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Time Displacement Equipment

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Time displacement equipment in The Sarah Connor Chronicles
The TDE powering up within the bank vault in "Pilot"
A time displacement sphere

The Time Displacement Equipment (or TDE) is a machine which allows living tissue and mimetic polyalloy to be sent backward and forward in time. Skynet, the Resistance, and Catherine Weaver have all have controlled TDE's; each has used them to send agents into the past in an attempt to change the future. The Resistance and Catherine Weaver have also used TDE's to send agents forward in time.

Contents

Technical data

According to the films and most canon of the Terminator Universe it is located within Skynet's main complex in the Navajo Mountain, the TDE is reached by a huge freight elevator that leads deep into the bowels of the building, descending at a 45-degree angle into a concrete lined tunnel. At the bottom of the elevator, huge vault-like doors open to reveal a chamber that is the size of a high-school gym and consists totally of machine surfaces. Wafer-circuit terminals are stacked everywhere, stretching from floor to ceiling, and complex configurations of cabling run beneath panels in the floor. Three enormous chrome rings, one inside the other, are suspended in a circular hole in the center of the room's floor. These rings float freely in a humming electromagnetic field.

Once coordinates are fed into the machine and it is set in motion, the rings begin to move, slowly rotating around each other on different axis like some form of complex gyroscope. The floor begins to split open, like wedges in a pie which then begin to pull back from the center. The rings begin to spin faster, suspended in space in the middle of the receding floor wedges. The rings then begin to descend, dropping into an unbelievably vast circular space. This is the biaxial node of the time-field generator. The rings rotate at a tremendous velocity, blurring from sight, as an energy charge builds up, causing small electrical sparks to spit out from the generator walls, searing the ionized air. Lightning then begins to arc across the vast room, until eventually there is a blinding flash and space from the two different time periods are displaced - they swap with each other.

In order for this time travel to occur, the subject must be a living organism (or must be surrounded by living tissue) in order to generate the bioelectric field needed for the TDE to operate. The subject must also be injected with amphetamines, and smeared with a thick, bluish, sour smelling super conducting jelly so that the time-field will follow its outline. Nothing else can go through time, not even clothes. However, as proven in "Earthlings Welcome Here", dirt is an exception. When time allows, Resistance fighters often take off their clothes prior to entering a TDE departure zone to prevent the destruction of their limited possessions in the time travel process. These could still be useful for personnel left behind.

Skynet is able to send Series 1000 Terminators back through time, but as they do not possess living tissue, it is unclear how they can be transported. One theory states that the T-1000 is capable of generating a synthetic bioelectric field. Another concludes that Skynet grows a synthetic flesh pod, or cocoon, around the T-1000 specifically to send it through time. Once through, the T-1000 would rip out of this cocoon and begin its mission. However, no evidence of such a pod was shown when the TDE was used to transport the T-X, an endoskeletal unit contained in a mimetic polyalloy infiltration sheath. It is also possible that the T-1000 simulates the structure of living cells for the duration that is required for the time displacement to occur.

In the "Pilot" episode of SCC, a Series 888 head is transported through time along with Sarah, John and Cameron. According to Josh Friedmann[1] the head was covered in tissue immediately before the time travel which was then burnt off during time travel. This could possibly be the way Skynet is able to send T-1000 prototypes back in time without traces of cocoons being seen following time travel - a thin layer of skin covering the T-1000 is burnt off during time travel.

It is not known exactly how, technically, this TDE works, however, it is known that the process creates large quantities of faster-than-light tachyon particles. The execution of the TDE causes huge power drains to Skynet's operating systems and can cause unprotected electric circuits within a 100 meter diameter to fuse, so it is rarely used. The process by which Skynet can transport people, or battle units, back in time is known as "chronoportation".

When a terminator or human arrives in their predetermined time, the time sphere will appear and cause a small electrical storm. The sphere would burn and/or melt anything around it. When it fades away, its traveler(s) will appear naked and crouched or lying down.

It would appear that Skynet has more than one TDE laboratory. This second TDE laboratory is very similar to the first TDE laboratory captured and used by the Resistance.

Dialogue between Kyle Reese and Dr. Peter Silberman in the first film suggests that the TDE process is a one-way trip; once they travel back to the set time period, they are unable to return. Only by constructing another device, possibly requiring unique future tech components smuggled back as well, can a person return to the future.

Reliability

It is shown in multiple sources that the equipment can have errors, delivering subjects to either the wrong location, the wrong time, or both.

Examples

In the TSCC Episode "Self Made Man"Myron Stark was accidentally sent to 1920 and had to prepare for and await 2010 for his assigned target. In the Dark Horse Comics The Terminator: Secondary Objectives saga, Z000.M is delivered to the right time, but 354 miles off the California coastline. In the Dynamite Entertainment crossover Painkiller Jane vs. Terminator, damage to the TDE causes a departing terminator targeted for Los Angeles 1984 to arrive off target in New York, 2004. Some errors are less evident, as shown when D810.X and D800.L were deployed simultaneously to Death Valley, yet arrived slightly offset, leading one terminator to suffer internal errors resulting in the survival of their targets. In a NOW Comics issue, a terminator accidentally arrives in earth's prehistory and is immediately devoured by a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

T-3 Novelization

In the novelization of Terminator 3 the origin of the TDE is addressed albeit it is so counter to the previously established canon of the series that its significance is questionable. It started as a different device known as the Continuum Transporter. this other form of time machine begun as a series of Special Action Projects (SAPs) carried out at the United States Air Force's high security research and test base Area 51 in the Nevada desert. Funded by the Department of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency, National Reconnaissance Office, and National Security, it was able to create an artificial wormhole - a passageway through space-time. Einstein and Stephen Hawking had worked on the problem in the past, but it appeared to need too much energy to be possible. By most calculations the wattage required to create an infinitesimally tiny wormhole would take almost all the energy ever produced in the universe since the moment of the Big Bang. However, an Oxford graduate student developed a mathematical model, melding Einstein’s relativity with Heisenberg's quantum mechanics, creating a 10-Dimensional wormhole at the superstring level. It would produce a passageway that would automatically expand exponentially like a virus gone wild. But only so long as power was applied to what was thought of as an artificial singularity.

In the mid 1990's, under the guise of launchings of dozens of military and NSA technical means satellites, a solar sail made of extremely thin Mylar, 200 km each side, was positioned in an extremely rare geosynchronous orbit that kept it stationary over the North Pole. The sail focused sunlight, beaming it to the reception antenna and singularity equipment at the CRS facility on the desert east of Los Angeles. Capable of transporting several hundred terawatts of energy over time periods of less than one nanosecond, a wormhole could be opened.

The Continuum Transporter equipment is very different from the Time Displacement Equipment seen previously. Whereas the TDE is huge, the CT is relatively small. The subject enters a holding chamber, which, when activated, moves to line up with a spherical transmission chamber. The subject then moves into the transmission chamber and places one bare knee and two hands on the pad. The transmission chamber clear bubble door is then closed. By un-caging the firing switch and flipping the toggle to the transmit position outside, the chamber takes on an eerie blue cast, and the subject is transported back through time.

The Continuum Transporter bubble witnessed by one or two Resistance members differs in many ways from the original opaque blue time bubble surrounded by blue lightning. Still surrounded by blue lightning, the CT bubble is clear, with a highly reflective mirrored surface. This outer structure covers a 3 m diameter layer which appears to be constructed from some form of metal alloy wire mesh. This mesh glows red hot and vaporizes upon chronoportation, leaving just the person or battle unit that has been sent through time.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles

TDE's display from "Pilot".

Sometime between 1963 and 1999, a person known only as the Engineer constructed Time Displacement Equipment in a bank vault with intention of being able to travel from the past to the future. It was used by the Connors and a terminator named Cameron to travel to 2007 to escape the pursuing Cromartie and continue their mission to prevent Skynet's birth. But for some strange reason, this particular use devastated the bank. A contributing factor to this destruction may have been the simultaneous firing of an isotope anti-terminator weapon from within the forming time sphere. Another may have been failure of the contemporary materials used in its construction.

In 2027, the Resistance was able to create their own time displacement machine from one of their bases. To stop Skynet from existing, Connor sent four men to 2007 to prepare to help his younger self and his mother. Cameron was probably sent through the device. In the series, resistance TDE operators are called Bubble Techs.

Skynet sent its own terminators to 2007 to stop the Resistance fighters and prepare for Judgment Day.

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References

  1. ↑ http://sarahconnor.wetpaint.com/page/Producer%27s+Blog
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