unforum

[Prominence]

[SPEC] Crystal/Time Travel

[Captain Ferrell]

Good theory. The only other prominent speculation reguarding Melissa's timetravel is something triggered by the suitcase-like artifact described in some dialogue text. There is a good chance that either that chrystal or the shiny suitcase of mystery is responsible for Melissa's unexplained chronological displacement.

[Prominence]

If so, then the Artifact is most likely Forrunner....They seem to be responsible for everything.

[zorplex]

Indeed, alien artifacts in the Haloverse seem capable of this.

(A short summery for people who haven't read the Halo books: A crystal was being tracked down by the Covenant aliens. It was located beneath the surface of the Human military planet Reach. Human forces(including Spartans) recovered the artifact. And later the crystal begins to warp space as the spaceship it's in enters hyperspace.)

If the artifact is capable of the powers mentioned in the book, time travel would be a logical conclusion. Relativity says that distance and time are not constants. If you could warp space, you then could warp time as well. Not a detailed explanation, but a general overview of how the time transtition could have occured none the less.

[SPEC] Maybe another trout...
Just to appease my geek in me- Apart from warping time through the power of an alien artifact, quantum transmissions could also play a role in the time transition. Since an AI is just electronic data. It could be transmitted digitally. Quantum transmission over a large distance, and then relayed to earth the same way, would allow for time travel...

[Kagehi Kossori]

But not, as I pointed out in another thread, the ability of that data to rewrite itself to run on ancient technology with completely different structures and opcodes. Logically there must be some 'physical' device here in this time that was damaged badly enough to require exporting the code to another location, but functional enough to make this still possible.

[sniperomega]

[Cherry Cotton]

[Oea]

She is well aware of the disheartening nature of our times technology and makes it painfully obvious in some pretty funny lines..

Being trapped on an abbacus, cp ancestor protocol, sludge of sand, et cetera. Her more complex functions seem to be attributed to some kind of distributed computing (The SPDR and fireflies, network connections) et cetera (System Peril Distributed Reflex)

More more... she came here somehow (quite possibly entering slipstream with that 'artifact' on board) who knows

[archon]

Pardon my potential trout, but the shiny-suitcase-of-mystery reminded me of the shiny-suitcase-of-mystery in Pulp Fiction.

In Pulp Fiction, the two lead hitmen of the story have to go and gather (one) shiny-suitcase-of-mystery that belongs to their boss, but was taken by an associate of his. It is never made clear what exactly is in the shiny-suitcase-of-mystery, however shortly after obtaining said suitcase, the hitmen are shot at by a crazed friend of the associate that took their boss' shiny-suitcase-of-mystery. The crazed friend unloads his hand cannon and misses them every time, thus causing one of the hitmen to believe that they have been granted a miracle by God, and that they should change their evil ways or be punished as a result.

The other hitman doesn't believe that and is subsequently killed later on in the film.

[Cherry Cotton]

Wow! Scientists must be channeling our discussion as we speak. Check out this on Slashdot; a group of scientists have entangled five photons and have demonstrated open-destination quantum teleportation of information. Nothing to do with I Love Bees, but it's relevant to our discussion, especially if you want to know a little bit about this quantum teleportation nonsense.

I hope I can get one of those Tomorrow People belts...

[The Deranged Hermit]

If the Forunners can create multiple ringworlds, contain the flood, wipe out sentient life in an entire galaxy and so on, who's to say they didn't have more than one of these temporal crystals?

[jellyfish_green]

[jellyfish_green]

Area 51

[GunsmithCat]

We should remember that the Apocalypso wasn't a name from Halo books. While Forerunner tech, and our mysterious manhole-shaped artifact are likely suspects, the crystal on Reach may easily have nothing to do with the ILB storyline.

[princeofthesword]

http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl?read=467643

Excellent (long) post about time-travel in the Haloverse, focusing on the events in First Strike. Not directly related to ILB, but might help shed some light (and open some doors of thought) on our situation and its possibilities. I also suggest reading the Haloverse and ILB spec, hanging out now on page 2. I'm tempted to bump it again, because lots of time-travel issues were discussed there that I keep seeing in new topics.

I love spec, I say over and over that it's a wonderful thing, but if we can avoid it, we should try not to make new topics about something unless it's absolutely needed. Look around for a nifty, pre-made topic that your thought fits in, and put it there. Not bashing anyone, just trying to help the mods save space. More spec. Spec good. Organized spec better. Great thinking folks, and farewell.