BXBX NOVEL Chapter 200 - 200 The grandfather paradox (logic)
Chapter 200: Chapter 200 The grandfather paradox (logic)
Dracula saw that one Hermione Granger was walking towards the library on the fourth floor of the castle with a face full of exhaustion, clutching a thick stack of books;
While the other Hermione was hiding behind a large pillar, avoiding the sight of the previous Hermione. Waiting until after the previous Hermione had left the corner of the corridor, she left her current position with hurried feet and ran in the direction of the auditorium.
"This is ... Granger from two different points in time?" Dracula raised his hand in the air, letting the deed hover in front of him, watching the scene before him with interest.
He had actually begun to pay some attention to Hermione not long after the start of this semester:
Hermione Granger, an honor student at Hogwarts, had spent the first two school years in every class in high spirits and fighting spirit, as if she was on the field of play!
The professor's questions were the flare gun in her eyes, and she was the first one to put her hand up in the air whenever the professor asked a question.
With the exception of Snape's class, a Potions professor who was blatantly biased in favor of his house, it was a surprise to professors and young wizards alike if she didn't get house points for Gryffindor in any class.
After the start of this semester, however, Hermione was more than a little worse in class compared to before.
She would still raise her hand reflexively to answer questions, but when she did, she would occasionally react half a second slower, suddenly forgetting the topic that the professor was asking about; there were times when she stood up but couldn't answer the question she had snatched up;
Not only that, Dracula found that he had been distracted in class on more than one occasion.
The phenomenon of wandering off was quite normal when it appeared in young wizards like Harry and Ron, but when it appeared in Hermione, it was rather surprising.
"I see." Dracula hooked up the corner of his mouth, and an extremely rare color of excitement appeared in his eyes, "I said how Granger's mental state has been a bit off lately, so it's like this ..."
A special word quietly surfaced in the middle of his mind-
Time Shifter!
Dracula had long heard of the concept of time converter, when it was still mentioned by Nicole LeMay when she was chatting with him.
According to LeMay, the British Ministry of Magic had an ancient department called the Department of Mysterious Affairs, which appeared even earlier than the British Ministry of Magic.
Among the Department of Mysterious Affairs, there were many reticent people who researched the secret secrets of the magic world, which included some magic energies that were rarely known to the world.
Other than the top management of the Ministry of Magic and the mutes in charge of the research, these things were usually not made known to any other people.
But LeMay was different, his alchemy techniques had long been recognized by the entire magic world, and even such an ancient and proud department as the Department of Mysterious Affairs had once invited LeMay to come and work with them on research.
Lemay mentioned that there is a kind of energy called "time" stored in the Department of Mysterious Affairs, and the silent people have always wanted to utilize it.
The way they utilized it was to create an alchemy product that could freely store and use time energy.
In LeMay's conception, the name of this alchemical product was called a time converter.
"It's also true, after all, more than a hundred years have passed, it's time to research something."
Watching the two Hermione's one in the library diligently prepping for tomorrow's homework, and the other in the auditorium hurriedly accompanying Harry and Ron to eat, Dracula laughed softly and raised his hand to snap his fingers.
A dark moon slowly appeared at Dracula's side.
He reached for the deed to Hogwarts, which was suspended in the air, and stepped into the midst of the dark moon, arriving at LeMay's home on the Rue Montmorency in Paris, France.
"Are you home, old man?"
Dracula walked familiarly through the living room and knocked on the studio's aged doorway.
With a "creak", the studio door opened, and the white-haired LeMay appeared in the doorway with a surprised expression, looking at the Dracula in front of him with some suspicion in his eyes.
"Old thing, why did you suddenly come over?" LeMay asked without any politeness at all.
"Hm? You don't seem to welcome me too much?" Dracula walked into the studio completely unseen, and sat straight on LeMei's workbench piled with experimental equipment, arms wrapped around him, looking at LeMei with a smirk.
"Slow down, don't touch my crystal ball!" Although Le Mei's mouth was such a reminder, he did not have the intention of stopping Dracula's movements, but instead, he closed the door without being surprised, and then sat down on a chair to the side.
It was evident that he had long been accustomed to this kind of behavior from Dracula.
"Don't you ever reflect on yourself why you are not welcome here?" LeMay said leisurely while organizing the somewhat disorganized countertop.
"Why should I reflect?" Dracula asked back with a light smile, "As the owner of this house, shouldn't you you reflect on why you don't welcome your rare guest?"
LeMay slanted a glance at Dracula and tugged at the corners of his wrinkled mouth, "I've never really seen a guest like you, who doesn't even say a word and shows up directly in the living room of someone else's house."
Dracula smiled, not taking the unwelcome on his lips seriously.
If he was truly unwelcome, LeMay wouldn't have left him access to the safe house where the Abject Loyalty spell had been imposed to this day.
As the owner of the only magic stone, there were always some desperate black wizards who wanted to obtain immortality from Le Mei. As a result, he was always in a state of danger.
Every wizard who was allowed to enter Lemay's house was a good man ... who had been confirmed to be of good character, integrity and nobility Of course, Dracula might have to be excluded.
Such as Dumbledore and Newt, LeMay's good friends, in addition to a Phoenix Floating Bronze Mirror connected to the Phoenix Floating Apocalypse book, all have another gold card, only the card holder can see the house at 51 Montmorency Street.
Dracula didn't need the card for access.
He was the only person other than Mr. and Mrs. LeMay who kept this safe house secret.
The mouthful of unwelcome words was just a different form of jest between two lonely people with long lives.
"Tell me, what is it you want from me again this time, or what questions do you have for me?"
LeMay quickly tidied up the countertop of her workbench and looked up at Dracula.
"Can't I simply be visiting you?" Dracula smiled at him.
"Come on, we've both known each other for centuries, and I've never seen a time when you came over just to bond with me!" LeMay said sarcastically, "Let's just say that after you woke up this time, which time have you come to me that you didn't have something to ask for my help?"
"First, you came to me to ask about the world situation in these hundred years; then you contacted me to chat with a few young wizards and talk about magic stones; some time ago, you came over to ask me to help you determine the similarity of the two types of dark energy ..."
"I'm a big old man, but I'm treated like a tool man by you, don't you feel guilty?" As Le Mei spoke, her tone unconsciously mixed in some gnashing of teeth.
"Okay, okay, my bad." Dracula held up his hands in surrender, "I really do have something to ask you this time."
LeMay drew her eyes back and shook her head in disbelief.
"I'm kind of unlucky to meet an old thing like you." He sighed, "Tell me what question you want to ask me this time."
Dracula nodded and jumped down from the workbench, addressing LeMay:
"I want to know everything there is to know about the time-turner during the hundred years I've been asleep."
Hearing Dracula's question, LeMay turned his head to him in surprise.
"How do you know ..." He was just halfway through his words when he once again remembered something, "Oh, that's right, since you're teaching at Hogwarts, it's only a matter of time before you find out about the time-transfer device ..."
While speaking, LeMay's expression gradually became serious.
"Brad, I hope it's best if you don't hit the time converter." He said with a solemn expression, "If it's someone else who gets the experiments of this current time converter maybe they won't be able to mess anything up, but if that person who gets the time converter is you ... I don't feel comfortable."
"Oh?" Dracula came to be interested, "So ... the time converter is still really able to completely convert time?"
"It's not as exaggerated as converting time, but it's able to let a person go back in time." LeMay said softly.
"I know it's capable of sending someone back in time." Dracula nodded, "I saw two Hermione Grangers on the Hogwarts deeds, one of my students, who used a time converter to go back in time to study for her homework."
"So my question isn't whether or not the Time Changer can send people back in time, but how far it can go ..."
"Does being able to go back to the past mean that it can change past history, or even change the course of the future?" Dracula stared into LeMay's eyes and asked softly, "If the Time Transformer is so powerful, how come it was distributed to those little wizards and simply let them use it for learning?"
Dracula didn't think it made much sense.
The power of time was hard to explicitly say how powerful it was, but if it could really bring people back from the dead and make things change their laws of operation, then it was bound to be a very foul energy ...
And if the Time Converter could be mass-produced, the possibility of it falling into the hands of black wizards with evil intentions would become very high, and wouldn't that cause the entire magic world to go haywire?
"Actually, the time converter isn't as insurmountable as you think." LeMay looked deeply at Dracula and explained to him, "Time shifting also has its corresponding rules, a person can go back in time but cannot change the course of history because of it."
"Even if someone has time traveled using a Time Shifter, the history that he has changed is only the established history that has already happened, everything that this person has achieved forms a closed loop, and our world is the final destination that has already been altered."
"How so?" Dracula asked, "Is there a clearer way to put it?"
"That is, this world has only one timeline!" LeMay emphasized the word "timeline".
"Not really." Dracula shook his head, but an expression of interest suddenly appeared in his eyes, "But I have an idea, listen and see if it holds true-"
"Since it can change the past, then I can make an assumption: if I get the time converter to go back to the past to kill myself, since I'm dead, then I won't get the time converter, and then I won't go back to the past.... Pushing it this way to the end, who actually killed me? "
Dracula's question actually had a similar meaning to the Grandfather Paradox, which was popular in the Muggle world -
If a person goes back in time and kills their young grandfather, and since the grandfather is dead, the time traveler's father would not have been born, and without a father there would be no time traveler ... In that case, who actually killed the grandfather?
In the middle of the same timeline, this paradox is of course impossible to realize. It was only after the emergence of the parallel universe theory that everything that happened in this paradox had a slight possibility of being realized.
However, according to LeMay's explanation, in this world, there was an item like the Time Changer, but there was only one timeline.
That didn't seem to make sense.
Hearing Dracula's question, LeMay couldn't help but draw a corner of his mouth.
Just what kind of person would think of going back in time to kill himself ah ... Oh, if this person is Dracula, that's kinda normal.
"Very deep question." LeMay forcibly controlled his expression and nodded in a contemplative manner, "In fact, this kind of thing you're talking about sort of has a similar situation."
"The Mystic Affairs Division had a mute person at the end of the last century, who used a time converter to return to the past in an experiment, but passed away because she stayed in the past for too long. During the experiment to return to the past, Eloise was trapped in the year 1402 for up to five days."
"Her travels caused the trajectory of the lives of all the people she met in the past to change, with at least 25 descendants disappearing from the modern era into beings that were never born!" LeMay said in a deep voice. "That's why the Ministry of Magic has established hundreds of laws regarding the use of time-turners."
"But doesn't this matter conflict with the time shifting rules you mentioned before?" Dracula asked.
"That's right, the two do create a big conflict." LeMay sighed and said to Dracula, "So the self-repairing ability of the time conversion rules is involved here."
"If an act that occurs during a time shift doesn't have a great impact, then the rules of time can repair it, pulling the world line back to the final ending that has already been altered, allowing the logic of the time shift to be self-referential."
"However if a person causes too great of an impact during time travel, then a portion of the rules of time will completely break down and will not be able to pull time back to the main line, resulting in catastrophic consequences!"