Merlin's magic (Oneshots) 1

Wired (part 0/ the introduction)

Summary:

This is a story of what comes beyond.
And it ends, as it always does, at the veil.

A.N.:

So... I am rewatching Merlin (still)
And I had a thought... and it escalated XD
Have fun.
So, the first chapter is nothing yet. It just explains my viewing on time for this story.
It's a bit philoshopical, that will change, I promise.
You may even skip that part.... until the actual chapter begins.

EDIT: SHIPS CONTAINED IN THIS STORY:
MERLIN/ARTHUR/GWEN/LANCELOT (polyamorous relationship)
Focus will be a little more on the Merthur side, obviously. (You can also read it as Merthur endgame, as Dragoon reconnects with past Arthur and future Merthur is (warning spoiler:) immortal, whereas Lancelot and Gwen are not.
Also, hinted at: Pergwaine
And Leon as.... Leon. By himself. Tormented as usual

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The concept of time is a construct made by mankind.
The concept of time is simple in the fact that everyone knows it exists. Apart from the occasional philosophic moment when we question everything. Even our own existence.

Merlin had once come upon a man who told him: "There is no time, there is only decay".
And it sounds wise, even in a pub crowded with drunk students and the smell of smoke and alcohol.
What this man did not count, was that decay does not exist outside the concept of time.
Nothing does.
Time determines the beginning and the end of decay. Therefore, decay cannot replace time itself.
Decay only works in one direction, it only works aligned with time. But it's not the same.
The closest thing to oppose decay is creation. But rewinding time in both cases looks much different.
Creation follows the same method, parallel to decay. And they too, are linked to time. But not the same.

As you see, the question of what time is, is more complicated than most people think. You don't have one wise moment and suddenly you understand everything about every single thing this world ever came up with.
It can take years, decades, centuries, generations of philosophers to get somewhat closer to an answer to this question.

So far, there is only one fact we know for sure.
And that is, that we are incapable of grasping the concept of time in full.

We, as humans, are caught and trapped in time and space. We cannot live outside it.
We cannot even begin to think anything beyond.
Even when you try to grasp the concept of nothing, you will come up with a picture.
You cannot imagine not existing.
There is always something. Never nothing. Nothing itself, is at the very least a word.

You cannot imagine yourself outside of space either. You will always imagine a room or a field. Always, a limited place. Even an endless void, has it's borders.
And you cannot imagine yourself outside of time, because you will always move along with it. Always moving. Whether it's forwards or backwards does not matter.
Because you, as a person, need time and a place, to even start thinking about these topics.
You need to be somewhere to think. And you need time to think it through.

Death and sleep is the closest we come to imagine this concept.

And that is, because when we die, our brain stops functioning. When we sleep the dreamless parts of the night, our mind shuts off for hours at once.
The mere act of unconsciousness is timeless in itself. You merely blink and hours have passed.
It feels like less than a second. At the same time, it feels like you were gone forever.

That moment of complete obliviousness, of non existing, that is beyond time. That is nothingness.
That is, what one could imagine death to be like.

Apart from that, everything else exists. Everything leads to death, but until then, we are alive.
Until we die, until we reach our final destination, we are bound to life.
And if you bring destiny into the mix... you are immortal, until destiny calls upon your end.

This is the basic understanding of time.

But there are.... methods to get an understanding of how time works. Not why it exists, or what the lack of it may mean. There are theories on how, instead.

As the human mind came up with tools and simplified concepts, time could be a straight line.
It could be a circle.
Others may say it is a spiral.

But those are, in my opinion, too simple constructs.
Because this suggests that every decision we make, was planned neatly and orderly.
This takes away the believe in chaos and the random.
Instead, you can make hundreds of decisions. And all those decisions could change the timeline.

This is why philosophers often argue whether or not you could go back in time and change the past, or if by going back, you create your own timeline in the first place. Is it set in stone?
Is it destiny or is it you who decides your future?
Why not both?

Some people believe that every decision splits the timeline in parallel universes.

Let's imagine, every timeline was one long endless line.
And now, imagine a texture. Like crossed lines over another.
And I think that is a nice start. But I believe, we have to take it a few steps forward to get a proper picture.

Imagine you had a whole bundle of wires. You don't know where one ends and the next begins. Hell, you don't even know how many wires there are.
They are pure chaos, knotted here and there, they contact at another place again.
And all of them are charged.

Electricity is the synonym of life here. Electricity always searches for the easiest way to get to it's goal. However, let's say, the electricity has the ability to choose at every contact point which wire to use.
How does the electricity know the easiest way? The answer is, there is no answer to that.
Because it's not important.
Because each cable ends where it began. The electricity leads nowhere. But it always goes in one direction. It never turns around.

This is why time travel is impossible. We are too weak to go against the stream.
But if you move forward, endlessly, you will at one point, return to the place where you started and from there, move along completely different or exactly the same. Depending on what you choose.
IF you don't get lost in so many possibilities. (1)

But... of course, to do that, your immortality needs to be much longer than that of a normal person.

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A.N.:

(1)This philosophical explanation of timelines was inspired by the Phineas and Ferb movie through the second dimension. I love that movie.