A timer is utilized both to start and stop the machine. The startup timer serves to prevent the person turning the machine on from immediately meeting "himself" (or another traveller) coming out. The shut-down timer determines the length of the trip and the required entry time. Time moves at a constant rate in the box, the same rate as outside the box, but in reverse direction—so if the traveller wants to go back six hours he sets the timer to turn the machine off six hours after it turns it on, lives six hours in the normal world, then enters the box as it winds down. He then stays six hours in the box by the watch on his wrist, and exits as the machine is being turned on by the start-up timer. An interesting note: to the traveller in the box, that startup will sound like a wind-down, just like when he entered.
In this example, for the six hours that the traveller is in the box there could be considered to be three versions of him in existence: the original and the "duplicate" going forward in time and the original going backward in the box as shown in the above illustration. In the movie, the "originals", after setting the timers, would seclude themselves in a hotel room to avoid causing a paradox while the "duplicates" from the future would act in the shared present. |
