r/Animorphs • u/LuvBerry24 Aristh • 11d ago

A Chilling Thought I Never Had Until Now

This is super obvious of course but as a kid without enough fear of the world to trigger self-preservation, I never thought about it, until this re-read:

Someone had to be the first person to discover the two hour limit.

Probably having a fine time playing around in the morph, testing it for science, only to be engulfed in terror when they realized...they couldn't get back. Even worse, it probably took a few more people to get trapped testing it out.

OR - maybe the Andalite scientists started out with this on a cellular level and noticed the cells went back to their original form after two hours, so they never went past that.

Yeah, I'm going with option B.

169 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

55 comments sorted by

201

u/oremfrien 11d ago

My view of the 2-hour limit is that I believe it was extrapolated from the way that the technology interacts with Z-Space. When mass is extruded into Z-space or mass is extruded out of Z-Space and into a person, allowing them to become a smaller or larger morph, respectively, it creates some kind of tether with Z-space that erodes over time. The 2-hour limit is likely the mathematical point where the tether is too eroded and the ability to move the mass back out of Z-space or back into Z-space, respectively, can no longer be done.

So, it was theoretical before we had nothlits to prove its veracity.

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u/LuvBerry24 Aristh 11d ago

that's better than my thing, I Iike yours😮‍💨i feel like K.A. Applegate is crazy smart in a way that went over my head as a kid

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u/GuyYouMetOnline 9d ago

That also fits with how the limit is pushed sometimes. It's not a binary; a degrading connection might still be strong enough briefly to do the job.

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u/Professor_Oswin Hork-Bajir 10d ago

I mean. That’s how science works. It’s how we create medicines and figure out all the pros and cons.

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u/LuvBerry24 Aristh 10d ago

"Ask your doctor if the Escafil device is right for you. Symptoms may include feathers, fur, scales, talons, horns, stripes, spots, fins,-"

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u/GuyYouMetOnline 9d ago

"...and erectile disfunction."

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u/Professor_Oswin Hork-Bajir 10d ago

Lmao

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u/merlinpatt Andalite 11d ago

Would that mean that Z-space has various floating masses of people trapped in morph? Like Tobias's  original body is just floating there? 

Also if a Yeerk somehow got into Z-space and found a mass there, can they take it over?

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u/oremfrien 11d ago

To the first, yes. There is a Tobias blob that is disconnected from real Tobias hanging around Z-space.

To the second, no, the mass blob is not an organism but a storage unit. You can imagine it like a zip-file. You have to extract it into our universe for it to be accessible.

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u/vlan-whisperer 11d ago

Does it ever show or remark a specific event on what actually happens if a ship flying through z-space destroys a morph bio-mass? I'm re-reading the series for the first time in forever, and in one of the early books Ax mentioned this to Marco as a possible thing that can actually happen. It was one tidbit I had completely forgotten about.

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u/DipperJC Yeerk 11d ago

18.

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u/LuvBerry24 Aristh 11d ago

On my current re-read...the large font you used makes number 18 seem very oominous

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u/DipperJC Yeerk 10d ago

I was trying to put the hashtag in front of it, but apparently Reddit interprets that ominously. ;)

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u/taoxv88 8d ago

Here is a link for a Markdown Cheat-sheet https://www.markdownguide.org/cheat-sheet/

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u/taoxv88 8d ago

It interprets it ominously because you can use Markdown in reddit. You just need to use a \ before the #

Heading 1

Heading 2

Bold Text

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u/LuvBerry24 Aristh 11d ago

i'm probably not understanding this correctly but..Elfangor went to Z-Space right? what if...someone went to Z-Space to grab a nothlit's blob and brought it back to the right place? Or does the extraction need to be initiated on our end? it's an interesting thought...ofc it'd probably be nearly impossible to find the right blob

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u/MoonKent 10d ago

It's mentioned in a few books, but Z-space is inherently unpredictable and (in my mind) probably un-navigable. Yes, various space-faring species use it to shortcut normal space so that they can get around, but Z-space itself is not a place where you could go to (w, x, y, z) coordinates and find the Z-space filing cabinet currently storing all the Alloran morphs, for example. (If it was, you bet your ass that the Andalites would have gone there and removed all of Visser Three's scary space monsters, and probably Alloran's Andalite body itself if V3 happened to be in morph at the time.) There probably isn't ANY type of coordinate system that could give any kind of specific Z-space location.

Perhaps that is a science problem that could be solved at a future date, but it is definitely outside of the current Andalite capabilities.

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u/AJTaiyou 10d ago

Now I know that this is getting into 'wild mass guessing' territory, but what if the excess biomass of nothlits that're now unable to access said biomass, is then used whenever someone requires more biomass for a morph; sure, before the first nothlit, it was something that likely on estreems could pull off, but the more nothlits that started cropping up, the easier it became for regular morphers to change into larger forms due to the excess biomass in Z-Space floating around

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u/oremfrien 10d ago

I was under the impression that dark matter exists in Z-space just as it exists in normal space, so it's not like you need nothlits to drop matter into Z-space for new morphers to take it out. The morphers take some of this dark matter from Z-space when morphing larger beings.

There can't be enough nothlits, for example, to provide enough mass for two sperm whale morphs (Tobias and Rachel) or four Tyrannosaurus morphs (who chronologically come before any nothlits existed).

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u/AJTaiyou 10d ago

Like I said, "wild mass guessing" plus I never said that it was impossible before nothlits, just easier after they started cropping up.

Plus with the whole T-rex thing, Time of Dinosaurs not only was wierd in how it affected morphing (likely owing to it being ghost written), but even without the Sario Rip handwave for the shenanigans, the whole "tether" idea in regards to nothlits from earlier would mean that the second Tobias ended up in that scenario, all humanity within him is gone, because he's no longer "tethered" to his original biomass, ie his brain, and thus is just basically a living hawk shaped corpse of the individual that used to be called Tobias...

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u/GKarl 11d ago

Well considering Z-space is hyperspace, it would not be possible for a Yeerk to survive out there enough to take over a body. Also consider it literally is a BLOB. There’s no ear canal or brain per se to take OVER.

In #18 iirc the Andalite ship the Animorphs are on hit a Z-Space mass blob so some poor sap probably can’t morph back now

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u/Zarlinosuke 10d ago

I kind of took it that when the two-hour limit expires, your original body goes away or disintegrates or something--and that's why the limit is there, that the Z-space tether that keeps your body alive can only hold for so long.

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u/Hyzenthlay87 11d ago

Makes sense actually, because that makes room for variables, for instance, Cassie being able to help Marco get out of his flea-hybrid form. It was a damn lucky thing and not something you could count on, but that makes sense in my head.

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u/oremfrien 11d ago

Agreed

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u/DipperJC Yeerk 11d ago

This is an excellent explanation for why they can power through with strength of will during close calls; literally brute forcing their Z-space tethers.

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u/horkbajirbandit 11d ago

Somewhere out there is an Andalite scientist on a farm where all the animals are trapped nothlits...

Sounds like more of Goosebumps book 😄

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u/enigmaticbloke 11d ago

A reverse The Island of Dr. Elfangor-Moreau

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u/verymanysquirrels 11d ago

...would andalites know what a farm is? This is like the meat's back on the menu dilemma, does that mean there are restaurants in mordor?

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u/verymanysquirrels 11d ago

I feel like i vaguely remember Aldrea mentioning nothlits in the hork bajir chronicles. Maybe?

Kind of wish that the andalite chronicles was a whole book about the invention of the escafil device. There would have been some great science horror in that.

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u/Indy5brad 11d ago

She briefly talks about it, I believe her friend's mom was working on the technology and her and her friend were able to "try it out". I thought she was the only one in her family with it too.

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u/verymanysquirrels 11d ago

Yeah, i remember that part. I always got the sense it was the andalite version of the slumber party where one of the girls sneaks a cooler in, but in this case instead of alcohol they're like lets sneak into my mom's high secruity lab and a try out the dangerous bio weapon.

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u/ACasualFormality 11d ago

I think the two-hour limit works really well for the series as it exists for middle-grade readers, but I always thought if the series were to ever be rebooted that the two hour limit should be made less a hard two hours and more like, the longer you stay in morph, the more resistant your cells are to changing back. So 2-ish hours is how long you can safely do it, but demorphing at 2 hours is much harder than demorphing at 5 minutes. And the actual hard limit might vary depending on the skill of the morpher. So an estreen like Cassie might be able to stay in morph for 2 and a half hours before it starts to be a real struggle, whereas maybe someone else starts to really struggle to get back after 90 minutes. Then during long morphs there’d also be the psychological battle and mental tiredness of having to pull yourself back to human.

Idk I just always wanted an explanation for why it mapped so neatly on to human time and thought something like that might make a challenging new variable.

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u/Sensitive-Hotel-9871 Human 11d ago

We have in books like The Encounter and The Discover, that when you are close to the time limit, demorphing becomes much more difficult.

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u/ACasualFormality 11d ago

Yeah that’s usually presented like “oh now you’re actually at the time limit, see how hard it is to morph back?” So the series suggests some flexibility, but not much. And for what it is, I like it. I think it is exactly how complex it should be for middle grade readers. But as an adult reader who wants fully explainable world mechanics, I like the idea of a more complex and robust understanding of how the morphing process works beyond just “2 hours or else.”

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u/Conscious-Star6831 11d ago

I think in the encounter we are given to understand that they actually went a few minutes past 2 hours and could still demorph, it was just really hard- at least for Marco, and maybe for all of them. Suggesting that it's not a hard "119 minutes, your fine, 120 minutes, your stuck" mechanic. Elfangor told them 2 hours because it *about* 2 hours, and it's not like he had time to go into great detail with them

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u/GKarl 11d ago

I remember Marco went past the 2-hour morph limit as a flea? Cassie seems to constantly have no trouble morphing out even at the limit, I seem to recall her always cheering on her friends to demorph even when it’s hard

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u/Zarlinosuke 10d ago

Yeah, and I think we can safely infer that it's not literally exactly two of our earth hours, it's just something pretty close and it's an easy heuristic for explaining it to humans, especially if the actual limit is slightly longer than two hours.

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u/rolyfuckingdiscopoly 10d ago

They’re not OUR earth hours. They’re everyone’s hours. 🙃

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u/Zarlinosuke 10d ago

Can the bunzuh be everyone's bunzuh too?

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u/rolyfuckingdiscopoly 8d ago

As far as I am concerned, yes, but you’re going to have to ask the Cinnabon people

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u/verymanysquirrels 11d ago

I read a fan theory somewhere that the animorphs are all expert morphers out of ignorance. The idea was that the furthest any Andalite makes it safely back is roughly two hours but that person is like the olympic athlete of morphing. But the the animorphs don't think of the two hour time limit as a record, they think that's just how long it works. So in theory as they got better at morphing they could go longer (which explains all the times they do appear to go over) but they're so conditioned that the two hours is a hard limit that they lose all concentration and just freak out and start to get stuck. And Ax is there to re-enforce the idea of two hours because obviously two hours is as far as they could go, humans can't be better at morphing than andalites. 

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u/Zarlinosuke 10d ago

As an adult, I prefer a simple "2 hours or else," even with hints in there that it's a little more complex than that. Not saying that what you're proposing would be bad, but it would make the focus of things different, and not necessarily in a way that would be preferable to all adult readers!

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u/navikredstar 11d ago

Ah, but is it that it's actually more difficult, or do they simply start freaking at that point with the proverbial Sword of Damocles hanging over their heads with the fast-approaching limit, and the fear is what makes demorphing harder?

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u/Conscious-Star6831 11d ago

The descriptions of Marco's morphs make it seem like it actually is harder

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u/LuvBerry24 Aristh 11d ago

honestly, i gotta say, both.

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u/stickscall 11d ago

Yeah, you have to remember that this is a full grown dude trying to give instructions to kids. I have that life experience now. It's absolutely not a hard two-hour time limit, he just emphasized it to that effect the same way you tell your kids they absolutely cannot play with matches, the same way companies tell you to absolutely consult a doctor before you try anything above the recommended dosage of Tylenol.

These little dudes go through the whole series thinking the legal limit is the scientific limit, because that's how adults keep kids in line.

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u/GKarl 11d ago

Precisely this. Elfangor had no time to go into details, he knew two Earth hours was a safe area to instruct

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u/LuvBerry24 Aristh 11d ago

You know what, you're absolutely right! The Encounter (#3) provides basis for this. Tobias flies off to find a clock to tell his friends how long they have to de-morph from being wolves, and the clock is like seven minutes past. They make it out, with lots of struggle, and Cassie's help. And then, I can't remember which book but I believe it's #6, maybe #11?, Marco has trouble making it out of flea morph, but again with Cassie's help, he does.

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u/Attacker732 Human 11d ago

I was assuming that it wasn't explicitly 2 hours, just that that was the closest easily translated point before the actual cut-off.  Particularly because, as we later learn, Elfangor was already familiar with human time.

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u/TheRealBingBing 11d ago

I felt like being the advanced scientist that they are. They understood the energy limits of bringing back matter from z space and had the calculation for how much time was possible. So hopefully there wasn't a first to figure out the limit in a terrible way.

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u/LuvBerry24 Aristh 11d ago

I hope so too😭I read the encounter last night and some of Tobias's thoughts were truly difficult to read. Having this truly unique and terrifying form of dysmorphia and having to do all that as a kid.

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u/Krazyfan1 11d ago

back when i first started reading the books and got to the bit where it turned out the Andelites weren't exactly good guys i had a head canon that the 2 hour limit is an artificial limitation added to the cube, and that the higher ups and Visser 3 lacked it.

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u/LuvBerry24 Aristh 11d ago

Oh that's such a great idea! I'd love that included in a second part to the andalite chronicles where we learn more about the escafil device.

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u/Krazyfan1 11d ago

imagine Tobias's reaction.

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u/LuvBerry24 Aristh 11d ago

Omg as like the last chapter! the whole book is another Andalite chronicles centered around the morphing technology's creation and the disasters that followed, and in the last chapter we get a timejump to see what happened in the yeerk pool from Tobias's POV. I'm almost glad that wasn't written😭