I've had a weird few days with only a couple hours of sleep for a few days in a row. I fell asleep at 7 last night and woke up at 3:30 from this really vivid dream of a world setting that I'm trying to figure out if it's worth fleshing out. I wasn't a person in the dream, it was more like I was watching it as a movie. Then in the dream, I was talking to Mike about the dream I had and we were trying to figure it out. Then I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep. So here's the premise:
In a far future setting, at least tens of thousands, if not millions of years in the future, our planet (in the dream it was Earth) has become a remote mining/manufacturing planet. By "remote mining" it means like "remote working"- through advanced technology, remote planets, stars and bodies are mined but through teleportation or whatever, the materials are processed and packaged here on Earth. The purpose of this is to create terraforming spheres- which are super-dense large spheres (in the dream, 50 to 60 feet high) that contain enough materials to terraform an entire planet. However, this isn't the only purpose for the spheres- essentially they are self-contained molecular manufacturing products that could create enough of anything to cover your planet in miles deep of whatever material you want, either all at once, or as you want to piece it out. These things are so super dense, that they should have their own gravity, but from some future technology (in the dream it was an offset of gravity by displacing it through a "portal" that shifts the gravitational effect to a point in dead space) they don't have a gravity that actually effects people or the planet.
I'm not even sure these spheres are important to the world idea, but they were there, so I'm including them.
In this far, far future, an anomaly happens and creates a "hitch" in time where, after a set period of time, everyone's consciousness jumps back a slightly longer period of time immediately preceding the last period of time. For instance, imagining this has been going on for a while- so in the dream there was a future setting where the "gap" was several months long. At the end of that gap, everyone would jump back in time to a point several months before that gap started. And at the end of that gap- when they'd reached the beginning of the last gap- they'd jump back to a slightly longer several months long gap that starts before this second gap. I don't know if I'm explaining it well, but essentially it's a bit like Memento where the world exists like normal for a few months, then everyone goes back and lives the few months before that, and then the few months before that, then the few months before that. But unlike Memento, everyone retains their memories through this. In the dream, people weren't tied to their fate-- i.e., they could do things that didn't occur in the past. I understand the fallacy in this, but my dream wasn't concerned about it.
Here's the other thing- the spheres, due to their super-density blah blah blah, were unaffected by the temporal anomaly. But once a sphere's resources were used, they were used, so even when a jump backwards took place, those resources were gone. Thus, even though they were created in the far future, they kept existing in the past through each of these jumps. This lead to another scene in my dream movie where there was a Roman-era type civilization that had just "jumped" to the beginning of their gap, which at this point in the movie, gaps were lasting decades and not months, and there was a race to get to a sphere to activate it to form the world in your kingdom's image. In my waking hours, I realize this probably doesn't make sense when these rules all get fleshed out, but it was really damn cool in my dream.
As I woke up and started thinking about it (and realizing I wasn't going back to sleep), I thought that if I fleshed out the rules for the world, it would make a cool book of short stories based at different time periods in the same world.
Questions that weren't addressed in my dream-
Is this temporal anomaly universal or just planetary?
How does society evolve/develop under these circumstances?
What rules need to be figured out for people living their futures? Can you break fate? What are the effects? Or does it matter if we look at it all as linear from their perspective?
How does human society develop when it's moving backwards but with weird knowledge like- when people will cease existing, etc.?
What is the effect, if any, of societal knowledge lost or gained from this effect?
Help me with this world I dreamed of
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
It's interesting to think, for instance, about whether the industrial revolution would proceed in a totally different fashion if people knew the effects it would have on the climate in a couple hundred years. Would they look for more sustainable methods of generating power? If you knew the outcome of the invasion of Iraq, or WWII, or WWI, before they even happened, would they even happen? Or is time and fate a relentless forward progress, doomed to occur no matter what you do or what you know? In which case, it's like everyone is in a time travel movie where they know something bad is going to happen, but they are powerless, collectively and individually, to stop it from occurring.
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
I guess I would separate out the core ideas and see what each one does by itself for your imagining of a short story. The idea of remote mining is cool all by itself and actually smacks of a realistic future situation. Suppose people on earth control the remote mining robots due to their quantum-based computers, or suppose they have to get within a certain range of the mined planet. Anyway, this permits continued expansion while finding the resources elsewhere.
Then there's the idea of jumping backwards and time and getting to redo a certain portion that may or may not increase in length as the jumps continue. Maybe it's a random length so those who jump backward with an ability to stop atrocities don't quite know how long they have, or must make an imperfect estimate. Maybe they use the chance as you suggest, to attempt to rescue the dominance of their civilization. What If most people have a short jump but some people have a very long jump, or a few go back and forth and just try to communicate about what they're understanding from the future?
The dense spheres of materials... Maybe that could be fit into any of these scenarios but what is its purpose? Is it a way of allowing remote mining to launch materials back to another place? Or preparing them so that it's easy to go pick them up from the remote miners? I guess this one doesn't interest me as much for its own sake as for what it does to a particular group of people who need resources for some reason.
Then there's the fact that Mike is some kind of disembodied immortal in the scenario and obviously you should keep that part no matter what.
Then there's the idea of jumping backwards and time and getting to redo a certain portion that may or may not increase in length as the jumps continue. Maybe it's a random length so those who jump backward with an ability to stop atrocities don't quite know how long they have, or must make an imperfect estimate. Maybe they use the chance as you suggest, to attempt to rescue the dominance of their civilization. What If most people have a short jump but some people have a very long jump, or a few go back and forth and just try to communicate about what they're understanding from the future?
The dense spheres of materials... Maybe that could be fit into any of these scenarios but what is its purpose? Is it a way of allowing remote mining to launch materials back to another place? Or preparing them so that it's easy to go pick them up from the remote miners? I guess this one doesn't interest me as much for its own sake as for what it does to a particular group of people who need resources for some reason.
Then there's the fact that Mike is some kind of disembodied immortal in the scenario and obviously you should keep that part no matter what.
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
Upon for the reflection I like the idea that the young demiourgos creator God consults a big brother or granddad for advice, but the older one is not interested in creation and doesn't get involved in it personally.
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bralbovsky
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Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
Love it. Here's what I daydreamed right after:
The anomalies are actually caused by the technology of shifting hyper-compressed matter. Like the fracking earthquakes in Oklahoma, they're an unintended consequence of the procedure. Like the tremors in Oklahoma, they're widespread and unpredictable, so these don't occur exactly locally, but in one of the areas touched by the ripples of displacement. Universal, in occurrence, but not universally simultaneous.
The time shifts have several complications: It's not Dr Who, or Looper, where the knowledge is privileged and secret. If everyone remembers, then collective or unpredictable action is possible. We have version 2 of Lincoln's Second Inaugural, knowing what we all know. If I slipped back ten years, I would make a special trip to Syria to look at archeology and assassinate Assad. It's the collective foreknowledge that makes perhaps wiser (or more intentionally oppressive) trends possible. It creates one more issue: the shifts might be repeated randomly, or like lightning, semi randomly. So I might have to kill him more than once, and, of course, the second time would be harder because it's in the books. Like lightning, it might not be entirely random. Could someone harness or direct it?
It would change the idea of fate, because suddenly we have limited agency. People don't simply stop existing, like a replicant, or the executed guy in skyrim, something happens to them. Mickey Mantle drinks himself to death, twice. There's war and disease. On the redo, would the whole pandemic political mess be handled differently? But the chances are unpredictable, so you do the best you can, knowing there might not be a saved game to go back to. (Note to self, build a game with random save points, so people play hardcore and have limited opportunities to reboot.)
Societally, I think it would make us more aware of the impact of the future. Right now, que sera, sera, but if we have object lessons that we have all experienced, It reduces the accidental nature of much of what happens. Our choices really do have attached consequences, and we can study them.
There will be a cult that views these anomalies as proof that it's all a game and meaningless, and they'll be dangerous.
The anomalies are actually caused by the technology of shifting hyper-compressed matter. Like the fracking earthquakes in Oklahoma, they're an unintended consequence of the procedure. Like the tremors in Oklahoma, they're widespread and unpredictable, so these don't occur exactly locally, but in one of the areas touched by the ripples of displacement. Universal, in occurrence, but not universally simultaneous.
The time shifts have several complications: It's not Dr Who, or Looper, where the knowledge is privileged and secret. If everyone remembers, then collective or unpredictable action is possible. We have version 2 of Lincoln's Second Inaugural, knowing what we all know. If I slipped back ten years, I would make a special trip to Syria to look at archeology and assassinate Assad. It's the collective foreknowledge that makes perhaps wiser (or more intentionally oppressive) trends possible. It creates one more issue: the shifts might be repeated randomly, or like lightning, semi randomly. So I might have to kill him more than once, and, of course, the second time would be harder because it's in the books. Like lightning, it might not be entirely random. Could someone harness or direct it?
It would change the idea of fate, because suddenly we have limited agency. People don't simply stop existing, like a replicant, or the executed guy in skyrim, something happens to them. Mickey Mantle drinks himself to death, twice. There's war and disease. On the redo, would the whole pandemic political mess be handled differently? But the chances are unpredictable, so you do the best you can, knowing there might not be a saved game to go back to. (Note to self, build a game with random save points, so people play hardcore and have limited opportunities to reboot.)
Societally, I think it would make us more aware of the impact of the future. Right now, que sera, sera, but if we have object lessons that we have all experienced, It reduces the accidental nature of much of what happens. Our choices really do have attached consequences, and we can study them.
There will be a cult that views these anomalies as proof that it's all a game and meaningless, and they'll be dangerous.
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bralbovsky
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- Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2020 11:05 pm
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
So, an addendum.
I don't think we behave much better than we have already.
Mobile Oil knew in 1973 that it was melting the North Pole and decided that was a good idea.
Do we save Tsar Alex 2, or let him go, and try to rescue Trotsky instead, and does that temper Stalin, or make the end of WW2 (which might be WW1) worse??
Would Black Tuesday suddenly happen a week earlier, or would we enact reforms to make it not happen at all? I'm not confident in our better angels. I think the Rothchilds would still lie about Waterloo, soldiers would still be killed after Armistice, Columbus would still get funding.
On a less global note: what is the fate of the victims of Ted Bundy? Does preservation instinct on the part of South African power brokers save Steven Biko? Would Pilate resist the crowd?
Very interesting concept.
I don't think we behave much better than we have already.
Mobile Oil knew in 1973 that it was melting the North Pole and decided that was a good idea.
Do we save Tsar Alex 2, or let him go, and try to rescue Trotsky instead, and does that temper Stalin, or make the end of WW2 (which might be WW1) worse??
Would Black Tuesday suddenly happen a week earlier, or would we enact reforms to make it not happen at all? I'm not confident in our better angels. I think the Rothchilds would still lie about Waterloo, soldiers would still be killed after Armistice, Columbus would still get funding.
On a less global note: what is the fate of the victims of Ted Bundy? Does preservation instinct on the part of South African power brokers save Steven Biko? Would Pilate resist the crowd?
Very interesting concept.
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
Yes x 1000 to this:
"The anomalies are actually caused by the technology of shifting hyper-compressed matter. Like the fracking earthquakes in Oklahoma, they're an unintended consequence of the procedure."
"The anomalies are actually caused by the technology of shifting hyper-compressed matter. Like the fracking earthquakes in Oklahoma, they're an unintended consequence of the procedure."
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
So imagine the effects of this on children too young to understand that anything is happening, other than they keep getting smaller. If we've been through two years worth of backing up, that means the body of a 3 year old actually has 7 years of memories in their heads. By the time they get to be babies, they have the brains of 10 year olds... and then they're gone. And after another year back, that baby will likely never exist again, because the butterfly effect means the chances of that particular sperm meeting that particular egg a second time is pretty much nil. Eventually, every version of every person will be born within this time-skipping anomaly world, and all people know their date of their non-existence simply by counting backwards to their birth.
Okay... maybe I've overthought it.
Okay... maybe I've overthought it.
Any time the solution is "banjo rifle", I'm in 100%.
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
So if you assume that this whole Memento bit of jumping back and reliving everything in 3 month chunks (ish) continues for centuries backwards in time... what does society look like after backing up that far? There would be a fantastic oral tradition to try to preserve the histories and technologies of the future, but honestly, if you only have a few months at a time, how much progress can you make? How much progress do you WANT to make, knowing that you will lose everything and start again in a younger body in a more primitive time? ...over and over and over.
I would make the jumps a bit erratic. Most commonly, a few months, but sometimes as short as a few minutes and sometimes as long as a couple decades. Those really long ones will be tough, as anyone who dies during that time has no memory of the future. You have this whole swath of AARP members who have no knowledge of the anomaly and will have to be convinced by everyone else. In fact, that will happen with every jump. Imagine being 16 years old, and everyone around you is freaking out about this weird time travel thing, and you have no idea what they're talking about. And then all your friends are trying to make you believe that you're going to die in a car accident after the homecoming dance. And of course you don't, because they've changed history, but how does all this look to you? That little vignette is a great short story right there.
Also, you may want to insert a bit about how you do maintain your "future" memories, but they are overlaid on top of the "physical" memories of your body as it currently exists. So after jumping backwards my whole life, I'm not suddenly struggling to remember my phone number or my passwords.
I would make the jumps a bit erratic. Most commonly, a few months, but sometimes as short as a few minutes and sometimes as long as a couple decades. Those really long ones will be tough, as anyone who dies during that time has no memory of the future. You have this whole swath of AARP members who have no knowledge of the anomaly and will have to be convinced by everyone else. In fact, that will happen with every jump. Imagine being 16 years old, and everyone around you is freaking out about this weird time travel thing, and you have no idea what they're talking about. And then all your friends are trying to make you believe that you're going to die in a car accident after the homecoming dance. And of course you don't, because they've changed history, but how does all this look to you? That little vignette is a great short story right there.
Also, you may want to insert a bit about how you do maintain your "future" memories, but they are overlaid on top of the "physical" memories of your body as it currently exists. So after jumping backwards my whole life, I'm not suddenly struggling to remember my phone number or my passwords.
Any time the solution is "banjo rifle", I'm in 100%.
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
A lot of thoughts and I’ll post more later. To one of Bill’s points- in my dream it was the spheres that caused the temporal shifts for that reason- the dimensional shifting of gravity in such concentrated locations in one place caused the anomaly.
To Mike’s point- in the dream there were people that had predicted the gaps- like eclipses. I don’t know if that’s advantageous from a narrative perspective, but the dream versions of you and me thought it was cool when we were discussing it.
Also. Y’all. I have the best dreams ever.
To Mike’s point- in the dream there were people that had predicted the gaps- like eclipses. I don’t know if that’s advantageous from a narrative perspective, but the dream versions of you and me thought it was cool when we were discussing it.
Also. Y’all. I have the best dreams ever.
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
Or what if the universe is fully determined with events fixed and unmutable, and then the people really do have to play it out again with some people knowing what's going to happen at different future times? As if deja vu was very real but we had it ahead of time in great detail, for some unspecified period?
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
I think the only way this is workable is if you don't make time immutable, right? When you jump back, all you're doing is changing a future that- for everyone- is now in the past. So you aren't stuck doing the things you were "remember" doing.
The question I haven't thought enough about is what others have brought up- so how does this affect people that are born or die in the current gap? I won't do it this way, but lets say the gap gets to be a decade long. And you are born at the very begining of that decade. So when you come back, you're born, but then I kill you- then you just cease to exist. So I guess that's not a problem, because as we continue to go back, you ain't there anayways.
And I assume that if we jump back to a point before someone was born, then they just don't exist anymore in our reverse-traveling timeline, right?
So what happens if I kill you? You still come back to the next gap with the knowledge that I did that, right?
The question I haven't thought enough about is what others have brought up- so how does this affect people that are born or die in the current gap? I won't do it this way, but lets say the gap gets to be a decade long. And you are born at the very begining of that decade. So when you come back, you're born, but then I kill you- then you just cease to exist. So I guess that's not a problem, because as we continue to go back, you ain't there anayways.
And I assume that if we jump back to a point before someone was born, then they just don't exist anymore in our reverse-traveling timeline, right?
So what happens if I kill you? You still come back to the next gap with the knowledge that I did that, right?
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
Yes, you do. And that certainly makes it hard for serial killers.
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
Except in some ways, this becomes a consequence free world. We don't have to save the planet, because all those future timelines are purely hypothetical. If we know the date that the last block started, then we know the date this one ends. People be crazy when they know there's no tomorrow. I mean there's gonna be almost no one showing up for work the last couple of weeks. A dramatic increase in crime? I mean, what are they gonna do? Arrest me in the past for an eyewitness account of a future crime?
Any time the solution is "banjo rifle", I'm in 100%.
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
Yeah, I agree with this, so what systems does (or can) society come up with to address this? Societies crave order. They crave rules. As crazy and chaotic as this is, something will come up to try to control it-- what consequences can authority place on people for acts committed in the future?Mike wrote: ↑Fri Apr 30, 2021 3:38 pm Except in some ways, this becomes a consequence free world. We don't have to save the planet, because all those future timelines are purely hypothetical. If we know the date that the last block started, then we know the date this one ends. People be crazy when they know there's no tomorrow. I mean there's gonna be almost no one showing up for work the last couple of weeks. A dramatic increase in crime? I mean, what are they gonna do? Arrest me in the past for an eyewitness account of a future crime?
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bralbovsky
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- Joined: Thu Dec 17, 2020 11:05 pm
Re: Help me with this world I dreamed of
Depending on how reliable, repeatable and widespread the events are, the consequence free world doesn't really happen. I could live in a place where I never see one, so my life is time-normal. Depending on the lengths of the shifts (I was thinking hours to a decade maybe) progress would be balky, but mostly normal. I wouldn't ask her to marry me because I know she'll say no. I have a rare chance to install the wiring differently because my building gets unbuilt.
If it becomes regular like eclipses, I'm more worried about people who chase these things so they can return to their homes younger, couples who want to unmarry make an unhoneymoon to a location where one is suspected. Senior facilities sponsor junkets to places so folks can turn back the clock.
If they become like hurricanes, regular and relatively predictable, chaos would ensue. Transactions would be voided, children unborn, jail sentences interminable. I could theoretically commit suicide by standing in the path of repeated anomalies. The catch is that if I'm George Bailey, doesn't that ripple affect everything in , I guess now Pottersville? If I cease to exist in a place, does my absence retcon universally?
If I'm designing this as a game, the ripples aren't the point, like the portals aren't the point of Portal. The ripples are a phenomenon, like a highway, or a sinkhole, that I learn to use to navigate the narrative of the game. I don't get to save intentionally, and sometimes, I go back to a time before something that went very well, and I screw it up this time.
I don't think I'm less tuned in to consequence.
If it becomes regular like eclipses, I'm more worried about people who chase these things so they can return to their homes younger, couples who want to unmarry make an unhoneymoon to a location where one is suspected. Senior facilities sponsor junkets to places so folks can turn back the clock.
If they become like hurricanes, regular and relatively predictable, chaos would ensue. Transactions would be voided, children unborn, jail sentences interminable. I could theoretically commit suicide by standing in the path of repeated anomalies. The catch is that if I'm George Bailey, doesn't that ripple affect everything in , I guess now Pottersville? If I cease to exist in a place, does my absence retcon universally?
If I'm designing this as a game, the ripples aren't the point, like the portals aren't the point of Portal. The ripples are a phenomenon, like a highway, or a sinkhole, that I learn to use to navigate the narrative of the game. I don't get to save intentionally, and sometimes, I go back to a time before something that went very well, and I screw it up this time.
I don't think I'm less tuned in to consequence.