Avengers/New Avengers: Time Runs Out (with spoilers)

[JKtheMac]

If Doom can kill 1000 MMs in 5 years, that's 200/yr. He's been at it for 13 years. So that's 2600 MMs by himself. Let's say he has a legion of 10,000 swans. The first one didn't arrive until year 8. To maximize the model, let's say all 10,000 joined year 8, none died, and none left. 10,000x5x200=10,000,000. That's a ton, but its not billions. Its more likely the exponential increase of universes destroyed through incursions killed most of the molecule men.

Try doing the equation if each swan recruits a new swan every time she kills a Molecule Man and then they quickly go out and kill / recruit.

[JKtheMac]

Try doing the equation if each swan recruits a new swan every time she kills a Molecule Man and then they quickly go out and kill / recruit.

Indeed an easy way would be apply the Fibonacci Sequence which would probably be a better model anyway. The first billion is passed by F46.

Edit: It may even be implied by "one quickly became three"

[Biclopcicle]

Try doing the equation if each swan recruits a new swan every time she kills a Molecule Man and then they quickly go out and kill / recruit.

This isn't a pyramid scheme lol. Anyway, the storyline/plot emphasizes the incursions, and they way I read MM's statement about killing billions was that it would bevia smashing things together, i.e. the incursions. The incursions are automatic, exponential, and don't require the tedious process of actually finding MM.

Basically, if they could kill billions of MM on their own, then the incursions would serve no real purpose. Yet MM wanted them to happen

Edit: I don't know how quickly the swans expanded their ranks or the actual size of the swan army. I mean, it took Doom eight years to get his first recruit. We can assume their number grew more rapidly than that, but by how much? I doubt they were getting a swan on 100% of worlds they visited. Going by Doom's kill rate, its about 2 days per world visited. What is the recruit rate? Probably less than 50% since most worlds didn't have super beings, and (although we don't know this) it seems Doom picked mutants or other beings possessing some superpowers. This doesn't have to be the case; he could augment a normal human with magic and tech.

[Viteh]

As an aside, I think its interesting the council of Reeds never discovered multiversal collapse. Incursions should have been well underway by then...

Good point. Maybe Doom prevented them from finding out? He did know they would come to exist, and what they would do.

[vitruvian]

I think they did kill billions. I don't doubt the words on the page. By the time they are used Molecule man is more like his jibbering self but we are talking a very large multiverse and if Molecule Man expects it to take billions and states it needs to be an order of magnitude higher than millions why doubt him just because it seems a lot.

The Incursions started before Doom recruited his first Swan, and he did not go from ~ a thousand to billions in just a few more years. Therefore, it did not take billions to start the Incursions.

I wasn't using the world meddling. I am not directly saying that every Universe is the result of time travel. I am saying that every universe is theoretically a branching point in the marvel model. That is why there are a near infinite amount of them as oppesed to DCs dozens.

Sure, but that has nothing to do with time travel, or with time being broken across realities (as opposed to in one timeline) due to time travel.

What were we talking about again? ;-)

If Doom can kill 1000 MMs in 5 years, that's 200/yr. He's been at it for 13 years. So that's 2600 MMs by himself. Let's say he has a legion of 10,000 swans. The first one didn't arrive until year 8. To maximize the model, let's say all 10,000 joined year 8, none died, and none left. 10,000x5x200=10,000,000. That's a ton, but its not billions. Its more likely the exponential increase of universes destroyed through incursions killed most of the molecule men.

Right, and the Incursions start at year 7, so at about 1,400 MMs killed, so clearly it doesn't take billions to kick off the multiversal collapse.

Try doing the equation if each swan recruits a new swan every time she kills a Molecule Man and then they quickly go out and kill / recruit.

We have no indication that the population of Black Swans ever got that large, though... which makes sense since there's no guarantee that there will be suitable candidates on every world, unlike Molecule Men.

Plus, that's pretty much irrelevant to the question of how many MMs need to be killed to start the Incursions, as the Incursions start before any Swans are recruited.

As an aside, I think its interesting the council of Reeds never discovered multiversal collapse. Incursions should have been well underway by then...

I think there were indications that some of them may have discovered it, there were vague references to something similar, not to mention the story of 'crushing' a Beyonder using Sol's Anvil. It's just that escaping/stopping the Mad Celestials was more urgent at that point in time.

It's interesting that the Council of Reeds was responsible for the culling of Dooms that gets mentioned in this issue as well, though.

[exiled]

So, based on that theory, The Beyonders started the incursions by destroying the universes where MM had already been killed because those univeres would not explode when MM became terminal? Which is why they used the Mapmakers to find all the worlds where MM was dead and destroy them as well as search for the Swans (who were killing MM)

Hi, no. By killing enough MM the incursions start. I was just saying that the theory that a universe dies every time a mm dies was wrong based on the information above.

[exiled]

Just to add my reading to the mix because I only talked about this in the issue review threads. The idea of blue and red shift universes suggests relative movement. Hickman took great pains to highlight the two colours of incursions and Molecule Man referenced them on the page immediatley preceeding the image of the first red incursion.

So by my thinking: Molecule Man is a fixed point that anchors the multiversal timelines together. As long as there is a Molecule Man time remains stable across the Multiverse. If you kill a Molecule Man his remnant world is blue shifted. - Blue shifting implies motion towards the observer and most incursions are red shited which implies motion away from the observer.

By my way of thinking the multiverse is expanding in a simmilar way to the universe, and blue shift incursions represent a collapsing timeline.

Putting these two ideas together I think the blue shift worlds are contracting very slightly in their timeline after they have become uncoupled from the mutiverse. Once billions of these blue realities exist there is stress in the multiverse with the contracting timelines causing incursions. This in turn causes universes to totally collapse and has a further contracting effect on the timelines. This secondary contraction was what Reed noticed early on and is part of his diagram. He had no way of knowing at that stage that there was a primary reason for the contractions so he put it down to a single universe collapsing for unknown reasons.

This makes sense. But what about the red shifts? Could that be when an earth is destroyed and becomes un attached from the incursion effect?

[JKtheMac]

The Incursions started before Doom recruited his first Swan, and he did not go from ~ a thousand to billions in just a few more years. Therefore, it did not take billions to start the Incursions.

No they didn't start before the first recruitment. It's clearly in the text exactly when each happened.

Edit : see my retraction of this later.

[JKtheMac]

This makes sense. But what about the red shifts? Could that be when an earth is destroyed and becomes un attached from the incursion effect?

There only seem to be two colours so I think Red is everywhere that doesn't include dead a Molecule Man. The implication is Red shift is natural (well as natural as an unnatural slamming together of worlds can be.

[JKtheMac]

No they didn't start before the first recruitment. It's clearly in the text exactly when each happened.

Doh sorry I stand corrected I forgot which order the story ran in! I apologise.

[exiled]

There only seem to be two colours so I think Red is everywhere that doesn't include dead a Molecule Man. The implication is Red shift is natural (well as natural as an unnatural slamming together of worlds can be.

I know we are aligned that the death of a MM does not kill a universe. I am not sure if you saw my post on how the first incursion happened after 7 years and the beyonders discover something is wrong in 10. But the Beyonders are seen investigating the "Scene of the Crime" of the original MM murder. So their assumption is wrong. But I guess I am thinking as the "why" killing a MM starts in simple terms. Hickman goes out of his way to tell us how unique and powerful the MM is. At the end of the day Doom is disrupting an experiment that is capable of destroying everything. Given what we know about the multiverse and how it is like a living organism it is not a big stretch at all to see why killing a MM would cause incursions. Incursions are the result of a celestial experiment gone wrong.

[JKtheMac]

I know we are aligned that the death of a MM does not kill a universe. I am not sure if you saw my post on how the first incursion happened after 7 years and the beyonders discover something is wrong in 10. But the Beyonders are seen investigating the "Scene of the Crime" of the original MM murder. So their assumption is wrong. But I guess I am thinking as the "why" killing a MM starts in simple terms. Hickman goes out of his way to tell us how unique and powerful the MM is. At the end of the day Doom is disrupting an experiment that is capable of destroying everything. Given what we know about the multiverse and how it is like a living organism it is not a big stretch at all to see why killing a MM would cause incursions. Incursions are the result of a celestial experiment gone wrong.

Indeed I don't see a problem with it just being a matter of "Killing a molecule Man is almost impossible. That has to have some serious ramifications." Especially when he now has a multiversal dimension to consider. Until this issue I probably would have argued that it is impossible to kill Molecule Man.

[jackolover]

This gives me an excuse to link one of my favourite double page spreads. The Branching of the Multiverse in action from All-New X-Men Annual V2014:
Attachment 21715

Yeah, that's a beautiful example. I came across it myself studying the many fissures opening up in the 616, and saw that one and it was spectacular and very demonstrative of branching realities going off into infinity.

[vitruvian]

So by my thinking: Molecule Man is a fixed point that anchors the multiversal timelines together. As long as there is a Molecule Man time remains stable across the Multiverse. If you kill a Molecule Man his remnant world is blue shifted. - Blue shifting implies motion towards the observer and most incursions are red shited which implies motion away from the observer.

This can't be right, as the multiverse was stable for billions of years before there were any Molecule Men. Back to the drawing board!

[jackolover]

As an aside, I think its interesting the council of Reeds never discovered multiversal collapse. Incursions should have been well underway by then...

The Hickman FF story had many mysterious cloaked threads including the Council Of Reeds not bringing in 616 Reed on the truth, (note most Infinity Guantlets were missing), as well as calling them Mad Celestials who were attacking them. We really don't know the full story behind that. Even Doom never found out about Incursions when he was creating his Doom Planet with an Infinity Gauntlet.

A bridge was built so Reed could fix everything, and in his computer query findings, he strictly stuck to realities that had good outcomes concerning the Reed, Tony and Pym combination. Reed never asked the computer to see how the world ends. The council of Reeds may have come across Incursions doing similar enquiries and looking more broadly about all issues. They could have tried many ways to stop Incursions and in the process Beyonders and Ivory Kings were disturbed, as well as Celestials. For all we know the council of Reeds were destroying Earths, and there used to be millions of them. Once the Celestials killed most of the Reeds, the process stopped? The last surviving Reeds built a Sol's Anvil which was capable of destroying an Earth. We all assumed they were doing that for another purpose, but now with the benefit of hindsight, there could have been a different purpose.

Future Franklin Richards told Cap in OS that Incursions couldn't be stopped, so Franklin and the Council of Reeds may already have known that, and were sitting on that fact to not cause a panic in the Multiverse.