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time travel and mobile phones
Apr. 8th, 2010 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
melannenBackground: this is set late 2009, England and Wales.
Character 1(a) goes back in time several months, and for time-paradox reasons, has to make sure character 1(b) (the version of herself in that time) doesn't know or suspect she was ever there, because character 1(a) didn't suspect until it happened. (Make sense?) She's trained & experienced for dealing with things like this, as are most of her friends, which simplifies it in some ways, but means that character 1(b) is more likely to become suspicious.
The question: can character 1(a) use her own mobile phone (which is the same phone as the one that character 1(b) has) or will she need to borrow a mobile that's native to the time she's currently in?
She has a reasonably nice phone and reasonably nice phone service, though I can fudge on specifics.
The issues I see: first, will 1(a)'s phone not work at all in the other time, due to time-stamps or synchronization or codes or something being off? (you can tell I know very little about actual mobile systems.) I know mine has no internal clock, it can't tell time unless it has a signal, but it is also the cheapest phone possible to buy, and nicer ones might have sync issues?
Second, would having a mobile that isn't, um, properly "registered" in the system, (or having two mobiles registered as if they're the same phone) mess things up so that one or the other of the phones couldn't reliably send/recieve calls properly? Would making or recieving a call on one of the phones interfere with getting service on the other at the same time? Apparently it is possible to have two mobiles with the same number on purpose, but that is with the system deliberately set up that way.
And third, presuming character 1(a) can make calls, would it be obvious to character 1(b) that someone else is using her phone - calls she never made showing up on her "recent calls" list or anything like that? If character 1(a) only makes outgoing calls and leaves the mobile turned off the rest of the time, does that make it more likely? (If it's just going to be minor irregularities in the bill, that's okay, she wouldn't notice that.)
(wild speculation welcome, I know very little about mobile phones.)
Character 1(a) goes back in time several months, and for time-paradox reasons, has to make sure character 1(b) (the version of herself in that time) doesn't know or suspect she was ever there, because character 1(a) didn't suspect until it happened. (Make sense?) She's trained & experienced for dealing with things like this, as are most of her friends, which simplifies it in some ways, but means that character 1(b) is more likely to become suspicious.
The question: can character 1(a) use her own mobile phone (which is the same phone as the one that character 1(b) has) or will she need to borrow a mobile that's native to the time she's currently in?
She has a reasonably nice phone and reasonably nice phone service, though I can fudge on specifics.
The issues I see: first, will 1(a)'s phone not work at all in the other time, due to time-stamps or synchronization or codes or something being off? (you can tell I know very little about actual mobile systems.) I know mine has no internal clock, it can't tell time unless it has a signal, but it is also the cheapest phone possible to buy, and nicer ones might have sync issues?
Second, would having a mobile that isn't, um, properly "registered" in the system, (or having two mobiles registered as if they're the same phone) mess things up so that one or the other of the phones couldn't reliably send/recieve calls properly? Would making or recieving a call on one of the phones interfere with getting service on the other at the same time? Apparently it is possible to have two mobiles with the same number on purpose, but that is with the system deliberately set up that way.
And third, presuming character 1(a) can make calls, would it be obvious to character 1(b) that someone else is using her phone - calls she never made showing up on her "recent calls" list or anything like that? If character 1(a) only makes outgoing calls and leaves the mobile turned off the rest of the time, does that make it more likely? (If it's just going to be minor irregularities in the bill, that's okay, she wouldn't notice that.)
(wild speculation welcome, I know very little about mobile phones.)
