Alex McColgan

Let's for ease and convenience say that the top of our diagram is the future, while the bottom is the past.

So the higher up our 2D person goes in this diagram, the older they get.

As we don't seem to have a whole lot of control over our ability to travel through time, let's imagine for a second that our 2D person travels upwards at a constant rate, as if there is some consistent force or wind at play pushing them upwards towards the future.

Sadly, we cannot slow down time for ourselves simply through willpower, no matter how much we might want to do so.

However, it is misleading to say that we can't change it at all.

The faster we travel in space, the slower we travel in time.

This is one of the guiding principles of Einstein's relativity.

This model can express this idea through the power of vectors.

As our 2D person tries to move to their left or to their right, their vector of travel changes.

While travelling at a fixed rate, like a sail on a ship catching a breeze, we can only go as fast as the wind takes us, so the vector coming out from their front must always remain the same.

To travel the fastest through time, our 2D person must orient his vector completely in the future direction, or upwards.

However, if they are to travel any amount in either direction to their sides, they can only do so by pointing their vector away from their direction of travel.

They have motion in the X direction now, but they have done so by reducing their motion in the Z direction.

They are moving through space, but at the cost of moving a little slower through time.

Taking this to its furthest extreme, our individual has completely flipped on their side,

and now only has motion in the direction of x, and none in the direction of z. They have velocity in space, but not time.

So I suppose this implies our vector is the speed of causality, or the speed of light.

If this is the speed we're talking about, then moving at low speeds through space would not have any noticeable difference in our speed through time.

We'd have to go really fast before we started to notice anything.

The vector still mostly points upwards.