The Intergalactic Highway

O.k., so I was thinking through some details for a piece of fan fiction I was hoping to write. I'll probably never do anything with it now, but I came across this question. I admit I asked about a year ago, but I'm still curious...

Megatron creates a time storm at the end of the second season, and the Maximals on Earth directly feel it- they phase in and slightly out of existence. But what about the Maximals on Cybertron?

I don't know if the third season ever mentioned anything like that happening, but were Maximals phasing in and out/panicking in the streets? Or do they never even feel the effects? Or are we never told?

I did just look through "The Gathering" comic to try to see if the time storm had anything to do with Magmatron coming to Earth, but all I could find is a vague reference to the fact that Ravage failed to bring in Megatron, in front of a picture of Megatron blasting at Optimus Prime, Optimus Primal shouting, and another shot of him as Optimal Optimus Primal.

This could suggest Cybertron felt the time storm, but it's ambiguous, and history established by comics can be easily dismissed anyways.

But... thoughts?

I would say it was a proximity thing, and Primal's team only felt the effects because they were present at the there and then of the attempted assassination, and aware of it.

Back on future!Cybertron, all of reality would be in flux but that doesn't necessarily mean anyone would notice. Say someone went back in time and tried but failed to kill your grandfather. For a moment you would wink out of existence. That doesn't necessarily mean you would realize it. In one reality you're going on with life as if nothing happened, and in a new reality that's vying for dominance you're simply... not existing. It's like, were you aware of the fact that you didn't exist before you were born?

Besides if anyone on Cybertron had noticed a huge time-storm threatening them you know their first priority would be sending a mission to the source to stabilize the time stream. Which, never happened... and was even discussed by Rhinox and Optimus in the second episode of season 3.

Ugh. Time travel. Headache.

I'd also say it's a proximity thing too and there's some canonical evidence and scientific theories (with some evidence) to help support this.

First of all, none of the Maximals in Beast Wars Second or Beast Wars Neo (especially the former since the events of BWII occur "concurrently" (so to speak, for example the events of "Lio Convoy in Imminent Danger!" (re: Beast Wars movie) in the future on Gaea occur at the "relative same time" as the Beast Wars Season 1 episode, "Chain of Command" on prehistoric Earth) were ever seen to be fading in/out of existence.

Secondly: Spacetime. According to the concept of space-time (postulated by Albert Einstein based on his theory of special relativity) space and time are one thing. A very simple way to observe and demonstrate this is to look at time zones on Earth. I'm currently in Sydney NSW Australia. If I were to fly to Auckland, not only would I be moving East in space, I would also be moving forward in time. If I were to fly to Tokyo, I would not only be moving Northwest in space, I would also be moving back in time. If I were to travel to the Toronto, I'd arrive at yesterday. So if there were a time storm originating in pre-historic Earth, it would have to travel through both time and space. We physically see this with the huge wave that expands from Mount St. Hilary at the moment that Megatron creates the time storm.

That all makes a lot of sense.

So if Cybertron might have been getting effected without noticing the changes or any storm, I have two more questions. Would a time storm result from any change in the time stream, or does the change have to be comparatively significant? And secondly, if a change in the time stream was left unchecked, so that it was allowed to become permanent, how far exactly would the time storm reach? Would it disappear if the change happened rapidly or would it keep on stretching to the effected region of space (or even beyond) regardless?

I... don't know, exactly. I would say the time storm would affect any world that had been influenced by Cybertron and Earth between the Great War and Megatron's era. Heck presuming that the Matrix is indestructible, in one possible chain of events it could have chosen a new Prime from the other 17 Autobots, one less worthy to lead who would have failed to destroy Unicron. Then... the entire universe would be fated to destruction.

As for the concept of altering reality, one would think such a change would be instantaneous. I think the time storm was largely artistic license on the writers' part. However if we were to try making some sense of it, I would put forth that the storm was a result of reality still being unstable, as the Maximals labored to undo Megatron's damage. Had they not been there to affect things, the changes might have been immediate.

If we take time and space as a single entity right... now if you alter something in space, there's like a ripple effect, and the magnitude of that effect weakens and deteriorates as you move away from its epicentre. Let's look at say a massive undersea earthquake which then creates a tsunami that travels across the globe and wipes out communities on the other side of the planet. With sufficient speed, that tsunami could travel across not only space, but also time (as it would travel through time zones). Depending on how powerful the disruption was, it is possible that the wave could travel across spacetime and effect Cybertron should it be allowed to reach it. After all, the Quantum Surge resultant from the destruction of the Vok's Planet Buster which originated in prehistoric Earth, eventually traversed into Cybertron of the future (it was intercepted and disrupted by the Predacons so that Cybertron never detected it though).