Dream with a mystery in it
Oct. 20th, 2015 10:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethGot woke up today in the middle of a dream that was turning out to be a series of Clues.
To start with there was a new light in the sky, and it was getting bigger. Either we had a really tiny rogue star coming our way, or an alien megastructure with a really spectacular power source. And either way, Something Must Be Done. This solar system with two stars? Bit of a problem.
And of course if it was just a wandering star we had somehow not spotted before, we were pretty screwed.
But if something built it, someone else could, well, unbuild it. Destroy, divert, there was an ongoing argument. But to decide precisely what to do we needed more data, and to get it we needed to send humans out there, fast.
I was selected for a crew of 8 sent in an Orion type nuclear pulse propulsion spacecraft.
The crew size was the first Clue. Even the 50s Orion was planned for a crew of 200. Given the size of the thrust involved, the weight and life support requirements of a few extra people is nothing. And for a mission this critical to humankind, you need backups. We should have our skills duplicated several times. I was explaining to the other crew that given the mass limits or lack thereof we could divide the ship into quarters, crew each quarter with a small university department, bring all of their equipment, and still have room for a gourmet chef. The whole ship is designed to be propelled through interstellar space while stuffed with nukes, stuffing the tiny people capsule with people instead shouldn't slow it down none.
But no, there were 8 people, no duplication of skills, and one of them was me.
I am not the first choice for a critical mission even in my dreams. Nor even the fourth.
So the other 7 were interesting. I think the bald dude in charge was Ben Grimm pre cosmic radiation. The bald dude sitting next to me was Lex Luthor, relatively young. I believe our engineer was Tony Stark. But in the dream none of them were Names and I had to learn them and meet them for the first time while we were up there. Also there were three more women, one of them married to the other man, two or possibly three of them trying to chat up Stark. Who is pretty, even if not rich and famous. And he might have been rich, rich people were not my special interest in this dream.
So this was Clue the second: Nasa has how many people available, as do other countries, and they send a crew that had never met? When we were expecting 200 crewmates that makes sense, but with 8 of us, no.
We started out in space and the initial thrust was going to be multiple gs, followed by steady 1g, then a couple of times a day of multi g. We're going fast. So we have these rather cool looking and feeling gel g couches to sit in. Really if I could get one of these as a recliner for my front room I'd be sorted. They're the comfiest things, they mould to the person sitting in them, and they look really cool. Not entirely unlike the Atlantis control chair, in the nice blue glowy bits with gel pads for your arms, but more like stuff in the shops now, and with the metal frame underneath showing and made of elegant curves. Actually quite a lot unlike the Atlantis control chair now I look it up. But it reminded me of one in the dream.
Thing was we were all sat down ready for the big push and I remembered I was still wearing rings and a necklace. I don't know how much they would weigh under thrust, but I didn't have time to do the maths and I didn't want to find out the hard way. So I said to wait and I pulled them off, but there was nowhere really to put them. Nowhere to put your drink or you work, except some like room dividers that reminded me of pew backs only metal and plastic, and those were out of easy reach. So I tossed my shinies on a worktop area which had upturned edges, and so did the guy beside me, and then there was a general clatter from behind us as others did the same (what, we're going to space and now we think of this?) and up front the boss dude is telling home that we're pausing for a few seconds, aaaand we're done. And boom, the first push happens. Tidy.
Except I did some maths while we were waiting it out, and the push happened at scheduled time on Earth + time for signal to travel. It did not happen when the boss dude pushed the button. We weren't in charge of our own spaceship propulsion, Earth was.
So then there's a bit of poking around to discover that (a) Earth is going to stay in charge until we reach the scary shiny thing and (b) Earth has no intention of us turning around early, not with that many nukes on board. We're going out there and back and using up all our fuel, or we're not getting near Earth again.
... a journey with no margin. Lovely.
I was explaining to the ship boss dude that I was autistic spectrum and had been Noticing Things when I woke up. Things like: I'm not the only person on board who is neurodivergent, and some of these people seem to be stealing each other's shinies? On a ship with 7 suspects that we're not exiting in the forseeable future? And this is not the crack crew I would have chosen.
Our duties were mostly minor maintenance. We were along in case the repair bots couldn't handle it. Or possibly to repair the repair bots.
But we had minimal carry on and we were discouraged from even bringing paper, everything was supposed to stay digital. And my paper notes were starting to not agree with some of the displays.
Clues. Clues everywhere.
And now I'm frustrated because I woke up before I found out what it all added up to. I mean, clearly we were disposable, and probably we were riding a really big bomb that didn't care how civilised the new neighbours were, because none of us were the local Daniel Jackson and I wouldn't choose us to talk to anyone much less aliens. Probably it was a very straightforward mystery.
Except sending a bunch of misfits, lying to them about tiny bits of data, and making sure they can't do anything about it, that seems overly complex. They could have just sent Jack O'Neill, original movie edition. So what were they trying to pull?
And was it anything like that Outer Limits episode with Wil Wheaton?
I mean, that's a lot of kaboom. Who could you fool into delivering a lot of kaboom?
So once we figured out the Clues then the challenge would clearly be to make sure the mission completed its original peaceful survey and contact objectives, preferably with maximum survivors.
That part would be Science Fiction with proper numbers and then some aliens who figured out the 'that would be an engineering problem' part of some of the best SF tech by just dragging a tiny star around for a power source.
... a first contact mission with Tony Stark and Lex Luthor, led by Ben Grimm, and with a kleptomaniac on the crew. That could in no way go horribly wrong at all.
So now I'm trying to figure out the plot. Of this dream. That was probably just going to turn into another one of those where I can't find the bathroom, only in space.
To start with there was a new light in the sky, and it was getting bigger. Either we had a really tiny rogue star coming our way, or an alien megastructure with a really spectacular power source. And either way, Something Must Be Done. This solar system with two stars? Bit of a problem.
And of course if it was just a wandering star we had somehow not spotted before, we were pretty screwed.
But if something built it, someone else could, well, unbuild it. Destroy, divert, there was an ongoing argument. But to decide precisely what to do we needed more data, and to get it we needed to send humans out there, fast.
I was selected for a crew of 8 sent in an Orion type nuclear pulse propulsion spacecraft.
The crew size was the first Clue. Even the 50s Orion was planned for a crew of 200. Given the size of the thrust involved, the weight and life support requirements of a few extra people is nothing. And for a mission this critical to humankind, you need backups. We should have our skills duplicated several times. I was explaining to the other crew that given the mass limits or lack thereof we could divide the ship into quarters, crew each quarter with a small university department, bring all of their equipment, and still have room for a gourmet chef. The whole ship is designed to be propelled through interstellar space while stuffed with nukes, stuffing the tiny people capsule with people instead shouldn't slow it down none.
But no, there were 8 people, no duplication of skills, and one of them was me.
I am not the first choice for a critical mission even in my dreams. Nor even the fourth.
So the other 7 were interesting. I think the bald dude in charge was Ben Grimm pre cosmic radiation. The bald dude sitting next to me was Lex Luthor, relatively young. I believe our engineer was Tony Stark. But in the dream none of them were Names and I had to learn them and meet them for the first time while we were up there. Also there were three more women, one of them married to the other man, two or possibly three of them trying to chat up Stark. Who is pretty, even if not rich and famous. And he might have been rich, rich people were not my special interest in this dream.
So this was Clue the second: Nasa has how many people available, as do other countries, and they send a crew that had never met? When we were expecting 200 crewmates that makes sense, but with 8 of us, no.
We started out in space and the initial thrust was going to be multiple gs, followed by steady 1g, then a couple of times a day of multi g. We're going fast. So we have these rather cool looking and feeling gel g couches to sit in. Really if I could get one of these as a recliner for my front room I'd be sorted. They're the comfiest things, they mould to the person sitting in them, and they look really cool. Not entirely unlike the Atlantis control chair, in the nice blue glowy bits with gel pads for your arms, but more like stuff in the shops now, and with the metal frame underneath showing and made of elegant curves. Actually quite a lot unlike the Atlantis control chair now I look it up. But it reminded me of one in the dream.
Thing was we were all sat down ready for the big push and I remembered I was still wearing rings and a necklace. I don't know how much they would weigh under thrust, but I didn't have time to do the maths and I didn't want to find out the hard way. So I said to wait and I pulled them off, but there was nowhere really to put them. Nowhere to put your drink or you work, except some like room dividers that reminded me of pew backs only metal and plastic, and those were out of easy reach. So I tossed my shinies on a worktop area which had upturned edges, and so did the guy beside me, and then there was a general clatter from behind us as others did the same (what, we're going to space and now we think of this?) and up front the boss dude is telling home that we're pausing for a few seconds, aaaand we're done. And boom, the first push happens. Tidy.
Except I did some maths while we were waiting it out, and the push happened at scheduled time on Earth + time for signal to travel. It did not happen when the boss dude pushed the button. We weren't in charge of our own spaceship propulsion, Earth was.
So then there's a bit of poking around to discover that (a) Earth is going to stay in charge until we reach the scary shiny thing and (b) Earth has no intention of us turning around early, not with that many nukes on board. We're going out there and back and using up all our fuel, or we're not getting near Earth again.
... a journey with no margin. Lovely.
I was explaining to the ship boss dude that I was autistic spectrum and had been Noticing Things when I woke up. Things like: I'm not the only person on board who is neurodivergent, and some of these people seem to be stealing each other's shinies? On a ship with 7 suspects that we're not exiting in the forseeable future? And this is not the crack crew I would have chosen.
Our duties were mostly minor maintenance. We were along in case the repair bots couldn't handle it. Or possibly to repair the repair bots.
But we had minimal carry on and we were discouraged from even bringing paper, everything was supposed to stay digital. And my paper notes were starting to not agree with some of the displays.
Clues. Clues everywhere.
And now I'm frustrated because I woke up before I found out what it all added up to. I mean, clearly we were disposable, and probably we were riding a really big bomb that didn't care how civilised the new neighbours were, because none of us were the local Daniel Jackson and I wouldn't choose us to talk to anyone much less aliens. Probably it was a very straightforward mystery.
Except sending a bunch of misfits, lying to them about tiny bits of data, and making sure they can't do anything about it, that seems overly complex. They could have just sent Jack O'Neill, original movie edition. So what were they trying to pull?
And was it anything like that Outer Limits episode with Wil Wheaton?
I mean, that's a lot of kaboom. Who could you fool into delivering a lot of kaboom?
So once we figured out the Clues then the challenge would clearly be to make sure the mission completed its original peaceful survey and contact objectives, preferably with maximum survivors.
That part would be Science Fiction with proper numbers and then some aliens who figured out the 'that would be an engineering problem' part of some of the best SF tech by just dragging a tiny star around for a power source.
... a first contact mission with Tony Stark and Lex Luthor, led by Ben Grimm, and with a kleptomaniac on the crew. That could in no way go horribly wrong at all.
So now I'm trying to figure out the plot. Of this dream. That was probably just going to turn into another one of those where I can't find the bathroom, only in space.