Apparently mimetic polyalloys that mimic human skin are capable of passing through time.
The biggest plot hole IMO is that time travel creates a sort of Fermi paradox — if humans can ever develop time-travel, why aren't there time tourists or time historians? Stephen Hawking puts forth that if time travel is possible, it's impossible to go further back then when the time disruption/warp/wormhole was originally created. Which could have been woven into the plot in some way.
The concept of "time tourists" and "time historians" is pretty weak, imho. Any time a person travels into the past, they
necessarily change the past just by the fact of them being there.
Consider this: We live in Timeline A. At the year 2934CE, someone travels back in time. They can travel back to a point in time on Timeline A, but it is no longer Timeline A when they arrive there -- it is Timeline B, where things are subtly (at least) different. The amount of mass and energy in the universe changes, and it is not inconceivable to suggest that even this tiny adjustment (especially if compounded dozens or hundreds or millions of times) would throw off the Earth's period of rotation, which might alter its period of revolution, and so forth. The Butterfly Effect, basically. Repeated time travel might change the rate at which the universe expands, causing us to suffer a Big Crunch!
But besides that, we traditionally assume that because a person travels back in time from 2934CE to 2007CE, that in Timeline A a naked guy appears in an alleyway, gets dragged into a psychiatric hospital blathering about the future, and meets Madeleine Stowe. This is derived from the idea that time is linear and that time travel is a sort of loop.
In Timeline B, there is quite possibly such a time tourist, and by the time you get to Timeline ZZZZYQ, the nature of time might be so fragmented that
any attempt at coherently explaining history fails completely.
I do not suggest that an act of time travel splits the universe in two á la the multiple universes theory. At least, I don't think I do. Perhaps I do in another universe's MacRumors. I'm not sure that I can grasp what the implications of this idea are.
I certainly do not believe, however, that Timeline A ceases to exist completely because of an act of time travel. Timeline A, where Cyberdyne does not design Skynet -- it is designed by someone else, continues to exist. Timeline B, where a T-800 is sent back in time by Microsoft Skynet v2.3™ to kill Sarah Connor (and succeeds) continues to exist. Timeline C, where the discovery of a crushed T-800 leads Cyberdyne to design Skynet and Skynet sends a T-800 back in time to kill Sara Connor, continues to exist.
If all points in time on Timeline A exist at the same "time" (viewed in a higher dimension), and the same for all other Timelines, we might assume that there is a law conserving energy similar to our own physical laws. If that is the case, it would be impossible to create or destroy timelines, only convert them into other timelines. I suppose this actually destroys my idea that multiple timelines can exist concurrently. (Hell, I don't know, I'm making this up as I go along)
Of course, I think that above paragraph presupposes the existence of free will. I don't believe in free will, since it goes against everything I understand about neuroscience, physics, and so forth. You may have conflicting desires, but in the end you will make the only decision you could have made.
If indeed there is no such thing as free will, and our lives and the ultimate fate of the universe down to the lives of the most microscopic buggers are fixed by physical laws operating in direct causal relationships, then there can only be one timeline or, at best, a fixed array of timelines.
And so, when Globbitus of Planet McDonald's in 2934CE gets the Spinning Beachball of Death on his copy of OS X Lemur and starts Time Machine v.161.42 without deleting the .plist or repairing permissions and actually travels back in time to 2007, it is still conceivable to view Globbitus as a rather perplexed (naked?) person suddenly appearing in an alley in Akron, Ohio, where he flirts with my wife and I kick his ass.
But at the same time, you might be able to view time more as a side view of an ant farm -- with branches thrown around willy-nilly -- not evolving as time progresses in a linear sense but rather there in its full glory ever since the birth of the universe, predetermined by the most miniscule of initial variables. Can the Big Bang alter structures in higher dimensions? Perhaps the better question is: was the Big Bang a result of structures in higher dimensions?
This is why I disbelieve in God. Every wonder that I see, from these little collectivist-socialist amoebas I read about on DamnInteresting to the ultimate mysteries of the universe, is immensely diminished by positing the existence of a man in the clouds who wants us to avoid eating shellfish. It's a rather depressing idea, to me at least. Similarly, it's a mistake to interpret literature of any kind based on the testimony of characters from that literature, who necessarily (as we all do) have imperfect knowledge. Analysis of the
reality of the work, as much as we can perceive, is the only way to perceive the truth of the work.
feel free to message me, I'm a huge Terminator and lost fan.
