Audio, public.

[ewestmarch]

[A sharp, scratchy female voice comes over the network, spitting her words like bullets.]

Where does the solidness of the objects come from when you turn on a spawner? How does it convert electrical energy into bread, or cloth, or gold? Is there a limit to how much of a certain material you can tell it to conjure?

It's all well and good to have spawners in every fucking color of the rainbow, but my world has too much power and not enough food. One of these could change the entire economy. Bring the bottom closer to the top.

And don't get any sly damned ideas. I saw it first. Just answer the questions.

[Private, also, to Braska.]

I've seen you over the network. What happens to the dead when they aren't Sent?

Comments

technobabble ahoy!

[timesbureaucrat]

Well, since you asked...

It appears to use a non-standard energy-matter conversion system, running energy through a variation on transdynamiplattic coils to decelerate the energy particles to hypolight speeds, then force a narrow beam through a type of pressoritron to assemble the energy into various particular forms of matter, the kind of matter depending on the the configuration of the atomic assembly, each of which is determined by a unique set of programming.

[Narvin actually looks really happy to talk about it. He likes gadgets. And showing off.]

But I wouldn't take alien tech to your home world if I were you.

[ewestmarch]

Non-standard. There is a standard system? Mechanical? More or less efficient?

[timesbureaucrat]

I mean to say that it's not standard compared to the types of systems I've seen and worked with before. The basic physics is the same, but the nature of the technology the aliens developed to harness the physical laws is peculiar. I can replicate it, but I'm not sure I entirely understand it yet.

[ewestmarch]

You can?

Could you make it portable? Mobile?

What do you need?

Show me.

[timesbureaucrat]

At the moment I can't alter it or improve it, merely duplicate the technology as it is.

The size is probably as small as physics allows. A certain amount of space is required for adequate energy build up to take place. Even the Gallifreyan variations I'm most familiar with are of comparable size, and not terribly portable unless stored within a dimensionally transcendental space.

[ewestmarch]

[Dimensionally transcendental. She doesn't want to ask what it means unless she has to. So.

Dimensionally. Adv. Relating to a property of space or extension in a certain direction. Transcendental. Transcendent? Transcending properties of space?]

If it couldn't be smaller, it could be larger?

[timesbureaucrat]

It could be encased in a container smaller than the spawner itself. That wouldn't change the weight, however; it would just twist space around it so it takes up less volume.

But it's all hypothetical as Time Lord law expressly prohibits allowing Gallifreyan technology to fall into alien hands, so even though I could build a dimensionally transcendental box, I won't.

[ewestmarch]

Asshole. What kind of name is Time Lord?

[timesbureaucrat]

[His eyebrow goes up at the swearing, but he says nothing about it.]

It is the name of my people, and a perfectly apt name for the first race who perfected time travel.

[ewestmarch]

If you have time travel, why is everything still so fucked up?

[timesbureaucrat]

Because you can't use time travel to just fix any past mistake that strikes your fancy! Every novice knows that.

[ewestmarch]

Why?

If you were going to correct it, wouldn't it already be corrected? It's only your hesitance that prevents the problems from currently existing at all.

Besides, it's not my fancy. I can think of a couple of genocides a well-placed knife could have nipped in the bud.

[timesbureaucrat]

That's exactly why it shouldn't be done at any old whim. If the problems no longer exist, then there is nothing to incite that future time traveller to go back in time and make the problems cease to exist. It creates a paradox, and those have to managed very carefully or else you can start fraying the very threads of reality. It requires discretion and a highly-trained professional touch.

Besides which, if we decided to use our powers to remake history we, like any race, would surely do it to our benefit, not out of altruism for the downtrodden. It is a sign of Rassilon's wisdom that he set down laws forbidding us from following that dark path. [A path which Narvin saw in an alternative universe. It wasn't pretty.]

[ewestmarch]

A law against preventing tragedies is a stupid law.

[timesbureaucrat]

It's a necessary law. If time travel isn't regulated, whose to say what's a tragedy that needs altering? One person's massacre is another's righteous victory against a threatening force. If everyone were changing the timelines to suit their personal moral tastes, it would be utter chaos. Plus, even the worst of tragedies are a critical part in the chain of events that make up history. Mess with that and you're inviting all sorts of trouble. Say you stop one primitive civilization from wiping out another. And those survivors who should-not-have-been procreate. And those children in turn procreate, and 2000 years down the line one of their distant descendants, who was not supposed to exit, writes a philosophical tract, which splits ideologies, which provokes a war, which leads to a nuclear apocalypse, wiping out the entire species. Changing history is not as simple as picking a particular event you don't like and rewriting the ending.

[Narvin's voice was slowly rising through the speech, getting downright shrill by the end. He clears his throat and his voice drops back to his more standard smooth tone.]

And that's not even addressing the very real problem of people abusing time travel for more selfish ends, if such a law did not exist.

[ewestmarch]

What's the penalty for breaking it, anyway?

[timesbureaucrat]

If you're one of the famous brothers from the House of Lungbarrow, you get a promotion.

[Narvin is never one to pass up a bitter jibe at Braxiatel and the Doctor. Even if they aren't here.]

Everyone else is punished with exile or vapourization.

[ewestmarch]

[Emilia laughs suddenly, a single burst of sound that stops in a matter of seconds.]

Oh, is that all? There are things I'd be exiled for. Or vaporized, hell.

[timesbureaucrat]

[Narvin raises an eyebrow at her laugh.]

We also send in a team to undo whatever damage was done to the timeline. Your actions would be undone. No martyrdom for the good of the cause.

[ewestmarch]

How can you undo what was done if it's always been that way? If the past changes, the present has to be influenced in turn.

[timesbureaucrat]

The Matrix records data outside of time. Regardless of what changes are make to history, the Matrix keeps a complete track of the original sequence of events. We can use that record to isolate and correct any untoward deviations in the time line.

[ewestmarch]

How can something be outside of time?

[timesbureaucrat]

Simple. Pocket universe. The Matrix exists within a space-time bubble. The Matrix's reality is not like the reality of the outside universe.

[ewestmarch]

Doesn't the word "universe" mean by its nature that nothing is outside of it?

[timesbureaucrat]

I've been to six distinct universes personally, including this one. Even met another version of myself.