: It doesn't create a paradox when you take multiple
: branching timelines into account. Which they have to,
: because something from the future (like information)
: reaching the past by its very nature changes said past
: and changes the future, however slightly. And if there
: is only One True Timeline, then that created a
: paradox, which by definition cannot exist. So if the
: Codex tells the future at all, then branching
: timelines must exist. That, or some kind of weird and
: highly improbably and easy-to-break world loop.
Depends what you mean by easy-to-break. General relativity allows for time monkeying, *provided* it comes in the form of a causal loop. And you may wonder how it is that no one would ever manage to break the loop--but that's kind of like wondering how no one ever manages to built a machine that manages to produce slightly more energy than it uses up. It's just one of those things. :-)
Put more precisely, the restriction of time monkeying to causal loops is very likely a consequence of the basic (and I mean BASIC--continuity, isometricity, that sort of thing) properties of space-time itself. This isn't unusual in physics--most other really fundamental laws, like conservation of energy and momentum, also derive from basic properties of space-time.
Anyway, I think that's how the Codex works. If reading it affects the future at all, it merely acts to ensure the outcome the Codex predicts. The Summoner was discovered because the Codex revealed his existence, so the Dark started looking for him. And so forth. (The difficulty in finding an exact page in the Codex may be a protection mechanism to prevent time-altering; no one ever knows all the details of a future event, so they can't know how to prevent it.)
--SiliconDream
