Source: http://sorahate.net/pic/sg01.jpg

That’s why, at this very moment, in the interval of a second,
I wish to cross the world lines and protect your smile.
Then, once again into a time loop devoid of misery,
I will be swallowed as a lonely observer.

- Steins;Gate opening theme, Hacking to the Gate

I’ve been putting this post off for a long time now, with excuses that I don’t have enough info to build on, or that it won’t come out as well as I thought it would be.

But no more! This show is one of my season favourites. I’ll admit that it did start off a bit slow for me, but it really picked up fast once the plot started kicking in. After all, what’s a show about time travel without actual time travelling? Or factors that deal with time travel, anyway.

There’s been a lot of ideas that I want to expand on after watching this show (which unfortunately, is ending soon). Instead of making a huge, long post that might look like a huge run-on sentence, I’ll break it down into digestible sections that you can pick and read, since I know that some people might like topics relating to physics whereas some people might like reading about a crazy dream related to Steins;Gate I had a few days ago.

On a short intro

Imagine you were given the chance to send messages back in time in order to change the future. A classic example would be to send this week’s winning lottery tickets to the you of last week, so that you would be able to win the lottery and become rich. Would you do it? Of course you would do something of the such. Everyone is born with an innate curiosity to do something, when given the chance. If I told you that you can suddenly get the objects of your dreams just by using a simple body wash, would you think of using it, even for a second? You get the point.

“The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind, is curiosity.” – Edmund Burke

 

 

 

Thus, the protagonist of the show, the great mad scientist Hououin Kyouma Okabe Rintarou figures out that he can use one of his experiments, the phone microwave, to send messages back into the past. However, if you know the butterfly effect, you should know that things can (and definitely did) go awry. Think of the butterfly effect like the domino effect, where one small change causes a chain reaction of cause and effect scenarios, resulting in one gigantic change due to one simple action.

Think about it. Say you did win the lottery. You can do a variety of things with your new-found wealth. Already, we have branched into a change in the timeline from when you didn’t win the lottery. You can buy a new house, new car, donate, deposit it in the bank…the possibilities are endless. Steins;Gate explores the many possibilities and dangers of time travel (or its variant, time leaping, in another term).

“Steins;Gate” and explaining tidbits of general relativity

First of all, excuse me if I fail at explaining these topics in their fullest detail. I wish I could be a physics major sometimes.

The word “Steins Gate” can just as well come from “Einstein’s ‘gate’”, since one of the main concepts is world lines, which Einstein opened a gateway to a brand new train of thought in physics. In general, world lines are the paths that people go through from start to end, which basically mean from birth to death. Steins;Gate basically uses one massive world lines, which are made up of the world lines of all humanity.

Think of it like a rope, which is comprised out of many tiny strings that hold it together.

Sorry for the crappy quality and Crunchyroll. I forgot which episode was the one where they explained world lines in a bit of depth, which I think they did quite well.

There is the possibility that there are multiple world lines. Steins;Gate focuses on two main world lines, one where an evil organization, SERN, will take over (CERN, don’t follow in their footsteps), and one where they don’t. As world lines relate to the multiple world theory (hey look, it’s Schrödinger’s cat again), there can exist multiple timelines and worlds where there could be a completely different version of ourselves.

Who is John Titor? The story of John Titor was the topic of discussion a few years ago, where a person named John Titor claims to be a time traveller from the future, a topic which Steins;Gate also revives and incorporates into its plot. Although he made several predictions for the future, none of them came true. Since John Titor’s predictions failed, he could either be a massive fraud or he could actually be from a different timeline where all of these things occurred (which thankfully didn’t).

Look, a fancy cube! Mesmerizing. (4D cube, tesseract)

Looking at the big picture (and going a bit off topic), we are therefore looking at the fourth dimension, (space)time. I’ve always held interest in time travel, and also in the theory that there are multiple dimensions. Check out this video proposing the theory of how up to ten dimensions might exist. Because pictures and text is boring. This is the age of video and pretty pictures.

Okabe’s dilemma and a dream

Source: http://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=20977473

If you’ve kept up with the show up until now, you’ll know that Okabe now has to make a huge decision. Will he choose the alpha timeline, and save Mayuri from her fate, or the beta timeline, and to save Makise from hers? Either way, it seems that one of them will die, no matter what happens.

This brings me back to my original topic in the intro. If you were given infinite chances, would you attempt to save a loved one from dying? E Minor presents a video game narrative of how Okabe might view time travelling as. After reloading to a previous preserved state of time, Okabe tries again and again to save Mayuri, his childhood friend, from her seemingly inevitable fate. Like a torturous Endless Eight, this has been repeated so many times that Okabe has been desensitized to the point where he barely speaks to Mayuri, the very person he is trying to save, and has become close to a true mad scientist from the repeated cruelty of death. But why suffer through this? Why not sacrifice one person to save humanity as a whole?

I refer back to the video game narrative and the dreaded aspect of achievements. Why do people restart a game over and over just to accomplish some achievements? If one is given the chance to fix the errors they have made to accomplish something worth doing, why not? Okabe is like an addicted player (or determined would be the proper word) to “unlock” the achievement of saving Mayuri’s life. Since he thinks that he has the means to do so, he tries endlessly to save one life, while possibly ignoring the fact that there is also a humanity to be saved, and that the game has yet to finish.

However, there is an unreal aspect in all this which I was brought to light upon by a dream. See, I either have no dreams at all, or the wildest and craziest dreams. In this dream, I was in a world where things were a bit more realistic. Okabe failed. This was a timeline where Okabe and the rest of the team were captured by SERN, and I was the only one left. Not that I wanted to be the only one left at all. There was no one else to go to. Okabe had Makise, which helped him a ton (and possibly saved him from insanity). You had to keep watch for people that might be after you, in this case, SERN, while trying to change the future through D-Mails (messages to the past) and time leaping. Eventually, I was in the same state as Okabe, but in a more grave situation. I barely escaped death by a gunshot to the shoulder by leaping, and each leap felt more realistic than the last. It felt like everyone was watching you, and the situation seemed hopeless. I was at my limits and was going to give in, when I suddenly woke up, scared and exhausted. I’ve only touched the tip of the iceberg, since it is more of an experience than a story, but one I don’t want to live through again.

Through that dream, I discovered that Okabe is really an interesting character to be able to last this far. Although he might have been seen as a joke of a scientist at first with his antics, I hope he’ll find a way to patch things up by the end of the series. Here’s rooting to you, Okarin! Fuu-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!