Hello. First time poster here.
I debated about whether or not to post this, but I figured if nothing else, it's going on the blockchain so the original idea can always be traced back to me here.
This post outlines an idea for a novel which I had intended to write about 11 years ago. I have no working title, but the original file from 11 years ago was tentatively titled "Expensive Ugliness" as sort of a codename for the writing project, and a tongue-in-cheek reference to the current state of civilization.
PLOT & SETTING NOTES:
Non-linear time is a proper noun (Non-Linear Time, or NLT), and is sometimes referred to as “Nolte”.
The main objective of the story is to invent time travel, perhaps even by accident. There may not be much in terms of technicality, but the concept is that at the moment of the invention of time travel, a kind of “marker” or “dock” is placed in the temporal dimension to act as a kind of beacon to travelers. This means that time travel would not be possible for any time prior to the placement of the first ever marker via the creation and successful implementation of the first time machine. This creates a great opportunity for an ultimate “saving of mankind” climax. The idea is that once the capability to travel through time is achieved, millions of travelers will begin arriving almost simultaneously from the future to contact their younger selves and take them all to a point far enough into the future where we have been absent from the earth long enough so as to let it repair itself from the damage we’ve caused. This could be at a time hundreds of thousands, or even millions of years from now.
Time travel is not possible any further into the past than the moment it is achieved successfully for the first time. Prior to that, it’s like having a cell phone with no wireless service. You have to have the signal from the tower for the phone to work. Until then, cell phones don’t exist. Same with time travel. You can’t travel through time until you have the first marker placed in the temporal dimension to act as a kind of beacon. And since time is like a river, the beacon’s visibility (or detectability) follows the river’s flow, which is downstream into the future. This also means that NLT only exists for as long as the technology required to make it happen exists, which could open up the possibility of the discovery that you can place an “end-point” marker which might prevent people from traveling any further into the future than a particular point… such as when the sun turns into a red giant and destroys Earth. This could still allow humanity to essentially put boundaries in time as to a start-point and end-point in which to thrive. No more racing the clock to leave earth before it is destroyed. Imagine the land space of the earth, but a period of several million, or perhaps even a few billion years, in which you could choose any time to live out your life. Or even to hop around a little from time to time to see different parts of the world in different times within NLT. Also imagine populations having the ability to be able to completely skip moments in earth's history when natural disasters strike, saving millions upon millions of lives each century.
Perhaps a plot device can be derived from HAARP and the conspiracy theories surrounding it. HAARP is believed by some to be a device that gives man the power to cause earthquakes by sending a billion watts of energy into the atmosphere, causing the ionosphere to rise rapidly, and then as it descends it contains enough force to cause disruption in fault lines via a kind of sonic resonance. For the purpose of the story, this energy could be harnessed and used to create a means for time travel.
Since time would then be non-linear, the human historic record would become like a piece of holographic film, where even the tiniest segment of the film contains information about the whole image (like a fractal). What this means is that the technology discovered far at the end of human existence would be available to those who are at the beginning of non-linear time. Like a hard drive vs. a tape drive. You don't have to wait for the tape to get to the info; you can just go right to it instantly. All technologies would exist in all segments of time following the moment of the invention of the first time machine. It would be, essentially, the apex of human history and human evolution.
The Gregorian calendar becomes instantly obsolete and is replaced with a natural 13-lunational year calendar for tracking LET, or “Local Earth Time”, which is still broken up into all the time zones we are all familiar with today, but without Daylight Savings Time. Thirteen 28-day months means each date would land on exactly the same day of the week every year, and full moons would be on the same date each month. This comes to 364 days a year, with one day thrown in each year as a sort of “zero date” to make up for the 365th day, and a second one occurring every 4th year which happens mid-year to accommodate leap year. The traditional suffixes B.C. & A.D. on our dates are replaced with the suffixes “NL” and “bNL” (Non-Linearity and Before Non-Linearity). The start date of which is the invention of the first time machine. There is also a less-spoken of “pNL”, or Post-Non-Linearity, which is believed by some to be a myth.
Everyone in NLT is required to have an implant which tracks their path through the Nolte and clocks their true age for proper record keeping and, most importantly, paradox avoidance. Everyone’s “zero date” is the moment in NLT when they were born, and follows the same 13-lunational calendar system as LET, or “Local Earth Time”. When an individual passes away, the device acts as a sort of a personal “Black Box”, which can then be scanned to find how old the individual was and where they’ve been not only physically but temporally. The device sends out a signal with the capability of crossing temporal barriers and alerting those responsible for retrieval.
Photography should be involved in the storyline somewhere, which could get interesting when characters begin finding images printed that they haven’t taken yet.
Although time travel further back than its invention is impossible, sending information a little ways back past that point may not be, even if only vague. This could be worked into how it was discovered accidentally. The moment itself that Nolte is created could be a kind of barrier, as when the sound barrier is broken. But since this is a temporal barrier that’s broken, the barrier itself essentially “shatters” and sends pieces of itself in both forward and backward directions temporally, sending information about the future in NLT backwards in time slightly, maybe only a year or two. This could be where the name “Nolte” comes from in the first place. It could be a kind of “calling” to the main character, perhaps through dreams or sudden unexplainable thoughts about Nolte, but not in detail enough to fully define themselves. In fact, the creation of Nolte could be as simple as being at the right place at the right time.
To expand on this idea, those who are more affected by “something that seemed to be called ‘Nolte’” are the same people who end up being present for the quintessential flipping of the switch that activates and creates non-linear time, and the experience is strongest in the main character, the narrator (if this is to be told in first-person).
Because of the nature of NLT, crimes and especially wars would be virtually non-existent, because your actions are already recorded and available anywhere and anytime in NLT. This needs expansion.
People who are new to NLT must be inoculated. Because time travel is possible, all possible viruses and other contagious diseases anywhere in NLT are a risk. For example, if one were able to travel to a time in our historic past, there may be diseases that exist in that time which we currently do not have or need immunity against. Thus, wherever we humans can go, our viruses can go. This can also become an interesting point to the story when beginning to refer to viral mutations and the effects that has on their development and subsequent effect on humans in NLT.
If told in first-person, the narrator could finish the story just before traveling back to retrieve his younger self to bring him into non-linear time.
Important simple point to remember: Though time may be non-linear, an individual’s life can only be linear. Nobody lives forever, of course.
as far as i know this is not on-chain.