This is...the longest I've ever really been away from home.

[He sounds depressed about it, but then he hurriedly adds; ] And I'll be fine, I just -

[Lapsing back.]

I just...miss home.

[A pause, like maybe he shouldn't even say what he was planning to.]

...so...is there anything that - anyone can suggest I do...or...something?

[ When Mithos comes onto the screen he looks a bit annoyed about something. ]

Uhm.. Hello everyone, I'd like to ask a question. What would you say is a clean room? More specifically:

[ He flips his tablet so it shows the room he's in. There were books and papers scattered all over the room. Sticky Note were in various places with some sort of fancy chicken scratch on them. Among the books and papers were also clothing and while the bed was clean it wasn't made.

He moves the tablet around and among the mess is also Kratos standing there with his arm crossed. It doesn't look like he has a clue on what his apprentice was doing right now.

Once Mithos was done he turns the tablet back around so it faces him again. ]

Are there any of you out there who would call that a clean room? And is there any way to convince someone to clean their room.

[ Because he's pretty close to just cleaning it himself. ]

Thank you.

[ a low, mumbling voice ]

My name is Randel Oland. Coroporal. Imperial Army State Section III - Pumpkin Scissors. I've been in Exsilium for two months.

I-- [ he takes a deep breath and gains a bit more confidence ] I know some of us have experienced war before. I have a question for those who have seen war end.

Was there anything done to offer war relief?

Ha, um...

[exhale. Marty fidgets, tablet propped up on his lap, himself squeezed against a corner of a room. his face goes through periods of twitchy, half-hearted smiles that he forgets to keep for more than half a thought.

he tugs at a length of hair, his bangs, holding them down as far as they'll go – just short of the tip of his nose.]

I need to borrow scissors. Or a knife. [weak smile #3.] See? It gets into my eyes and hurts when the wind blows too hard.

It'll only be a couple minutes.

[too bad that's not very long at all. not-so-cheap excuse to talk to the void and get some answers? you bet it is.]

Seems like a lot of people want to know about time travel - which, given the objectives here, isn't all that surprising. I'm not a mathematician or a physicist - if you want the grounding in temporal mechanics, you're better off asking someone else. I am a time-traveller, though, long before I ever came here. I've timeslid enough to have lost count of the number of times. So while I can't tell you the science, I can tell you the practicalities.

People who don't deal with this sort of thing generally have one of two concepts of how time works. One is that time is perfectly linear and immutable. If you go back and time and change something, you will have always gone back in time in changed it, and therefore nothing has actually changed. It will have always already happened. The other view is that every choice splits the universe, into an infinite multitude of realities in which every choice has happened at least once.

The reality, from what I've learned of the mechanics, and what I've experienced, is somewhere inbetween. What the Initiative seeks to do - it's entirely possible, given the right skills. There are nexus points in time, moments that are important whether or not they seem so at the time. History hinges on those moments, and so does the timestream. If a moment is uncertain enough, two different futures will exist for the same timeline simultaneously - call it timeline 1, futures a and b. 1a and 1b will exist in phase until the nexus point snaps into certainty, at which point one will become the future of timeline 1, and the other will become a different reality, timeline 2. Or something else happens entirely, if things are uncertain enough, and both futures break off into timelines 2 and 3, and something else becomes the future of timeline 1.

I don't know anyone who's actually tried to carry out the grandfather paradox, though I assume if you did, you'd strand yourself in a timeline that was no longer your 'native' one - your reality would continue on without you while you're stuck in the other one.

And, I suppose, the one piece of advice I can give - if all of this seems overwhelming, it's simplest to think of things in terms of your own personal timeline, the chronology you've experienced. Which may be out of order with what people around you experience, but it's easier to keep straight that way. And even if you experienced things in a timeline that later - from your point of view - was broken off and orphaned, that doesn't make those experiences any less real.

[Aaaand now you are free to ask questions, even if he forgot to actually invite them. He's not really a teacher, okay]