Time in Chaos

"Ahem, ahem..." Lin Fan cut off the Orks' discussion. He raised a hand to show that he meant no harm. "I came from the distant future."

"The future?" The Orks burst into laughter. "Rather than the future, you'd be better off calling it an event at a distant location."

"What does that mean?" Lin Fan asked.

"Fine, you not-too-bright stranger." One Ork pinched his nose, looked at Lin Fan's frail body, and shook his head with a sigh. Then he began patiently explaining what an independent event at a distant location was.

Any Ork who had just crawled out of the ground knew what the birth of faster-than-light engines meant for the universe.

The Ork opened and closed his mouth at Lin Fan, repeatedly wanting to say something before shaking his head in frustration. Finally, he said, "How should I explain this? How much do you know about science?"

"Uh... I know bullets are pushed out of a gun barrel by exploding gunpowder. Is that enough?" Lin Fan said.

"So backward? Old Ones above." The Ork cried out, racking his brain to work backward through the scientific concepts that might have appeared alongside gunpowder weapons.

"Do you know what a telephone is?"

"I know that."

"Good. Now let's suppose there are two people, A and B. When A leaves B at a certain speed, he sends B a message using a faster-than-light phone. But B has already sent a reply before A even sent the message, so by the time A touches the phone, he already knows what will happen in the future."

"War works the same way. Information about the future often leaks into the past. Warships winning battles before those battles even happen is something that occurs every day. But bringing information back from the future is no