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| - Through Applied Phlebotinum, Functional Magic, or some other means, our heroes travel back to the past. In the past, they wind up being responsible for the very events that underpin their own "present." This creates a chicken-and-egg scenario, in which the looping sequence of events has no clear beginning. The result of breaking the zeroth law of Time Travel: do not cause the event you went back to prevent. For further discussion of this trope, see Wikipedia. Importantly, this trope is not to be confused with Groundhog Day Loop. Examples of Stable Time Loop include:
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| abstract
| - Through Applied Phlebotinum, Functional Magic, or some other means, our heroes travel back to the past. In the past, they wind up being responsible for the very events that underpin their own "present." This creates a chicken-and-egg scenario, in which the looping sequence of events has no clear beginning. The result of breaking the zeroth law of Time Travel: do not cause the event you went back to prevent. This is also the basic premise of how Time Travel would work, according to Albert Einstein. Simply put, even if it were possible to travel back in time, you would not be able to change any events in the past, because they've already happened. No matter what your intentions, everything that you did would only fulfill the past. The only thing that would change is your perception of the events. (Hm, this somehow explains Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act.) This is sometimes referred to as a "time loop" paradox, particularly when a character, object, or piece of information was never originally created, but exists solely because of its own existence. Also known as a "bootstrap paradox," from the classic Heinlein short story, By His Bootstraps. It's also called an "ontological paradox" on The Other Wiki. The classic hypothetical example is to jump into the future, steal some wondrous gadget, come back to the original time, grab the patent on that gadget and start mass-producing them immediately. Eventually, they become so ubiquitous or so common that you, ten, twenty years younger, show up and steal one. If it's the same one you stole before, it's an Object paradox. If it's not, then it's this. The simplest version is the one where the time machine itself is the product of the stable time loop--the character sees a version of himself pop into existence with a time machine, hand it to him, and press the button, only to be whisked into the past where he hands it to his past self and presses the button. Tricked-Out Time is when you "change" the past on purpose to resemble this. Compare You Already Changed the Past, Wayback Trip, Timey-Wimey Ball, Retroactive Preparation. For the Recursive Fiction variant of this, see Mutually Fictional. For further discussion of this trope, see Wikipedia. Since many examples of this trope aren't revealed until late in the story, and the existence of a loop can itself be a Spoiler, consider yourself spoiler-warned. Importantly, this trope is not to be confused with Groundhog Day Loop. Examples of Stable Time Loop include:
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