Calculations

"They had these tools, these powerful machines, that could predict possible futures. Not what was going to happen, but wha-what could happen... probabilities. And... well, they spent a lot of energy trying to decide what was the most likely scenario for the future. Theirs and ours."

―Desmond Miles attempting to explain First Civilzation calculations

Minerva projecting herself into the future

Minerva's calculations made the First Civilization proficient in the studies of alternate, future, timelines. From within the Nexus, Jupiter, Juno and Minerva worked to influence several individuals in the future to prevent the reoccurrence of a solar flare from devastating the planet.

Examples

• Minerva constructed two builds of the Eye based on her studies; the first, to alter existence itself and prevent the Second Disaster, and the second to commune with Desmond Miles, through his ancestor Ezio Auditore da Firenze.
• Ezio Auditore da Firenze once used his Apple to discern what threat Cesare Borgia still posed following his arrest. What he saw immediately resolved him to eliminate the incarcerated Grand Master.
• Ratonhnhaké:ton communed with Juno via a Crystal Ball; she instructed him to join the Assassins, and showed him the consequences should he not do so: the Templars would breach the sanctuary near Kanatahséton, and the world would not be saved from the coming apocalypse.
• Later, an Apple of Eden also showed Ratonhnhaké:ton that if he had never became an Assassin, he would not have been present to prevent Washington's corruption, and the collapse of the United States into civil war.
• When Nikolai Orelov touched the Imperial Sceptre – a Staff of Eden – during the Tunguska event, he saw events from the past and future. Through the Bleeding Effect, his descendant Daniel Cross saw his eventual meeting with the Mentor.
• Inside the Colosseum Vault, Juno showed Desmond Miles what would happen if he did not kill Lucy Stillman: Abstergo Industries would have arrived to claim Ezio's Apple of Eden and placed in the Eye-Abstergo satellite, ignoring its importance in preventing the Second Disaster.
• Minerva later showed Desmond that if he did not use the Eye and release Juno from the Grand Temple, then the cataclysm would have destroyed humanity, but that he would lead the survivors in a restart of civilization. Long after his death, history would have repeated itself; Desmond would be worshipped as a god, but his teachings would be twisted to justify mass genocide.

Trivia

• Darby McDevitt confirmed that "Calculations" was the in-house term for parallel universes in the series, and added that Clay Kaczmarek went insane because he saw too many possible futures, in addition to the Bleeding Effect.