“I’m going to kill her!” Helen screamed. She yanked the rifle from my hands and aimed it at the traitorous woman, who was still lying unconscious in the other woman’s lap.

I would’ve put up more of a fight, but everything came flooding back to me at once. It had been so long since I’d fought in a battle, and the screams, both from a few minutes ago and twenty years before, reverberated in my mind. I smelled smoke and burning flesh. I saw the faces of dead friends. I relived that time in an instant. Shaking, wheezing, I moved to one of the crates and sat down before my legs failed me. Cinthia was right there, standing over me as I squeezed my hands into fists.

She began rubbing my back. “You’re alright,” she whispered.

“I will be,” I said between breaths. “Deal with Helen.”

Heath was already on it. I looked up and saw him standing between Helen and the two women beside the wall. “Sure,” he said. “Burn down my ship, why don’t ya.”

Helen glared at him. She did not lower her weapon. “I know you hate yourself and everything, but she just tried to kill us all.”

“I know,” Heath said. “And there will be time to deal with that, but not now. Not ten seconds after a fight. And we’re not out of it. If those Nordics get through that rubble, they’ll send ships after us. Go help Jill. Once we’re through the wormhole and you’ve got your head on, come back.”

Helen glared for a moment longer, then she spun and threw the rifle against the opposite wall. I felt the wind of the weapon as it flew past, but I hardly noticed. I was still busy trying to catch my breath.

“She’s not joining the crew,” Helen said. “I’ll kill her when you’re not looking.” She stormed out of the hull.

As she left, another horrible detail spilled into my mind. “The prisoners!” I gasped. “Before we left, I heard plasma shots. Can we help them?”

Heath turned to me, and his expression seemed worried. He hid it as quickly as I saw it and said, “We’re doing more for them than we’ve done for anybody else. We’re bait. Those Nordics aren’t going to care about their rituals when someone just spat in their eye, and those Greys won’t put up much of a fight. They have a better chance than most, even with only two guns.”

“Plasma guns are really effective against Nordics,” Cinthia said. “The three of us just took out half a garrison. I think they’ll be fine.”

“We didn’t kill enough of them,” Heath said, scowling. “Once they recover, they’ll put together what we’ve been doing. Our brothel operations are probably done.”

“That was going to happen anyway,” Cinthia said. “It was just a matter of time, and this way, we won’t be surprised by it.”

“I guess,” Heath said. He looked at me. “Are you alright?”

“It’s just nerves,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

“You’re not going to do this every time, are you?” Heath asked.

“I doubt it,” I said.

More like I hope not, I thought.

“Good,” Heath said. “Mad has big plans for us and all that.” He grinned and shook his head. “I’m going to help Jill. I doubt those ships are coming, but you never know. Cinthia, stay with him.” He started out of the hull.

“Wait!” the woman holding the traitor said. She stood up, and, like Cinthia, embraced him. Once again, Heath winced, then he looked down at the charred wound on his shoulder. However, this time he didn’t try to return the hug. “I’m sorry,” the woman muttered into his chest. “I take it all back. I’ve wanted to say that for a long time, and now you’re here. So, I’m sorry. I know I can’t make it right, but I’m still sorry.”

Heath pulled her away, holding her at arm’s length. “You’re safe. I’m taking the two of you to Mary’s. You can decide what to do there.”

The woman swallowed and asked, “Are you two okay?”

A scowl grew on Heath’s face. He closed his eyes, then took a breath. “No.”

The woman let out a noise from her throat. She pressed her eyes together and, through clenched teeth, said, “I know that’s our fault, my fault. I’m sorry.”

Heath let her go and took a step back. He turned from her, and I saw a look of pure rage on his face. He closed his eyes again and let out another, longer breath. I thought I heard him whisper, “Okay.” Then he turned back around. “You and I . . . are fine.”

The woman broke down sobbing. After a moment, she asked, “Why did you come back for us if you’re still so angry?”

Heath was silent for a minute, then he slowly said, “Because even if this whole thing was forced on us, you still mean something to me. You all do.”

“But I was terrible to you,” the woman whispered.

“It’s done,” Heath said, sharply. “Don’t bring it up again.” He paused, and his shoulders dropped. “Please.”

The woman looked down at the floor. Then she lifted her eyes and whispered, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Heath said in as soft a voice as I think he could manage.

“The others are safe,” she added quickly. “They just got the two of us. Everyone else is fine.”

“Tell Madulluel. I think she’s still looking for some of them.” He paused, then whispered,

“I’m glad you’re alright.” He turned to us. “Cinthia, please help her find some clothes.”

The woman seemed to remember the blanket she was wearing then. She squeezed it closer to her body. Cinthia turned to me, giving me a wry grin. “We’re doing the right thing, right monk?” she whispered.

I smiled back at her. Thankfully my breath was starting to return.

“Don’t want to ruin it with revenge,” she added, then turned to the woman. “Alright,” she said louder. “I think I’ve got something that will fit. Come on.”

Cinthia threw an arm around the woman’s shoulder, and the three of them left the room, leaving me with the unconscious woman on the floor. For a long time, I sat there continuing to struggle with my breath, although it wasn’t as difficult as it had been. I pushed the thoughts of war away from my mind and tried to think about the bizarre and tragic situation I found myself caught up in.

I’d heard of the zoos. I’d heard of the various breeding programs and experiments. I’d heard of the slavery. I’d heard there were entire planets filled with slaves. Mining planets, they were called. I’d even seen a mass abduction during the war, a broad translucent green beam that seemed to suck every living, breathing thing into the sky. I knew that the first war had been worse and that there were millions, if not billions, of humans at this point enduring perverted schemes and perpetual servitude. But I’d never met anyone who’d experienced such things. I’d never seen the confusion and pain they were going through. What was I supposed to tell them? How was I supposed to guide them through something I couldn’t even begin to understand? How was I supposed to know what God really wanted for them? Was it better for Cinthia and Helen to go their own ways and start their own families, or was it better for them to stay with Heath? Was it right for Heath to accept this arranged marriage with Madulluel, or should he reject a relationship forced on him, even if it could cost countless lives? And as Helen had put it, should they all have died rather than given up their virtue, or were they right to do as they were told? And what about the babies? Should they have given up their children to save their own lives, or should they have died trying to protect them, even if their cause was doomed? What would I have done?

It was like living in ancient times, a time of harems, arranged marriages, slavery, and subjugation. How could our age of technology have led to such barbarism? Weren’t all these wonderful inventions supposed to make things better? Weren’t they proof that mankind had evolved? No. Instead, technology had taken us in a circle, back to a time when men and women sacrificed their children to alien gods.

The woman in front of me groaned. Then she sat up. We stared at one another until the woman tightened the blanket around herself and leaned back against the wall.

“What?” she asked, giving me a toothy grin I didn’t like. “Has Heath taken up religion.” Then she muttered, “Like that’ll save him.”

“I’m just a passenger,” I said. “Are you Jeena or Silby?”

“Jeena,” the woman said. “And you are?”

“Nicholas.”

It was then that I noticed her eyes. They were pink and shined in the dim hull light. She seemed to realize what I was looking at, saying, “Yeah. They’re pretty, aren’t they? They were going to change my hair and paint some colorful tattoos all over my skin.” She leaned forward. “That’s what they do; you know. They change you. It’s all about removing who you were. These invaders aren’t just content to burn down your temple. Oh no. They desecrate your body. And I’m one of the lucky ones. Usually, they give you a tail, some ears, change your hair so it’s more like fur, or they give you scales—anything they can think of so that every time you look in the mirror, you remember what you really are, an animal.”

“Obviously, I don’t believe that’s true. Do you?”

“I don’t really care what I am,” Jeena said. “Doesn’t change where I’m at or who I’m with.” She shrugged. “A shame about the tattoos, though. I was looking forward to that. I’d show them to you, but they’re not done. Probably never will be now.”

“Is that why you alerted the Nordics?” I asked. “You were excited about your tattoos?”

“I was trying to kill Heath,” Jeena snapped. “I could give or take everyone else, myself included. Since you were shooting beside that slut Cinthia, then I’m sure you know what’s going on.”

I straightened when I heard her insulting Cinthia. Our brief exchange had made me feel closer to her than anyone else. Again, Jeena noticed.

“Oh, don’t take it hard, priest,” she said. “We were all sluts. We had to be.” She looked toward the cockpit. “And Heath was quite a stud, wasn’t he? I don’t know who the stoic guy that entered my room was, but the Heath I knew was chipper and upbeat, happy as a sow in mud with his harem, until it cost him.”

“Is that what you did?” I asked. “Made him pay for it? You should be happy then. I’ve seen nothing but pain on this ship.”

“That’s good,” Jeena said.

“Then maybe you should put it aside,” I said. “The time for paying is over. It’s best to move on.”

“And because he saved me, right? You’re forgetting that part.”

“And because he kept Helen from killing you.”

“Helen was a bitch even in that cave. I hated her then, and I hate her now. But we all smiled at the time because we were ‘all in this together.’ We kept two stinking corpses in our cave because there was nowhere to bury them, and we were ‘all in this together.’ Even when we gave up our children, we were ‘all in this together.’” She leaned back again and smiled. “We were just a pack, fighting to survive like everybody else. If your God were real, you’d think he would’ve told us about all these other special creations made in his image or whatever. He didn’t. So, he’s not, which means Heath didn’t save me at all. It doesn’t matter if I sell myself to him, or some Nordic, or whoever because one situation is just as shitty as the other. There’s no better because there’s no good.”

“Maybe God kept us isolated because he wanted the truth to spread from our planet just as it did from Israel. Perhaps that isolation served a higher purpose. If that’s true, then Heath did save you.”

Jeena scoffed. “Cute.” She tilted her head toward the cockpit. “Why don’t you tell the others I’m awake. I think our conversation is done.”

I said, “I agree,” then left the hull.

I’ll discuss what happened next in the following entry, Lord willing.

May God grant you peace.

Hieromonk Nicholas Petrov

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I hate time travel. I mean, I really hate it! From a storytelling standpoint, it’s almost as bad as the Liar Revealed trope, where most of the story is taken up with covering up a deception.

So, if I were to write a story with a time machine — and not take the idea too seriously — my first question would be, “How do I break this stupid thing so the reader will care about the plot! Why should anyone care about what’s going to happen if it can all be repeated again?

Still, a few time-travel stories have been done right, so I’m going to close out this series of articles by presenting two examples of time-travel stories done correctly. Then, next Saturday, using the rules I’ve described in this series, I will build a time-travel plot. My goal is to show that the story rules I’ve been discussing aren’t just arbitrary regulations. They can prevent plot holes before they emerge, and they can even be used to build the story itself.

An early time travel story

First, though, I want to bring up an honorable mention: A Christmas Carol. This is probably the best time travel story in history: Charles Dickens’s classic 1843 tale uses a soft magic system in the sense that the time travel is done by ghosts. That is about as soft as you can get. While Carol uses the time travel as a means of character development — which is typically how a hard magic system is utilized — its mysterious nature is crucial to understanding the character’s journey. Scrooge is being given what amounts to a miracle, a last chance to change his ways. The fact that three ghosts appear in succession shows the severity of his current state and his need for transformation.

When it comes to time travel, A Christmas Carol is a bit of an outlier. On the one hand, it’s a soft system because the ghosts can pretty well do what they want. By definition a miracle has no rules attached to it. But on the other hand, it’s a hard magic system because Marley’s ghost does give a set of rules — Scrooge will be visited by three further ghosts: Past, Present, and Future — and this rule creates a ticking clock that drives the plot forward. If the magic systems were on a line and point A was soft and point C was hard, I would say that A Christmas Carol is point B, directly in the middle. It strikes a perfect balance between both systems. Perhaps that’s why it’s a classic.

But alas, A Christmas Carol isn’t science fiction, and in order to illustrate my point, I need two examples from the sci-fi genre. That means omitting not only Carol but Groundhog Day (1993), and The Butterfly Effect (2004) from the running, even though they all deal with time travel beautifully.

Making a soft magic system work

With that in mind, I’ll begin with a positive example of a soft magic system. As much as it pains me to say it, H.G. Wells’s novella The Time Machine (1895) is the most classic example of a soft magic system in science fiction — done right.

How the time machine works is irrelevant. Wells focuses on his social commentary — repugnant as it is. The time machine in the story is simply a device to accomplish that end — to establish a scenario where a man can postulate about the future of humanity. To create tension, he allows the machine to be machine stolen; however, this is a plot device that mostly explains why it took the traveler so long to return from his journey. It does not create a story question.

Because Wells’s primary focus in the book is his social commentary, the only issue he has to address is, if the technology works, why there aren’t more time machines? He deals with that handily by having the traveler disappear, never to return, at the end of the book.

Making a hard magic system work

When it comes to a hard magic system, I’m going with Timeline (1999). I haven’t read the novel by Michael Crichton (1942‒2008) but in the movie version (2003), each time the machine is used, it damages the user. The damage the machine does is compared to a fax machine distorting the letters on a document. Every time the users travel, they are altered in some way. Thus they can only travel into the past so many times to complete their task without risking serious bodily harm. This is one of several of the film’s rules that generate complications for the characters.

It would take another series to explain all the things these films do right when handling the subject of time travel. But for this article, I want to focus on one crucial point that both stories have in common: In both stories, the systems are used to establish limits, something the Terminator franchise never did. The machine can only be operated a certain number of times, either because it breaks, or it does damage to the user, or it is stolen, or whatever.

It’s the same principle as the fact that there are only so many bullets in the chamber of a gun. Setting limits to the system is the first step to establishing stakes in a story.

The larger problem of understanding time

We also need to ask what approach should be taken to time itself. Should the writer lean toward fate or toward the butterfly effect? Most writers wisely try to find a middle ground. The best way to describe their tactic would be to say that in all cases, time should remain a soft system because theories about time are not well understood. But the machine itself can be either a hard or soft system, depending on which approach better fits the story.

Note also that the type of time system utilized — fate or the butterfly effect — is not nearly as important when the protagonist is traveling into the future. Whatever damage is done in the future can be undone for the purposes of the story by returning to the present. Thus, a safe way to use time travel in writing would be to travel into the future and ignore the troublesome questions that come with journeying into the past.

But that would be too easy. So, next time, I intend to build a plot that deals with traveling into the past. We will walk through that process then, in the final article of this series. See you then!

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Another group among the shapeshifting class is the Elementals. These are a small batch of supernatural beings you’ll likely never encounter. These creatures are humanoid in shape but can take on the form of a respective element: fire, water, electricity, earth, metal, etc. One important note about this race is that they differ from their fairy-realm counterparts in that they cannot use their elements for attack, meaning that they cannot direct a lightning bolt or fireball from their hands. These are not magical beings in that sense. They could strike or drown you while in their elemental form, or perhaps they could stab you as a human, but they have no practical reason to do so.

There is a subclass of this group, sometimes referred to as Sprites. The only difference between an elemental and a sprite is that a sprite’s humanoid form will be reminiscent of their elemental form, so for example, they might have grass for hair, or green skin, or clay skin, or be made of water and so on. They are also short, between three and four feet in height. They may or may not look like children.

The elemental, however, takes on the form of a naked man or woman, and their height is within the same range as a human. They are found in deep forests, caves, rivers, places where nature abounds and man is seldom seen.

No one knows where they came from or their precise origins. And there is some debate about whether they are sentient—I personally believe they are. It’s hard to guess how old they are, and some believe that they can’t even breed. Here, I shall posit my own theory, which is based on my only elemental case. I believe that, in order to breed, the creatures must take a human partner, and that partner must agree to become an elemental as part of the marriage pact. This in fact happened.

A man went on a bear hunting expedition in Idaho. There, he encountered a woman in the middle of an intense storm. He shared his tent with her, and although they had no carnal relations, they spent the night talking until the storm passed. When the man awoke later in the afternoon, the woman was gone, but charred into the bark of a tree next to his tent was an inscription that said, “I have fallen in love with you. You will see me again.”

The man returned to his home in Utah. Obviously, Utah has far less rain than many states, but our lucky man was living in a region of Utah that has a higher number of thunderstorms than the rest of the state, not the highest number, but higher. This was my first clue. It was the disparity between the rain totals and the number of storms. In both the region of Idaho, where the man was hunting, and the region of Utah, where the man lived, the rainfall totals were somewhat low, but the thunderstorm mean was on the lower end of average. To give the precise numbers, in the case of both states, the rain total was 10-19 inches a year, but the number of thunderstorms was 27-36 a year, and in this particular year, the number was closer to 36 in both states.

This fact, coupled with the fact that our woman in question repeatedly visited our man only during storms, not just average rain showers, but only when there was lightning, told me I was dealing with an electric elemental. There is one other detail that I hesitate to submit, but it is relevant, so I feel I must. Each time the woman visited the man in his home—he lived in a medium-sized town—she was naked, but she was never arrested, neighbors never seemed to spot her, and she had no vehicle. At first, the man had suspected she was an apparition. But when he offered her clothing, she put it on, although she was somewhat clumsy during the task.

This detail was the fact that alerted the Mormon Church. The man was a member, and he asked for help, fearing his lovely apparition was a demon. The woman would always wait until the man had fallen asleep before she departed, and the storms always seemed to last until he was unconscious, another clue. She would remove the clothing and do her best to fold it before placing it on the couch, and when the man sent by the church inspected the garments, he found them damp, and he even found a long yellow hair. The man’s hair was brown.

Having money and thinking that the woman might be a homeless madman, he attempted a DNA test on the hair, hoping her name might show up on a police database. I should note that such measures are not typically taken, and the DNA test was the only reason the woman was eventually discovered. This is why such cases are so rare. How does one catch a creature that can turn into lightning, melt into mud, or vanish into the wind at a given moment?

Not only did he fail to find a name, but the test determined that the woman was not human. The test came back, “inconclusive,” the materialist’s favorite word. This left our churchman in quite a bind. Our poor man’s woman was not a demon, nor was she human. He decided that the best thing to do was see this woman for himself, so he showed up at the man’s house during the next storm.

Here is a brief segment of his account.

“She arrived at approximately 8:30pm, just as the rain was most intense. X opened the door, and she stood outside, wearing nothing at all. When she saw me standing behind X, she didn’t show the faintest hint of shame, but she did look worried. I introduced myself, and when she learned that I was from the church, her eyes brightened. Evidently, she thought X meant to marry her.

“She said, ‘I was beginning to wonder if you really loved me. But now I see. Thank you, but he won’t do. That’s not how this works. We must make the arrangement ourselves. God will understand. It’s His covenant.’

My first impulse was to ask her what she meant, but I realized that if she found out I wasn’t here to marry them, she would become hurt and might even turn suspicious. I found myself more and more certain that she wasn’t human as I watched her, but even if I were wrong, that would still mean she was insane, and crazy people can do anything when their hurt. Perhaps it was a lie, but I decided that the best thing I could do was let her go on believing that X meant to take her as his wife. X must’ve shared my opinion because he only nodded at her.”

After this encounter, I was called. It took the churchman some time to find me, but the Mormons have resources, and when the right calls are made, I am easy to find. I met our man about a month later. And, shortly after that, I met the woman. I’d already done the research I’ve previously described and was fairly certain of her species at this point, and my suspicions were confirmed when I met her.

I haven’t spoken of many cases so far. I suppose this is because I’ve dealt with so many vampires and werewolves that it’s hard to pick a proper example, and those memories are so unpleasant in any case. I’m happy to say that this was one of the most delightful encounters I’ve ever had. The woman was suspicious at first, but I was able to quickly calm her and sat with her at the kitchen table. We did have to deal with the unpleasant misunderstanding that she was under, and while she was very sad, our man was emphatic that he wasn’t rejecting her. In that instance, I felt very much like a counselor resolving a lover’s dispute because, whether our man had realized it or not, that was exactly what they had become. He even agreed to marry her by the end, and he was only hesitant because he was confused. The woman explained that her kind avoided humanity as a general rule, but she had been intrigued by him in Idaho. For this reason, she had been hesitant to admit what she was and even more worried about proving it because she believed that if she’d done so, he would agree to marry her out of fear. However, it was evident to me that she was not the type to do harm—at least, such a thing would’ve been very unlikely, but it is always unwise to assume, even in the most obvious circumstances.

During this exchange, I was able to ask her a number of questions regarding her kind. Personally, I think her testimony is more than sufficient to explain the elementals’ nature, but the Order’s academics have done their best to treat this woman as an unreliable narrator since she took the uncommon step of falling in love with a mortal man. Her claim refutes this abnormality, but the academics maintain their position, and I’m sad to say that my account has done little to end the ongoing debates about the elementals.

I should start out by saying more emphatically that, based on my interaction with this woman, elementals are sentient. Although, that is not to say they think the same as humans. Their lived experience is very different, and, therefore, they perceive the world in a very different way. They do seem to understand that there is a major power imbalance between them and man, but rather than emboldening them to try to overpower our race, this knowledge seems to have made them very shy. They have a strange aversion to fear. I don’t know if this aversion is learned or imprinted inside them. But they pride themselves on their gentle demeanor.

She told me that most elementals are women due to their tender nature. There are a few “tender men,” as she called them. But they almost never breed—unless they are already promised—because they are focused solely on the elementals’ work, which is to take care of creatures affected negatively by the elements. They are like the nymphs in this respect. The only difference being that they are a response to natural disasters rather than pure caretakers. Elementals help young animals find their parents after being displaced, help trapped animals, nurture the wounded, things of this nature. They do not help humans because humans, as she explained, have a will. Animals are reactionary, and, therefore, often need help. She said the elementals are a balancing force in nature, keeping the animals from being overwhelmed by chaos.

They have no home, and their travel and consciousness are tied to the disruptions of the elements. This is a difficult concept to explain. An earth elemental will be awake and moving wherever there is active plate tectonics. A fire elemental will be awake and moving depending on where there is a fire, a water elemental wherever there is running water. In our elemental’s case, she was awake and moving wherever there were thunderstorms or wherever a large amount of electricity had been amassed. She is not in all storms, but only one at a time, and, once that storm dissipates, she isn’t sure when or where she’ll wake up again, and she must move a storm herself or hop between storms to get where she wants to go. She told me that she cannot control electricity. She can only become electricity. She also maintained that she could not be summoned, another distinction between her kind and her cousins from the fairy realm. Her time between storms she described as being asleep. She dreams, but she knows not where.

There are only a few hundred of them in the world, and, when the various natural disasters become too much, they will decide to breed. Usually, only a handful of the women do this. In this respect, she was an outlier. She was so intrigued with our man that she broke protocol and only told the others of her kind after the fact. She said this wasn’t a large matter because there is no law over such things. Their limited population is due to a fear of humans and a tradition that has been held for a long time for unknown reasons.

In order to consummate the marriage, the man in question must first agree to become as she is because their union will take place in the sky. When I asked how she intended to obtain her gentleman’s agreement without telling him what she was. She did a good amount of rambling—I suspect the woman didn’t know her own mind—but the general sense of her words seemed to be that she was working up to it.

After this long and fascinating conversation, the logistical questions regarding the man’s former life were asked, and I agreed to make sure that his friends and family—he only had a brother and sister still connected to him—were taken care of; that is to say, were given a story to explain his absence. My general policy in this situation is to give assurances that the subject in question is alright but wishes not to be contacted for reasons he or she can’t afford to go into. If the friend or family member presses the matter, I leave them with the truth. They never believe it, but it doesn’t matter because usually, the man or woman caught up in the supernatural will visit their connections at some point, and whatever proof the friends and family require can be provided then. Of course, many times they still won’t believe. Implications, not proof, often determine worldviews.

When the conversation was finished, I allowed the couple some privacy. I stepped outside as they spoke for a while longer. I would need to gather some things for the man’s friends and family before I left, so my work was not done. A few minutes later, the couple stepped outside as well, holding hands. The woman thanked me for everything, and I thanked her for being so direct. Then she looked up at the sky. There was a bright flash, and I saw two bolts of lightning rushing toward the storm above. Just before the bolts reached the clouds, they merged into one. I looked down. All that remained of them were two piles of charred clothing on the doorstep.

Now, what to do if you encounter one of these beings? Personally, I don’t think they are much of a threat. I’ve wondered about their value in terms of reconnaissance, but, to my knowledge, such a thing hasn’t been tried. Their movements seem very dependent on environments, so it would be difficult to ensure they will be where you’d like them, assuming you can even find one to begin with. But I will say this, based on experience, they seem gentle in nature, even naïve. They’d be likely to tell you what happened but incapable of interpreting what any of it meant. I also wouldn’t expect them to act independently should the need arise. They would require precise orders, and if a variable were to take place, they would become unreliable. That being said, this case demonstrates the need to do as much research as possible prior to going into a situation. Were it not for the testimonies and data I’d gathered before, I could’ve walked into a situation where a demon was trying to gain access to the man’s mind. Had I advised him to accept the entity, he would’ve been lost, and I would’ve been responsible. But even after prior research, it’s important to listen, not just to the victims, but sometimes, to the creature itself. There are occasions where listening can save you a great deal of trouble. Do not go into a situation hot-headed. Start with caution, then move on to sympathy or aggression as required.

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As I noted last time, the Terminator franchise has so far failed at time travel because it conflated soft and hard magic systems. Technology in science fiction serves the same function as soft and hard magic systems in fantasy, and I’ve chosen the word conflate intentionally.

Essentially, the writers of these films were trying to introduce a bunch of rules while attempting to keep everything mysterious. But the simple truth is that, while a writer can probably get away with this to an extent, as a story grows larger, it becomes impossible.

In discussing the successes and failures of the previous films, I’m attempting to demonstrate how this trick progresses and its ramifications for the overall story. Keep in mind that the writers didn’t know from one movie to the next whether there would be a sequel. So, a patchwork of a magic system was slopped together as they limped along.

Things must get bigger… but there’s a catch

But there was also an underlying motivation behind all the additional rules and characters: escalation. After all, simply having a robot from the future appear and try to kill someone over and over again would get repetitive. So each movie has to offer bigger and more complicated scenarios than the previous one: more robots, more time machines, more timelines. With all these additions come new rules that are pasted into the plot to justify them. But — whether from laziness or lack of time—the writers didn’t know how to weave all the new elements into the existing ones. They’d add a random rule and shroud it in mystery in the hopes of creating a situation that seemed more dangerous than the last.

The tactic of shrouding the story rules in mystery and creating escalation only works with soft magic systems. Usually, the story’s focus is on something other than the system. The magic or tech is just a means to an end, and the real story is about something else altogether.

Take the escalation in The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Gandalf’s powers are a classic example of a soft magic system. The Witch King is one of his antagonists. In the book, Gandalf and the Witch King have a standoff at the gate of Minas Tirith. Readers have no idea what these characters powers mean that they can and can’t do. And they’re not supposed to. The point of the standoff is to emphasize the turn in the battle when the Rohirrim unexpectedly arrive, ending the climatic showdown with Gandalf by forcing the Witch King back onto the battlefield.

For all the audience knew, the two wizards could’ve leveled the city, so it was perhaps best to not have them fight at the gate. The escalation in that situation comes from the fact of not knowing. There, the ambiguity plays into the narrative’s favor.

What if…

If the writers of the Terminator franchise had understood the use of ambiguity, one thing they could’ve done is had a completely different group from Skynet send a robot into the past. Perhaps John wound up a world leader of some sort instead of a military leader. Perhaps he ends up building a T-800 of his own for sentimental reasons. Perhaps a competing faction copies what he did and builds another Terminator based on his T-800 as well as a time machine. Thus he now must, once again, send a T-800 into the present to defend his past self.

I’m not saying this is a great plot, just a coherent one, one that keeps the time machine a soft system. It doesn’t add additional rules to the overall story, just more characters. A clever writer could further raise the stakes by calling into question the type of leader John is going to become, now that he no longer has a war to fight.

Why you can’t just add rules to a hard system

Adding random rules without paying attention to what’s already been added can’t work with hard systems because the rules are intricately connected to the plot. The issue arises because writers do not understand how the rules of a hard magic system work. They might broaden the world on the surface, but what they’re really doing is narrowing the focus of the plot onto the character. This is done by tying the rules of the system to the character’s development, and at the same time, using the rules to establish the severity of the threat.

Two things are happening at once. The bad guy has some power tied to the magic system that makes him unbeatable in the character’s current state. So, the character must learn some new thing that requires a journey of self-discovery. At the end of this process, he finally defeats the bad guy, as well as overcoming his own limitations. The stakes are not raised by going bigger and simply broadening the world; they’re raised by intertwining the rules with more than one thing: the power system and the self-discovery.

For example, in the novel series The Dresden Files (2000 and following) the readers know Harry Dresden’s skillset. He usually comes across a new foe who’s worse than his last foe. That requires him to learn something new, and at the same time, he learns something about himself. If he pulls a random trick out of his hat at the eleventh hour, it’s usually out of desperation. Each time author Jim Butcher does this, he must foreshadow the new ability in some way; otherwise, the reader will feel cheated.

How the rules of hard magic change the system

Furthermore, the rules of a hard magic system don’t just grow the world; they also narrow it. That is because they set new limits. They tell the audience not just what can happen, but what can’t. But whether the rules create new horizons or limit the possibilities, they are always focusing the story, usually on the character. They’re not just adding more for the sake of more.

In the Terminator franchise, no one understands the time machines. Nobody explains how they work — and yet more rules about time are added with every film. This goes on until everything is complete chaos and the franchise collapses under the weight of its own contradictory rules.

Does the butterfly effect escape the time travel problem?

Stories that utilize the butterfly effect — minor changes created in the past due to time travel create monstrous effects down the road — are not as prone to contradictions as the Terminator franchise. But they still suffer from the same flaw: the rule is being used to create mystery but the theory is a hard magic system. That is because the theory, right or wrong, embodies a definite mechanism: step on a butterfly in the past; alter the present.

The problem is, the theory is too broad to be applied effectively in a story. If catastrophic changes happen because someone stepped on a butterfly in the past, what happens if someone just kicked up dirt? And so on. The writers using this theory seem to think that the more complex something is, the more mysterious it is, when really all they’re doing is muddying the plot.

The movie The Butterfly Effect (2004) got around this problem in two ways. The film basically turned the time travel into magic instead of making it a form of technology and they limited the domino effect of the changes created by the protagonist’s interactions with others. This is the only film I’ve seen that treated the butterfly effect in a semi-believable way.

In short, hard magic systems, used correctly, narrow the story’s scope. The story is normally about a character using the rules to solve a problem. The rules are never used just to broaden a world or introduce an antagonist.

I would argue that a hard magic system serves as more of a telescope on a character than anything else. Soft systems use ambiguity to raise stakes; hard systems use the rules to connect the world with the character. But to use the rules to build such a connection requires that the writers understand the mechanics of their system. The writers of the Terminator series clearly didn’t, so they tried to, in a sense, cheat by conflating complexity with mystery. In so doing, they created contradictions. I’ll discuss how to tell a time-travel story the right way next time.

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Cinthia didn’t meet Heath’s eyes, which hovered over her as he scowled. Then he nodded to Jill and Helen, and the trio left the cockpit. Cinthia looked at me and tilted her head towards the back of the ship. She stood and began walking. I followed her into the hull, where we sat facing each other on a couple of crates, close to where I’d spent so much time writing before meeting Madulluel. Cinthia looked at her lap, then at me, her curling into a small grin as her heels mindlessly knocked against the side of her crate. She lifted one shoulder in a half-hearted shrug.

“Sorry you’ve been forced into the middle of all this, Monk,” she said. “Did Mad tell you it was going to be this way?”

“No,” I admitted. “But I’m not sorry to be here.” And this was true. I may flirt with heresy in Orthodox circles, but I’m still a monk, and it’s my job to offer council and comfort whenever possible. My only regret had been not knowing what to say. But, in my experience, it’s better to remain silent and let people work out their own ideas. God places the truth in all of our hearts, and I feel everyone should at least be given a chance to find it on their own. That requires silence. If they find themselves stuck or going down the wrong path, then I can intervene with either a rebuke or guidance, but silence first, always silence first.

In this case, that seemed to be the right choice. Cinthia continued kicking at the crate with her heels. She whispered, “I had a little boy with Heath’s eyes. I wish I could’ve been his mommy.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She wiped her eyes with a hand and said, “Heath’s the old-fashioned type. He probably would’ve joined your church if things were different. A lot of guys are scared of having kids, probably because they want to stay kids themselves. Not Heath. When they stole our babies, he took each loss hard, but he carried it, you know? Stayed strong for us. Then he broke.” Her gaze met mine, and for the first time, I saw a fire in her eyes, a wrath that I think would’ve caused Helen’s blood to run cold. She was showing me something that she didn’t show the others. “It’s not right that they broke him. And I want my son back.”

Once again, words failed me. I would’ve given anything to find something to say to comfort her, but before I could, Heath, Jill, and Helen entered the hull. Then I noticed the rifles slung over their shoulders and the smooth, purple crystals sticking out from the stocks. My eyes widened. I was shocked. I’m no weapons expert, but even I knew that Heath had found a unique use for a niche weapon.

Weaponry is a somewhat complicated subject in our time. Stories from the past indicate that lasers were an upgrade from bullets. This is and isn’t true. Really, different sorts of long-range weapons are needed for different purposes and environments. Lasers work well when they are on larger vessels because enough heat can be generated to offset water vapor and other such environmental conditions, although a thick overcast is enough to thwart the most powerful beam. Yet when it comes to rifles and pistols, lasers are sometimes used, but they’re not as powerful, and a variety of conditions can undermine their effectiveness. I suppose I shall have to delve into more detail about our weaponry eventually, but my point is that mankind was still able to resist the Nordics with bullets. They have advantages of their own. But there are defenses against bullets too that go beyond mere armor, so Heath, Jill, and Helen were carrying rifles that fired plasma orbs, a sort of halfway step between lasers and bullets.

Certain weapons exist that create directed forms of gravity and magnetism, and these can be used to guide the bullet or the beam away from an intended target. Plasma orbs are not affected by such weapons, and they are particularly effective against energy shields, something the Nordics prioritized after the first Nordic War. These orbs are created by special crystals housed within the stock of the rifle or pistol handle. When properly charged by sunlight and electricity, these crystals release a small batch of particles when struck by the gun’s hammer. These particles exit the barrel in the form of an elongated oval and condense into an orb a quarter the size of a fist, pulling in water, dirt, and particulate matter from the air as it does so. This creates a plasma that sticks to the intended target and burns at a temperature slightly cooler than lava. The reason these weapons were so effective against the Nordics was because every shield must have a certain amount of give so the soldier could fire his weapon while protected. To do this, the shields are made so that they can withstand the velocity of a bullet fired from a long range but are unable to protect against a bullet fired at point blank, meaning it’s possible for kinetic energy to pass through the shield. And if kinetic energy can pass through the shield, so can other forms of energy like heat. Therefore, when the orbs strike the shield, the heat they produce causes the Nordics great pain, and they are forced to drop their shield so that the plasma may fall to the ground, but this opens them up to the next shot. On top of this, the orbs are often aimed toward the head so that the plasma may obscure the Nordics’ vision.

Plasma orbs couldn’t be utilized by an entire army because the air would quickly become useless, but for three smugglers like Heath, Jill, and Helen, they were perfect. Heath stopped and looked back and forth between us. “I don’t expect this to take long. It’ll be fast, one way or the other. Go back to the cockpit and keep an eye outside. If you see men running toward the ship, but you don’t see us, take off. Leave the monk at Mary’s so he can meet up with that soldier Mad was talking about.”

Cinthia didn’t reply, so Heath and the others walked to the end of the hull. Heath pressed a button, and a large door lowered to the sidewalk, forming a ramp. The trio left the ship. Cinthia and I watched them leave, then stared at the vacant sky.

After a minute, Cinthia looked at me and said, “They want to keep me sweet.” She stood. “They don’t know me at all.” She turned and started walking.

“Where are you going?” I asked, standing as well.

“I won’t ask you to come with me, Monk,” Cinthia said. “But I’m not staying.”

I started walking after her. “Well, what kind of man would I be if I let you go alone?”

“A smart one,” Cinthia said. “How long has it been since you’ve held a gun?”

The last time I’d held a gun was at the start of the Second Nordic War some twenty years before, so I said, “Too long.”

Cinthia stopped, turned, and gave me a sly smile. “That’s a good answer.” She tilted her head to a doorway to our right. “Let’s go make ourselves useful.”

We turned, passing through the doorway and entering a short, narrow hall. “How are we going to do that?”

We entered a small room where countless guns were hanging from a wire mesh mounted to the wall. Cinthia answered my question as she took two of the rifles and began disassembling the stocks, checking the crystals. “The building outside is a Nordic military brothel. You know how perverted they and the Reptilians are. When they capture foreign soldiers, they’ll have them do strip teases and perform tricks in the back. It’s a humiliation ritual, part of their de-evolution thing. But we’ve been using that against them.” Cinthia grabbed four wires connected to a hole in the wall and a roll of black electrical tape. The ends of the wires were frayed copper. Cinthia ripped off four strips of the tape, pressed them against the frayed ends, then connected the four wires to the crystals inside the rifle stocks. She turned and faced me. “The lower-ranking Nordics watch the strip tease, and the brass gets the tricks. But prisoners are guarded by Greys, and they’re not too bright. We’ve been sneaking weapons into the ventilation shafts and telling the prisoners where to find them. The prisoners take the weapons and kill the brass during a trick, then they make a prison break. We’ve done this five times. Twice we’ve had to shoot our way out, which is one of the many reasons Heath’s been getting a reputation.” Cinthia smiled and lifted her chin a little. “They can’t de-evolve us. Those prisoners are still soldiers, no matter how much they’ve been put through. They know how to use those guns, and so far, there haven’t been enough Nordics left for their leaders to figure out what we’re doing.”

“So, Heath and the others are going to sneak into the ventilation shaft and pull Jeena and Silby out.”

Cinthia nodded. “If things go well, they’ll leave two of the guns where the prisoners will find them. That won’t be enough for a frontal attack, but they might manage a late-night escape. But that’s not what I’m worried about. Jeena and Silby hate Heath.”

“Why?”

Cinthia shrugged. “I don’t know. When we were in the zoo, we hated the Nordics. When we were with Mad, we hated her, although that became harder over time. But when Mad let us go, I guess there was nobody left to hate, so they hated Heath. They said he’d taken advantage of us, but he was in the same boat that we were. If he didn’t do what the Nordics said, they would’ve killed him. Mary would’ve lost her husband, and we would’ve been paired with someone else. But when the whole thing was over, that didn’t seem to matter.”

“What do you think they’re going to do? Surely, they don’t believe they’re in a better place.”

“I don’t know,” Cinthia said. “They’re not exactly logical. They might shout for the Nordics once they think they can get away, let Heath die shooting while they run. They might shoot Heath once we’re in space. I’m not sure. I just want to make sure I’m behind them.”

She turned, removed the tape, threw it in the trash, and reassembled the stocks. She then handed me one of the guns. The rifle felt heavy in my arms. It really had been a long time. As I adjusted my hold on the rifle, trying to remember the proper way to carry such weapons, Cinthia began walking again. I turned and followed her.

We passed through the hallway, crossed the hull, and walked down the large door serving as a ramp for the ship. Once on the parking lot, Cinthia turned and started toward the building. We began passing through the various ships, and I realized that Cinthia was trying to hide us from the large pair of doors in the middle of the building. As we hunched over, running from ship to ship, Cinthia said, “We usually enter the vents through the left- or right-hand sides of the building. The Nordics won’t follow them, so we’re going to guard the front doors.”

“We’ll act as a flank if the Nordics try to go after them,” I said, nodding. Memories of the war came flooding back to me. I remembered countless conversations just like this in the dead of night, and they were always followed by screams. I missed my monastery. I wanted nothing more than to return to my small room, to my simple cot, where I’d sit and try to forget those screams all over again. But that was a cowardly longing, and I knew it. I closed my eyes and tried to take on that focused frame of mind I’d learned during those few terrible years. Hopefully, Cinthia was wrong, letting her suspicions about Jeena and Silby get the better of her. However, the truth was, I shared her suspicions. I couldn’t say why. But Cinthia wasn’t as naive as she let on. She had a natural intuition about people.

We slowly moved right until we reached the ship closest to the building. It was a small, red thing, slightly larger than a hover car, and Cinthia and I crouched together under the wing. There we waited. Before long, I saw two Nordics walking toward the door.

This was the first time I’d seen them in years, and I’d forgotten how intimidating they were. They stood eight feet tall, with eyes slightly larger than a human’s. Their long blonde hair fell halfway down their backs. Both the men and the women wore their hair long, but the males always tied a purple strap of cloth around their foreheads. These men wore long white robes with an open, sleeveless, purple outer garment. Both the outer garment and the robe were cinched at the waist with a golden rope. They were also decorated with an inordinate number of golden necklaces and rings. They would’ve looked like ancient monarchs were it not for the rifles slung over their shoulders and the metal utility belts hanging just below their golden ropes. However, armed or not, the robes were not the official military garb of the alien race, so these men were off duty. They weren’t expecting a fight.

I heard Cinthia’s knuckles popping, and turning, I saw that her face was red, although her knuckles were white. She noticed me and tried to smile. “I want to kill them. Is that a sin?”

It probably was, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that, so I said, “We’re doing the right thing.”

Cinthia snorted. “Right. Probably shouldn’t ruin it with revenge.”

We smiled at one another and waited. More Nordics passed through the doors until finally we heard footsteps to our right. I turned and saw Heath and the others. Sure enough, Heath was the only one carrying a rifle. Jill and Helen were carrying two women covered in blankets. The wounded pair shambled more than ran alongside the building, and I could tell that Jill and Helen were struggling to keep the two women moving quickly. The group passed by without noticing us. They rounded the building and began running even faster down the parking lot, between the two clusters of scattered ships on either side of the brothel, opting for speed rather than stealth. The Eagle Seven was directly in front of them, and there was a straight path. Cinthia and I stood, peering over the wing to take one last look at the doors. Then we moved around the wing, crossing in front of the small, red ship, intending to follow them, but before we’d taken five steps, one of the wounded women looked over her shoulder. I knew what she was going to do before she opened her mouth. Cinthia had been right.

“Hey! Hey! Here!” the woman screamed.

I looked toward the doors to see two Nordic soldiers staring stupidly at the group as they struggled to the ship. I then looked back at the group. Heath was in the middle of spinning around on one heel. He finished his turn, saw the men at the doors, and began moving around Jill and Helen, raising his rifle.

“Get them to the ship!” he cried.

The traitorous woman was trying to break away from the group. Helen only held her by one hand. Apparently, she hadn’t been as wounded as she’d let on. The other woman began begging for her companion to stop.

“Are you kidding me!” Helen roared.

“Do it!” Heath shouted.

I didn’t wait to see how Helen would respond. I turned back to the Nordics, who were raising their rifles as well. It was a close draw, but Heath fired first, then Cinthia, then me. Before the men could fire a shot, one of our plasma orbs, I wasn’t sure who’s, struck the man closest to the red ship. He hadn’t turned on his energy shield and immediately burst into flames. Then the second Nordic fired as his partner screamed and flailed beside him. A solid red beam shot from the barrel, forming a glowing line between Cinthia, me, and Heath before striking a ship further down the parking lot. He didn’t turn off the beam, and an orange glow began illuminating from the ship’s metal. The Nordic then moved the laser toward Heath, intending to slice him in half. We all fired at the Nordic, but when the first orb struck, it stuck to the energy shield surrounding his body. That one orb was certainly causing him pain. I got a glance of his teeth grinding, but the whole thing was over too quickly for me to say more than that. Several more orbs struck him, and his finger let go of the trigger as he screamed in pain. I didn’t look to see if the beam had managed to strike Heath or not. At that point, I wasn’t sure, but I knew it had been close. Instead, I kept my eyes on the man, my frightening focus truly returning to me in an instant, and waited for what I knew would come next.

The Nordic’s hands scrambled toward his belt until he found the right button, and the energy shield shut off. The plasma from the splattered orbs fell around him. Tiny flames flickered on the metal parking lot. But this did him little good. I fired a well-aimed shot, and I know the orb that killed him was mine.

“Back toward the ship slowly,” Cinthia shouted. “We can’t run for it! Keep shooting! We have to blind them!”

Sure enough, the doors burst open. I couldn’t tell how many Nordics there were, but there were enough to fill the doorway. They looked down at the fallen soldiers, then back up at us. We didn’t give them time for anything else. As we backed away, Cinthia and I hit them with a barrage of orbs, and whether we’d hit shields or not, the cumulative heat was enough to force the Nordics back. Heath, who I was happy to see alive, was much smarter than us. He aimed his rifle upward and fired his orbs over the top of the doorway. Smoke began billowing into the sky as the plasma burned the metal above the Nordic’s heads. The three of us continued firing until Heath’s gun suddenly stopped.

“I told her to charge it!” Heath screamed.

Cinthia and I were almost beside him then, and figuring he was a better shot than I was, I shouted, “Take mine,” and tossed my rifle to him. Heath caught it and gave me a nod. Then he continued firing above the doorway.

“Go back!” Cinthia shouted as she tried to keep the Nordics from firing at Heath.

“I’m with you,” I told her.

A small grin curled up her lip. “Crazy old man,” she muttered. Then she raised her voice. “Thanks.”

We kept backing away, but gradually, we moved past Heath, who had slowed his pace. A few feet from the ship, something changed in his demeanor. He stiffened, then lowered his rifle and fired directly at the Nordics. Then he began moving toward them, screaming. Cinthia and I reached the ramp of the Eagle Seven. We ran to the top of it and turned to see Heath still moving toward the doorway.

“Heath! What are you doing?” Cinthia shouted. She began firing again.

I couldn’t see what the Nordics were doing through all the smoke, but they must’ve figured out something because a laser beam fired diagonally from the doorway and struck a ship. The beam then quickly turned off, and another shot closer to Heath. It was straight enough to shoot all the way to the Eagle Seven, and only the lip of the ramp prevented the beam from removing my feet. The beam began cutting across the row between the ships, but it was low enough for Heath to jump over, which he did. Then another beam fired, striking above the landing gear of the Eagle Seven, but it was slightly high, and Heath was able to duck under it as it cut at an angle across the parking lot. For myself, I had to hop over it as it traveled across the body of the ship. I peered over the side of the ramp and saw a glowing orange streak across the legs of the landing gear. I knew rifle lasers were weaker than the lasers used on ships, so I hoped the damage was superficial.

I looked back at Heath, who was still advancing toward the Nordics. In fact, he’d nearly reached the doors. I thought the least he could do was lay on his stomach because the Nordics appeared to be shooting blind. Then another beam shot out, once again striking the landing gear and nicking Heath’s shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice, but the moment that laser moved, it would be over for him. Then the frame above the doorway gave out. Molten and twisted metal spilled over the cloud of smoke as the front of the brothel collapsed on top of the Nordics. The final laser beam went out. I didn’t realize the Nordics had still been screaming until there was silence.

Heath gave a final nod to the brothel, then sprinted back for the ship.

“Thank you,” Cinthia whispered.

I turned to her. She was looking at me and smiling with tears in her eyes. “That’s the first prayer I’ve said in a long time.”

I nodded, then I lifted my hand, offering to take the rifle. She gave it to me and rushed to Heath. She examined his arm as he ran back to the ramp, and once they were on board the ship, I took one last look at the brothel. I heard the fire of more plasma rifles and realized the prisoners had taken their chance. I pray they made it.

I returned to the ship and had enough time to realize Jill was not inside the hull. Then the ship lurched, and Helen let out a curse. She moved past me and pressed a button. Then the door began to rise, sealing us inside the ship.

When the door was closed, I turned and saw the two women huddled up against the wall. The traitorous woman’s head lay in the other woman’s lap. There was a bright red spot on her cheek, and I knew Helen had helped her the only way she could.

Heath passed by me, holding his arm. He approached Cynthia, looking at her sheepishly. “Thank you,” he muttered. He turned to me. “You, too.”

Before I could say anything, Cynthia grabbed Heath by his shoulders, threw her arms around him, and squeezed. Heath winced but did his best to hug her back. Then she took his head in both her hands and forced him to look into her eyes.

“Don’t ever underestimate me again,” she said.

Heath nodded.

I’ll describe what happened then in the next entry, Lord willing.

May God grant you peace.

Hieromonk Nicholas Petrov

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Last time, I discussed how time travel, like all technology in science fiction, operates in a similar way to soft or hard magic systems in fantasy. I promised to show how this applies to the Terminator franchise, not only because we spent so much time on it but because it beautifully demonstrates the perils, along with the promise, of the Time-Travel Trope.

Both Back to the Future and the first two Terminator films brought time travel to modern audiences. While it would’ve been fun to look at Back to the Future in this context, the Terminator franchise is unique. It illustrates a very specific problem that the trope presents… as time goes on — if you’ll humor a terrible pun.

Conflating two different magic systems

As I have mentioned elsewhere, the Terminator films’ main plot mistake was that they ended up conflating the soft and hard magic systems, which created conflicting emotional stakes. The first two films kept time travel ambiguous, and rightfully so.

The time machines in that movie were just the mechanism used to create the inciting incident. The first movie took the risk of creating a paradox at the end by making Kyle Reese John’s father. However, this wasn’t too much of a risk because, at the time, nobody knew there was going to be a sequel. So the writers could use the paradox to keep the ending open-ended.

The film also kept the time travel theme vague enough to lean into the mystery a paradox creates, which is the hallmark of a soft magic system. That system is designed to either introduce mystery or rescue the protagonist when the objective is escape.

Handling a paradox in a smart way

Terminator 2: Judgement Day was risky in the sense that now the paradox that time travel has created is in play. Thus the film has an additional rule to contend with. But the writers handled this risk in a smart way. It directed the audience to focus most of its attention on the T-1000.

Then in a dramatic twist, the new objective becomes fixing the paradox—no fate. This was ultimately accomplished by destroying the T-1000, Skynet, and the T-800 sent to save John. Only after the T-800’s dramatic death is the loop finally closed.

There were two rules in Terminator 2: time travel itself, treated as soft magic, and the paradox the time travel had created, and the movie dealt with both of them.

But then things shift toward hard magic…

Then Terminator 3 entered the scene, and things began to fall apart. Now, the film had three rules to contend with: time travel, the paradox, and fate. The problem was that the soft magic system has just become a hard magic system. Why?

Someone might argue that Terminator 2 had a hard magic system, but I disagree because the paradox is surrounded in mystery. All the audience really knows is that time travel itself creates paradoxes. But the details remain unclear and don’t interfere with the logic of the story. Sarah infers from a dream that she can end the paradox by destroying Skynet or the man who is going to create Skynet. And in the end, the T-800, the one who is most likely to know the truth, reveals that he must be destroyed as well.

The writers chose to keep their cards close to the chest about all this, and the mystery that choice created helps drive the plot. So I would say that the time travel in Terminator 2 is fundamentally soft because the story question is essentially how to solve a problem the protagonists don’t understand.

As an aside, I should also like to point out that, even in Terminator 2, the future events are not hard to guess. John sent Kyle Reese into the past to save his mother, but John must’ve missed something during the future war, and the robots were able to try again. So, because it’s evident that future John will be unable to solve the problem, the only solution is to keep the apocalyptic future from happening in the first place. Thus, we don’t need any information beyond what is happening in the films to infer what’s happening in the future.

So where did Terminator 3 start to go off the rails?

Terminator 3 crossed into hard magic territory when it added the concept of fate to time travel. While fate is often portrayed as mysterious, there’s no mystery to the basic idea: No matter what else happens, certain events in the future are fixed and will lead to certain outcomes. That’s a hard rule, and there’s nothing for the characters to discover, much less correct.

The rule instantly reduces the mystery and lowers the stakes in the story. Why should the audience care if whatever happens is going to happen anyway? It also doesn’t help that the film is sloppy at best. If it weren’t for the ending, I would consider the movie a total failure.

But Terminator 3 was still salvageable because the one thing the writers did right was position John as the future leader of humanity. The past may be fixed, but, from the audience’s perspective, the future is still very much in question, so as long as the next movie focuses on the war. If the time-travel narrative is dropped altogether, there’s no lasting damage. This is what the next movie did.

The introduction of fate in Terminator 3 also offered an advantage in the sense that the concept of fate doesn’t conflict with a paradox. In fact, it’s arguable that a paradox could be explained by fate. The paradox must be a necessity in order for fate to happen. The two rules might be too complicated for easy comprehension, but they don’t contradict.

But then the story gets very complicated

Then Genisys enters the scene and starts adding multiple timelines, time machines, and robots. In fact, there are so many robots and time machines it’s impossible to construct a scenario to explain everything without writing a novel. That’s too much work for an audience. They get confused, get bored, then check out.

When Dark Fate arrives, everything collapses because fate is mixed with infinite regresses. Now not only is it difficult to construct a scenario to explain everything, it’s impossible because the franchise’s rules have become contradictory. There can’t be fate if one robot army is going to replace another army—but it’s not even the same army and John isn’t the same John.

Someone might call that a sort of momentum—there will be a robot war no matter what—but that’s not the fate described by the third film. Skynet itself is still created despite Skynet’s past tech being destroyed. John is still forced to be the leader of the resistance despite destroying Skynet, and the whole war still happens within approximately the same time frame; it’s only pushed back a few years. That war and that John are meant to exist. Skynet and John are fated to exist. Dark Fate attempts to twist fate’s definition but just ends up contradicting the rest of the franchise.

Furthermore, the only reason the Terminator was sent in the first place was Skynet. If Skynet is destroyed, the Terminator is never sent, period. The fact that the T-800 from the second film remains and has to destroy itself only proves that the T-800 was right. The paradox from the first film proves that events in the past and future are connected by some kind of loop, so Dark Fate cannot claim that the Terminator remained despite Skynet being destroyed.

The entire franchise collapses under the weight of its own rules. That’s why time-travel stories are difficult when the time travel is treated as a hard magic system. But there’s a reason the writers did this, and I’ll cover that next time.

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Werewolves are by far the most common shapeshifting variant. No one knows why, but there’s something about a wolf that people find appealing. The werewolves are one of the main reasons that people subscribe to the Antediluvian Ritual Theory. In the previous log, I mentioned that some men and women in our line of work claim that shapeshifters are proof that all monsters come from rituals recovered after the great flood. To extrapolate on that point, the werewolves are cited as proof for the theory because every first-generation werewolf is created by a ritual. Now, the same can be said for vampires. As discussed, the first phase of vampiric development begins with a ritual; however, the werewolf ritual is more direct. Rather than a red-eyed phantom floating around a cemetery, a werewolf ritual turns the human in question into a fully formed werewolf. There are no intermediate phases, just a jump to a final form. The werewolf will gradually increase its strength and speed with time, but these improvements are modest compared to the vampire, and it basically begins with its final form.

That being said, there are various types of werewolves, and with each type, a corresponding ritual, cursed object, or potion. You have the basic wolf. This is essentially a wolf, no more, no less. Some people believe that there is a species of human that can transform into a wolf by natural means—without a ritual, cursed object, or potion—but I would disagree with this assertion. I believe these people to be from a line of second-generation werewolves, but more on that later. The second type is a dire wolf, basically a really big wolf. The third is a humanoid wolf, a wolf that walks upright but is approximately the same size as a human. The fourth is a large humanoid wolf; these werewolves are usually lanky and stand around eight or nine feet tall. The fifth is a dwarf wolf; unlike the name suggests, the wolf is still the same size as a man, but its muscular capacity is disproportionate. And the last is a hulk-wolf—my name, not the Order’s. This wolf stands around eight feet tall and upward with a gigantic muscular frame. As counterintuitive as it might seem, the sizes of these wolves are not correlated to stages of development, but are the result of distinct rituals, cursed objects, or potions.

The only way to really gauge the power level of a werewolf is by the means of their origins, and, as with all things regarding shapeshifting, the situation is tricky.

The first-generation werewolf is defined as the initial werewolf who was created by magical means. The second-generation werewolf is defined as a werewolf bitten by the first generation. There is no third generation because the end result of a bite from a second generation is the same as a bite from the first generation. However, the differences between a first-generation and a second-generation are extreme. A first-generation werewolf is not dependent on the moon for its transformation. The ritual is what causes the change, and the wolf either remains in its monstrous state, losing all its sentience, or can control its transformation at will, retaining its sentience. In the same vein, a first-generation werewolf’s ability to transform will be triggered by a potion or cursed object, and the situation regarding their sentience can vary. It’s hard to tell since they can’t always talk, but some do, and it’s unpleasant. Since the first-generation can control their transformations, they are often considered an extremely high-ranking werewolf, despite their particular size and strength. When it comes to werewolves, sentience is the criterion for their ranking, with the exception of potions, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Now, a second-generation werewolf will invariably be dependent on the moon for its transformation, but they can all, in time, learn to control the transformation at will. Most don’t, of course, but they can if they are found and given enough time. The particular difficulty in learning to control the transformation will vary depending on the species’ ritual of origin. But here is where things get interesting. While vampiric babies are rare, werewolves can have children, and if two werewolves have a child, that child will become a werewolf, usually around puberty, but not always, and if the two werewolves in question have learned to control their transformation, the child will be able to control the transformation the moment the curse manifests. Now, usually, the child is aware of his parents’ situation long before the curse takes effect, but it’s hypothetically possible for a child to go his or her entire life with the ability to transform and not even know it. There are no examples of this, of course, but I see no reason why such a situation couldn’t take place. It may very well have.

This is where I believe the races of humans who can become wolves come from. I imagine that the first couple of that race learned to control their forms and carried that control to future generations. The thing you must understand about werewolves is that most of them, pardon the pun, run in packs. They often roam the woods in small nomadic groups. The risk of being discovered in urban areas eventually became too great—the process of learning control takes a great deal of time—so many of them eventually chose isolation. They might send a child to college if they’ve learned adequate control—I did have such a case—but this is rare, and often the child finds the transition to urban life too difficult and will return to his or her pack.

Before addressing how to handle werewolves on the field, I need to mention potions. Shapeshifting potions are effective for their purpose, but the transition of the curse is particularly weak in such situations. Unlike cursed objects, potions are broken down by the body, and the potion’s potency can vary a great deal. For this reason, it’s very difficult to classify the strength of a first-generation werewolf because the measure of their sentience can vary depending on how long the potion has been in the body. And the curse works the same way. For lack of a better analogy, the magic from the curse, more or less, spills out of the werewolf, and how much of that curse carries through to the victim will depend on how long the potion has been in the body. (Note: When it comes to the matter of werewolf rankings. I wouldn’t spend a great deal of time studying them because they are largely arbitrary. As I said before, the criterion is the werewolf’s measure of control, but from my point of view, the situation is dichotomous. Either they can control the curse or they can’t. Partial control—that is to say, lapsing in and out of awareness—won’t cut it in the field. So, I don’t bother with the distinctions. Plus, the whole problem with the werewolf rankings is that if the werewolf is utilizing ritualistic means, then the fact they can control their sentience is immaterial. They are utilizing the demonic, with the exception of extraordinarily rare cases when a wizard might utilize his own internal power—but why would they since there are far better ways to obtain speed and strength—or perhaps in a situation when a vampire or some other creature with magic independent of the demonic makes a cursed object or potion. This almost never happens. So, a first-generation werewolf who can control his or her sentience doesn’t change our job. When it comes to second-generation werewolves, the ability to control their transformation warrants a higher ranking, but it doesn’t tell us anything about their advanced speed and strength since the control of the transformation might be the result of a weaker form of the curse. Therefore, I have little use for the Order’s ranking system on this subject.)

I recently had a very complex case where a young woman was bitten by a shifter—who was using the werewolf as one of many forms—and she learned to control her transformation inside of a year, which is record time. However, she simultaneously shared all the speed and strength of her maker. This werewolf was of the hulk variety, and she’d taken on his strength and speed, which were comparable to any werewolf of that species, so far as I can tell. (I wasn’t present for the case. I merely consulted.) The reason for this rapid control was because the curse’s grip was very weak, so she must’ve been attacked towards the end of the potion’s effective period. I say this simply as a word of caution. Potion-oriented transformations can be unpredictable and have unforeseen effects on both the victim and the individual utilizing such a method.

Now, when it comes to the question of how to fight werewolves. Number One: Christian methods will work on first-generation wolves but not on the second-generation. The reason for this is because the nature of the curse changes during the transfer. It becomes more grounded in natural energies, hence its dependence on the moon. Here is where things become very tricky. Silver will work on the second-generation, but not the first. This is what gets many hunters killed. They misjudge the correct means to dispatch the werewolf; furthermore, those who are unfamiliar with the distinction will kill the second-generation werewolf, then fail to kill the first-generation because the thing about werewolves is that there is almost never one of them. When there is a werewolf in an urban area—remember the long-term, more experienced, and powerful wolves are moving in packs deep in the forests—the cause is almost always a witch doctor or cultist who’s turned via occult methods, and in the case of the werewolf, the means for this transformation are almost always demonic. There are a few who might use their own energy, but this is rare because there are far safer ways to utilize shifting, and none of them are rooted in the fairy realm. This is something that makes lycanthropy distinct from other forms of shifting. In fact, satanists often use werewolves as guards, and these men are all subject to Christian methods. You can remove the curse by utilizing them. The process is much like an exorcism. Remember, God is doing all the work, not you, so the particulars don’t really matter.

I want you to think back to all the horror movies you’ve seen about werewolves. The movie usually ends with the tragic beast’s demise, but, in reality, the work is never done when that poor soul is dispatched. It’s imperative that you find the initial cause. The locals who adopt such a mob mentality almost always end up having trouble later because they never spot the initial culprit, and very often that job falls to us because someone else has failed. Understand that instances of werewolf attacks are loud, brutal, and brief. Second-generation werewolves are much like zombie vampires in that respect, but the plague persists because people stop after the first wolf is killed. I cannot think of a time when there wasn’t a puppet master tormenting the town during the werewolf cases I’ve worked. Second-generation werewolves are usually mere muscle. They can serve few other functions. They lack sentience, after all. Someone has to be controlling that muscle.

Much like with shifters, the key to finding the first-generation wolf is much like finding the witch doctor or cultist in his or her human form. And just like the mad scientist scenario I mentioned in a previous log, the key is looking for the loathsome individual lurking around the various crime scenes. This is where our job becomes ethically complicated. We don’t want to wait for the second-generation wolf to kill again. We don’t trade lives. At the same time, we often use the crime scenes to find the first culprit. My advice is to never make the trade-off and to try and find the initial culprit by any other means possible, but should the werewolf kill someone while you are working the case, it should be your priority to get to the crime scene as fast as possible and find the skunk lurking about. Utilize the Christian means we’ve discussed to remove the threat. Command the curse to be gone in Christ’s name, then arrest the madman, or kill the creature if a cop isn’t handy.

Now, when it comes to destroying the second-generation wolf. First of all, I should begin by saying that I take great pity on these poor souls. I treat their murders as something more akin to manslaughter. They’ve usually lost their sentience and have no control or memory of the crime. I tend to find them and send them to the Order, where they can be isolated and taught to control the curse. Werewolves, believe it or not, can make great agents, so long as they are not fighting elder vampires. But if you are put in a situation where you must destroy the beast lest you be killed yourself, silver is imperative. The reason for silver working on the second generation and not the first is the same as the reason for the transformation’s dependence on the moon. The first-generation’s power is rooted in the demonic, but in the case of the second-generation, they didn’t choose to take on the curse, so it shifts from something demonic to something rooted in the elemental. Therefore, the curse requires an elemental force, silver in this case, to stop it. And I can’t stress this enough. A werewolf’s healing factor is practically infinite. It even surpasses the vampire. A vampire can be shot in the head or heart, but it doesn’t matter where you hit a werewolf or if you blow the beast up. It will heal, and it will heal before the night is out so the human can return to his or her home oblivious to the entire encounter. The bullet must be silver, and if you wish to kill the beast, the wound must be substantial enough to kill a man. This is a hard rule. But I would advise you to take a more investigatory approach when dealing with werewolves. The second-generation wolf has no idea what’s going on. They’ll be suspicious, but they will not have encountered anything certain enough to convince them that they are the culprit. And why would they believe such a thing? Who wants to admit they’ve killed a man without realizing it? And in my experience, once the wolf is aware of his or her situation, they try very hard to fight it. That’s worth something.

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Pinkerton’s Bestiary is a supernatural field journal from the Annals of S.O.L.M. universe, documenting monsters, curses, and occult threats encountered by hunter John Pinkerton.

New entries and stories are published weekly.

I spent a great deal of time talking about the Vorvolakos because through them the manifestations of the vampiric virus or curse are most apparent. When it comes to the Vrykolakas, the situation is much simpler. The only anomaly here is the emergence of the Flesh-Wearers, which seem to be a hybrid of the Full-Bat variations and a lower class of zombie vampire. Here, I should probably take a moment to explain why these two variations of vampire developed into the Flesh-Wearer.

Full-Bat variations are categorized into two camps: those with sentience and those without. However, they cannot return to a human state, and the Flesh-Wearer’s true form is bat-like. And the zombie vampire’s rates of decay can vary. So, it’s believed that the Flesh-Wearers developed their ability to grow human skin from a zombie variation. But why do our scholars assume that it must have been a zombie and not one of the lesser Vorvolakos? Because the chief anomaly of the zombie vampire is that they lose their sentience. There have been a handful of times in the past where a zombie vampire has retained or regained their sentience, but this is not typical among that species. What has occurred then is a vampire that grows a suit of flesh, probably reminiscent of a zombie vampire that showed little signs of decay—palish skin and nothing more, perhaps—but mentally they are essentially non-sentient. In the Flesh-Wearer’s case there might be exceptions, but I haven’t heard of them. They perform a kind of mimicry. That is, they can answer questions and interact, but their minds are constantly focused on feeding, and this compulsion is much stronger than the typical hunger, which interacts with the human will to twist the mind into feeding. This hunger is more like an instinct. It’s important to note that the real commonality between the Flesh-Wearer and the zombie vampire is that the true person is dead, gone entirely. If it has access to memories inside the brain, they are fragmentary at best, snapshots they can use to infer a backstory. But both variations are fully animalistic in nature. It’s just that one can form words the same way a computer can pretend to have a conversation, and the other grunts. In short, it is the degradation of the mind that persuades most to believe that the Flesh-Wearers are a combination of the Full-Bat Hybrids and a lower-class zombie vampire, but it is entirely possible that the Flesh-Wearers are the result of a Full-Bat that lost its sentience, and the curse was introduced to another factor. We just have no guess as to what that factor might’ve been.

Now, as to the first and strongest class of zombie vampire, the Vrykolakas, this class, I’m happy to say, is extinct. I have recently heard a troubling rumor about their return, and while I am acting as if the rumor might be true, I desperately hope this rumor is incorrect. The reason being is that currently my strongest allies are Vorvolakos, and they are particularly weak to the Vrykolakas. In the past, they were a sort of opposite force to the Vorvolakos. One might think of it this way: if Vorvolakos were order, the Vrykolakas were chaos. One Vorvolakos in particular claims that her master used to keep them as pets. When the Vorvolakos were pretending to be gods among the ancient, pre-pantheon Greeks, they would release a batch of Vrykolakas to attack a town, then present themselves to the villagers as divine rescuers. I see no reason to doubt her tale, but this would’ve been dangerous work, for a Vrykolakas bite is venomous, not just to humans but to the Vorvolakos.

If a Vorvolakos was bitten by a Vrykolakas, then that wounded vampire would be driven mad, possibly die, and every last person bitten by that Vorvolakos would then transform into a Vrykolakas. Basically, the Vrykolakas curse overrides the Vorvolakos curse. To make the situation even more deadly for the Vorvolakos, all zombie vampires attack as a herd, and the Vorvolakos could hit them a hundred ways before killing them. But if the Vrykolakas inflicted one bite, the Vorvolakos was finished, no matter their age and strength.

As far as the strength of the Vrykolakas goes, it, like the other versions of its curse, was relatively low on the tier list. They could lift a heavy boulder, land safely from tall buildings, things of that sort, but nothing on par with the Vorvolakos variations. Their speed, at most, was akin to a human on adrenaline. Their intellect can range from insectile-like swarms to cunning wolves, but never beyond that. To accomplish more, they’d have to regain their sentience. To my knowledge, they’ve never displayed magical abilities either.

And as I’ve said previously, zombie vampires are easy to spot. They are usually decayed or have very pale skin. Only the lowest-ranking ones would even retain their hair, and those that do would probably be killed and mistaken for a madman. They can eat meat but require blood. In this way, they are often mistaken for ghouls, but ghouls can transform into a particular shape, whereas the zombie vampire cannot. Religious relics cannot affect them because there is no soul to affect. They are purely animalistic in nature.

The real danger with these creatures is being cornered by them. Depending on the zombie class, it may or may not require a wound to the head or heart. Many can be killed by simply spraying bullets at it. To the prepared, they are one of the least dangerous creatures you’ll have to deal with, but that is not to say there is no danger, unless you want to consider a bear non-threatening.

Variants

I must address variants as well because they are a confusing class. Some of them are extremely powerful; others are not. The key component is that they’ve made tradeoffs in their magical abilities. They’ve traded some of their talents in favor of other talents or an advancement of their abilities in a shorter period of time. Some will be decayed and therefore indistinguishable from Dark Vampires. Others will have strange abilities like making sure their victims decay in their vampiric state while they retain their youth. These creatures are true wild cards.

In a previous log, I mentioned an example. Dracula was relatively young but had obtained a variety of powers reserved for Elders. However, he lacked the infamous supernatural speed, and this was his undoing. He was forced to utilize help to transport himself from one location to the next and was killed en route to his castle. That was one way he died, anyway. This was also the time he remained dead for the longest. One of his other talents is his ability to respawn. There are some theories as to how this happens. Here, I’ll mention two. One is that his name is so popular that every vampire cult in existence attempts to summon him first. The other is that he has copied the soul trinket tactic of the wizards and has a variety of objects hidden somewhere with a thread of his silver cord attached to them. Normally, these objects would have to be gathered together and a ceremony done to reform the villain inside a willing human victim, but wizards have found ways around this over the years, and in Dracula’s case, we think he simply returns as a class one Vorvolakos and eventually either indwells a corpse or convinces someone to give up their body. Nobody has actually seen this. This is merely speculation.

Variants are very rare, and I only mention them because challenging these creatures is among the hardest tasks we have to face. The reason being is because there is almost always a very unique way required to kill them. Religious objects are particularly effective, though, and they often mean the difference between life and death. I should also mention that the reason we call the Order in Variant cases is because sometimes, S.O.L.M., a branch of the Coptic Order, will have located a carrier of a mantle. I will discuss the mantles later, but people blessed with such a gift will often be able to discern how to kill the creature. It’s as if the needed information is downloaded into them from on high. These people are particularly helpful when it comes to dealing with Variants. Some creatures are very complicated to kill, advanced zombies for example. I will devote a log to them later, but even in the case of an advanced zombie, we have a general idea how to dispatch them. Variants can require anything, so we often need help.

Hybrids

One group I haven’t mentioned because they are not really a group at all is hybrids. Every once in a while, some mad scientist type will try to splice two species of something together. This can be multiple species of vampires, Gremlin Vampires with Full-Bats, or a Traditional Vampire with a Banshee, whatever, and the result is something in between. The usual methods are normally all it takes to dispatch one of these hybrids, but things can become complicated if the mad scientist tries to combine two different monstrous species, say a vampire and a werewolf, for example. This one is more common than you might think. These two species are the most well-known, so the greatest number of troublemakers tend to go, “Wouldn’t it be cool if . . .” So, yeah. You might have to deal with a vampire-werewolf combo. This can be annoying because the question becomes, “Do I shoot it in the heart or head, or do I just need a silver bullet?” The correct answer is yes to both questions, but it can become taxing if some hunter hacks a hybrid all day without using silver. In that case, the poor soul is just wasting his time. A werewolf can be hit in the heart, head, wherever, but silver is required to kill it. Or the hybrid might go in the other direction, and the hunter ends up dying because he shot it with silver and didn’t finish the job. In some cases, the hybrid can look like a giant wolfman but needs to be shot in the heart or head, or it can look like a vampire with abnormal teeth and require silver.

The easiest way to infer if you’re fighting a hybrid is to look for the scientist, not the monster. If you have a nefarious individual lurking around crime scenes, gawking at the blood, follow that man or woman home and see if you find ritualistic or scientific equipment. If the equipment exists, then grab your silver bullets and shoot the beast in the heart. Then turn the scientist in for the killings. They won’t be able to pin the murders on the cretin, but people like that have usually broken multiple laws, and the scientist will wind up in jail for something—grave robbing if nothing else.

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Over the last several months, I’ve been covering the time travel trope in science fiction movies. Its modern manifestation began with H.G. Wells’s novella, The Time Machine (1895) and the film interpretations it later inspired, along with the botched Terminator franchise. In this series of articles, I would like to explore the concept of time travel itself in more detail. My goal is to show what does and doesn’t work when it comes to time travel and why. How can a writer use the trope skillfully and what should the writer avoid.

Why do viewers accept a story premise?

I believe that the suspension of disbelief, which is one way to measure the quality of a story, is driven by stakes, that is, why the audience should care. This is also sometimes called the story question.

Stakes are manifested by clarity. I’ve recently been reconsidering my position on stakes. I am entertaining the idea that clarity is really the prime criterion for a believable story. It may even be what makes a story good or bad.

In my experience — especially while writing these Sci-Fi Saturday reviews — I’ve come to realize that plot holes always sprout in ambiguity. Usually, the writer has ignored something. He or she wants a visual or a particular outcome or a message and rushes to get to that point, leaving various matters unaddressed.

This is why plot holes are legion in propaganda pieces. One of the best ways to identify veiled propaganda is by pinpointing a random uptick in plot holes in an otherwise coherent series or isolated story. The studio or government or whatever sponsor is more concerned with the message than with continuity. Thus the work as a whole suffers.

Time travel technology as either soft or hard magic

Technology in science fiction serves the same function as soft and hard magic systems in fantasy. A soft magic system is one whose rules are vague. It can add an element of mystery to a story, suggesting a bigger world — think Merlin — or it can be a means of rescue for the story characters. So, let’s say that, instead of a time machine, we have a wizard who teleports people through time. The stakes involve getting to the wizard, in the same way that the protagonist would want to get to a time machine.

We typically see this soft magic approach in plots where the protagonist has traveled into the future and needs to return to the past. The stakes (the story question) become whether the protagonist can return to the wizard or the time machine. How either operates is not important because the story question isn’t focused on the wizard or the machine so much as it is focused on the protagonist finding whichever one is needed.

In a hard magic system, by contrast, there are definite rules. The system works in a particular way, and understanding those rules is critical to the plot—think Harry Potter. The mechanics of the magic itself affect the story. Not every detail has to be fleshed out, but the ones that are fleshed out drive the plot. For example, a character must say the right word at the right time; otherwise, the big bag will say another word at the wrong time and crush the protagonist with an anvil.

An example of a hard magic-like system in science fiction can be found in the Matrix franchise. A definite rule of this technology, operating as a magic system, is this: a person who dies in the Matrix dies in real life. This shifts the focus of the story.

Neo doesn’t just need to reach the telephone to escape the Matrix; he must reach it before Agent Smith kills him. If Agent Smith kills him in the Matrix, Neo will die in real life. Hard magic systems add variables, which increases the intensity of the stakes, or the number of story questions. The audience must watch the protagonist solve not one problem but two: reach the phone, beat the agent.

What goes wrong in time travel stories

A key way things go wrong is that the writers try to conflate soft and hard magic systems. So, let’s return to the example of the Matrix. In the last film, Neo and Trinity are resurrected. The film never explains how this is done and tries to treat the mechanics of this robotic resurrection as a soft magic system. But this resurrection conflicts with the Matrix as a film, because the Matrix — which was created by the robots — is a hard magic system. The stakes are tied to the rules, and one rule in particular: the person who dies in the matrix, dies in real life.

Now, the audience is forced to conclude that the rules are lies. We can no longer trust what we are being told about the rules of the system, the rules that both the protagonist and the antagonist are using to accomplish their goals. To that extent, we disengage from the story because the information is unreliable.

A technological wizard could show up at any point and raise the protagonist back to life. So, why should the audience care? The stakes are gone. The story question no longer matters. The god in the machine can come in and reset the board any time it likes.

Resurrections in stories are not always bad

Game of Thrones for example, for all its problems, handled the resurrection of Jon Snow correctly by keeping the rules and natures of the gods in that universe vague. It was no guarantee that Jon would be resurrected a second time. For all the audience knew, the gods might’ve resurrected Jon just for giggles. Maybe he was an important figure in the plan; maybe they just wanted to watch him die again. No one knows.

A writer can handle a resurrection either by keeping things vague (soft) or add additional rules to explain why it can’t be repeated. For example, a writer might create a spell that enables a true love’s kiss to bring back a dead loved one once. After that, all bets are off.

But because the Matrix writers had an ironclad rule about how characters died in that world and spent so much time setting up the nature of the machines in previous films, this sudden resurrection brought everything into question. The film conflated the rules of the soft and hard systems. Therefore, the stakes of the last film were destroyed, the story question no longer mattered, and the suspension of disbelief was broken.

This brings us to how the soft and hard magic system rules were broken when it comes to time travel narratives in the Terminator franchise. I’ll talk about that next time.

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Once we’d returned to the ship and left the Droguldai way station, I felt a desire to say something, but a somber silence had fallen over the crew, and I couldn’t break it. Throughout the initial part of our journey, I’d remained in the hull, feverishly writing these entries and trying to recount Earth’s history and the lore. Now, I found myself in the front of the ship. It reminded me of the old-fashioned cars—something called a “van.” The Eagle Seven was a large ship, but the flight deck was surprisingly small. This did not help the tension. Heath had taken the pilot seat, and Jill sat in the copilot seat beside him. Cinthia and Helen sat in front of me in the two chairs behind Heath and Jill, while I sat on a long bench-like seat in the back row. The brown leather seats were worn and cracked. Buttons and controls I didn’t recognize flashed all around me. I couldn’t guess what any of them did, and the whole compartment smelled of rust and mold. Stars streaked past us, but even at such a rate, it would take years for us to reach our destination. Dry air tormented my nostrils, and silence filled my ears.

The first to speak was Helen, and her words didn’t improve matters. “So, are we perverts, Monk?”

Jill snapped her head back and hissed, “Shut up, Helen.”

“I knew about the zoos,” I said quietly. “Although, I’ve never met anyone who was forced into them.”

“It put us in a real spot,” Helen said. “Should we have died rather than given up our virtue? Should we have died rather than give up our babies?”

“Please stop,” Cinthia whispered.

“I want an answer,” Helen said, smiling, and there was no humor behind that grin. “It’s tormented me for years. How’s God going to judge all of that?”

“I don’t think you sinned,” I said. I had my reasons for believing this, but something told me Helen wasn’t really interested in hearing them.

“What about the jealousy I felt when Madulluel let Mary keep her next set of kids?” Helen asked. “I was happy for her, sure. But I was jealous. Furious even.” She looked up at Heath. “Was that the deal, Heath? Mary got to keep her kids if you dated the alien queen?”

Heath was quiet for a long time. I heard his knuckles popping on the wheel from my seat. Finally, he whispered, “How long have you been wanting to ask that, Helen?”

Something about his tone defeated Helen. She leaned back in her seat and cupped her hands in her face. She let out a long sigh and practically melted. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Seeing your kid got in my head is all. She’s cute and everything, but that just . . . brought stuff back.”

“I know,” Heath said.

More silence filled the cockpit. Jill eventually broke it. “At least, we know where Jeena and Silby are. What’s the plan, Heath?”

“Do we have to?” Helen asked. “They led the coup.”

“Coup?” Cinthia asked with a wry grin.

“Whatever,” Helen said. “I say leave them.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Heath said.

Helen groaned. “I know. Just thought I’d bring it up.”

“What’s the plan?” Jill repeated.

“Not now,” Heath said. He gave Jill a sharp look, and she nodded. Cinthia stiffened in her seat and frowned.

The silence returned. After a while, Heath knelt down and began flipping switches. Two antenna-like arms extended from the left and right sides of our window. There was no noise from outside the ship, but some motor inside the cockpit began humming, and I knew I was about to see something I’d only heard of. A few seconds later, the stars in front of us shifted. That was all there was to it. There was no swirling mass of energy, no distortion that appeared as rippling waves in front of us, just a subtle shifting of the stars in front of us because they were no longer our stars.

By the time the Nordics had made their duplicitous play during the Treaty of Introduction, the US government had long since figured out how to use wormholes, but they’d failed to tell the public—for reasons of national security, I suppose. Again, I am not a technician, so I couldn’t tell you how these wormholes were created, but the trouble was that they produced a great deal of radiation, and the first men who attempted to use these portals quickly died. It took a great deal of time to figure out how to properly insulate the ships, both from the radiation produced by the wormholes and the radiation put out by the elements required to make them. There were also rumors. The men who traveled through those portals claimed to see things, but I’ve never met anybody who knows what. It’s been said that these portals are dangerous if one remains within them for too long, so everyone flies in and out as quickly as possible, but the length of these portals is something unknown to me, so it’s impossible for me to say how long a ship remains inside them. The other issue with these portals was that the coordinates had to be very precise. A pilot was required to have intimate knowledge of star charts and be capable of pinpointing the exact location of their destination in the Milky Way. If a pilot risked too many jumps at once, the ship’s controls would begin to malfunction. Even after centuries of effort, the protection against the radiation isn’t complete. How many jumps it takes to start experiencing deleterious effects is still a debated issue.

Heath didn’t seem bothered by any of this. He flew straight toward these new stars, and before I’d realized it, we were inside the portal. How to describe the experience? It was darkness of a sort, but not quite a void. All the stars, save the circle of stars in front of us, disappeared. The familiar light of the sun, which was quite faint, became sorely missed when it vanished from the window. Yet there was a light, a dark light, something blue and purple and undulating as if it were alive. It wasn’t still, steady, constant. I’d always envisioned the inside of a wormhole to be like going underwater. The sun wavers and shifts beneath the surface, making you aware of the liquid between you and it, but, this light, it was like the faint glow of a bulb, which becomes flickering and uncertain as it’s about to go out forever. Then something moved.

I saw it only for an instance, but I did see it! A black mountain shifted from the left side of the window. There was nothing but a blackish curtain with a blue and purple hue. There were no discernible shapes. That is until a shape, a mound, perhaps with a head, perhaps not—I couldn’t be sure—leaned to one side. Then the whole monstrous thing was there, and what’s worse, that motion revealed an army of somethings. I couldn’t see them, but there was more than one of that . . . something. Jill winced but did not speak. Heath kept his eyes forward, intent on the stars, the only source of light, before him. Helen and Cinthia kept their eyes downward, staring at their laps. They didn’t seem afraid, but they didn’t look. They must’ve seen that something before. Then that mountain began to turn, and we were out of the wormhole. Everyone let out their held breaths. I looked down and saw that I was clutching the cross draped around my neck. Then I wondered if we were playing with forces that should best be left alone.

Before I could ponder the question, I saw a small blue planet centered in the middle of our former circle of stars. The familiar constellations were gone, and although I am no expert when it comes to charting stars, I felt their absence. I knew I was somewhere wholly new, another region inside the Milky Way. But did we cheat to get here? I wasn’t sure.

“I’m going to land,” Heath said. “Then Jill, Helen, and I are going to talk. Cinthia, I want you to stay with the Monk.” Heath turned and eyed me. “I don’t care what you see. Stay on this ship. This is Nordic territory. If they find a Christian anywhere on one of their planets, you might be put in a zoo yourself, if you’re lucky. They still exist here. Stay on the ship. Understand?”

I nodded.

No one spoke as Heath landed. So far as I could tell, the planet looked exactly like Earth. The buildings, some skyscrapers, others more house-like in appearance, were oval-shaped structures, and as we descended toward a city, I saw that the roads and sidewalks were covered in metal plates instead of asphalt. There were ariel vehicles hovering over the plates, and I supposed that all the craft were using a form of magnetism for propulsion, but that’s just a guess on my part. Heath lowered the craft until it rested on a large parking lot surrounded by other ships that were similar in size to the Eagle Seven. In the middle of this parking lot, there was a low, wide building. It was as round and as wide as a stadium, but the domed roof led me to believe that the structure was a single story. Heath flipped a few more switches, and the craft landed with a thud. Then he was out of his chair, eyeing first me, then Jill and Helen, who removed their seatbelts and stood, intending to follow him.

Heath crossed to the back of the cockpit and turned. “Stay here.” But he wasn’t eyeing me as he spoke these words. He was eyeing Cinthia.

I’ll describe what happened next in the following entry, Lord willing.

May God grant you peace.

Hieromonk Nicholas Petrov

Go to garypaulvarner.org

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