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Horologist (Worm AU/Altpower)

Horologist

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In which Taylor trains her clockmaking skill so high that her clocks start warping reality.
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The origins of a clockmaker
  • Threadmarks
    • We Just Write

    We Just Write

    Blatantly Plural
    Location
    New England
    Pronouns
    Plural

    (logo provided by @DestinyPlayer and shaded by @ShadowVulpix)
    WARNING: Contains Time Shenanigans, proceed at your own risk.
    Date Point: July 24, 2008

    I held up my creation to my mom, the erratically ticking wooden box in my hands churning away as it measured the passage of time, saying "Mom, I made you a gift! It's a clock!"

    My mother set the mechanism on the table. Eventually, she noted "Wow, you actually made a working clock. I'm seriously impressed, little owl."

    Looking at the rudimentary clock face mounted to the device, I shrugged as I replied "Yeah, it's not a very good clock, though. You hear that irregular tick? It'll probably be losing or gaining time basically at random as long as it's running. Still, it's my first working clock, and I want you to have it."

    Mom pulled me into a hug, saying "It's amazing. Also, I noticed you saying it's your first clock, are you planning on building more?"

    I nodded enthusiatically, saying "You bet, mom! I've got all the tools now, and now that I know what I'm doing, I'll be able to make way better clocks. I've been reading up on John Harrison's work, and I think I'll be trying to replicate his H4 naval chronometer's functionality as my next major milestone."
    Date Point: February 16, 2009

    The movement's ticking over perfectly now. Gear ratios are correctly calibrated, hands properly balanced, everything's working smoothly. Carefully, I close the casing of the newly constructed pocket watch, all the moving parts rendered in glorious Invar and Brass. Now I'll be setting it for the accuracy measurement and-

    Dad interrupted, saying "Taylor, a man from the PRT just arrived, he says he wants to talk to you."

    I immediately spun around in the carefully-arranged workspace that I'd turned the basement into, practically shouting "For the last time, I am not a Tinker! Just because I've started making high-quality timepieces from raw materials at age 13 does not mean I have powers, I worked for my skill at this! All my work has been fully comprehensible to normal humans, and I've even had independent clockmakers look it over before I started selling my work!"

    At the top of the stairs to my workshop, I saw both my dad and a man in a suit with an inquisitive look on his face. I followed his gaze as he looked over the walls covered in diagrams of the insides of clocks, several of my previous timepieces representing major advances in quality, and then... my first. Most of my work was rendered in brass with recent pieces sometimes using Invar, but my first was wood.

    Immediately, I snapped at the man as I marched up the stairs "Get out of my workshop. I am fully in compliance with all regulations pertinent to clockmaking, fire safety, and OSHA, so you have no business being here. Especially seeing as I am in no way a parahuman, therefore not under your jurisdiction."

    Then I slammed the basement door in his face and went back to my clockmaking. All the better to avoid thinking about mom.
    Date Point: October 1st, 2009

    Honestly, I was a bit sad that Emma didn't have the grades to follow me here, but I wasn't too broken up about it. For some reason Emma had started being really mean to me whenever we met up, and that was enough for me to stop trying to contact her and spend more time perfecting my craft. So, I simply went to Arcadia without her.

    So far, Arcadia was turning out really nice, even if I did have a well-deserved reputation as the nerdiest of all nerds. I mean, considering that when someone asked me about my watches I'd proceeded to more-or-less lecture him on every single detail of my craft until the next period, it was only to be expected. Still, one upside of this was that rich kids were apparently quite willing to get their hands on a genuine Hebert watch in exchange for a sizable sum of money. So Arcadia was also an excellent location for me to advertise and sell my watches along with the occasional wall clock.

    Musings aside, today I was sitting down across the lunch table from Amy, performing spot checks on my latest watch after carefully cleaning up all the crumbs and grease from eating lunch. Generally, we got along OK. She liked that I didn't pester her for healing, and I liked that she was one of the few people aside from Dad who'd listen to me prattling on and on about how my clocks worked.

    Today, I was talking to Amy about the next model of escapement I'd be using, which promised an utterly immense improvement in accuracy over my current timepieces.

    In response, the off-duty healer noted "So, I guess that means soon you'll have another timepiece on your breakthrough shelf, then?"

    I nodded enthusiastically as I replied "I certainly hope so! In another few months I'll be closing in on levels of accuracy previously exclusive to atomic clocks at this rate."
    Date Point: November 1st, 2010

    At breakfast, I was mulling over the next generation of clocks I'd be making, when my Dad awkwardly spoke up "Taylor, you probably won't want to hear this, but I don't think it's actually possible to make more accurate clocks than you're currently making."

    I just scoffed, saying "That's nonsense dad, it's always possible to make a better clock."

    Dad nodded, replying "I don't doubt that you'll be perfectly capable of making even better clocks, but I don't think more accuracy is possible. The reason being that your clocks are starting to warp reality in order to make the time they display correct."

    That brought me up short as I put my hands in the 'time out' position and asked "Wait, what do you mean by my clocks starting to warp reality?"

    With that, my dad gestured to the wall clock hanging up in the kitchen and answered "So, I forgot that you included automatic daylight savings time for that particular clock. I went to set it an hour back just after sunrise, and when I was done it was before dawn. Also, I'm pretty sure I got a glimpse of my past self going to set the clock back, but I didn't want to risk a paradox there so I just let it happen."

    Grumbling, I got up from the table and marched over to that clock as I noted "Don't you start on about me being some sort of time Tinker too, my clocks are not capable of altering the flow of time, only measuring it!" With that, I set the clock forward by four hours, my father vanishing as the angle of the sun changed to be near its apex for today.

    Oh.

    Awkwardly, I set the clock back to a few moments after I left, time jerking backwards as my dad looked at me with a smug grin on his face. That was a "Told you so" expression if I'd ever seen one, and I didn't like it one bit.

    After several moments of awkward silence punctuated only by the ticking of my apparently time-warping clock, I said "So. This obviously needs to be investigated more thoroughly. After I get home from school, I'll use the wall clock to loop back around so that I can use the workshop while past-me is taking classes and assemble an exact replica of that clock so I can figure out exactly how it's distorting time. No-one is going to believe that a clock that screws with time when changed isn't Tinker-tech, so I need to figure out how to make my revenue clocks not do that, while still maintaining the extremely high quality I'm known for."

    Dad nodded, before noting "That sounds like a plan."

    That's the exact moment when I rewound into the kitchen, telling my past self "Hey. Figured that since we all knew about the time travel by this point it would be a good time to arrive."

    My past self nodded to me and noted "I guess I can use the workshop later. Anyway, I'd best be getting ready for school now."

    With that, I went my separate ways, my past self packing our bag for school as I went downstairs into my workshop. Coincidentally, I also had a large number of watches and other timepieces down here; I made sure to test my clocks for at least a month to make sure they worked right before I even considered selling them. This also meant that I had about five different watches on my testing rack at any given time; these days I was averaging a bit more than a watch per week, which was a very good rate seeing as I was doing everything by hand directly from raw Invar, Brass, and glass.

    The very first thing I did was therefore to test each of my watches-in-testing for anomalous behavior. To my great relief, the oldest two watches on my testing rack were not causing any temporal anomalies, meaning that none of my time-warping clocks had yet been released to the general public. The fourth and fifth watches behaved like the wall clock, in that setting their time caused time travel; the biggest difference there is that I could walk around with the watch strapped to me, bringing it with me when I time traveled. The third watch meanwhile demonstrated interesting transitional behavior; it didn't alter time in any way, but whenever I tried to set it wrong it immediately snapped back to the correct time.

    Now that I knew what I was looking for, I brought watches 2, 3, and 4 over to my workbench and took a look at their internals, trying to figure out exactly where the anomalous behavior was coming from. At first, it didn't seem like anything untoward was going on, simply having assembled an extremely high-precision timepiece. However, I knew that couldn't be the case, since that wouldn't be causing the observed temporal anomalies.

    Then, after sitting and staring at the insides of my watches for several minutes, I finally saw, the flow of time itself laying bare before my eyes. Watch number two was the first I made that interfaced with time's flow at all, minute eddies of time inside the mechanism keeping the movement perfectly synchronized with the rate of time at its location. Watch 3 and 4 meanwhile were even more interfaced with the flow of time itself, the chronal eddies making up significant parts of their workings that until recently I had completely failed to realize I was creating. In fact, now that I could see all the parts of my new temporal-linked clocks, it was pretty clear that most of the physical components were entirely unnecessary. I'd still need the escapement, clock face, and controls to make them work, but with time itself taking up most of the slack I could do away with most of the complicated inner workings; I wouldn't even need to include power sources any more.

    Then, my mood soured. Yes, I'd unlocked a whole new level of clockmaking I never thought possible, but I couldn't show it to anyone except Dad. If it got out that my clocks were working without most of the normal internal mechanisms, I'd almost immediately get called a Tinker. That meant my revenue clocks would have to keep using the older, inferior techniques I had been working with up to this point. The only way I'd be able to show off my full capabilities would be if I joined the cape scene, but I really didn't want to do that and risk getting murdered by a supervillain.

    Though maybe, if I could figure out a way to minimize the risks it would be OK? I really need to see what else I can do with these time-warping clocks of mine, then I can make a decision.
     
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  • Threadmarks
    • I just write said:
    WARNING: Contains Time Shenanigans, proceed at your own risk.
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    I just write said:
    In fact, now that I could see all the parts of my new temporal-linked clocks, it was pretty clear that most of the physical components were entirely unnecessary. I'd still need the escapement, clock face, and controls to make them work, but with time itself taking up most of the slack I could do away with most of the complicated inner workings; I wouldn't even need to include power sources any more.
    Click to expand...
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    This doesn't look like a crossover, but I'm hoping for the sake of Earth Bet that if it is then it's something light and friendly, like Bernard's Watch. There's a number of series that could take this in some complex and terrifying directions.

    Otherwise, this is looking interesting, and Danny seems to be taking it very well, which is a nice change of pace.

    I'm half-expecting Taylor to end up with an arm covered in watches, like The Matrix's Trainman.
     
    Very unusual idea. Can't say I've seen anything quite like this before...

    (I like it, though - at least so far.)
     
    Inkling said:
    This doesn't look like a crossover, but I'm hoping for the sake of Earth Bet that if it is then it's something light and friendly, like Bernard's Watch. There's a number of series that could take this in some complex and terrifying directions.

    Otherwise, this is looking interesting, and Danny seems to be taking it very well, which is a nice change of pace.

    I'm half-expecting Taylor to end up with an arm covered in watches, like The Matrix's Trainman.
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    I think it is a crossover... in the Doctor Who universe, the Time Lords were originally Clockmakers.

    I believe that you are wrong my friend, this is going to get very wobbly wobbly.

    Allonsy!!
     
    Noximilien shenanigans, when?

    wakfu.fandom.com

    Nox (Animated Series)

    Nox is the main antagonist of Season 1 of the French anime, Wakfu, based on the game of the same name. He desires to steal Wakfu from any and all sources to power the Eliacube, a mystical cube of incredible power that appears to speak to him, so he can go back in time to save his family from...
    wakfu.fandom.com wakfu.fandom.com
     
    When I saw clocks and time schenanigans I expected a clockblocker fic, but I'm definitely okay with getting this instead. Look forward to where you take it
     
    chortles I got the honour of watching this idea be built originally, and I cannot wait to watch what was talked about there show up here.
    Keep up the good work!
     
    You know, you're going to have a lot of people watch this. [/Shameless Pun]

    Now, whether Taylor can build time dilation watches with an area of effect for things touching the watch then she has a superpower. Make a bubble of time where it's going 10 times faster for you inside and it'll look like you have superspeed.
     
    Why should Shards be the only beings capable of arbitary acts of reality warping? Sure they've got big 'brains' but they don't have the world breaking determination of Taylor.
     
    Hmm, this is different. Watched.

    I believe Taylor still has a shard, and the reality warping is a parahuman power. The point of divergence is that Taylor was naturally a gifted clockmaker, and triggered after her mum died.
     
    So, HOW did Taylor start interlacing her watches with the element of time? And more importantly, how does she expect her watches to not continue to be made with "inferior techniques"?
     
    So my question is, what happens when clockblocker freezes one of Taylor's clocks? Since his power works more like stasis than actually stopping the time for the object, when his power holds the hands of the clock still, does the clock then freeze time as well?
    I guess it should also be questioned whether the time changes affect just earth bet, or the entire multiverse. Since if it is just earth bet, then the shard would unfreeze the clock in 5-10 minutes from its perspective. While from earth bet perspective no time will have passed at all looking from the inside that his power doesn't affect the clock. But if the clock freezes the multiverse that means the shard is frozen as well, and thus will never unfreeze the clock unfreezing the multiverse. I guess that's a bad end until some timeless being comes about and breaks the stasis.
     
    Taylor should substitute her mother for a corpse double just before the car crash.
    Then bring her mother forward to the present time.
    Timeline preserved and she gets her mother back.

    Panacea can mock up the double.
    Ezy pezy.
     
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    So what happens if Clockblocker tries to freeze the third one?(the one that self adjusts itself)
    Would the (frame?) be frozen while the display ignores everything he tries to do?
    Would time personify itself to beat him and then go back to normal?
    Would a time traveling Taylor from an undetermined point in the future show up to prevent it?
     
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    Clockblocker vs Watch #3
  • Sidestory
    • Skirata said:
    Would the (frame?) be frozen while the display ignores everything he tries to do?
    Would time personify itself to beat him and then go back to normal?
    Would a time traveling Taylor from an undetermined point in the future show up to prevent it?
    Click to expand...
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    And now I have some ideas. Damn you ADHD, allow me to write what I want! In the mean time, have some short snippets about your questions.

    For the first,
    "Alright, one stopwatch, coming up." Clockblocker said, miming the action of rolling up sleeves.
    "You froze it, right?" Gallant asks, as the piece of tinker-tech continued to move.
    "Yep." Clockblocker replied, he started pushing on the watch, to prove that he had frozen it.
    "Then why does it continue to measure time?"
    "If I knew that, I'd be able to afford the watch this is based on. I'd make millions."

    For the second,
    "Alright, one stopwatch, coming up." Clockblocker said, miming the action of rolling up sleeves. Just before he could touch it a hand, made out of what could best be described as melted clocks, reached out of it to punch him.
    "Vista, if another hand tries to punch him, keep it away from him." Aegis commands, "Clock, do it again." This time, instead of a punch to the face, it aimed for the gut area. Vista turned and puked as it entered her space-warp, and the punch landed on Clockblocker.
    Clockblocker was gasping for air as he spoke, "Next time, you're getting punched because of power interactions."

    For the last,
    "I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle." Taylor says, stepping towards the Wards trying to touch her watch. Clockblockers eyes flash in recognition, while Vista and Aegis slowly start to back away.
    "Forgot to say please." Clockblocker responds, seemingly completely forgetting about the watch. He walks closer to Taylor and mimes putting out a cigar on her chest. She knew what to do from here, the PHO post she read would guide her. She punched Clockblocker in the face, ran over to her watch, picked it up, and ran away.

    ► Clockblocker (Verified Cape) (Wards ENE)
    Replied on February 4, 2011:
    And this is why I'm no longer allowed to reference movies on patrol.
     
  • Sidestory
    • Interesting concept. Almost all of the time-travel Worm fics I know of are Peggy Sues, so this will definitely be unique.

    I just write said:
    After I get home from school, I'll use the wall clock to loop back around so that I can use the workshop while past-me is taking classes and assemble an exact replica of that clock so I can figure out exactly how it's distorting time. No-one is going to believe that a clock that screws with time when changed isn't Tinker-tech, so I need to figure out how to make my revenue clocks not do that, while still maintaining the extremely high quality I'm known for."

    Dad nodded, before noting "That sounds like a plan."

    That's the exact moment when I rewound into the kitchen, telling my past self "Hey. Figured that since we all knew about the time travel by this point it would be a good time to arrive."

    My past self nodded to me and noted "I guess I can use the workshop later. Anyway, I'd best be getting ready for school now."
    Click to expand...
    Click to shrink...

    If I'm reading this right, Taylor from the future that already attended school that day is the one that we're following now. You should probably put a better transition for when she time travels into the kitchen, cause that's really jarring for a perspective shift.
     
    OrigamiPhoenix said:
    Interesting concept. Almost all of the time-travel Worm fics I know of are Peggy Sues, so this will definitely be unique.



    If I'm reading this right, Taylor from the future that already attended school that day is the one that we're following now. You should probably put a better transition for when she time travels into the kitchen, cause that's really jarring for a perspective shift.
    Click to expand...
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    Yeah, it seems like she cause a casual paradox and there is now two of her existing simultaneously at this point.
     
    mickeysofine said:
    I've been playing "TimeSplitters" recently.
    These sort of casual paradox's reminded me of it.

    I'm looking forward to all sorts of time shenanigans.

    EDIT: forgot the quote.
    Click to expand...
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    I really hope the info from nowhere aspect isn't possible.

    Danny: "So, what's with the flash drive?"
    Taylor 1: Plugs the drive into her computer. "Just an idea I wanted to test."
    Taylor 2: Appears having time traveled. "It worked!" Gives Taylor 1 the flash drive she recently bought.
    Taylor 1: "Cool." Plugs in flash drive 2, copies it to flash drive 1, removes flash drive 1, then goes back in time.
    Danny: "So, what was the test?"
    Taylor 2: Sits down and opens text files on drive. "Just seeing if I can create info from nothing. Seems I can."
    Danny: "So, what information did you create?"
    Taylor 2: After a moment of looking. "Seems to be a collection of stories about alternate versions of me. Weird."
     
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