First, allow me to introduce myself. I am Cheng Liyan, a civilian official in the Galactic Empire's military system, and one of the first volunteers to undergo testing with the Time Gate. Over the past century, I have made over fourteen hundred time-traveling journeys.
During such frequent travels, I felt as though I had become a higher-dimensional being. Time was no longer a constant, flowing river, but rather a series of undulating waves, with spray repeatedly drifting between the past and the future. In this state of oscillation, I sometimes felt immense freedom, and at other times, a cage-like torment. I often forget my age; it has been decades since I last celebrated a birthday. When time becomes controllable, any festival commemorating its passage becomes utterly meaningless.
I will be updating a series of travelogues to share my experiences, providing travel references for future Time Gate users, and incidentally earning a meager amount of clicks and稿费.
In this travelogue, I wish to share that, in the use of the Time Gate, you cannot change the future by foreseeing it.
Before the invention of the Time Gate, many people believed that if they could meet and converse with their future selves, they could change their lives.
However, the mechanism of the Time Gate is such that once you travel to the future, your destiny becomes intrinsically linked with the future you witness. Your observation of the future influences your past actions, leading to an absolutely irreversible outcome. This process is extremely complex and always unfolds in ways you would never expect.
I will recount a few personal experiences to illustrate why I say this.
My first personal experience: the death of my colleague.
I had a colleague named Zeng Xiuyuan. We were good friends, and I called him Old Zeng.
On one occasion, I traveled ten years into the future and received the terrible news that Old Zeng had died a few days prior, having fallen to his death from a dilapidated building in the suburbs. The reason for his suicide remained unconfirmed, and the police were still investigating.
I returned to ten years in the past and told Old Zeng about this. I urged him to live well and to never give up, to which Old Zeng, breaking out in a cold sweat, said he would be careful and would certainly not jump off a building.
Despite my warning and having given him a heads-up, I remained uneasy. I wrote down the location and date of Old Zeng's fall on my wall. I planned to wait until ten years had passed, and as the time approached, I would watch him for 24 hours, perhaps confine him in a small room, and absolutely prevent him from leaving on that specific day.
I also prepared for the worst-case scenario: if I failed this time, I would simply travel through time again and find another way to save Old Zeng. As long as I kept trying, Old Zeng was sure to survive.
Ten years passed quickly, but events took a turn.
The army was engaged in war at the time. High-level alien civilization had been discovered on Donggan Star, and our forces were fighting valiantly on the front lines, with shockingly high casualties. Several of my comrades died in space near Donggan Star, their remains becoming space debris, forever drifting in the cosmos. During that period, I often woke up crying at night, sometimes so intensely that I couldn't straighten my back.
Later, the frontline forces discovered something: many warships were hit by alien fire because a certain component in their engines frequently malfunctioned. This component caused deviations in warp-evasion maneuvers, leading them to be struck by stray fire. Conservative estimates at the time suggested that this small component alone had caused the deaths of at least a hundred thousand people.
All our participating personnel were enraged and submitted joint petitions demanding severe punishment for the component manufacturers and quality inspectors.
One day, my superior suddenly summoned me to his office.
My superior informed me that the supplier of that component was Old Zeng.
I couldn't believe it, but my superior produced a box full of investigation results and related evidence. I carefully reviewed all the evidence, and there was no mistake; it was Old Zeng's responsibility. He had taken money and used expired parts, passing them off as new. Perhaps he had his difficulties, or perhaps he didn't realize that expired parts could be fatal. He might have thought that properly stored expired parts would be fine. But regardless of his reasons, such a crime was unforgivable.
At that time, Old Zeng was already a high-ranking officer, and he had even been publicly praised in the newspapers. If the responsibility for a hundred thousand deaths fell upon him, it would become a tremendous scandal that would affect military morale. Therefore, my superior decided not to prosecute him publicly but to assassinate him instead.
The assassination operation was to be carried out by me. My superior taught me how to stage Old Zeng's death as an accident. The moment I heard the method, I felt what it meant to be destined.
I left the battlefield and returned to our home planet. I visited Old Zeng's home and met him. Old Zeng was very excited to see me, thinking I had come to protect him as promised ten years ago. He said he had been living well recently, had no enemies, and would absolutely not jump off a building. In the past decade, whenever he felt down, he would recall my advice and quickly adjust his mindset.
I told him, "It seems changing the future is possible. I'll stay with you for a few days, and then I'll leave once the time has passed."
Old Zeng hosted me warmly, and we sat together drinking. I plied him with alcohol. He said I shouldn't drink too much, lest I stumble onto the rooftop in a daze. I replied, "You're wrong. Getting drunk is insurance. A drunk person will only lie motionless in bed. You just need to drink your fill and sleep soundly through the time of your previous death." Old Zeng thought about it and agreed, so he happily got drunk and fell into a deep sleep.
I took Old Zeng to the dilapidated building in the suburbs. This didn't take much time, as I already knew where he would die ten years ago. I placed him on the edge of the rooftop, with his right arm facing outward, in a lying position. Simultaneously, I placed a small pebble, no bigger than a peanut, under his left shoulder. It was a piece of construction debris picked up from the dilapidated building.
After completing all this, I left the scene and settled in a small town to wait. Soon, I saw the news of Old Zeng's fall.
The reason for his fall was simple: for a short period after waking from a drunken stupor, a person's consciousness is hazy, their mind is blank, but their body's instincts are still active. After Old Zeng sobered up, he would feel something uncomfortable under his left side. In his dazed state, he would roll to the right, thus falling.
After executing Old Zeng, I suddenly wondered: if I could go back in time and tell Old Zeng not to supply the parts, but to do something else instead, could I prevent his death? Could I also prevent the deaths of a hundred thousand people in the war?
I immediately applied for the Time Gate and returned to ten years in the past.
However, while I was on my way to Old Zeng's residence by car, I was involved in an accident and became a vegetative state, remaining in the hospital for a full nine years and nine months. After nine years and nine months, medical conditions improved, and I woke up. But by then, the war had escalated, and the casualties of a hundred thousand people had already occurred.
Relying on my memory, I went to the small town where I had stayed after assassinating Old Zeng. I found the inn where I had previously stayed and rented a room in the inn opposite. I waited for a few days, and as expected, I saw my past self entering the inn. At this point, Old Zeng should have been lying on the edge of the dilapidated building's rooftop.
I realized one thing: there are certain rules in the universe that cannot be forcibly changed. If you try to change them, you must pay a great price, just as I lay in bed as a vegetable.
If you still don't believe me, I will tell you another true case. This case is very short, but it reveals the unbreakable and mutable nature of these rules.