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So, I want to make new pages. About Watchers and Universal Constructors from novel 'The Time Ships' (by Stephen Baxter).
Realm of Ideas :
[… It was as if the partition had appeared out of nothing.
"Where does it come from?" I asked Nebogipfel. He said, after some thought — evidently he had to choose his words: "The Sphere has a Memory. It has machines which enable it to store that Memory. And the form of the data blocks" — he meant the partitions — "is held in the Sphere's Memory, to be retrieved in this material form as desired." For my entertainment, Nebogipfel caused more extrusions: on one pillar I saw a tray of foodstuffs and water rising out of the floor, as if prepared by some invisible butler! I was struck by this idea of extrusions from the uniform and featureless Floor. It reminded me of the Platonist theory of thought expounded by some philosophers: that to every object there exists, in some realm, an ideal Form — an essence of Chair, the summation of Table-ness, and so on — and when an object is manufactured in our world, templates stored in the Platonic over-world are consulted. Well, here I was in a Platonic universe made real, the whole of this mighty, sun-girdling Sphere was suffused by an artificial, god-like Memory — a Memory within whose rooms I walked even as we spoke. And within the Memory was stored the Ideal of every object the heart could desire — or at least, as desired by a Morlock heart.]
The existence of Plato's realm of ideas in Time Shipsverse.
[Now, only a gray-white light filled my awareness: but that is a metaphor, for I knew that what I was experiencing now was not the light of Physics, but that glow hypothesized by Plato, the light which underlies all awareness — the light against which matter, events and minds are mere shadows.]
Time Traveller and co. reached Plato's Realm of Ideas (Conceptual/Metaphysics Realm?).
[We have reached the Nucleation, whispered Nebogipfel. Space and Time are so twisted over that they are indistinguishable. There is no Physics here… There is no Structure. One cannot point and say: that is there, such a distance away; and I am here. There is no Measurement — no Observation… It is all as One.]
[no Physics], [no Structure], [no Measurement], [no Observation]. Clearly indicates metaphysical realm.
Continuously Branching Timelines :
["If you had returned here and shot your younger self well, there would be no causal contradiction: instead, you would create a new History, a fresh variant in the Multiplicity, in which you died young at the hand of a stranger."]
No causal contradiction. Different decision leads to new history.
[Nebogipfel said, "We cannot help but interact with History, you and I. With every breath we take, every tree you cut down, every animal we kill, we create a new world in the Multiplicity of Worlds. That is all. It is unavoidable."]
Further in creating new histories.
[All possible Histories exist in the greater Multiplicity, lying against one another in an endless catalogue of What-Can-Be. Every History which was possible, with all its cargo of Mind, Love and Hope, had an existence somewhere in the Multiplicity.]
All possible histories exists in the multiverse.
Descriptions above share strong similarity with Level III Multiverse. Level III Multiverse according to Tegmark's paper :
[As strange as this may sound, Figure 5 illustrates that this exact same situation occurs even in the Level I multiverse, the only difference being where her copies reside (elsewhere in good old three-dimensional space as opposed to elsewhere in infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, in other quantum branches). In this sense, Level III is no stranger than Level I.]
Level III Multiverse is infinite dimensional. However, no direct statement that a Time Shipsverse itself is infinite dimensional. Only that its Multiplicity-multiverse- have strong resemblance to Level III Multiverse, which have infinite dimensions.
Body Modifications :
[Nebogipfel said, "They mean to carry us with them — the Constructors — these beings of Plattnerite — back to the dawn of time, and perhaps beyond… But not like this." He indicated his own fragile body. "We could never survive it — not for a minute… Do you see?" The Plattnerite tentacles brushed against my scalp, forehead and shoulders; I ducked, to avoid their cold grip. "You mean," I said, "that we must become like them. Like the Constructors… we must submit to the touch of these Plattnerite cilia! Why did you not warn me of this?"]
Universal Constructors intended to bring Time Traveller and Nebogipfel with them to the Beginning of Time, perhaps beyond boundary of time itself. But Human body won't survive in the process, let alone survive in the metaphysical realm (later shown below).
[I was outside Time and Space. It was not like sleep — for even in sleep, the brain is active, functioning, sorting through its freight of information and memories; even in sleep, I contend, one remains conscious, aware of one's self and of one's continued existence.]
Time Traveller after body 'modification'. Described as being outside Time and Space.
[Nebogipfel, what am I? Am I still a man? You are still yourself, he said firmly. The only difference now is that the machinery which sustains you is not made up of bone and flesh, but of constructs within the Information Sea… You have limbs, not of sinew and blood, but of Understanding.]
Time Traveller have body literally made out of Information. Kinda same thing like things from Morlocks' sphere. Made out of Ideas.
Time Travelling Towards Beginning Of Time :
[We are close to the Boundary, Nebogipfel whispered. The beginning of time itself… and yet you must imagine that we are not alone: that our History — this young, glowing universe — is but one of an infinite number which has emerged from that Boundary; and that as we retreat all the members of that Multiplicity are converging towards this moment, this Boundary, like swooping birds…]
Time travelling towards the beginning of time. And the explanation how histories are converging.
[The Time Ships no longer accompanied me — perhaps their physical forms had been unable to survive that journey through the Nucleation — and the Plattnerite netting around me had gone. But I was not alone; all about me — like snowflakes caught in a flash-lamp's burst — were speckles of Plattnerite-green light, which bobbed and drifted about each other. These were the elemental consciousness of the Constructors, I knew, and I wondered if Nebogipfel was among this disembodied host, and indeed if I, too, appeared to the rest as a dancing point.]
How Time Ships can't survive journey past Nucleation. Understandable, it is a 'Nothing' area after all.
[And, just as our History has shriveled to a single, searing point, so the Multiplicity of Histories has converged. The Boundary itself is melting away — can you understand it? — lost in the infinite possibilities of the collapsed Multiplicity…]
Explanation how multiplicity itself contains infinite possibilities = infinite timelines.
[And, in the Time Ships, we reached one pole.
Yes. That point where all the longitude lines converge. And, in that precise instant of infinite possibility, the Constructors fired their Nonlinearity Engines…
The Constructors have traveled across the Histories, he said. They — and we — have followed paths of Imaginary Time, paths scrawled sideways across the surface of the Multiplicity globe, until we have reached this new History…]
Constructors fired their Nonlinearity Engines in the convergence of histories…
[I do not know… it was not chosen for us. Remember that the Constructors have sought, he said, a universe — out of all the in finite sheaf of possibilities that is the Multiplicity — a universe which is optimal for them.]
… to choose a single universe as their new home. The Optimal History.
The Optimal History/Infinite Universe :
[Nebogipfel said, Among all the myriad possibilities, the Constructors have sought out that universe — the single one — which is Infinite in extent, and Eternal in age: where that Boundary at the Beginning of Time has been pushed into the infinite past. We have traveled beyond the Nucleation, to the Boundary of Time and Space themselves. And ape-fingers have reached out to the Singularity that lies there — and pushed it back!]
[infinite past] the universe literally would have no beginning. [Infinite in extent] infinite size/volume, [Eternal in age] the universe would not die.
[An infinite universe!
You might look out, through the smoky clouds of London, at the stars which mark out the sky's cathedral roof; it is all so immense, so unchanging, that it is easy to suppose that the cosmos is an unending thing, and that it has endured forever.
…But it cannot be so. And one only need ask a common sense question — why is the night sky dark? — to see why.
If you had an infinite universe, with stars and galaxies spread out through an endless void, then whichever direction in the sky you looked, your eye must meet a ray of light coming from the surface of a star. The night sky would glow everywhere as brightly as the sun…]
More about Constructor's infinite universe.
Appearance of The Watchers :
[The form before me coalesced against the star-light, as if a magic-lantern slide had been held up before me. It began as a mere shadow against that universal glare — at first I was not sure if there was anything there at all, save for the projections of my own desperate imagination — but at last it gained a sort of solidity.
It was a ball, apparently of flesh, dangling in space, as unsupported as I was. I judged it to be eight or ten feet from me (wherever, and whatever, I was) and perhaps four feet across. Tentacles dangled from its underside. I heard a soft, babbling sound. There was a fleshy beak, no sign of nostrils, and two huge eyelids which now wrinkled up like curtains, to reveal eyes — human eyes! — that fixed on me.]
Appearance of a Watcher. Some sort of posthuman being.
[The Watcher was immense before me. His flesh was smooth, and covered with fine, downy hairs; his eyes were immense — sky-blue — with all the beautiful complexity of human eyes — and I could even smell him now; he had a soft animal musk about him, a scent of milk, perhaps. I was struck by how human he was. This may seem odd to you, but there — so close to the beast, and suspended in all that unstructured immensity — his common points with the human form were more striking than his grosser differences. I grew convinced that this was human: distorted by tremendous sweeps of evolutionary time, perhaps, but somehow akin to me.]
More descriptions how the Watcher strongly implied to be human in origin.
[Throughout my brief, spectacular career as a Time Traveler, I saw now, I had been followed — studied — by the Watchers. The Watchers must be able to follow at will the lines of Imaginary Time, crossing the infinite Histories of the Multiplicity with the ease of a steamship traversing an ocean's currents; the Watchers had taken the crude, explosive Nonlinearity Engines developed by the Constructors and developed them to a fine pitch.]
Watchers can travel through histories with ease. And how advanced they are compared to the Constructors.
[This Optimal History was engineered — and this artifice must be what the Watcher had brought me on this immense journey to understand.
I recalled old predictions that an infinite universe would be prone to disastrous gravitational collapse — it was another reason why our own cosmos could not, logically, be infinite. For, just as the earth and other planets had coalesced from knots in that turbulent cloud of debris around the infant sun, so there would be eddies in this greater cloud of galaxies which populated the Optimal History — eddies into which stars and galaxies should tumble, on an immense scale.
But the Watchers were evidently managing the evolution of their cosmos to avoid such catastrophes: I had learned how Space and Time are themselves dynamic, adjustable entities. The Watchers were manipulating the bending, collapsing, twisting and shearing of Space and Time themselves, in order to achieve their objective of a stable cosmos.]
Explains how the Infinite Universe (Infinite in… pretty much everything), the Optimal History that Constructors choose as their new home actually was aritificially engineered by The Watchers to be that way.
[Of course there could be no end to this careful engineering, if this universe were to remain viable — and, I thought, if the universe was eternal, there could have been no beginning to it either. That reflection troubled me, briefly: for it was a paradox, a causal circle. Life would be required to exist, in order to engineer the conditions which were prerequisite to the existence of Life here…
But I soon dismissed such confusions! I was, I realized, being much too parochial in my thinking: I was not allowing for the Infinitude of things. Since this universe was infinitely old — and Life had existed here for an infinitely long time — there was no beginning to the benign cycle of Life's maintenance of the conditions for its own survival. Life existed here because the universe was viable; and the universe was viable because Life existed here to manage it… and on, an infinite regression, without beginning — and without paradox! I felt loftily amused at my own confusion. It was clearly going to take me some time to come to terms with the meaning of Infinity and Eternity!]
Optimal History exists because Watchers are there to make it so and Watchers are there to maintain Optimal History because they are born in Optimal History.
[no end to this careful engineering] maybe it meant that before Watchers (humans) even 'born', Watchers are (somehow) already around to engineer this Optimal History.
Constructors Become One with Optimal History :
[The meaning of this bizarre vision was immediately clear to me, for I saw more of the regularity here which I had observed among the galaxies and stars. I could see — suffused in every wisp of gas, in every stray atom — meaning and structure. There was a purpose to the orientation of each atom, the direction of its spin, and the linkages between it and its neighbors. It was as if the universe, the whole of it, had become a sort of Library, to store the collective wisdom of this ancient variant of Humanity; every scrap of matter, down to the last stray wisp, was evidently catalogued and exploited… Just as Nebogipfel had predicted as the final goal of Intelligence!]
Constructors encoded their knowledge into Optimal History.
[But this arrangement was more than a Library — more than a passive collection of dusty data — for there was a sense of life, of urgency, all about me. It was as if consciousness was distributed across these vast assemblages of matter.]
Constructors' consciousness itself became one with Optimal History.
[Mind filled this universe, seeping down into its very fabric! — I seemed to see thought and awareness wash across this universal array of fact in great waves. I was astonished by the scale of all this — I could not grasp its boundless nature — by comparison, my own species had been limited to the manipulation of the outer skin of an insignificant planet, the Morlocks to their Sphere; and even the Constructors had only had a Galaxy — a single star-system, out of millions…
Here, though, Mind had it all — an Infinitude. Now, at last, I understood — I saw for myself — the meaning and purpose of infinite and eternal Life.]
More explanations.
[The universe was infinitely old, and infinite in extent; and Mind, too, was infinitely old. Mind had gained control of all Matter and Forces, and had stored an infinite amount of Information.]
How Mind (Constructors? Watchers? Rather unclear. But Constructors previously referred as 'Mind', but Watchers are the one who engineered Optimal History in the first place) was infinitely old. And literally have stored infinite amount of information.
[Mind here was omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. The Constructors, by means of their bold challenge to the beginnings of time, had achieved their ideal. They had transcended the finite, and colonized the infinite.]
Constructors gained control of all Forces and Matter. Constructors became one with Optimal History, thus they're omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent inside it.
Watchers may be also One with Optimal History itself :
[My Watcher halted and rotated in space like some fleshy balloon. Those huge eyes came towards me, dark, immense, the glare of the light-drenched sky reflected in pupils the size of saucers; at last, it seemed, my world was filled by that immense, compelling gaze, to the exclusion of all else — even the fiery sky…
But then the Watcher seemed to melt away. The scattering of distant constellations, the foamy galactic structure — even the glare of the burning sky — I saw them no more — or rather, I was aware of these things as an aspect of reality, but only as a surface. If you imagine focusing on a pane of glass before you — and then deliberately relaxing the muscles of your eye, to fix on a landscape beyond, so that the dust on that pane disappears from your awareness — then you will have something of the effect I am describing.
But, of course, my change in perception was caused by nothing so physical as a tug of eye muscles, and the shift in perspective I endured involved rather more than depth of focus. I saw — I thought — into the structure of Nature.]
Implied that Watchers too (race more advanced than Constructors, and the race who engineered the Optimal History) are one with Optimal History itself.
Existence of Greater Multiplicities :
["That's all clear enough to me, now. There is no paradox possible within a single History, because of the existence of the Multiplicity."
"But," the Morlock went on calmly, "the Watchers have brought you here, so that you could deliver the Plattnerite to yourself that you could initiate the sequence of events which led to the development of the first Time Machine, and the creation of the Multiplicity. So there is a greater closure — of the Multiplicity on itself."
I saw what he was driving at. "There is a sort of closed loop of causality, after all," I said, "a worm eating its own tail… The Multiplicity could not have been brought into existence, if not for the existence of the Multiplicity in the first place!"
Nebogipfel said that the Watchers believed that the resolution of this Final Paradox required the existence of more Multiplicities: a Multiplicity of Multiplicities!
"The higher order is logically necessary to resolve the causal loop," Nebogipfel said, "just as our Multiplicity was required to exist to resolve the paradoxes of a single History."
"But — confound it, Nebogipfel! My mind is reeling at the thought. Parallel ensembles of universes — is it possible?" "More than possible," he said. "And the Watchers intend to travel there."]
[Multiplicity of Multiplicities], multiverse of multiverses.
[He lowered his head from the sky. The dawn was growing quite bright now, and I could see the pasty flesh around his eyes wrinkle up in discomfort. "And they will take me with them. I can think of no greater adventure… can you?"
"Nebogipfel — when you reach this greater Multiplicity — what then?"
"There are many orders of Infinity," Nebogipfel said calmly, the light rain trickling down the contours of his face. "It is like a hierarchy: of universal structures — and of ambitions." His voice retained that soft Morlock gurgle — its intonations quite alien — and yet it was suffused with wonder. "The Constructors could have owned a universe; but it was not enough. So they challenged Finitude, and touched the Boundary of Time, and reached through that, and enabled Mind to colonize and inhabit all the many universes of the Multiplicity. But, for the Watchers of the Optimal History, even this is not sufficient; and they are seeking ways of reaching beyond, to further Orders of Infinity…"
"And if they succeed? Will they rest?"
"There is no rest. No limit. No end to the Beyond — no Boundaries which Life, and Mind, cannot challenge, and breach." ]
[There are many orders of Infinity], [It is like a hierarchy], [The higher order is logically necessary to resolve the causal loop], [greater Multiplicity], [just as our Multiplicity was required to exist to resolve the paradoxes of a single History], [There is no rest. No limit. No end to the Beyond]
To summarize, the existence of a multiverse ensure the existence of greater multiverse (multiverse of multiverses) in order to resolve causal loop. Greater multiverse needed greater-greater multiverse to resolve it's causal loop. Ad infinitum and you get endless hierarchies (layers?) of… everything.
Okay so, points are :
• Universal Constructors are race of machines that is made of Plattnerite. Substances that allows for time travel in The Time Ships novel.
• Being made of Plattnerite made you being able to be outside Time and Space apparently.
• Universal Constructors, Time Traveller (and presumably Watchers too) could travel past the 'decreating' of Multiplicity. Where histories converge. Even Time Ships themselves are physically affected by the 'convergence' process. Implying multiversal durability.
• Universal Constructors, Time Traveller (and presumably Watchers too) were able to reach past the Boundary of Time and Space, past [no Physics] [no Structure] [no Measurement] [no Observation] [It is all as One.] realm. Possibly some sort of Metaphysical realm, it sure have similarity to Plato's Realm of Ideas/Theory of Forms. Morlocks (future humans) was shown to be able to drag things out of it.
• Universal Constructors could become one with Infinite Universe. Being Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscience inside it.
• Time Shipsverse possibly have infinite dimensions (share similarities to Level III Multiverse).
• It have endless hierarchies (layers?) of multiverse. With each hierarchy above is literally infinitely greater than below.
• Watchers themselves aren't currently at the top of said endless hierarchies (layers?). But strongly implied to be able to breach even said endless hierarchies.
• I personally would like to rank Universal Constructors Tier 2-A in durability and Low 2-C in general.
• Watchers… they're bit like Downstreamers. But they're not yet standing on top of endless hierarchies. So maybe I'd give them 'At least Low 2-C likely higher', or 'Possibly High 1-B (if endless hierarchy is accepted)' maybe 'Possibly 1-A' (if transcending Realm of Ideas and Endless Hierarchies are accepted as Outerversal, even if Watchers haven't done it yet)
• Then again, Downstreamers (https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Downstreamers) pretty much already topped Watchers in capabilities (superior Multiverse-which would automatically include Realm of Ideas, [no Physics, no Structure, no Observation, ] realm too- and DS are standing above endless hierarchies and DS too could survive without multiverse or physics) but even them are not accepted as Tier 1-A. So don't want to get my hopes up I guess.
So, thoughts?
Realm of Ideas :
[… It was as if the partition had appeared out of nothing.
"Where does it come from?" I asked Nebogipfel. He said, after some thought — evidently he had to choose his words: "The Sphere has a Memory. It has machines which enable it to store that Memory. And the form of the data blocks" — he meant the partitions — "is held in the Sphere's Memory, to be retrieved in this material form as desired." For my entertainment, Nebogipfel caused more extrusions: on one pillar I saw a tray of foodstuffs and water rising out of the floor, as if prepared by some invisible butler! I was struck by this idea of extrusions from the uniform and featureless Floor. It reminded me of the Platonist theory of thought expounded by some philosophers: that to every object there exists, in some realm, an ideal Form — an essence of Chair, the summation of Table-ness, and so on — and when an object is manufactured in our world, templates stored in the Platonic over-world are consulted. Well, here I was in a Platonic universe made real, the whole of this mighty, sun-girdling Sphere was suffused by an artificial, god-like Memory — a Memory within whose rooms I walked even as we spoke. And within the Memory was stored the Ideal of every object the heart could desire — or at least, as desired by a Morlock heart.]
The existence of Plato's realm of ideas in Time Shipsverse.
[Now, only a gray-white light filled my awareness: but that is a metaphor, for I knew that what I was experiencing now was not the light of Physics, but that glow hypothesized by Plato, the light which underlies all awareness — the light against which matter, events and minds are mere shadows.]
Time Traveller and co. reached Plato's Realm of Ideas (Conceptual/Metaphysics Realm?).
[We have reached the Nucleation, whispered Nebogipfel. Space and Time are so twisted over that they are indistinguishable. There is no Physics here… There is no Structure. One cannot point and say: that is there, such a distance away; and I am here. There is no Measurement — no Observation… It is all as One.]
[no Physics], [no Structure], [no Measurement], [no Observation]. Clearly indicates metaphysical realm.
Continuously Branching Timelines :
["If you had returned here and shot your younger self well, there would be no causal contradiction: instead, you would create a new History, a fresh variant in the Multiplicity, in which you died young at the hand of a stranger."]
No causal contradiction. Different decision leads to new history.
[Nebogipfel said, "We cannot help but interact with History, you and I. With every breath we take, every tree you cut down, every animal we kill, we create a new world in the Multiplicity of Worlds. That is all. It is unavoidable."]
Further in creating new histories.
[All possible Histories exist in the greater Multiplicity, lying against one another in an endless catalogue of What-Can-Be. Every History which was possible, with all its cargo of Mind, Love and Hope, had an existence somewhere in the Multiplicity.]
All possible histories exists in the multiverse.
Descriptions above share strong similarity with Level III Multiverse. Level III Multiverse according to Tegmark's paper :
[As strange as this may sound, Figure 5 illustrates that this exact same situation occurs even in the Level I multiverse, the only difference being where her copies reside (elsewhere in good old three-dimensional space as opposed to elsewhere in infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, in other quantum branches). In this sense, Level III is no stranger than Level I.]
Level III Multiverse is infinite dimensional. However, no direct statement that a Time Shipsverse itself is infinite dimensional. Only that its Multiplicity-multiverse- have strong resemblance to Level III Multiverse, which have infinite dimensions.
Body Modifications :
[Nebogipfel said, "They mean to carry us with them — the Constructors — these beings of Plattnerite — back to the dawn of time, and perhaps beyond… But not like this." He indicated his own fragile body. "We could never survive it — not for a minute… Do you see?" The Plattnerite tentacles brushed against my scalp, forehead and shoulders; I ducked, to avoid their cold grip. "You mean," I said, "that we must become like them. Like the Constructors… we must submit to the touch of these Plattnerite cilia! Why did you not warn me of this?"]
Universal Constructors intended to bring Time Traveller and Nebogipfel with them to the Beginning of Time, perhaps beyond boundary of time itself. But Human body won't survive in the process, let alone survive in the metaphysical realm (later shown below).
[I was outside Time and Space. It was not like sleep — for even in sleep, the brain is active, functioning, sorting through its freight of information and memories; even in sleep, I contend, one remains conscious, aware of one's self and of one's continued existence.]
Time Traveller after body 'modification'. Described as being outside Time and Space.
[Nebogipfel, what am I? Am I still a man? You are still yourself, he said firmly. The only difference now is that the machinery which sustains you is not made up of bone and flesh, but of constructs within the Information Sea… You have limbs, not of sinew and blood, but of Understanding.]
Time Traveller have body literally made out of Information. Kinda same thing like things from Morlocks' sphere. Made out of Ideas.
Time Travelling Towards Beginning Of Time :
[We are close to the Boundary, Nebogipfel whispered. The beginning of time itself… and yet you must imagine that we are not alone: that our History — this young, glowing universe — is but one of an infinite number which has emerged from that Boundary; and that as we retreat all the members of that Multiplicity are converging towards this moment, this Boundary, like swooping birds…]
Time travelling towards the beginning of time. And the explanation how histories are converging.
[The Time Ships no longer accompanied me — perhaps their physical forms had been unable to survive that journey through the Nucleation — and the Plattnerite netting around me had gone. But I was not alone; all about me — like snowflakes caught in a flash-lamp's burst — were speckles of Plattnerite-green light, which bobbed and drifted about each other. These were the elemental consciousness of the Constructors, I knew, and I wondered if Nebogipfel was among this disembodied host, and indeed if I, too, appeared to the rest as a dancing point.]
How Time Ships can't survive journey past Nucleation. Understandable, it is a 'Nothing' area after all.
[And, just as our History has shriveled to a single, searing point, so the Multiplicity of Histories has converged. The Boundary itself is melting away — can you understand it? — lost in the infinite possibilities of the collapsed Multiplicity…]
Explanation how multiplicity itself contains infinite possibilities = infinite timelines.
[And, in the Time Ships, we reached one pole.
Yes. That point where all the longitude lines converge. And, in that precise instant of infinite possibility, the Constructors fired their Nonlinearity Engines…
The Constructors have traveled across the Histories, he said. They — and we — have followed paths of Imaginary Time, paths scrawled sideways across the surface of the Multiplicity globe, until we have reached this new History…]
Constructors fired their Nonlinearity Engines in the convergence of histories…
[I do not know… it was not chosen for us. Remember that the Constructors have sought, he said, a universe — out of all the in finite sheaf of possibilities that is the Multiplicity — a universe which is optimal for them.]
… to choose a single universe as their new home. The Optimal History.
The Optimal History/Infinite Universe :
[Nebogipfel said, Among all the myriad possibilities, the Constructors have sought out that universe — the single one — which is Infinite in extent, and Eternal in age: where that Boundary at the Beginning of Time has been pushed into the infinite past. We have traveled beyond the Nucleation, to the Boundary of Time and Space themselves. And ape-fingers have reached out to the Singularity that lies there — and pushed it back!]
[infinite past] the universe literally would have no beginning. [Infinite in extent] infinite size/volume, [Eternal in age] the universe would not die.
[An infinite universe!
You might look out, through the smoky clouds of London, at the stars which mark out the sky's cathedral roof; it is all so immense, so unchanging, that it is easy to suppose that the cosmos is an unending thing, and that it has endured forever.
…But it cannot be so. And one only need ask a common sense question — why is the night sky dark? — to see why.
If you had an infinite universe, with stars and galaxies spread out through an endless void, then whichever direction in the sky you looked, your eye must meet a ray of light coming from the surface of a star. The night sky would glow everywhere as brightly as the sun…]
More about Constructor's infinite universe.
Appearance of The Watchers :
[The form before me coalesced against the star-light, as if a magic-lantern slide had been held up before me. It began as a mere shadow against that universal glare — at first I was not sure if there was anything there at all, save for the projections of my own desperate imagination — but at last it gained a sort of solidity.
It was a ball, apparently of flesh, dangling in space, as unsupported as I was. I judged it to be eight or ten feet from me (wherever, and whatever, I was) and perhaps four feet across. Tentacles dangled from its underside. I heard a soft, babbling sound. There was a fleshy beak, no sign of nostrils, and two huge eyelids which now wrinkled up like curtains, to reveal eyes — human eyes! — that fixed on me.]
Appearance of a Watcher. Some sort of posthuman being.
[The Watcher was immense before me. His flesh was smooth, and covered with fine, downy hairs; his eyes were immense — sky-blue — with all the beautiful complexity of human eyes — and I could even smell him now; he had a soft animal musk about him, a scent of milk, perhaps. I was struck by how human he was. This may seem odd to you, but there — so close to the beast, and suspended in all that unstructured immensity — his common points with the human form were more striking than his grosser differences. I grew convinced that this was human: distorted by tremendous sweeps of evolutionary time, perhaps, but somehow akin to me.]
More descriptions how the Watcher strongly implied to be human in origin.
[Throughout my brief, spectacular career as a Time Traveler, I saw now, I had been followed — studied — by the Watchers. The Watchers must be able to follow at will the lines of Imaginary Time, crossing the infinite Histories of the Multiplicity with the ease of a steamship traversing an ocean's currents; the Watchers had taken the crude, explosive Nonlinearity Engines developed by the Constructors and developed them to a fine pitch.]
Watchers can travel through histories with ease. And how advanced they are compared to the Constructors.
[This Optimal History was engineered — and this artifice must be what the Watcher had brought me on this immense journey to understand.
I recalled old predictions that an infinite universe would be prone to disastrous gravitational collapse — it was another reason why our own cosmos could not, logically, be infinite. For, just as the earth and other planets had coalesced from knots in that turbulent cloud of debris around the infant sun, so there would be eddies in this greater cloud of galaxies which populated the Optimal History — eddies into which stars and galaxies should tumble, on an immense scale.
But the Watchers were evidently managing the evolution of their cosmos to avoid such catastrophes: I had learned how Space and Time are themselves dynamic, adjustable entities. The Watchers were manipulating the bending, collapsing, twisting and shearing of Space and Time themselves, in order to achieve their objective of a stable cosmos.]
Explains how the Infinite Universe (Infinite in… pretty much everything), the Optimal History that Constructors choose as their new home actually was aritificially engineered by The Watchers to be that way.
[Of course there could be no end to this careful engineering, if this universe were to remain viable — and, I thought, if the universe was eternal, there could have been no beginning to it either. That reflection troubled me, briefly: for it was a paradox, a causal circle. Life would be required to exist, in order to engineer the conditions which were prerequisite to the existence of Life here…
But I soon dismissed such confusions! I was, I realized, being much too parochial in my thinking: I was not allowing for the Infinitude of things. Since this universe was infinitely old — and Life had existed here for an infinitely long time — there was no beginning to the benign cycle of Life's maintenance of the conditions for its own survival. Life existed here because the universe was viable; and the universe was viable because Life existed here to manage it… and on, an infinite regression, without beginning — and without paradox! I felt loftily amused at my own confusion. It was clearly going to take me some time to come to terms with the meaning of Infinity and Eternity!]
Optimal History exists because Watchers are there to make it so and Watchers are there to maintain Optimal History because they are born in Optimal History.
[no end to this careful engineering] maybe it meant that before Watchers (humans) even 'born', Watchers are (somehow) already around to engineer this Optimal History.
Constructors Become One with Optimal History :
[The meaning of this bizarre vision was immediately clear to me, for I saw more of the regularity here which I had observed among the galaxies and stars. I could see — suffused in every wisp of gas, in every stray atom — meaning and structure. There was a purpose to the orientation of each atom, the direction of its spin, and the linkages between it and its neighbors. It was as if the universe, the whole of it, had become a sort of Library, to store the collective wisdom of this ancient variant of Humanity; every scrap of matter, down to the last stray wisp, was evidently catalogued and exploited… Just as Nebogipfel had predicted as the final goal of Intelligence!]
Constructors encoded their knowledge into Optimal History.
[But this arrangement was more than a Library — more than a passive collection of dusty data — for there was a sense of life, of urgency, all about me. It was as if consciousness was distributed across these vast assemblages of matter.]
Constructors' consciousness itself became one with Optimal History.
[Mind filled this universe, seeping down into its very fabric! — I seemed to see thought and awareness wash across this universal array of fact in great waves. I was astonished by the scale of all this — I could not grasp its boundless nature — by comparison, my own species had been limited to the manipulation of the outer skin of an insignificant planet, the Morlocks to their Sphere; and even the Constructors had only had a Galaxy — a single star-system, out of millions…
Here, though, Mind had it all — an Infinitude. Now, at last, I understood — I saw for myself — the meaning and purpose of infinite and eternal Life.]
More explanations.
[The universe was infinitely old, and infinite in extent; and Mind, too, was infinitely old. Mind had gained control of all Matter and Forces, and had stored an infinite amount of Information.]
How Mind (Constructors? Watchers? Rather unclear. But Constructors previously referred as 'Mind', but Watchers are the one who engineered Optimal History in the first place) was infinitely old. And literally have stored infinite amount of information.
[Mind here was omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. The Constructors, by means of their bold challenge to the beginnings of time, had achieved their ideal. They had transcended the finite, and colonized the infinite.]
Constructors gained control of all Forces and Matter. Constructors became one with Optimal History, thus they're omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent inside it.
Watchers may be also One with Optimal History itself :
[My Watcher halted and rotated in space like some fleshy balloon. Those huge eyes came towards me, dark, immense, the glare of the light-drenched sky reflected in pupils the size of saucers; at last, it seemed, my world was filled by that immense, compelling gaze, to the exclusion of all else — even the fiery sky…
But then the Watcher seemed to melt away. The scattering of distant constellations, the foamy galactic structure — even the glare of the burning sky — I saw them no more — or rather, I was aware of these things as an aspect of reality, but only as a surface. If you imagine focusing on a pane of glass before you — and then deliberately relaxing the muscles of your eye, to fix on a landscape beyond, so that the dust on that pane disappears from your awareness — then you will have something of the effect I am describing.
But, of course, my change in perception was caused by nothing so physical as a tug of eye muscles, and the shift in perspective I endured involved rather more than depth of focus. I saw — I thought — into the structure of Nature.]
Implied that Watchers too (race more advanced than Constructors, and the race who engineered the Optimal History) are one with Optimal History itself.
Existence of Greater Multiplicities :
["That's all clear enough to me, now. There is no paradox possible within a single History, because of the existence of the Multiplicity."
"But," the Morlock went on calmly, "the Watchers have brought you here, so that you could deliver the Plattnerite to yourself that you could initiate the sequence of events which led to the development of the first Time Machine, and the creation of the Multiplicity. So there is a greater closure — of the Multiplicity on itself."
I saw what he was driving at. "There is a sort of closed loop of causality, after all," I said, "a worm eating its own tail… The Multiplicity could not have been brought into existence, if not for the existence of the Multiplicity in the first place!"
Nebogipfel said that the Watchers believed that the resolution of this Final Paradox required the existence of more Multiplicities: a Multiplicity of Multiplicities!
"The higher order is logically necessary to resolve the causal loop," Nebogipfel said, "just as our Multiplicity was required to exist to resolve the paradoxes of a single History."
"But — confound it, Nebogipfel! My mind is reeling at the thought. Parallel ensembles of universes — is it possible?" "More than possible," he said. "And the Watchers intend to travel there."]
[Multiplicity of Multiplicities], multiverse of multiverses.
[He lowered his head from the sky. The dawn was growing quite bright now, and I could see the pasty flesh around his eyes wrinkle up in discomfort. "And they will take me with them. I can think of no greater adventure… can you?"
"Nebogipfel — when you reach this greater Multiplicity — what then?"
"There are many orders of Infinity," Nebogipfel said calmly, the light rain trickling down the contours of his face. "It is like a hierarchy: of universal structures — and of ambitions." His voice retained that soft Morlock gurgle — its intonations quite alien — and yet it was suffused with wonder. "The Constructors could have owned a universe; but it was not enough. So they challenged Finitude, and touched the Boundary of Time, and reached through that, and enabled Mind to colonize and inhabit all the many universes of the Multiplicity. But, for the Watchers of the Optimal History, even this is not sufficient; and they are seeking ways of reaching beyond, to further Orders of Infinity…"
"And if they succeed? Will they rest?"
"There is no rest. No limit. No end to the Beyond — no Boundaries which Life, and Mind, cannot challenge, and breach." ]
[There are many orders of Infinity], [It is like a hierarchy], [The higher order is logically necessary to resolve the causal loop], [greater Multiplicity], [just as our Multiplicity was required to exist to resolve the paradoxes of a single History], [There is no rest. No limit. No end to the Beyond]
To summarize, the existence of a multiverse ensure the existence of greater multiverse (multiverse of multiverses) in order to resolve causal loop. Greater multiverse needed greater-greater multiverse to resolve it's causal loop. Ad infinitum and you get endless hierarchies (layers?) of… everything.
Okay so, points are :
• Universal Constructors are race of machines that is made of Plattnerite. Substances that allows for time travel in The Time Ships novel.
• Being made of Plattnerite made you being able to be outside Time and Space apparently.
• Universal Constructors, Time Traveller (and presumably Watchers too) could travel past the 'decreating' of Multiplicity. Where histories converge. Even Time Ships themselves are physically affected by the 'convergence' process. Implying multiversal durability.
• Universal Constructors, Time Traveller (and presumably Watchers too) were able to reach past the Boundary of Time and Space, past [no Physics] [no Structure] [no Measurement] [no Observation] [It is all as One.] realm. Possibly some sort of Metaphysical realm, it sure have similarity to Plato's Realm of Ideas/Theory of Forms. Morlocks (future humans) was shown to be able to drag things out of it.
• Universal Constructors could become one with Infinite Universe. Being Omnipotent, Omnipresent and Omniscience inside it.
• Time Shipsverse possibly have infinite dimensions (share similarities to Level III Multiverse).
• It have endless hierarchies (layers?) of multiverse. With each hierarchy above is literally infinitely greater than below.
• Watchers themselves aren't currently at the top of said endless hierarchies (layers?). But strongly implied to be able to breach even said endless hierarchies.
• I personally would like to rank Universal Constructors Tier 2-A in durability and Low 2-C in general.
• Watchers… they're bit like Downstreamers. But they're not yet standing on top of endless hierarchies. So maybe I'd give them 'At least Low 2-C likely higher', or 'Possibly High 1-B (if endless hierarchy is accepted)' maybe 'Possibly 1-A' (if transcending Realm of Ideas and Endless Hierarchies are accepted as Outerversal, even if Watchers haven't done it yet)
• Then again, Downstreamers (https://vsbattles.fandom.com/wiki/Downstreamers) pretty much already topped Watchers in capabilities (superior Multiverse-which would automatically include Realm of Ideas, [no Physics, no Structure, no Observation, ] realm too- and DS are standing above endless hierarchies and DS too could survive without multiverse or physics) but even them are not accepted as Tier 1-A. So don't want to get my hopes up I guess.
So, thoughts?
