“Now, still holding the yarn picture, imagine that, all of a sudden, with no explainable reason, a force greater than all the yarn haphazardly tangles the line. What a mess!”

This, Max, is a Time Maze.

It is an time anomaly of microscale. The timeline distorts itself (or gets distorted) into a single, constrained space, mostly physical. Whatever enters in there is subject to the laws that rule the anomaly, which are none.

Now, I believe you already understand the nature and perils of finding yourself in a time paradox, right? Two timeframes cannot coexist, otherwise they will erase each other and the Time Maze will implode, rearranging the timeline to its rightful place.”

“And why can’t we just change the timeline?”

“Because This timeline is already doomed. You failed the test, and soon you shall face the consequences for it. Unless…”

“unless???”

And Mr. Rato smiled before proceeding.

“To you I offer a question, and what its done with it is rest in your hands: what if it was possible to create another timeline?”

“another timeline? this is not physically possible!!”

“Haha, Meryl, I shall disagree with you. To create a timeline is a more physical than you would ever imagine. In fact, it is bound to literality.”

“How so?”

“Do you remember the yarn ball allegory? Well, picturing a timeline as such, what if we could just create another one? What if we could take another yarn ball?

Usually we can’t. The mesh of timespace is too thick for us to directly manipulate it. But as you’ve been seeing through this little journey of yours, the laws of reality get a little nebulous inside a powerful anomaly like a Time Maze. The fabric of time becames more maleable and, if holding the right knowledge, one shall be able to make it sucessful to craft an entire new chain of events.”

“I don’t get it. Don’t we do this already? Like, whenever we take an action?”

“Perfectly put, Max, we are indeed, technically speaking, able to write our future - but at the cost of overwriting the original lines. We are merely “changing” the current timeline. Can you imagine how many changes we do in the span of minutes? Seconds, even? How many alterations we do in our “particular timelines”?

Now, imagine if you can, what if we could visualize all of these alterations? What if they happened all at once?

To these we give the name of “alternate timelines”. To make one? It is simpler than it looks.

It only takes a string.”

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