The Leather Duster time travel theory

[despicableme]

Sounds dumbass even to my while I type...but I like like the symetry (sp.!)

Fallen Angels (Denarians) have shadows.  Copies that have a life of their own.
Harry has a shadow (subconscious harry).  Which can interact without his knowledge with other shadows

Harry part angel?

Calling people's opinions "dumbass" isn't permitted here.  We require that posters treat each other with respect. --Priscilla

Okay, clearly *I'm* the dumbass.  You were talking about your own theory.  Carry on. --Priscilla

No worries Priscilla. Glad you are keeping me us in line : )

Just to carry on with the baseless speculation...could Harry's double pain point headaches result from two "shadows" in his head fighting for real estate?


Horrible pic.  Overused meme.  I couldn't resist posting.  I feel great shame.

[HistoryDave]

Harry has had a person with eidetic memory in his head for some significant part of the series, come to think of it.

Yes, exactly correct.  If we want to pursue this rabbit down its hole.  Lash can recreate rooms and settings exactly as she perceived them.  She was present at the construction and use of LC so she is familiar with the method.  I feel a little ilke a conspiracy theorist, but it is a fun line of thought.

[wizard nelson]

Yes, exactly correct.  If we want to pursue this rabbit down its hole.  Lash can recreate rooms and settings exactly as she perceived them.  She was present at the construction and use of LC so she is familiar with the method.  I feel a little ilke a conspiracy theorist, but it is a fun line of thought.

what is your theory precisely? that lash will help recreate LC? that due to increased influence she convinced harrys subconscious mind to sleepwalk and fix LC?

[wizard nelson]

I hate to even open this can of worms but it fits with the line of reasoning from earlier posts.  Little Chicago: Harry projected himself outside his body using that device.

If Little Chicago still exists could it be used to breech the 4th dimension?  Maybe Harry can leave his body without it now that he has more experience being out of body.  LC is just a focus, though extremely complicated, magic can be performed without a focus.

Sits back to watch the speculation.

i WAGed that it would be used as a thaumaturgical springboard to travel back to chicago the way it used to be. like a little piece of history to use as the connection. but a duck nailed me with a woj that little chicago would be totally destroyed in a fire, though he never precisely says it was... its still great theory based on sound magical processes.

[sn0mm1s]

Does this fit with all that subconscious Harry says though? I could've sworn he says to not trust Tara West in Full Moon. So, unless she plays a role in some future story, that would seem like a very odd seed to plant. I am sure I could nitpick some other conversations that just don't make much sense if it was an astral projecting/time traveling Harry.

[roteral]

Does this fit with all that subconscious Harry says though? I could've sworn he says to not trust Tara West in Full Moon. So, unless she plays a role in some future story, that would seem like a very odd seed to plant. I am sure I could nitpick some other conversations that just don't make much sense if it was an astral projecting/time traveling Harry.

WellI remember hearing once that Terra's story isn't done yet, so that either means shell come back tod help or hinder Harry. If it was Future Harry, that means that Terra probably hurts Harry in the future

[Bakoro]

There's no way Tera West isn't going to come back. Her little Were-cub must be about 11 or so now? The Line Will Not End!

[logistics]

Heh...Vadderung said that the best way to change history is to affect the future.

Now that's an angle I hadn't considered when putting this together, but it fits. Overcome the temporal inertia problem Odin mentioned by having your past self make all the changes.

[french engineer]

I'm sorry, but it seems to me a lot of your theory hinges on subconscious!Harry wearing the duster before the duster makes an appearance. Doesn't the new coat, the one that is definitely not the black leather duster, mean that the future!Harry you say is subconscious!Harry comes from before Cold days?

[HistoryDave]

i WAGed that it would be used as a thaumaturgical springboard to travel back to chicago the way it used to be. like a little piece of history to use as the connection. but a duck nailed me with a woj that little chicago would be totally destroyed in a fire, though he never precisely says it was... its still great theory based on sound magical processes.

I haven't fleshed my "theory" out.  It was more like stream of consciousness suposition.  I had thought that Lash could potentially recreate LC, or any setting she was familiar with.  I was honestly embarrassed to post that thought.  I have seen LC posts degenerate into wild speculation, based on a very thin premise.  I suppose I don't have the courage of my own convictions when I started speculating about LC being a potential device for time travel.

There are couple of really big IFS in my "theory"

IF#1:  Time travel via mental projection.  The OP supposes that Harry was able to project himself back in time into the role of his own subconcious.  I like this theory, mostly because of the cool factor, but the dialogue with Harry sounds a lot like a more experienced Harry offering advice to his younger self.  Accepting that as apremise I started speculating about how this might be accomplished.

Harry has projected himself outside his own body on a couple of occasions.  Most recently when he was "mostly dead" and before when he used LC.  It greatly resembled Astral Projection when he did it in WN.  He placed himself in a deep trance (an unconscious state) and using LC as a focus was able to project his thoughts (his sub-conscious) into the city of Chicago.  This was accomplished by using a scale model of Chicago (LC) in a meticulous recreation of its PRESENT state.

IF#2:  Recreating LC in a past point in time would allow Harry to project his thoughts into said past.  Ms. Duck pointed out the LC is a "puddle of goo". I speculated about what a person with an eidetic memory might be able to do and Neurovore pointed out that Harry may have Lash still in his head (she has an eidetic memory as exhibited in DB) and she can project detailed recreations of anything she has seen. 

If#3: Lash is still in Harry's brain.

If Lash is still in there, she could recreate LC or a simulacrum thereof inside Harrys mind to use a focus.   We saw Harry do a rather complex summoning ritual, without a focus object when he summoned Mab in GS.  He did it all in his own mind.  If Lash were to help Harry  visualize Chicago, or any place else for that matter, at a certain point in time he would have the opportunity to project his sub-concious to that place.  There is no place that Lash is more familiar with than Harry's brain, she has been there for years (maybe). 

So, IF all of this is true, Lash could at some future point create an image of Harry's state of mind via his own memories as it existed in FM and future Harry could project his sub-conscious back to that point in time to give past Harry a pep talk at a critical decision point in his life.  This could allow him to affect the future and avoid many of the dangerous variables of time travel like the "butterfly efect" as the location of interaction would be his own mind.  It also has the elegance of him not having to lie to himself. it really is his own sub-concious mind with whom he is having the conversation, just not his present sub-conscious.

Whew.  I'm not sure even I believe this but it seems to fit with a number of things we have been shown about the laws of magic.  And it's cool!  Also, Logistics is the guy who gets credit for this line of thinking.  My ideas were based on his seed.  He may not agree with what I have posted.

[logistics]

I'm sorry, but it seems to me a lot of your theory hinges on subconscious!Harry wearing the duster before the duster makes an appearance. Doesn't the new coat, the one that is definitely not the black leather duster, mean that the future!Harry you say is subconscious!Harry comes from before Cold days?

From my understanding, the new coat looks very similar to the original leather duster with only a few minor cosmetic differences, but fits even better then the original. Which I take as additional evidence, actually now that I think about it.

From page 390-391 of Cold Days, the new coat description:

I found myself smiling and held up a long coat of heavy black leather, like one of those old cowboy dusters, except for the long mantle hanging down over its shoulders. It smelled like new leather and shone without a scuff mark to be seen.
...
The weight of the leather settling around me was familiar and comforting, but this coat wasn't the same as my old coat. The sleeves were a little longer, and fit better. The shoulders were a little narrower, and actually matched up with mine. The mantle hung down a bit more. The pockets were in a slightly different place.

[logistics]

...
IF#1:  Time travel via mental projection.  The OP supposes that Harry was able to project himself back in time into the role of his own subconcious. 
...

Just to clarify, I don't honestly think that the Mysterious Figure (need to come up with a better name...how about Future!Harry) is actually in his own subconscious or influencing it in any way. I don't think Harry has ever talked to his own subconscious. Thinking back to my barely remembered psych courses, the entire idea of talking to your subconsciousness just doesn't seem plausible, even in a hypnotized state.

Personally, I think Future!Harry proposed the whole 'I am your Unconscious Mind' as a way to head off any speculation from Present!Harry into guessing what is going on. Future!Harry presumably knows how he thinks, and he's been notoriously non-introspective for almost the entire series. Getting him to think of his future self as some dark aspect of his mind would  be exactly what a Future!Harry would want, as his own psychological hangups and defenses would shut down any deep thought on the matter. This allows Future!Harry to influence the past without anyone - especially his past self, noticing.

[Ms Duck]

Time travel via mental projection.  The OP supposes that Harry was able to project himself back in time into the role of his own subconcious.  I like this theory, mostly because of the cool factor, but the dialogue with Harry sounds a lot like a more experienced Harry offering advice to his younger self.  Accepting that as apremise I started speculating about how this might be accomplished.

this actualy fits into my own ideas of what a mantle is , and how it works.

I think the mantles, bob, the archive are essentially different versions of the same thing- programs/ databases made of pure infromation, and to some degree stored in the NN.

we know, from Jim, that other versions of Bob exist. We can speculate, from Jim's evil laugh, that some of them are much more impressive then Bob.

Bob's a PC. single system, stored in a single place, but pretty awesome

now whats the archive? its obviously not all in the head of that poor little girl, it wont fit. Its a network of some kind, with some parts in Ivy, some stored in her ancestors in the past, some potential in the future. this givers her some level of precogntion; thats why she got so upset about not being able to help harry in changes. Now lets go one step farther-

a cloud/ distributed system. imagine avst system, so large that no sinbgle person's past/ present/ future selves can possibly hold the thing. A system capable of calculating weather/ environemnt/ biological changes on a global scale. Imagine Giaia.

some part of it is hosted in mother winter, im sure. Some lesser part in Mab. Now some in Molly. But the same holds true for summer. Its all one ,mantle, just different aspects of split among the now six hosts.

Each person is a distinct entity, but each has access to the central server.. and the server has access to them, which is why they start to resemble twins even when they arent bioligicaly related at all; they are all different points on the same curve.

now Harry has some limtied access to this. He cant use it now, but in the future he might be able too, with propper experience and some soulfire to 'hack' the system.

he now has a tool for both seeing the future, and changing the past.. as long as hes damn carefull with it.


and so Priscellie can eyebrow me for calling myself a dumbass too, i shall now call myself a dumbass too because I just figured out how future Harry could have fixed little chicago. And why/how Molly's feelings could infleunce Mab. Shes part of the system now, after all.

Oo

oO

someone please tell this theory makes no sense at all

[Rasins]

Ms. Duck,

I think your Model is flawed (as are most models of systems). 

I do believe that everything of a certain bent has a connection.  But I believe that free will throws a curve into the system that you don't take into consideration.  I think that's the wild card in the whole system that isn't supposed to include humans.  Maybe they are the "Users" (to take a term from Tron) of the system?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

There's no way Tera West isn't going to come back. Her little Were-cub must be about 11 or so now? The Line Will Not End!

Or so legend has it. Everything Chauncey says about that curse after "legend has it" could be a pack of lies that Chauncey is truthfully reporting was once told as a legend.  So we have no solid reason to believe in it.