The Delta
Problem

The Core Problem

What the Fixative Actually Does

The Fixative is described, in the museum's technical documentation, as an instrument that extends the duration of a Divergence Point. This description is accurate. It is also, we have come to understand, incomplete in a way that matters.

A Divergence Point opens and closes according to the geometry of two universe-planes in relative motion. The natural duration of any given window is determined by the rate at which those planes move past one another — what the museum's research team calls the friction rate: the speed at which the contact boundary between two universes resolves itself back into separation. When the Fixative is engaged, it introduces a counter-force at this boundary. The friction is slowed. The window stays open longer than it would have.

The interval between the natural closure of a Divergence Point and its Fixative-extended closure is what we call the delta. It is, by definition, time that should not have existed — time during which two universes remain in contact beyond the duration their geometry prescribed.

The Experiment Touches What It Observes

This is not a new problem in science. The principle that an observation changes what is observed is foundational to quantum mechanics and, in a broader sense, to the philosophy of scientific method. What is new here is the scale and the irreversibility.

When the Fixative slows the friction between two universe-planes, it does not affect only the Divergence Point. It affects the temporal experience of both universes for the duration of the delta. In Universe A — our own — nothing perceptible changes. The counter-force is entirely internal to the Cyclorama. In Universe B — the target — the situation is different. The window that should have closed remains open. Whatever was going to happen in the hours or days immediately following natural closure now happens in a universe that is still, imperceptibly but measurably, in contact with ours.

Whether this contact has effects in Universe B that would not otherwise have occurred is a question we cannot answer with certainty. What we can say is that the conditions in Universe B during the delta are not the conditions that would have obtained had we not intervened. The Fixative changes something. We do not know, in most cases, what.

A Concrete Example

Consider a painter in Universe B. The natural Divergence Point between our universe and theirs would have remained open for thirty-six hours. The museum's research team, needing more time to conduct the acquisition, engaged the Fixative and extended the window by four days. The painter — unaware of any of this — continued to work during those four days. On the third day, according to records recovered through subsequent observation, they completed a canvas they had been working on for several months.

That canvas was completed in the delta. It was completed in time that the geometry of the Reticulum had not allocated. Whether it would have been completed anyway — whether the painter would have finished it before a different Divergence Point, years later, made retrieval possible again — is not knowable. What is knowable is that its completion occurred during a period of unnatural contact, in conditions the museum created.

What the Museum Has Already Altered

Every acquisition in the museum's history that involved the Fixative produced a delta. In some cases, the delta was measured in hours and, in our judgement, is unlikely to have produced consequences distinguishable from the background variation of normal events. In other cases, the delta was measured in days or weeks. We have reviewed these cases. In several of them, events occurred during the delta — documented through the Alidade's passive observation capabilities — that we cannot confirm would have occurred otherwise.

We do not know, with certainty, what we have changed. We know that we have changed things. The distinction between these two statements is the Delta Problem.

The museum does not consider this knowledge a reason to stop using the Fixative. It considers it a reason to use it with greater care, shorter deltas where possible, and full documentation of every extension applied. It also considers it a reason to be honest with the public about what the acquisition process involves — which is why this page exists.

The implications of the delta for intentional generation of artworks are addressed separately in The Hammond Principle. For the technical description of the Fixative, see The Cyclorama.