under the Gravitational Path of the Six Fold Path of Magic. With a strong enough Distortion spell, I had discovered that I could warp reality and time itself. I had also predicted that at a certain point, the warp in the structure of time would cause an internal collapse, resulting in time which flowed in reverse, for a duration proportional to the magnitude of the initial Distortion. This was the core principle of the time ripple spell, which essentially allowed me to “rewind” spacetime, revert all of existence to a prior moment in history, contingent upon the strength of the Distortion I used.

I had dabbled with Distortion in the past, that is to say, the future, but I had never activated it on such a scale before. I was not concerned about its untested nature though. As I had intended, at the moment of my death at the hands of the humanoid giant, all of spacetime was “distorted”, reversing existence back thirty years.

Okay, I’ll admit, I was a tiny bit apprehensive about the whole thing not working, it being unproven and all. The feeling was like turning in an exam, which I knew I had aced, but for which the final outcome was still undetermined. For the time ripple, I knew that it would work, my calculations had been pristine, but I still let out a cry of joy as I saw my de-aged body, thirty years the younger.

Now, one may hear my explanation and realize a fundamental flaw with what I had just said. Sure, I can create a distortion in the gravitational fields such that time flows in reverse. But what this essentially amounts to is an erasure of the future, a deconstruction of events between the moment which the time ripple begins and which it ends. For example, buildings become un-constructed, returning to their original materials. Trees un-grow, returning to their original saplings. And I un-die, that is to say, return to the original state of being alive. But therein lies the rub. If I had been rewound to an earlier state of existence, then my future self, its memories, its knowledge, its emotions and desires, all those should have been erased, never to have been, just as the building’s architecture never was, just as the tree’s height never was. So then, how am I able to recount these events, how am I am able to recall thirty years of memories when those thirty years of existence themselves no longer exist?

Well, the solution is the true genius of the time ripple spell. Remember, I had said that the spell was a composite of three other spells, of which Distortion is the most important. But the other two, Uncertainty and Calibration, also play a critical role. With Uncertainty, I was able to phase myself into an undetermined state of existence. Allow me to explain what this means.

In experiments, I had discovered that casting Uncertainty onto a particular object conferred upon it the ability to selectively respond to the effects of spacetime. Another way to think about it, Uncertainty allows an affected object to ignore certain rules of reality.

For example, consider an apple which, if left alone, inevitably rots. But under the effects of Uncertainty, it may rot, or it may never rot, or it may rot to some certain degree. I have no way of predicting beforehand which will happen to the apple, as the outcome is random and each is just as likely, but I am guaranteed that one of the three outcomes will occur. In this way, the apple is said to be in a state of uncertainty, hence the name of the spell.

One thing that is clear from this explanation is that I can obviously check the rottenness of the apple at any time simply by picking it up. But what I discovered is that by doing so, I inadvertently cancel the spell. Now, one may wonder if such is the case, what use is Uncertainty? Well, the answer is that its true power lies in its application in conjunction with Calibration, allowing me to accurately control the probabilistic effects of spacetime on any given object.

Let’s return back to the example of the apple. Using Calibration, I am able to make one of three outcomes more likely. I can choose to make it more likely that the apple doesn’t rot. Or I can choose to make it more likely the apple rots exactly fifty-percent of the way through. I can even control which parts of the apple rot. I can allow the core of the apple to rot, while maintaining the freshness of the pulp, or vice versa. Now it should be clear where I’m going with all this.

By putting myself under the effects of Uncertainty, I was able to manipulate which parts of my body were susceptible to the influences of the distorted spacetime. I was able to isolate my brain’s spacetime, essentially wrapping it in a protective bubble, while the rest of my body’s spacetime went in reverse along with the rest of existence. In such a way, I was able to revert my body back to a time when I was alive and healthy, while still maintaining all my memories and knowledge of a thirty years that was now non-exist.

There is, of course, still one lingering problem in all this. But I’ll save that for another time. I’ve rambled for long enough, and there’s a more pressing matter.

Clothes! I need to find some damn clothes!