Dream dimensions
Apr. 19th, 2019 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethHad a dream that was mostly a lot of running around trying not to get killed by, for instance, stairs or the wires making elevators work. That was kind of tiring.
But there was also a thing with a woman and her boyfriend of four years, and they're on a train in a compartment with no strangers around, and he just asks her where she goes. And she can't tell, it's classified, so he starts telling her, about the other worlds all around us. How many are there? And she sort of gives up, tells him a tiny bit, and says it's complicated. The absolute minimum on any area they've ever found is 8 other dimensions.
And then he grins real ugly and slits her throat
and drops his head like a tok'ra changing drivers, and something slithers out. Something that shouldn't be in our dimensions, and can't hardly be perceived in them. Something that could be a grey shadow and could be something dreamed up by AI trying to look at a frog.
When the boyfriend looks up again he has the most terrible look on his face, because now he knows what 'he' has done.
But the point of view character was right there to arrest him, and collect forensic evidence. They knew possession was a possibility - and that's a job and a half, possession police with a minimum of 8 borders to patrol on every inch of Earth. But proving who was driving when something bad happened is a whole other level of challenging.
When they get back from the lab having checked the evidence in, they find it's not going to matter. The boyfriend isn't from around here, dimensionally speaking. So they're just going to execute him.
And then someone contacts her because the boyfriend pulled the plug on the network, but the network doesn't want to disperse, so they've chosen her to talk to.
Turns out a *lot* of travellers end up on that world more or less by accident, or claim it was an accident, or get stuck there, or would really and sincerely rather be there than home. But there isn't some widely recognised way to claim asylum, not on that Earth. So they're just stuck, illegal immigrants in a really grand way. And most first time travellers havent a conscious clue how they did it, and they didn't keep close enough note of where they were, or they came through without noticing and it could have been anywhere on their route home. And most places have more than 8 options. 16 or 32 is still navigable with skill, but 64 is luck for most humans, and nobody believes the ones that reckon they can reliably navigate 128. Worse, nobody knows if that's the high end, or just the ones they've got some clue to measuring. Past a certain point the only thing they're sure of is there's Many, and it feels like a storm to stand there. Anyone who falls through the storm? Is absolutely out of luck, getting anywhere again.
And that's the kind of people who the boyfriend probably was, and now he's in the middle of something criminal that becomes a death sentence.
This is unjust on several levels, so obviously Adventure will ensue. Especially since it's Mick Rory who warns the viewer about the death sentence, and has been chosen to carry it out. That's a prison break about to kick off...
I guess if a world has a simple system where one gate leads to one other realm, you wonder why people don't just use it. Temporal differences are a good reason but still. Making it so there's at minimum a rainbow of options, and humans have to learn how to navigate it by some kind of synesthetic perception unique to each traveller? That's not a transit route, but it could be an adventure.
I'd rather make it an adventure with no possession and far fewer dead people, but, that's the difference between dreams and writing, once awake I am in charge...
But there was also a thing with a woman and her boyfriend of four years, and they're on a train in a compartment with no strangers around, and he just asks her where she goes. And she can't tell, it's classified, so he starts telling her, about the other worlds all around us. How many are there? And she sort of gives up, tells him a tiny bit, and says it's complicated. The absolute minimum on any area they've ever found is 8 other dimensions.
And then he grins real ugly and slits her throat
and drops his head like a tok'ra changing drivers, and something slithers out. Something that shouldn't be in our dimensions, and can't hardly be perceived in them. Something that could be a grey shadow and could be something dreamed up by AI trying to look at a frog.
When the boyfriend looks up again he has the most terrible look on his face, because now he knows what 'he' has done.
But the point of view character was right there to arrest him, and collect forensic evidence. They knew possession was a possibility - and that's a job and a half, possession police with a minimum of 8 borders to patrol on every inch of Earth. But proving who was driving when something bad happened is a whole other level of challenging.
When they get back from the lab having checked the evidence in, they find it's not going to matter. The boyfriend isn't from around here, dimensionally speaking. So they're just going to execute him.
And then someone contacts her because the boyfriend pulled the plug on the network, but the network doesn't want to disperse, so they've chosen her to talk to.
Turns out a *lot* of travellers end up on that world more or less by accident, or claim it was an accident, or get stuck there, or would really and sincerely rather be there than home. But there isn't some widely recognised way to claim asylum, not on that Earth. So they're just stuck, illegal immigrants in a really grand way. And most first time travellers havent a conscious clue how they did it, and they didn't keep close enough note of where they were, or they came through without noticing and it could have been anywhere on their route home. And most places have more than 8 options. 16 or 32 is still navigable with skill, but 64 is luck for most humans, and nobody believes the ones that reckon they can reliably navigate 128. Worse, nobody knows if that's the high end, or just the ones they've got some clue to measuring. Past a certain point the only thing they're sure of is there's Many, and it feels like a storm to stand there. Anyone who falls through the storm? Is absolutely out of luck, getting anywhere again.
And that's the kind of people who the boyfriend probably was, and now he's in the middle of something criminal that becomes a death sentence.
This is unjust on several levels, so obviously Adventure will ensue. Especially since it's Mick Rory who warns the viewer about the death sentence, and has been chosen to carry it out. That's a prison break about to kick off...
I guess if a world has a simple system where one gate leads to one other realm, you wonder why people don't just use it. Temporal differences are a good reason but still. Making it so there's at minimum a rainbow of options, and humans have to learn how to navigate it by some kind of synesthetic perception unique to each traveller? That's not a transit route, but it could be an adventure.
I'd rather make it an adventure with no possession and far fewer dead people, but, that's the difference between dreams and writing, once awake I am in charge...