#238 Sorta

[Alikat]

Link
Looks like this Kaye's crew is a bit lower in tech level than the alt crew in the region of this Cascade Event that includes the splays where they installed the oscillator overthruster gizmo. That makes sense, and I'll bet it was an alternate of Wai Ngo's who designed it in the first place.

[Tychomonger]

So that field is grabbing a piece of the fabric of spacetime and pinching it together? Can last week see into today before the field is broken? What happens to last week when it is suddenly now instead? Does it just splay off harmlessly or is there a good reason why it has paradox implicit in its name?

[Quaeras]

This is both the best looking and the coolest TSH in a long while (since the Thillia scene), although major props goes to the interior of the ship a few panels ago.

Your work is looking better and better all the time. Amazing.

[WarpZone]

Aren't Hyperwindows copyright infringement?

[Nick]

This is the most inventive application of time travel technology I've ever seen. Doubleplusgood portalthink, Jennifer.

Also: Yay! My speculation on the last strip was accurate!

[Alikat]

Another interesting point: Vola was certain that ALL of them were above her splay's tech level. So the alternate Pho and the alternate Wai, being chased by the "Seraphim," are both from splays with a much-higher tech-level than this crew's versions. Wai was from a Steampunk splay, and Pho was from a splay that still uses muscle power for everything, including sidearms.

Perhaps the crew we're watching are not the Main Players in this Cascade Event, they might be pretty darn far down the decision-making food chain and are just being dragged along in the wake of the Real Crew. Unfortunately, in real life, being the Star of the show is no guarantee that you will get to say your lines before a spotlight comes crashing down onto your head from the rafters. Sometimes the stand-ins have to finish the play. And I think that the stars of this play are in Soviet Russia, where burger picks off YOUR pickles. Looks like we were smart to be watching the stand-ins after all, how clever of Jenny not to focus on Dead Kaye and her High Tech Crew of Pros from Dover and instead to focus all along on the second string, since the second string is going to finish this game.

[Mitsukara]

It's like 8 bit theater, where they aren't the real light warriors!

Sorry, it just popped to mind...

Realistically speaking, while I can see how one or more likely a few versions of them could be heavily responsible for causing a cascade event, I don't see a thing this team has done that could've caused that. A cascade event depends completely upon alternative- if similar- individual participation turning out in huge masses. That could be influenced if you ran around doing things to change several individual splays so that another team of yous was likely to spring up from there, but... what have these characters done that could possibly cause such a thing, directly?

What I don't understand, too, is how any form of what I can guess they might be trying to do (be it saving Chou, Kaywai, or something like that) can possibly affect stormfall happening in the first place and causing this lowering of the existence of stormfall splays. Another argument, I think, for there being more epic/heroic versions of them running around affecting the multiverse at large with the kind of crazed, massive action- or subtle action with planned time travel, or something- that something like that should necessitate.

If I'm thinking clearly, that is. But certainly they are going to be accomplishing something. Maybe not what they intended at all, like influencing the creation of some random meaningless AI that goes on to have, say, epic cosmic influence in the future, or somesuch, but it'll be something. And they are definitely participating in their individual form of the quest, whatever that may be, too.

But in any case, with so much individual variety and infinite (?) possibilities to work with, how can anyone fairly claim to be the "best" version of themselves? What criteria are we judging on? And how can you possibly judge fairly? That's all just self confidence- be it balanced or otherwise- talking, I think.

[Wizard CaT]

So that field is grabbing a piece of the fabric of spacetime and pinching it together? Can last week see into today before the field is broken? What happens to last week when it is suddenly now instead? Does it just splay off harmlessly or is there a good reason why it has paradox implicit in its name?

Think Chrono Trigger. As in THE Chrono Trigger, from the game. It's a simple time freeze. As in from the time you started reading this post, and you finished, a week passed and you didn't know it. Though of course they knew this was going to happen and are all ready to fight or defend. Don't know if there are any side-effects though. Guess we find out Monday.

[Alikat]

A cascade event depends completely upon alternative- if similar- individual participation turning out in huge masses. That could be influenced if you ran around doing things to change several individual splays so that another team of yous was likely to spring up from there, but... what have these characters done that could possibly cause such a thing, directly?

Well, you've sen for yourself just how different a lot of the Crew's alternates were at Virtue's home splay, in the Infirmary. This Cascade Event isn't just a single large cluster of closely-related splays where all the same folks just decided to hop into a Mover and get going. As you've seen, OUR Crew has been heavily influenced by the Crew that died on Wai's home splay, in that THAT crew managed to come up with a piece of tech not seen very often, perhaps the last time was when Virtue's Grampaw brought back Virtue's Burungidani uncle: The Oscillation Over Thruster I think it's called.

I am fairly certain that this Cascade Event is literally Universe-wide, that a preponderance of the splays that have both Movers and a KaiWai have each triggered their own version of this Crew, and that the Crew we've been following around are like children compared to the alternate Crews that have enough savvy to make an Oscillation Over Thruster of their own. This Crew is probably going to (coincidentally) be the singular Crew that pushes the Big Red Plot Button later on, but in this Cascade Event, they are like one spermatozoon among many, all wriggling towards the same Egg. It's almost as if Tryst is undergoing a state change, and the Crews are the seed crystals.

[Alikat]

What I don't understand, too, is how any form of what I can guess they might be trying to do (be it saving Chou, Kaywai, or something like that) can possibly affect stormfall happening in the first place and causing this lowering of the existence of stormfall splays.

They've got a Time Machine, and are going to affect the pasts of MANY splays and possibly turn the Ascended of Tryst into The Man Who Folded Himself.

[Mesocyclone Goddess]

What I don't understand, too, is how any form of what I can guess they might be trying to do (be it saving Chou, Kaywai, or something like that) can possibly affect stormfall happening in the first place and causing this lowering of the existence of stormfall splays. Another argument, I think, for there being more epic/heroic versions of them running around affecting the multiverse at large with the kind of crazed, massive action- or subtle action with planned time travel, or something- that something like that should necessitate.

I think it's fairly likely that our crew will, at some point in their journey, go to Myrmidon. I'm not positive of it, because no such event shows up on the Multiversal time diagram in Pastel (whereas Kaye does definitely make stops shortly before the Singularity and then in the far future after CURSOR's time). However, I seem to recall the Creatrix saying, on the old forum, that there would be a stop in the distant past and two stops in the far future. My guess is that this is where scalped-Kaye's gun comes from in the infamous strip #200. I can't envision a near-Singularity or post-Singularity culture needing deadly weapons. There have been no personal weapons like that in Trys; the projectile weapons have been wrist-mounted, but the gun looks like it'd be right at home in Pastel, which is probably closer to Myrmil than anything else.

And if this group is "fated" to travel to the distant past, then by the law of probability, some other group has already done it and started the cascade.

This brings up an interesting point. If they were, hypothetically, able to prevent Stormfall from ever occurring anywhere, wouldn't that wipe Pastel out of existence, and in turn all the Omnipitors that were keyed to splays of Pastel? This could get very, very ugly.

//Edit to add: I don't trust Kaye. I think she is lying her a$$ off about what she is really doing. The whole sequence earlier in the strip, when Pho wanted to know who they were saving and she wouldn't say, doesn't ring true to me. Why would it be so harmful for Pho to know Chou's name, when he already knew that Chou was "the most important person in history"? That looked like an excuse to me, and it makes me wonder what the farg she could be doing that would make "saving Chou" a good cover story. Maybe she is trying to stop Stormfall and has to go to the Ascended to get history cleaned up.

[Quaeras]

Makes you kind of gape in awe at the level of power you'd have to literally mess up the history of two Siamese universes.

[Tychomonger]

This brings up an interesting point. If they were, hypothetically, able to prevent Stormfall from ever occurring anywhere, wouldn't that wipe Pastel out of existence, and in turn all the Omnipitors that were keyed to splays of Pastel? This could get very, very ugly.

Jennifer has stated before that changing the ontology of one universe will never change the ontology of a linked universe, even if it had given birth to it. This is because the child universe has its own time line completely independent of the parent. After it has been seeded, it is its own entity.

I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule though. For example, what happens to an arcduct if you completely erase one of the universes at its poles? There would no longer be any MEST potential to pull the arcduct along.

[Mesocyclone Goddess]

Jennifer has stated before that changing the ontology of one universe will never change the ontology of a linked universe, even if it had given birth to it. This is because the child universe has its own time line completely independent of the parent. After it has been seeded, it is its own entity.

I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule though. For example, what happens to an arcduct if you completely erase one of the universes at its poles? There would no longer be any MEST potential to pull the arcduct along.

After rethinking this, I am not sure it would even be possible to prevent Stormfall from happening in every single splay. This is infinity, after all. The only absolutely foolproof method would be to commit genocide against the humans, and somehow I doubt that is her plan. If there are any humans at all, then statistically, SOME splay out of an infinite set would produce Stormfall. Infinite Monkeys scenario here.

And then, if I have quantum theory correct, as soon as the precipitating event (Trato-Yauronic detonation) occurred in any splay of Trys, splays of Pastel would begin to bud off immediately. It wouldn't be a fully realized cosmos every time. In some, the arc-duct might not develop into anything habitable. In some, the universe would be habitable, but the Nakimono Facility would be crushed and destroyed, and no people would survive to colonize it. In many, the humans would indeed survive, and would cause infinite other Pastel splays to branch off.

This discussion is getting very close to "bigger/smaller infinities" and "percentages of infinity," which makes my head spin.

[Alikat]

[My guess is that this is where scalped-Kaye's gun comes from in the infamous strip #200. I can't envision a near-Singularity or post-Singularity culture needing deadly weapons. There have been no personal weapons like that in Trys; the projectile weapons have been wrist-mounted, but the gun looks like it'd be right at home in Pastel, which is probably closer to Myrmil than anything else.

Actually, the Chou3000 unit was located in a Museum of technological Antiquities, so they most likely have a Weapons Hall.

[Alikat]

[This brings up an interesting point. If they were, hypothetically, able to prevent Stormfall from ever occurring anywhere, wouldn't that wipe Pastel out of existence, and in turn all the Omnipitors that were keyed to splays of Pastel? This could get very, very ugly.

No, we have already established that even when a universe is utterly destroyed, any footprints it left in other universes remain. Apparently there is a more fundamental level to reality and time expressed in hyperspace, as witnessed by the Minkowski-Reitz diagrams.

[Jennifer Diane Reitz]

Jennifer has stated before that changing the ontology of one universe will never change the ontology of a linked universe, even if it had given birth to it. This is because the child universe has its own time line completely independent of the parent. After it has been seeded, it is its own entity.

Quite correct. Just weirder still. There are some things that can bleed between disconnected universes and cosmic structures, in my cosmology, some forces that can have an effect. Even a massive effect. Gravity, yauronics, telocosmonicity, or other, even stranger forces, that are essentially hyperdimensional in nature can all do this. But even though this may happen, the effect is independent of the cause, in extraversal terms. Any effects one cosmos may have on the worldline of another cosmos exist independently of the originating cosmos.

Dipping into the second question prematurely - even if a cosmos that had distant effects upon another cosmos through extraversal forces were to vanish utterly, the effects that had occurred for the second cosmos would not vanish nor be affected at all. They would be effects without a cause, which to any observer of such things, say a passing Krawlni, seeing outside of space and time, would be a wondrous curiosity. The fascination would be that an effect devoid of a cause would imply the 'loss' of something that 'never was'. Such suggestions of 'neverwas' are very appealing and interesting to certain beings existing at metacosmic levels. They are 'fun' in the way that paradox stories are fun for... us. Collecting evidence of such non-events is like... collecting Pokemon or something. Gotta catch 'em all!

I'm sure there are exceptions to this rule though. For example, what happens to an arcduct if you completely erase one of the universes at its poles? There would no longer be any MEST potential to pull the arcduct along.

In my cosmology, at least, if an arcduct, or other cosmic event, was initiated by an influx of MEST, it would expand into the Fertile Void and generate its own past and future, finally solidifying into its own ontological stability. Once the injection of MEST happens, this new ontology becomes almost completely independent, for it exists outside of the timeline of the cosmos that birthed it. Thus, even if that original cosmos were entirely wiped from existence, erased as if it had never been, this event would not affect the new structure at all. Paradox cannot occur, in my cosmology, except within one coherent worldline. The arcduct (or whatever) has its own, independent worldline the moment its expansion begins.

The result of such an event would result in a cosmic structure that would appear to have always been. It would have no definable beginning, it just always was. There would be no observable source from which it budded, and in my cosmology, universes bud off from each other, a natural extension of the same principle that permits splays. In effect, another, alien universe, is in a sense, a splay, on steroids. A supersplay, if you will.

So what of an arcduct, or even a true, stable universe with no origin? We already have seen one - Tryslmaistan. I have long described it as a universe with no beginning. It always was.

It is almost certain, therefore, that Tryslmaistan must be a cosmos budded off from another universe that through design, accident, or natural force, was erased from the metacosmic sea within which all universes 'float'. From any perspective within the set which I choose to render my tales, it is literally impossible to discover what that previous cosmos was, or even if it ever existed. It can only be implied.

There is a thought, though that there might, even must be, a higher space in which alien and strange metacosmic oceans themselves are bedded, and from that unimaginable place, an incomprehensible trace of lost and erased universes might be recorded. Perhaps the Post-Singularity types can perceive such things. Perhaps it is beyond even them. In any case it is so far beyond human, that it falls outside of my capacity to make it entertaining or enjoyable, or anything beyond an abstraction of an abstraction, so I do not bother with it. If you like, it is turtles, all the way UP.

That said, if you put all of this together, you can figure out for yourself the answer to one mystery of To Save Her - what reason brought the Krawlni so dangerously and precipitously close to Tryslmaistan that it ended up crashing there.

Do I overthink this crap, or what?

[strange_person]

There is a thought, though that there might, even must be, a higher space in which alien and strange metacosmic oceans themselves are bedded, and from that unimaginable place, an incomprehensible trace of lost and erased universes might be recorded. Perhaps the Post-Singularity types can perceive such things. Perhaps it is beyond even them. In any case it is so far beyond human, that it falls outside of my capacity to make it entertaining or enjoyable, or anything beyond an abstraction of an abstraction, so I do not bother with it.

Seems clear enough to me. The "fertile void" has some countable number of spatial dimensions, it's own internally-consistent (albeit highly permissive) physical laws, and a time dimension. The void's time axis is, necessarily, perpendicular to the time axes of all the universes within the void. Folks don't normally pay attention to it, because they're so wrapped up in the idea of having transcended the time and causality of the universe they started out in, but it's still there.

It is generally regarded as impossible to retrieve things from destroyed universes, because that would require going outside the time axis of the Fertile Void itself, and there's obviously nothing "outside" an infinity of infinities. You know, just like how it's "obvious" that the earth is flat like a coin, and the sun and moon go around it.

[Alikat]

Tryst certainly has an ENGINEERED feel about it, in all its serpienski glory. It follows Godan's Law, being very well-suited for human life once you realize that it included Vlax. I am of the considered opinion that Tryst is the Universe that Folded Itself, and the Ascended of Tryst are their own Grampaws in a way. Which means that they have special, superior-inferior brains like Philip J. Fry!

[Dan]

Tryst certainly has an ENGINEERED feel about it, in all its serpienski glory. It follows Godan's Law, being very well-suited for human life once you realize that it included Vlax. I am of the considered opinion that Tryst is the Universe that Folded Itself, and the Ascended of Tryst are their own Grampaws in a way. Which means that they have special, superior-inferior brains like Philip J. Fry!

I already did.