Recently, physicists have decided that time is like a tree - it branches off at every decision, sprouting a
new timeline. Some decisions are minor and vary little from their parent, such as whether to have one
lump of sugar or two in your coffee. These timelines, depending on how minor, can sometimes weave
themselves back into the original timeline. Thus, one person remembers events happening a certain
way, while another swears that it happened differently. Others create almost entirely new trunks - such
as whether or not an assassin's bullet hit its mark, killing Adolf Hitler in 1933, if the decision was
made not to drop the A-Bomb in 1945. These events almost never weave back into their parent
timeline.
What science has yet to understand is that time is indeed like a tree... it has roots. While time has a
trunk with decisions causing branches, it also splits in the past, with countless different roots and
possible pasts, as well. And all of them are equally valid.
The universe began as a cosmic void. Then, six thousand and five hundred years ago or so, a Supreme
Being declared "Let there be light!" And there was light, and he saw that it was good.
The universe began as a cosmic void. Then, fifteen billion years or so ago, a hypercondensed
singularity exploded into the known universe, expanding at more than 99% of the speed of light as
galaxies, quasars, nebulas, and the like.
The universe began as a cosmic void between a place of cold and a place of heat. The heat melted part
of the ice, revealing Audhumla the Cow, who licked the ice to reveal Ymir, the first Giant. He was later
slain by Odin, Ville, and Ve, who used his body to make the Nine Worlds.
The universe began on November 3, 1989, when a squawling man-child was born. He's really the only
being in existance, you see, everyone and eveything else (including both you and me) are figments of
his imagination and only REALLY exist when he thinks about us.
The Earth was created by the Hand of God forming his will just so, and the planet just appeared. The
next day, it was filled with life.
The Earth was created by cooling embers from the initial Big Bang, collecting out of the accretion disk
of a Type M star. It took billions of years for life to emerge, and hundreds of millions to evolve to a
state beyond single-celled organisms.
The Earth was created before the universe was, and was populated by Elder Things from Beyond the
Stars, demons and gods of power that would drive men mad to simply behold. The universe was
actually an afterthought, created to help imprison the worst of the Old Ones.
The Earth was created by the Great Ocean giving birth to a mountain. We do not ask who the father
was.
All of these contradict each other. They cannot possibly all be true. And yet, they are. Earth was a
paradise, and a Hell, in the days before Man. It was a wild planet, and an orderly proccess. It was filled
with demons, and watched over by angels. These things all happened. All of them occurred
simultaneously across a single day and across billions of years.
And then there came Man.