The Slow Path: Difference between revisions

A sort of breakdown of [[Meanwhile in the Future]], [['''The Slow Path]]''' is what a character travels down when they use time travel to experience much ''more'' time than the other characters in the story.

* In [[Neil Gaiman]]'s original ''[[Books of Magic]]'' miniseries, the [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] Mr. E takes the protagonist to the end of time, so he can kill him without interference. [[The Grim Reaper|Death]] stops him, and forces him to take [[The Slow Path]] ''back'' -- with—with the implication that he will create a [[Stable Time Loop]] by teaching his younger self to time-walk.

* In ''[[Elf Quest]]'', the immortal elf Rayek kidnaps the family of Cutter, chief of the mortal Wolfriders, and takes them roughly ten thousand years into the future. His plan is to save the ancestors of the elves during their initial time travel mishap (which sent them back into the past). However, this would prevent the Wolfriders from ever existing. Cutter has no idea when his (immortal) lifemate Leetah and their (mortal) children will ever appear again, and he knows that he will die after roughly six thousand years. The first five centuries are torment for him and his tribe, and they eventually decide to have themselves wrapped in a time-freezing cocoon. The immortal characters (including the troll king, whose daughter was also kidnapped) live the years out, as do a select few Wolfriders who dislike tampering with nature and who simply choose to life a normal life. The plot resumes ten thousand years later, when Cutter's lifemate and children finally see him again -- afteragain—after what, for them, has only been a few hours. Later chapters show that Cutter's time without his family severely traumatized him -- hehim—he could simply not stop ''counting''.

* In the ''[[Thorgal]]'' story Master of the Mountains, a time warping ring is used to deposit two characters in the past. One uses the ring to get back, the other has to take [[The Slow Path]]. {{spoiler|This is done twice, once by a would-be [[Chessmaster]] in a ploy to end up with power ''and'' the girl, and once by the girl to counter the [[Chessmaster]]'s ploy and kill him.}}

* Kyon has to take [[The Slow Path]] for an evening in ''[[Kyon: Big Damn Hero]]'', at one point.

* At the end of ''[[Frequency]]'', after an entire film of [[Write Back to the Future]], {{spoiler|Frank takes [[The Slow Path]] to rescue John from the Nightingale Killer}}.

* In ''[[Hot Tub Time Machine]]'', {{spoiler|Lou}} takes [[The Slow Path]] back because his life in the original time line sucked. He uses the opportunity to make better decisions, and uses his knowledge of the future to become very rich. It's played with, though, because his physical age remains the same--hissame—his mind from the present had traveled back to inhabit his younger self.

* In ''[[Kamen Rider OOO|OOO]], [[Kamen Rider Den-O|Den-O]], All Riders: Let's Go Kamen Rider'', one of two [[Street Urchin|Street Urchins]]s who end up traveling 40 years into the past finds himself stuck there, . {{spoiler|in the end, he turns out not only to have been instrumental to helping the Kamen Riders make their [[Bad Future]] better, he also happens to be [[Luke, I Am Your Father|his best friend's]] [[Disappeared Dad]].}}

* In Terry Pratchett's ''[[Johnny and The Bomb]]'', the hero and his friends travel back to World War II, {{spoiler|then one of them ends up returning to the present via [[The Slow Path]] because of a Grandfather Paradox, after which he seeks out the hero in the present, having spent the intervening half-century using his knowledge of fast food (!) and future events to become the world's richest man.}}

* In ''[[The Dark Is Rising]]'', Hawkin takes [[The Slow Path]] {{spoiler|and becomes the Walker}}.

* Marvin in ''[[Hitchhikers Guide|The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy]]'' ends up being "thirty-seven times older than the universe itself," due to various incidents involving messing about with time travel. One can only assume he took a ''lot'' of [[The Slow Path|Slow Paths]] at some point. In one instance, he waits 576 ''billion'' years on the planet Frogstar B after the rest of the crew get teleported away. He doesn't enjoy it much:

* In the short story "I Borrow Dave's Time Machine" by S. N. Dyer, the protagonist goes back in time and commissions several new works of art from various old masters--thenmasters—then leaves them hidden in the past and retrieves them when he returns to the present. Had he just brought them back with him, they would have been dismissed as fakes because the paint would have been fresh.

* '[[Thursday Next]]'': The ChronoGuard from Jasper Fforde's novels can end up with chronological ages of several centuries and actual ages in the mid-twenties because of all the time-travel whackery they get up to. This makes life very hard for their families, who are busy taking [[The Slow Path]] and having grandchildren who end up being older than their grandfather.

* In [[Harry Harrison]]'s ''The Technicolor Time Machine'', the plot follows a film crew who use a [[Mad Scientist]]'s time machine to film a movie about [[Horny Vikings|Vikings]] for cheap. They use [[The Slow Path]] approach several times, such as leaving a script writer on an uninhabited island in the past for several months (his time), which for them took several seconds. They also end up sending a Viking named Ottar to Vinland by ship in order to film him getting there, while all they have to do is use the time machine. They also end up accidentally leaving their star actress behind when jumping forward by a year. They find her again as Ottar's wife and the mother of his child.

* ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'': "Time's Arrow" -- Data—Data's head spends several hundred years in a cave in California. In a classic [[Stable Time Loop]], it's the discovery of his head that bootstraps the adventure.

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'': "Unending" -- SG—SG-1 is trapped within a time-stop field on the ''Odyssey'' for fifty years. When they finally work out a solution, Teal'c volunteers to be excluded from the time-reversal effect, so that he can deliver a plan to save the ship. Fortunately, as a Jaffa, his lifespan is [[We Are as Mayflies|exceptionally long]], though he is still visibly older by the end of it.

* ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'': "Before I Sleep" -- An—An alternate Dr. Weir has spent ten thousand years in stasis after saving Atlantis from flooding. She's still an aged old woman by the timme she's discovered.

** And then {{spoiler|Charlie herself takes [[The Slow Path]], when Samuel and Arnold hide her in the 1940's to keep her away from Hiro. He runs into her again in the present, where she's an elderly grandmother. Hiro decides not to intervene when he meets her granddaughter.}}

** "Bloodlines" (from the webcomic tie-in) reveals that {{spoiler|Arnold, elderly the time-traveler from the Sullivan Bros Carnival, was actually 15 years younger than Samuel. Then on a mission back to 1961, he got [[Easy Amnesia]] and ended up taking [[The Slow Path]] back to the present.}}

* ''[[Dark Cloud|Dark Chronicle]]'' depends heavily on people taking [[The Slow Path]] from the Present to 100 years into the future. As you create villages and populate them with people from the starting city, these villages have become high-tech laboratories, temples, great forests, or industrial sites by the time you return to Monica's time.

* In the aptly named ''[[Stickman and Cube]]'' arc "The Slow Path," everyone ''but'' the titular characters are forced to take [[The Slow Path]] when Stickman and Cube travel into the future. The wait severely flusters the Author, who has to somehow keep the readers occupied until they return.

** Another episode uses it on a smaller scale, almost as a throwaway gag. [[Evil Genius|Evil]] [[Teen Genius|Teen]] [[Genius Ditz]] Jack Spicer uses the Sands of Time to disappear into the future--thenfuture—then returns a few seconds later in a Hawaiian shirt (but otherwise unchanged), explaining that he took a year off to come up with an [[Evil Plan]].

* In the ''[[Justice League]]'' episode "The Savage Time," the League travels back to World War II in order to stop Vandal Savage from conquering the world, and Wonder Woman fights alongside special agent Steve Trevor while there. Once the League returns to their own time, Wonder Woman encounters Trevor again -- thisagain—this time as an old man, in a retirement home.

** In another episode, "Hereafter," Superman is teleported several thousand years into the future, where he finds... Vandal Savage, who has spent the entire time on Earth alone, living with the guilt of having wiped out the human race. For an additional sting, Vandal himself is personally well-versed in time travel science (cf. "The Savage Time"), but the local [[Our Time Travel Is Different|rules of time travel]] prevent one from [[Never the Selves Shall Meet|travelling to an era where one already exists]] -- which—which for the immortal Savage is basically ''all of history'', which is why in "The Savage Time" [[Write Back to the Future|he merely sent information to his past self.]]