Time, Repetition and the Uber-Dimension (was: Narrative Function

[Talisman]

No: HPFGUIDX 79635

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "sevenhundredandthirteen" 
<sevenhundredandthirteen at y...> wrote:
> This is a follow on from my last post (#79043) in which I presented
> both sides of the 'Which type of Time-Travel is JKR using?' from 
the point of view that both are possible. <snip> And *NOW* I would 
like to take the opportunity to show you why I think the 'it 
happened once' theory is much more likely that the 'it happened 
twice' theory.
>> Laurasia

Talisman, just back from a net-free frolic in the Forbidden Forest, 
checks the post, and sighs:

Alas.  
Laurasia, you seem to have spent a good deal of time 
crafting "authoritative" tomes on the  "Two Options In
Time Travel," 
in which you explain your theory vs. what you assert to be my 
theory.  The problem is that you have not yet understood, or at 
least not yet iterated, my theory.  I hope you'll understand why
I 
don't provide a specific response to your posts, as they are not 
germane to any actual view I hold.

And, bboy, don't you go anywhere.  I know that you and Laurasia
are 
not the same person (at least I think not)  but in the surprise move 
of the week, your "relativity" and "metabolism" riffs
provided good 
tools for illuminating the critical junctures where we part company 
in Time-Travel theory (though you may be surprised to find we agree 
on a great deal.) 

* * * The Actual Theory: * * * 

(It might be helpful to invoke a muse at this point.  Lets all close 
our eyes and chant Scotty Fitzgerald's quip three times: "The
test 
of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed 
ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to 
function.")

Good.  Now, for purposes of this discussion, I will assume that Time 
is linear.  This is a Greek idea, and not the only extant concept of 
time (that spiral shape we keep seeing, being another) but I'm as 
happy as a bug with linear, so that's one less argument.

All posts on this topic are pseudo-science, but it's good to set
out 
the parameters so that any assumptions at the foundation, which will 
ultimately affect the outcome, remain transparent.

Therefore, let's start with some "rules:"

1) There is only one Time. Time itself is never, in any way, split, 
bifurcated, divided, multiplied, or otherwise partitioned.  

2) Time moves ineluctably forward (except when it's trapped in a 
Bell Jar).  It is never rewound or erased.

3) Time, qua Time, is static. That is to say, Time itself never 
changes.

4) The events within Time are not static. Indeed, altering past 
events is the raison d'être of Time Travel. 

I know you don't agree with this Laurasia.  But, the proposition
is 
self-evident. I find your alternative explanation: that Travelers 
are just "ensuring time happens correctly" (#72145), 
disingenuous.  
In any event, your "ensuring" idea  includes the notion that
things 
could "go wrong" without the Traveler's assistance;
therefore, by 
preventing something from happening, your Traveler still changes the 
course of events. 

5) Time is relative.  No doubt about it.  Hermione experiences the 
same hour from three vantage points in a serial manner, while Time 
itself sees all events simultaneously in the same "fixed"
hour. 
Hence, the pre-traveled self can experience the post-traveled self 
within the Relevant Span of Time. Voila, the notorious "footsteps
in 
the hall."

I agree with all of this, but I require more than the circular 
sophistry of: "I returned, therefore I was always there."

In order to accept the Harry-always-saved-himself theory, the reader 
must defer entirely to Time's point of view; they must allow Time
to 
be the arbiter of the action. But, this is error because,

6) Time is a highly prejudiced observer.

Here, bboy, you and I definitely part company.  I cannot join your 
reliance on the premise of an  "unbiased, neutral timeline"
(#78975).

 Time is not at all unbiased.  Indeed, Time is so fanatically biased 
that it insists on its own rules and will neither demonstrate nor 
admit to anything that does not wholly conform to its rules.

7) Time-Travel is predicated on the violation of Time's rules.  

8)  It is axiomatic that Time does not control Time-Travel.

9) Because Time will never recognize or demonstrate a violation of 
its own rules, Time's view of Time-Travel events is always
flawed.  

Nothing is erased, nothing is rewound, but some things simply do not 
appear in Time's  record.  And, herein lies the crucial missing
step.

  * * * * A Demonstration* * * *

Let's take a black permanent marker, some HP action figures and
your 
kitchen table.

Use the marker to draw a ray, ~3 feet long,  moving left to right.  
This is Time.  Permanent, linear, forward-moving, etc.

(Alright bboy, yours can be 3 ½ feet long.)

Mark off the center one foot section of the line.  We'll call
this 
the Relevant Span (so we can reuse it for demonstrating any Travel 
event).

Now, we are obviously in the Uber-Dimension (though it looks a lot 
like your kitchen) because we are outside of Time, looking down on 
it.

Because the Traveler must break free of Time's grip in order to 
travel, I believe most of the trip happens in the Uber-Dimension.  
It's not necessary that you agree. You can think of Travelers as 
somehow-still-being-in-Time-but-no-longer-subject-to-Time's-rules
if 
that makes you happy.  I'll use the Uber-Dimension. 

Now, let's place a Time-Turning Action!Hermione at the beginning
of 
the line. It's September 2, 1993 and she's on her way to 
Arithmancy.  Slide her up the line. There she is at 9:00am (first 
tick mark on your line). Now she`s moving through the class hour.
 
Here we come to the second tick mark (10:00am). She exits the door, 
and stops.  Make her little hands turn the Time-Turner.

Now, using Laurasia's own words to describe the Time-Travel
process, 
Hermione will "get transported back,"  she will "get
picked up and 
placed [back] in the actual events [at 9:00am]." (#79019)  

So, pick up your Action!Hermione and place her back at 9:00am.

You might have noticed that you just made a loop. It happened in the 
Uber-Dimension (or its correlate) and it left no visible trail 
(unless Hermione was leaking jet-fuel).  Time will not record it, 
because it is a violation of Time's rules.  But it is there.  We
all 
saw it.  

Any time you "go back" to a place you've already been,
you 
necessarily make a loop.  It's as simple as that.  It doesn't
matter 
if you drag Hermione back with her little feet touching the line the 
whole way.  That would just be a two-dimensional loop. Time isn't 
looping, Hermione is.

Now, Hermione1 is still going to Arithmancy, and Hermione2 decides 
to go to Divination (put another Action!Hermione at 9:00am to 
represent this).  Looking down at the Timeline, you see no evidence 
of HOW this state of affairs came to be, you only see Hermione in 
two places, simultaneously, "as if" both selves were
"always" there.

You can repeat this a third time for Muggle Studies.  Then, after 
the third and final Hermione arrives, we see the ultimate record of 
Time for the hour between 9:00am and 10:00am on September 2, 1993.

Because 9:00am-10:00am, September 2, 1993,  is "always" the
same, 
exact hour, however many times Hermione uses the Time-Turner will 
determine how many Hermiones will populate the hour and, whatever 
the number, they will seem "always" to have been there.

But, "always" is a word from Time's limited vocabulary. 
In 
actuality, the "always" that we end up with is not the only
"always" 
that ever was, nor is it the only "always" that could ever
have 
been. 

If Professor Trelawney were to throttle Hermione2-- before the 
second turning of the Time-Turner, before we lifted Hermione's 
little feet from 10:00 back to 9:00, again-- then Hermione would 
only  "always"  have been two places during that hour.  It is
only 
because Hermione lived to turn the Time-Turner twice that she will 
now "always" be three places during that hour.

In addition to explaining why Hermione is in for an early menopause, 
bboy's metabolic riff further underscores this point.

Though we finally see all three Hermiones in the 9:00am to 10:00am 
slot, we know that Hermione3 is a metabolic-hour older than 
Hermione2, and two metabolic-hours older than Hermione1.  

This demonstrates that each iteration of Hermione had to survive 
(and choose to use a Time-Turner)--without the assistance of the 
older version of herself-- in order to "send back" that older 
version.
 
Though Time stubbornly shows Hermiones 1,2 & 3 as 
being "always" "simultaneously"  there, we know that
they arrived in 
a serial fashion, and they still bear the metabolic proof of it.  
Therefore, each is dependant on the pre-survival of the other.  

This has important implications for Harry by the lake, because:

You cannot exist as a savior-self that is even one metabolic-second 
older than you were when you would have perished without it.

Say it again. 

You cannot exist as a savior-self that is even one metabolic-second 
older than you were when you would have perished without it.

To say otherwise is not only improbable, it is impossible.

Therefore, older Harry could not initially save younger Harry--even 
though Time insists that he was "always" present in both
roles.  
Younger Harry needed to survive long enough to be older Harry--so 
that older Harry could, in turn,  go back and "always" be
there.  At 
least "always" in  Time's point of view, which is warped
by its need 
to adhere to its own rules and its very denial of the Time-Travel 
event.

Bboy seems to recognize this, at least briefly,  in #57776 when he 
says: "I won't get into what happens if your original self
dies 
during that 10 years because it obviously didn't happen or you 
wouldn't have been able to be age 30 and go back in time."

Quod erat demonstrandum.

Time-Travelers will experience the "always" presence of
themselves, 
because whenever they act in the Relevant Span, they are back inside 
of Time, once again subject to its rules, and it's denial of 
the "return trip."

But we, in the Uber-Dimension of your kitchen, know differently.  
And we have snacks. 

* * * * *Narrative Function* * * * *

I neither accept Laurasia's mandate for a Two Option universe,
nor 
the artificial dichotomy she tries to create by insisting that 
theory choice is driven by the reader's narrative preferences.

Acctually, the "it-was-always-that-way" theory seems to
largely 
render the narrative work of Time-Travel superfluous. Laurasia 
maintains that Travelers have always achieved their goals, before 
ever using the Turner, and that they don't actually change
anything. 
Under these circumstances, one doesn't wonder why the Ministry 
controls Time-Turners, one wonders why they bother to produce them 
at all.

The idea of the series' message being that Harry "only has
himself, 
and doesn't need anyone else" is rather perverse inasmuch as
he has 
never yet survived an adventure without a great deal of assistance.

Even under Laurasia's theory, Harry needed Dumbledore's plan
and 
Hermione's knowledge/use of the Turner in order to "always be
there 
for himself."  Then there was McGonagall's work persuading
the 
M.o.M. to let Hermione have the Turner, and of course Lupin's 
efforts to teach Harry how to make a Patronus, in the first place.   

Next, Laurasia tries to equate rejecting her theory with denying 
that Harry created the patronus.  How she comes to this, I do not 
know.

I unequivocally believe that Harry created the "Prongs"
patronus, 
which was the one and only patronus seen in the PoA "dementors by 
the lake" scene.

I do not think Snape used a patronus there at all.  Harry may not 
know of any other means to control dementors, but he is hardly 
Snape's equal in DADA.

The only difference the reader has with my theory is that Snape is, 
as usual, protecting Harry.  In this case, protecting him in such a 
way that Harry gains the confidence he needs to finally produce 
his "Prongs," and so reap all the narrative benefits thereof.


None of the melodramatic intimations of narrative consequence obtain.

Nonetheless, I have no doubt that Harry will someday be surprised to 
find what an ally he has in Snape. Especially in light of all the 
guilt and anger Harry is busily displacing in unreasoned hatred of 
Snape, by the end of OoP.  (Though Snape's new awareness of the 
Dursley's abuse is the likely source of the Order's sudden 
intervention on Harry's behalf.)

Along the lines of  bluesqueak's "Good vs. Nice" review
(#79453), 
with which I agree 200%,  I'll say that Snape is as Good (and
Brave) 
as he is "not Nice."  He has helped Harry in every book, and
we 
haven't seen the best of him yet.

It is not rational to say that my requiring the Traveler to survive 
long enough to "go back" would allow mass resurrections.
There is 
just no basis for this statement.  Moreover, when this discussion 
started, one of my first postulates was that Time-Travel could not 
bring back the dead or soul-sucked, and I thought we, at least, all 
agreed on that.

As to the grayness of HP's moral landscape, I am on record,
previous 
to the TBAY posts you laud, Laurasia, as to its being very gray, 
indeed.  This is not at all altered by Snape's helping Harry.  
(Although, your being Kirstini's alter-ego WOULD explain a few 
things. )

Rather than causing gaps in the narrative, my account 1) joins 
seamlessly with Snape's established character development, 2)
offers 
the "least inventive" explanation of how Fudge, etc. knew the 
dementors had tried to kiss Harry, 3) is perfectly supported by 
Snape's proximity and Harry's limited vision in each version
of the 
experience, and 4) explains the repeated use of the dementor scenes 
during Occlumency lessons in OoP.  

At the risk of inbreeding, I'll point out that more on these
points 
can be found in my posts leading up to this Troll wrestling event: # 
# 78215, 78258, 78273, 79068.  

Let me add this little smidgen to my facial comparisons in # 79068 
(Occlumency dementor scene), not only is Harry's "screwing up
his 
face" in the "Snape among the dementors" vision (OoP 591)
consistent 
with what Harry1 would have been doing as he fought for 
consciousness, (PoA , 383-84 ) but it is what Harry2 is described as 
doing as he tries to see across the lake (PoA, 411).  

Finally, JKR is sometimes criticized for descriptive repetition, but 
repetition is a time-honored literary device that not only unifies a 
text, but infuses it with meaning by creating internal symbolism.  
Next time you think you hear an old bell ringing, listen.  Give it a 
chance to tell you something.      

Talisman, off to Knock-turn Alley for that Action!Hand of Glory.