Three Coping Mechanisms for Problems in Imaginative Fiction

Self-Caused Time Travel Event

So there are two basic models of time travel; one model says that when you go back in time everything that happens after the point you traveled to gets reset, and the other says that time is fixed and while it is possible for a time traveler to affect the future/present that effect has already been determined and if they try to change something that they know for certain happened they will fail.

Now, there is a particular problem with the fixed-time model which many writers of imaginative fiction simply love to exploit, which is that in this model two events can simultaneously cause each other. For example, in the television show Gargoyles there was an evil wizard who was falling to his death when he was rescued by... himself. From the future. Who was saved in exactly the same manner. In fact, they actually showed the whole process of the older self instructing the younger self and eventually sending him back in time to become the older self saving and instructing the younger self. So why did this happen? When the wizard was falling to his death, was there any good reason to assume he would be rescued? Of course not! He was only saved because his future, time-traveling self had been saved by his own future, time-traveling self who had also been saved by his future, time-traveling self... You get the picture? These two events are causally cut off from everything else in the universe aside from those relating to the original birth of the wizard! It's completely illogical and it really gets on my nerves...

Which is why I've developed my own theory to cope with the bad logic of this paradox. You see, my theory is that what we see in such stories is the third or fourth incarnation of a cycle. In the first cycle, a time-traveler goes back in time to make some change. Then they get zapped back to their own time and they realize that with the original problem fixed they have no reason to go back in time and fix it. I'm not quite sure what this problem looks like when it's played out, but however it looks the basic idea is that the universe swallowed a paradox and it is finding that paradox very hard to digest. Maybe the time-traveler has/is a copy of himself, maybe there's a hole in space and time, or maybe there's something else I can't even imagine. Whatever the case, the time-traveler realizes that they have to go back again in order to fix the paradox. Then, after at least one more cycle of time trying swinging in and out of balance, we finally get the cycle that you and I see in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Gargoyles, and occasionally on Doctor Who. The final cycle is one in which time is satisfied because both events are caused by each other (in other words, the future event isn't disrupted by the time travel because it is caused by it) and logic is satisfied because the ultimate cause for both events lies in another timeline which logic can recognize even if time can't.

Creatures that Grow Huge in Mere Minutes

You know what's a really, really basic rule of science? The Law of Preservation of Matter. You know what the Incredible Hulk, the Xenomorph from the Alien movies, and the incredibly quickly aging child from a particular episode of Fringe all have in common? They all break the Law of Preservation of Matter. Basically, any time something grows to three times its original size or more without eating as much mass as it's gaining, that law is being broken.

Now this kind of thing is entirely acceptable in fantasy. Magic can do things like that. It is not, however, okay in science fiction, particularly a science fiction show like Fringe that makes a point of explaining how all its phenomenon are supposedly plausible in some vague way. You are allowed to bend the rules or invent new ones in science fiction, but this is the kind of thing that is just so incredibly basic that it's almost sacrilege to ignore it. And in most cases no one seems to even realize there's a problem!

In this particular case, I have a multiple theories to make my head stop hurting and to reverse my transformation into a giant squid of anger. One theory is basically all about wormholes. In this scenario, the subject in question is actually some kind of special quantum creature (I mean, there really isn't any way to explain superheroes like Thor without claiming they tap directly into the fabric of the universe) which uses tiny, cellular wormholes to draw in the necessary chemicals from all across the universe. This theory works, but it's not really one that I'm happy with simply because I find the idea of a Xenomorph incorporating this into its biology to be so absurd. The kinds of creatures that appear to gain matter out of nowhere often simply don't fit the type of something that warps the very fabric of the universe.

The two other theories I have to explain this can basically both be labeled as alchemy. The first is that the creature in question is able to draw in and incorporate any matter readily available, even if that's only the air that it breathes. Somehow, the creature is able to make those chemicals act as if they were other ones (specifically, the nutrients that a living thing needs in order to grow) or else it is able to rearrange the particles and turn the chemicals it has into the chemicals it wants (don't ask me what happens to the leftover particles).

Finally, the second alchemical theory is that the creature has that matter all along, it was just... hidden. Essentially, the idea is that in this imagined universe there is some way to trick an atom into compressing or expanding beyond its normal size. In fact, it's even possible to trick the compressed or expanded atom into behaving as if it weren't even there. That's why Bruce Banner can step on a scale and see that he's 174 pounds, but when the Hulk steps on the same scale it just gets smashed to pieces. They both have exactly the same amount of matter, but when Bruce is himself much of that matter just hides in a little corner and does nothing. It doesn't weigh anything, it doesn't react to anything, it doesn't do anything that suggests that it even exists. Until he gets angry.

Obviously, all three of these phenomenon would be unlikely to occur naturally even if they were possible, but they are still more likely than a monster growing from two feet to fifteen feet tall without having eaten anything. And so the headache is relieved.

Aliens that Could Never Have Invented Spaceships

Finally, the last problem that I can currently recall is that of monstrous, animalistic aliens that fly through lightyears of space to... eat us. Two examples of this problem are the new movie After Earth in which a race of aliens called the Ursa (which sense their prey by through the hormones released by fear and are otherwise blind even though they can apparently sense the landscape fairly well) relentlessly hunt humans and in Storage 24 in which an alien creature (which is baffled and even frightened by a robotic puppy) stalks a handful of friends through a storage facility. In both cases the aliens in question are highly animalistic (they literally fight with only tooth and nail, they are very predatory, and they are completely naked) and also have spaceships.

The problem here is that the monsters are heroes fight couldn't possibly have built the ships they fly. Even if we accept that these are extremely intelligent creatures (which is a role they certainly don't fit very well) we have to realize that it takes more than intelligence to build a spaceship. It takes an almost playful delight in solving puzzles that is so great you actually go out looking for puzzles such as the formula for converting energy into matter, it takes a collection of beings that are peaceable enough and interested enough in knowledge to preserve and build upon the discoveries of its members, and lastly it takes a complete civilization that can both provide everything needed to build a spaceship and can also support people whose role in life is to simply solve puzzles and build inventions. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see the shrieking, naked, homicidal monsters present in so many alien movies as being able to fit into the society I just described. So how did they build those spaceships?

They didn't.

I have two simple theories on this matter; one being that they stole the ships and the other being that they themselves are just as much tools as those crafts they are carried by. In the first scenario these are savage but intelligent cave aliens who came into contact with another much more developed race at some point in the past. These other aliens showed them their fabulous technology, tried to interact with them, and finally got killed for it. The monsters that we see then took the vessels of their vanquished prey and familiarized themselves with them. In other words, they are technologically parasitic savages. This also explains why these aliens invade Earth instead of terraforming new planets (if they want the land) or mining other celestial bodies (if they want resources) since they don't actually know enough about their own technology to use any planet they can't survive on.

The other theory is that they were either enslaved or bioengineered by another alien race that is actually drawing the strings. This makes sense since any seriously developed civilization would probably send probes on ahead instead of risking their own kind in any exploration of space. Perhaps their medicinal skills are advanced enough that the advantage of a probe that can heal outweighs the risk of disease. Of course, this theory also makes things very interesting for any story in which the heroes valiantly defeated some army of feral extraterrestrials. In this scenario, the invasion humanity is so happy to have survived is only a fraction of the onslaught our distant enemies are capable of unleashing.

A Thanks For Stumbling Blocks

Praise to the Lord
The Holy One of Israel
Who has made me weak

I was of fortunate birth
With a robust mind
And a tall frame
I could have been anything

But my Father is wiser than that
He gave me flaws to match my strengths
He saw the idol I might have built
And took a knife to the wet clay
Slicing at imagined tendons
Carving away the smug grin
He saw my own Tower of Babel
And contaminated all the bricks
Tweaked all my mathematics
And sent storms to bring it down
He did it at the beginning
And He has done it again and again
Whenever I was foolish enough
To resume the work

I have walked the steady descent to Hell
More times than I can count
And each time I was turned back
It could have been easier
I could have gone farther
But He put a knot in my gut
And gave my feet a clumsy gait
He made a procrastinator
Who fears crowds and offices
And struggles with small talk
He gave me vices and weaknesses
And sacred stumbling blocks
To save me from myself

So praise Adonai
For those little moments
When I can't help but see my wickedness
When I'm heading to Gehenna's gates
And He knocks the wind out of me
Throws me to my knees
And waits to receive my prayers

Thank God
That I am not the me I could have been
The one that climbed the mountain
Of mortal ambition
And, finding it empty,
Died of starvation
And praise the I Am also
That I am not the other one
That never felt temptation
Because there's a glory that's only seen
When you've been knocked senseless
Struck down in the middle of evil deeds
And, out of nowhere, made to kneel
That's when you get it
The sight of the Cross
The glorious, fearful, powerful, costly Cross

I can almost hear it sometimes
Echoing from the coming ages
I hear a moment resonating
Perfectly in tune with just one line
Sometimes I think I'm dancing to it
That song that I will sing
Loud and giddy and full of life
Before all the angels and all the Church
When I stand before my beloved King
And sing the story of my life

It's costly, like all glorious things
The price is the sum of all my flaws
If I had been given a choice
I probably wouldn't have made the exchange
I am too foolish and afraid
But it was never my choice
And thank the Lord for that
Because I was made to sing that song

Disharmony

There should be tears
There should be a rush of feelings
I should be impassioned
I should be overwhelmed
So why am I so cold?

I hear myself laugh
I consider my expressions
My murmurs and nods
Are they real?
Am I faking it?
Putting up a facade?
Am I simply playing the part
Of the person I think I should be?
Do I read the moment like a script
And select the proper mask?
I don't know...

But I do know one thing
I know the inquisitor is too loud
If the laugh is true, it is due to the subject
It is because my attention is outside myself
Of course it turns hollow when the inquisitor comes
When I turn away from the bright thing outside
To the dim view of my own passions
My skeptic tells me my smile is false
But the skeptic is a fraud

Perhaps the laugh was fake
Maybe the worship was not genuine
But if it was real, I find the same thing
The real mountains become cardboard cutouts
The roaring fire becomes painted lightbulbs
The inquisitor is a destroyer
A debunker who blots out the sun
And then asks why the plants are all withered

I stand surrounded by life abundant
The wonders of Creation shining bright
The glory of the Creator, my Beloved, all around
Waiting to be breathed in
If I could sit still
If I could forget myself
I could take that breath
But my mind wanders
And I pass the Glory by
Ignorant

I watch a sunrise
And in an instant I spoil it
By thinking about the watching

I am all out of place
With my mind and will at war
With every aspect of my being
Disjointed and uneasy

But this is my hope
That is broken thing
Will be made whole
That the patchwork heart
Will be made one
That I will forget myself
And then remember joy

But until then I act
If I am inattentive in prayer
I pray for my inattention
If my mind grows impatient
And wanders from its object
Let my dutiful hands stay the course
My mind will return to them again
If only out of boredom

Thank You Mr. Lewis

In 1931, he walked with Tolkien one night
And finally surrendered on the morrow
And now, seven decades later,
He's still teaching me
To lay down my own sword

He was hounded by sorrow
It caught his scent when he was nine
And he saw the total disfigurement
That lay upon his mother's corpse
It chased him through school
Where it met with the goddess Nonsense
They chased him through his classes
In his nightly prayers they hunted him
Until they chased him from the Church
And he sighed with relief

He set up a signpost before his soul
That "this is my own"
And wandered the dark lands
He put on the chains of modernity
And sat upon the hills of snobbery
He played the games of the world
He ate the feasts of the flesh
And even paused to watch
The very spectacles of Hell

But the fiends were not alone
And there were others on his heels
Together, Joy and Reason laid their traps
One day, Joy whisked him off
Off to Northern lands
For one brief taste
Of that sweet ache

In the lands of the Enemy
She swept through like a ghost
And one by one she unmasked each fiend
Teaching the boy at each turn
That the supreme bribe was not there

And beside her was Reason
Clad all in armor
She led him through the pages
Of Plato and of Chesterton
As Joy called him to Phantastes
She cut down his chronological snobbery
And whispered things he dared not to hear

They chased him for years and years
Until the armor was unbuckled
Until each threshold was passed
And he took the sign down
And made his surrender

But that was only the beginning
For then the Irishman took up a new sword
He revisited his old sorrows in The Problem of Pain
He raised up the ghost of years past
Still clinging to its signpost
And made war upon it

He wrote of the Tao
Of Nature and Supernature
Of a Man who was either a Liar, a Lunatic, or a Lord
He wrote of doctrine and arguments and joy

He stabbed at his infected soul and let the pus seep out
Out with it spilled a zoo of lusts
A bedlam of ambitions
A nursery of fears
A harem of fondled hatreds
He cornered them all
Like rats in an attic
And extracted a name from each
And out of that toil came an infernal tale
Which left him tired and aching in his spirit
Called The Screwtape Letters

He remembered the holiness of Fairy Land
And set to chronicle the wonders
Of a whimsical God
In the far-off land of Narnia

He shared his pilgrimage
His struggles
His delights
His fascinations
And before he was called Home
He let us observe his grief

And now I sit here
With his books on my shelves
An introverted storyteller
An evil sinner in need of a savior
Who looks across the decades
Seeing one who knows my heart
And all the wickedness therein
Someone like a teacher
Or an uncle
Or a fellow comrade

So thank you, Mr. Lewis
I don't know the untravelled paths
The world without you is unknown to me
But I know that I never yearned for humility
Until you told me about the really humble man
I know that you made me doubt
My own chronological snobbery
I know there is something in me
However great or small
That would be gone
If I had never heard your name

So I give my thanks
To the Chronicler
To N.W. Clerk
To Jack the Giantkiller
To C.S. Lewis
And to the One who raised him up
And likewise raised so many heroes
Through all the ages

What's Wrong with the World

What's wrong with the world?
Is it social conditions?
Is it bad nutrition?
Is it spankings?

Maybe we work too hard
Maybe we don't work enough

It could be all this technology
It could be we don't have enough technology

The problem is promiscuity
The problem is puritanism

The problem is what's old
The problem is what's new

It's because we're so ignorant
It's an information overload

What is it?
What's wrng with the world?

It's the poor
It's the rich
It's the middle men

It's all those freaks
It's all those conformists

The problem is isolation
The problem is extroversion

We're under the shadow of colonialism
We're trapped in the flames of unguided revolution

What is it?
What's wrong with the world?

I am

I'm not sick
I'm not confused
I'm out of excuses
I'm just sinful

I know my obligations
I know who my work affects
Yet I am careless in my efforts

I know the holiness of love
I know the harm my own hate does me
Yet I cannot begin to count all the nights
I went to bed with murder in my heart

I have the wisdom of God at my fingertips
I am not ignorant of the righteous ways
And still I sin more with each passing hour

How can I point to the warlord
Or the addict in the gutter
Or the wealthy miser
As some wretched other?
I have less power for evil
But the miniatures of there sins
Undo me every day

If I fall to the little, everyday vices
How would I fare against true temptation?

I am what's wrong with the world
I call down the curse each day
My most righteous words condemn me

So what hope do I have
Bu the Blood of True Love?
And how can I have any right to such pride
As too deny the Heaven I did not earn on my own?

I am what's wrong with the world
And what's best in the world
Is the Blood by which I'm forgiven

A Cry of Lament

There is a dreadful night in Israel
From the children of Jacob
Comes a mournful cry
For the Roman fist is heavy
And the wretchedness of sin
Is overwhelming

Who will save us
When will You remember us?
When will you dethrone the cruel and unjust?

The land we were promised
Is littered with broken bones
The bones of our children, our lovers, our neighbors
The bones of our ancestors are scattered to the east
Who will gather them up and bring them home?

Who will stop the swords of the wicked?
Who will rescue the weak and weary
We are under the rule of godless men?
They gutted a pig in the Temple once
Won't You bring humble them?
Won't You humble them before they do it again?


Who will save us
When will You remember us?
When will You right the wrongs?

But when have we obeyed?
When have we kept our vows?
Will You look kindly on us, O Lord?
Will You soften my hardened heart?

Can You redeem the wicked kings?
Can You redeem the legacy of Solomon and Ahab?
Will the diseased and withered line of David yet bear fruit?

We have been crying out for over a thousand year.
When will Your deliverance come?
There have been many false Messiahs
When will the true one be sent?

So Israel cries out
And as in the days of Moses
The Maker of Heaven is moved
As on the mountain with Abraham
A sacrifice is provided
As in the suffering of Job
God shall speak with men

Starting with Mary

The Wedding

She rose from the bed

The sheets sliding away

Carrying off her fears

Her worries

She rose, cloaked in sadness

Resolute in her sorrow

She passed through the threshold of blood

The house of irrevocable ties

Its wooden frame stained with rot

She walked by shelves of broken promises

Her bare feet pained by the refuse of old grudges

She walked along the crowded streets

The whole thing damp with blood and sweat

She saw televisions blasting models and contestants

Venders and magicians shouting about "success"

A whole crowd chattering worriedly about "happiness"

A politician singing and chanting about a blissful "tomorrow"

She jostled through the frantic mob

She crossed through a park

And almost gagged from the stench of gossip

A gang of old friends stumbled by her

She couldn't remember why they all glared at her now

She rushed along, afraid and sickened

The whole high school game flashed by

She pushed through the jumble of noise

The wolf whistles and catcalls and cheesy slogans

Not even stopping to see what was clawing at her arm

And there she was

At the bridge

Her little hideaway

The beautiful, quiet place

The shelter she always ran to

To wait our the fears and disappointments

But it wasn't enough

All those times she had cried there

All the secret hate and misery she had spilled out

The bridge had never answered her

So she went to the edge

Staring at the rushing waters

And then came the afterthought

Her whispered plea

Her quiet challenge

To her very last hope

She felt it grab her

Like a fierce, clawed hand

The call of the park and the city and the home

The song of all the rotten prizes she was giving up on

The game and the utopia and the lover gripped her once again

But her despair was stronger

It's bitterness was more lovely than their sweetness

The waters did not hear her plea

They had not understood her heart

Not on that day nor any before it

But they knew the Bridegroom's hand

They listened when He said "Gently"

They carried her, unharmed, to the shore

Washed clean of the city's grime

Made ready for her wedding

They did this in obedience

To her one last Hope