Story Time

Time travel is a fun little subject, there are a lot of possibilities inherent in the concept. First the very idea of time travel plays upon human nature as it is only natural to rail against the oppression felt at the hands of the clock,as time continues to march forward no matter what we do. The rigid linearity of time means that we only ever get one chance at something, and the constant theme of predestination in time travel tales is a bit of a rationalization of this; it always seems to turn out that the way things happened were the best way for things to happen, otherwise that would mean that the decisions we could have made in the past could have turned out better, and with how time works in reality, we'll never actually be able to experience the benefits of having chosen correctly. Both the premise and the moral of the story are reassuring fantasies.

Using time travel as a narrative device also allows authors to play with perspective. People only ever experience time linearly, but through imagination and memory, can mentally project themselves either into the past or the future. The problem with perceiving the past and future in a purely mental sense of the word is that we can't actually tangibly change anything. No matter how many times we relive a memory, the past remains the past, and no matter how thoroughly we predict the future, it is still just a guess until the appointed time arrives. In time travel fiction these rules change, being able to foresee the future will allow you to change it, the past can be relived exactly as you remember it, only this time you can change things for real. Heck, with time travel it's possible to uncover events in the past that allow you to change the future, or use information from the future to change the past. The linearity of time is soundly cast aside, and whole new realms of perspective open up to the reader.

But enough about time travel as a high concept, how is isoChronal Panic! going to be using incorporate time travel into its story? Well, in the world of isoChronal Panic! time travel is possible thanks to a special element called Timetanium, the only problem is that there is a very limited quantity Timetanium, well in the physical sense of the word. You see all the Timetanium in the entire universe was created in the form of a giant crystal at the dawn of time, that's all the Timetanium there ever was, or ever will be... at one time. Because Timetanium exists throughout history, that means there are an infinite number of individual instances of Timetanium throughout time.

Our main man Dan Guymore may not be an astrophysicist, but he understands the concept in general. His cunning plan is as such: If 1.) Timetanium is extremely rare then that means it's valuable and 2.) Timetanium allows for time travel, and 3.) If one Timetanium crystal sells for a lot of money, than more than one crystal should sell for even more. So it stands to reason that he can use the Timetanium to go back in time to steal more Timetanium and thus get a huge payday by selling off thousands of different Timetanium crystals. In order to get as many Timetanium crystals as possible Dan must start in the his present, (i.e. our future), because if he tried to travel into the future to steal the Timetanium there it wouldn't exist because he used it to power his Chrono-Bowler to travel there to get it. Anyways by starting in the present and working his way backward to the dawn of time, Dan can steal every instance of the Timetanium in existence. Sure it might cause massive chronological instability as time clones of himself pile up within a small cluster of seconds, but all the money he stands to make will make it worth it! It's the perfect plan, nothing could go wrong with it, and even if something did, he could just go back in time and fix it, it is truely the perfect time crime.