I decided to look back over the Area Zero journals from the base game, just to see how all of the new information lined up with the old, and… well, let’s just say there’s a lot of issues with the reported chronologies between the two. I’ll try to summarize what I think are the conflicting elements:
According to the Crystal Pool scene and the Underdepths journals, Sada / Turo was deep into their research on the time machine, but kept hitting dead ends. Suddenly, they were transported to the Crystal Pool, where they meet the player. The professor says they’re desperate to find any information that will lead to a breakthrough, which we provide to them in the form of Briar’s book. This informs them about Terapagos and its location in the Underdepths, and we can infer that it’s Terapagos’s power that will allow them to create and power the time machine. We also inform them of the name “Koraidon / Miraidon,” and give them the idea to create an AI duplicate of themselves. The professor hands us the Scarlet / Violet Book in exchange for Briar’s Book (which is a whole other issue that’s already been talked about, so I’ll not focus too much on it here), and then returns to their time, where they presumably write the journals that we find in the Underdepths, which mention their meeting with us at the Crystal Pool and their receipt of Briar’s Book. Aside from the Scarlet / Violet Book hole, it’s a pretty typical bootstrap paradox. Simple enough, but also, we should take a moment to note that the Sada / Turo who appears at the Crystal Pool explicitly states that they have a son whom they imagine is quite lonely due to the professor’s absorption in their own research.
But the journals found in the Research Station during The Way Home tell a very different story. According to those, the sequence of events is as follows: The professor determines that a creature with a shell of hexagonal plates (whose name is blacked out) is the source of the Terastal phenomenon, which the professor coins the name of. This allows the professor to invent the first Tera Orb (and we know from Raifort’s history classes that this occurred 10 years before the main story), which convinces the professor’s corporate backers to provide more funding for their research. They set up their lab at Cabo Poco, but intend to return to Area Zero one day.
Eventually, the professor does return to the Zero Lab, and after many experiments, is able to create the working time machine. (If we’re factoring in the chronology proposed by the Crystal Pool scene, this means that the professor receives Briar’s Book from us in between inventing the Tera Orb and inventing the time machine.) The first Pokémon to have been successfully brought through the time machine is Koraidon / Miraidon, which the professor names (and to reference the Crystal Pool scene again, we are seemingly the one who gave them the idea for that name).
Here’s where it gets messed up, though. At this point, upon Koraidon / Miraidon’s summoning, the professor writes, “I was expecting one new life to treasure, but what fortune to be blessed with this gift as well!” The next journal says, “I’m so close to creating a world like the one in the book — a paradise where
we three can live happily together forever.” And then the next mentions that “that man / woman walked out not long after the boy was born.”
According to that sequence of events, Arven wasn’t even born yet at the time of the time machine’s completion and successful activation. So how could the professor at the Crystal Pool, who has yet to get the time machine working, already be talking about their son Arven and speaking to his loneliness (which is partly a consequence of Arven’s other parent walking out on them)?
Assuming, in good faith, that Game Freak didn’t just completely forget about the details of their own story, I feel like this is actually a pretty strong point in favor of the idea that the professor we interact with at the Crystal Pool is not from “our” timeline. The one from “our” timeline, in our past — Arven’s actual mother / father — must have received a copy of Briar’s Book from a different timeline’s version of us, without offering the Scarlet / Violet Book to them in return (I guess that timeline’s professor was just more impolite?)
… Actually, that all being said… is Arven meant to be less than 10 years old…? If Tera Orbs were made 10 years ago, but prior to his birth… bro is literally the same age or younger than Poppy!?
