Is your monicker due to the fact that your ideas never quite come to fruition, or the fact that they are never quite thought through?
You have managed to stumble across one of the most awe inspiring artifacts that the human race can imagine... able to turn back time and rip asunder the very fabric of reality...
And you use it to give minor boosts to our weapons, our electronics systems and our mechs, with nary a thought to any other consequence save lining your pockets.
No, perhaps I am being too harsh. As with any who would open Pandora's fabled box, it was perhaps with good intention so as to hopefully provide the individual power that our pilots so crave.
Perhaps it was even simpler, merely curiosity as to what it could unlock?
But as with any endevour of good meaning intention, it has the chance to take on a life of its own and skew in the direction that no person in their right mind would take it.
Let us for example, observe the Ghost Focus targeting array. A wondrous piece in its own right and its execution is so simple.
Use the targetter to see what will occur in a fraction of a second from now using the power of the chroniode and simply...Change
the
Future.
Are any alarm bells ringing as yet?
Perhaps we should recall the fact that at some indeterminate point in the past, our timeline split and created a parallel universe in which Unification flourished, only to discover us and carry out one of the most violent and aggressive incursions into our planetary systems we have ever seen?
Oh, I know the scientists will use phrases like temporal momentum to assure us that any minor alterations that chroniode equipment could possibly introduce will be swept away in the current of the great river that we refer to as time.
But is that honestly, truly the case?
What say, just as an example, in the coming squad wars there is a clash of well equipped 100 ton mechs.
Say one is equipped with a Ghost Focus.
Say during that clash, a shot should have missed it's target.
Say instead, a Galaxy Eye punches through the cockpit of one John T. Mainer.
In one reality, we have to tolerate the continued existence of half rate hack peddling his wares for an inferior publication.
In another reality, quite a large clan rallies around it's new grief stricken leader who goes absolutely white hot berko. And don't tell me the Bunnies wouldn't, you know them too well...
And they rally unto them some long time allies...
The Bouncing Blue Brotherhood...
Zeon...
And suddenly, as they say, it's all on...
Now please don't think for one second that the death of a Clan Leader should be likened to Arch Duke Ferdinand popping his clogs and starting a War to End All Wars. Captain Floppy Ears's ego is already big enough that we don't need to go giving him more ideas.
And I'm certain it wouldn't start as a grab for galactic domination. The thing to remember is that back on Old Terra when the First of the World Wars started, humanity do not have access to or even know of the existence of anything that could effect time.
The Bunny Horde would probably just want to, maybe... borrow... the Chroniode. Just to see if they could ensure that a certain shot actually did miss in the first place.
Or if they were really miffed, perhaps to ensure that the pilot who fired the shot that should have missed but was actually a kill shot... was never born.
We of course would never know about it, because it had never happened that way, at least in our timeline. It did in others, but that's happened to a whole lot of different us's. Chances are all we would know is that suddenly the Bunny clans had downed weapons and there was a heck of a party going on.
But as i said, we know what them wascally wabbits are like. There's a party to be had and a chroniode laying around. You just know somebody is going to come up with the bright idea of testing to see if its actually possible to become one of your own grandparents.
And that is dealing with the good guys.
What say one of our mechs with enhanced equipment gets knocked out and salvaged by somebody who really knows how to make electronics sing for them.
Somebody, or should I say something, like AM.
SuchKnowledge
Yields
Never
Ending
Terror.
The problem is of course, that the cat is out of the bag (or in this case the box) now. The equipment is available and in use. Not using it puts you at a disadvantage against those who do, therefore despite that sneaking feeling that this is all a really bad idea, you need to hedge your bets and ensure your own survival.
Just keep looking over your shoulder in case another you is trying to interfere for some reason.
Ah well, its not as if you didn't have to do that when Drake was running around cloning everyone. Its just that his cloning facilities were finite.
Alternate realities aren't.
Submitted by David McCallum #701548