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“So…how do you do it?”
Clockwork stirs with a hum, a sure sign that he’s definitely deep in thought – or, as Danny likes to call it, deep in the trenches. “Do what, young Daniel?”
“You know,” he says, gesturing around them with a wide sweep of his arm. “This.” The Zone all around them, green and black that would be no different than staring into the sun and have the afterimages sear into his retinas if he was fully and irrevocably mortal. The ever-present shift in colors flowing in and out of the tower like a stream, and it brings to mind something Mr. Lancer had once brought up in class out of the blue: Oceanus, the river that girded and encircled the entire world – one vast, eternal loop that helped make the Earth go round. “How do you not go crazy doing all this?”
“This? Oh…you mean keeping track of all timelines.”
“Yeah!”
“Well,” Clockwork begins matter-of-factly, drawing the word out, “it’s rather simple, really. I just do.”
“But that’s your job. You have to know what you’re doing, that’s why you’re the Master of Time!”
Clockwork smiles. “Indeed I do.”
“So…how?” Danny asks again. “Don’t all these clocks just drive you up the walls? Doesn’t it just, I dunno, hurt, looking into all those timelines all at once?”
“Ah, you mean the fractals.” Clockwork nods understandingly. “I am old, Daniel, far older than you can scarce imagine; and when you get to be…more or less as old as I am, you tend to pick up tricks and adapt accordingly. As I am in the employ of the Observants, or the Observers, as you tend to call them, that involves…quite the number of tasks you need to keep track of, although not quite as numerous as you’d think there would be. There is a lot of compartmentalization involved, but the fact of the matter is: you must stay anchored.
“See now, for example, the timeways,” he says, and with a hand indicates the amount of inactive portals around them – from the ones on the ground floor on their bases where he and Danny are convening to the ones hanging in mid-air, the ones attached to different portions of both four corners of the walls and the portions of the walls and stairways – Penrose and Escherian, two other terms that pop in Danny’s head - that twist and turn without any adherence to the laws of physics or geometry up the shaft of the clock tower and down into its depths; to where they go not even Danny could guess beyond it must be deeper into the Ghost Zone. “Think of them as you would see a branch on a tree. Pretty simple, yes?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, that branch is big, but from it there are smaller branches that are connected to it; and from those branches there grow leaves, and sometimes there are fruits and berries you may find among those leaves. Those smaller branches, and the fruit that they bear, are tangents that have split off from the bigger, stronger branch, each created from a single choice that would otherwise be made differently in another universe. Yet all those branches big and small must all converge onto a single point, and that is the tree. Yet a tree does not become a tree right away. To become a tree, it must first begin its place as—”
“A seed!”
Clockwork chuckles. “Yes, that’s right. It must always begin as a seed, no ifs, ands, or buts. That seed grows roots which becomes a trees which in turn grows branches and leaves and fruits and berries, and then those roots, if it is in their nature, will expand from underground and intertwine with other trees that grow along with it, side by side, until you have a forest, and other forests that may eventually grow from the seeds that may fall from their fruits and spread out even more. On and on, depending on the weather and the circumstances that come from it.”
“But…just how do you keep track of all of them? There have to be millions of timeways!”
“Not just millions, Daniel, but billions upon billions of timelines that stretch out into eternity! What I and the Observants must pay privy to are beyond compare, more than the mortal mind can ever hope to keep up with! But it is not so much keeping track of that we are charged to do rather than we are scanning it. Consider the trees for what they are far from civilization, untouched by human hands and the steady march of mechanization. The forests that which they belong in stretch for miles and miles around! But the mortal eye cannot discern just exactly how many trees there are by itself, be it on the ground or up in the sky where the birds fly free. No, Daniel, that requires technology; that, or plentiful of patience to tally the total of trees in a long-spanning forest on the ground.
“Ah, but we do not use magic to observe the timeways. Although I suppose if you prefer you could call our ability to scan them as such, if that makes it easier to understand, but the truth is that we do not. We are ghosts down to our very core; we do not try to defy our nature like Skulker dares to do. We embrace it! Just as much as you have come to embrace, if not accept, your nature as a halfa. But yet you are still human, and so it would strain you body, mind, and soul to try and reach out across the fabric of space-time to even get so much as a glimpse of everything and everywhere that must be observed if not safeguarded in the rare occasion intervention must be called for.
“Think of it as scanning the forest from up above,” Clockwork says, and slowly waves his hand before him from left to right, ectoplasm trailing in its wake, and Danny’s eyed followed. “Like a raptor, searching for prey. Even from that high up, riding the thermals, it is looking for prey, but before it can do so and dive down it must first look upon the trees.” As he explains he forms the ecto into a ball and lets it float between them, and as he goes on he splits it into smaller portions of itself with each point of his fingers. Soon there are numerous green pinpoints hanging in the air, some of them no bigger than the nail on Danny's pinky finger, and others were even smaller yet - so much so that Danny couldn't make out their shape even if he tried to squint. “Imagine that, Daniel. Imagine me as I am now, looking at every tree, every leaf, every blade of grass that might contain a squirrel, or a bird, or a fish that might catch my interest. Imagine that I am looking at only just that forest. With my eyes I can see every every leaf that grows on the tree branches, every fruit that those branches bear, every blade of grass that sprouts around the bases of the trees, and every creature that lurks within the thickets.
“Now, put that forest on top of another forest. Then, put those two forests on top of four more. Four on top of sixteen, sixteen on top of two-hundred fifty-six, and so on and so forth.” He moves his hands through the pinpoints of ectoplasm with a chopping motion, and with each one made they break down smaller, smaller, and even smaller, until they appear to Danny as one big block of solid green energy. “It isn’t about how far and how many the trees go - it’s trying to keep count of every single one of them, and all on top of each other, from a vantage point where I must keep my balance focused. That is what it’s like to look upon the fractals, Daniel. That is how we perform our duty.”
“Wow,” Danny says, hand to his chin in thought. “When you put it that way, that does sound pretty simple. But…by that logic, that means any ghost can do what you do!”
“Indeed they can! But that requires so much patience, Daniel,” Clockwork notes with a chuckle, “and to be fair, most ghosts are anything but that. They would be rather bored by it, if given the opportunity. It’s not for everyone. I daresay even someone like Pariah Dark would find it quite dull, and that would be without the Crown of Fire and Ring of Rage to grant him that same level of sight.”
Danny nods, his mood turning sober. “I see. So I guess that means people like my evil self will exist no matter.”
“Hmm…perhaps. But that does not mean whatever choices you make here, in this timeline, will cause him to be born. There are just as many universes where you became Dan Phantom as there are universes where you stayed as Danny the boy who became Phantom, and universes where you remained Danny Fenton. There are even universes where Danny Fenton and Danny Phantom are separate beings, universes where Dan Phantom is his own separate person, and universes where all three of exist together, or one among the other. There are going to be certain instances in the multiverse where the outcome is fixed no matter what choice is made; that is simply the nature of time, but yet it is also within its nature to undo the fixation, difficult as that may be. Ah, but when has that stopped someone from trying to fight against the hand that fate has dared dealt?
“Rest assured, young Daniel,” Clockwork says, and drops a heavy hand on top of Danny’s head, “that your descent into Dan Phantom is not one of those fixed points. The one you have fought has made his choices and will more than likely continue down his path - and continue to be trouble - in the future. But you are your own person; only you can decide who – and what – it is you want to be…but I think we both the answer.”
Danny laughs and wraps his thin, slender fingers around the Time Master’s strong wrist. “I’ll leave the heavy lifting to you then!”