Groundhog dream
Sep. 29th, 2019 03:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI woke up from one of those groundhog day dreams that reset whenever you die
and half awake pondered it until I had a whole theory of the multiverse to go with it.
It was either at the poles or on an ice planet, and I thought ice planet, so that was cool.
We were in a hollowed out ice base, trying to get the ship repaired and get out of there before whatever it was that kept resetting us happened. Getting closer to it too.
I had been looping the longest (so very long)
but I'd acquired a couple of friends.
They had been developing superpowers the more times they looped
and I had a whole bunch of magic at my command, though only very limited amounts that actually show. Telekinesis, but as if I could grab with my hands, not stronger.
One of the people with me could get light and go fast over water or other unstable surface
and the other went full on tinkerbell or wasp, shrink and wings and fly.
... they weren't very good at flying yet. They had a really complicated arrangement of wings and they kept veering off and crunching.
These are not typical side effects of time loops
but
we were trapped at the near center of a mana storm.
It was a big old one and logically it was what the base was there to study, but we hadn't built it, just arrived in it when we died elsewhere.
I'd started out alone but met the other two, and we'd been looping pretty much together ever since. And there was maybe a fourth person, but they were very traumatised and not very interactive, so we didn't know if they were time looping or just there when we started lately.
Because the loops only stayed very similar, there were, eventually, changes.
And just when we were going loopy wondering if we were imagining change, whoosh, a big one: the base was inhabited.
So we'd finally reached a point we thought we could get out - we'd been able to launch, we just needed to fix a thing first next time - but suddenly there were so many people around there?
So I made a call and said we were part of the colony now.
Meaning, now we needed to save them all.
Preferably without dying again, because who knows how that would work out.
So in the dream there was getting people to respond and telling them to airtight the base and actually getting them moving because we could count down to when the worst weather events hit, including the purely weird glowy ones.
And I recruited some very sketch people, because getting everyone working together means different tactics for different people.
And one guy, who fancied himself the local crime boss (and I had not figured out why the place had one of those)
I whispered something to him
something that would probably get me killed if the others knew:
my rank? Admiral.
So that was cool.
But out on the surface, uniquely to this loop, there were new, violently active, mana storms breaking out. Someone had figured out how to start them. Someone was blowing things up, just to watch reality burn.
Or they thought they had a plan, who knew, they weren't the same people as we were with, and they'd probably kill them all if they knew they were there. But the storms they were making were still tight glowing tornados, like fire twisters but cherenkov blue, whereas our storm was an old one, way more diffuse. Their experiments would tell them nothing could survive a mana storm, but our experience said sure it could, just by changing.
Experience also suggested it could not get out again.
We were ignoring that bit.
So: theory of the multiverse.
Punching a hole in the multiverse both requires and generates energy.
And other universes can have laws very different to our own, so some of that energy is stuff you don't get around here.
It can't exist outside its own universe, so it gets trapped in the overlap.
In the new fierce phase of manastorm, that overlap is very tightly focused, and spins. But it can calm down and widen out. Still spinning, so what it does to local air is storms, but other, weirder, things are happening to the new sorts of energy.
Lacking a better word, we call that energy mana, and its effects magic.
If there were only two universes in play this would be simple to model. Relatively. Plug hole down the drain maybe, but both sides are in some sense draining.
A black hole is another model. Yes, eventually either the universes in some sense equalise or they disappear into each other. That's a concern, but it takes longer than centuries, so it is not concerning the powerful people, just the theoreticians.
Stuff can cross between universes, but the conditions it has to survive are spectacular.
The theory is this means nothing can cross.
In practice, it means it crosses while dead.
Groundhog day, resetting at death.
In the travellers' experience they are in a time loop. But it's like that one spook story of time travel I read, where he's slipping between universes and has been treating it like a groundhog day and has a horrible moment of realising every single thing he did is permanent somewhere.
So we've been slipping a layer in the multiverse every time, and we've finally gone far enough that the differences are notable.
Think of the multiverse as a stack of tissue paper. Or very thing plastic of the sort that stretches before it breaks. You can punch a hole in it, but enough force to break one is enough to bend many and then boom, hole in the stack.
In some senses this bends timelines around the hole. Hence waking up at the same moment. It's when something important broke, so it's the way in.
There's a theoretical temporal orbit to be stably achieved in one place, but it's in a storm and subject to butterflies, so it's not very likely.
More likely is dropping a layer through these tissue thin differences, and waking up somewhere else.
Doing so exposes you to all the weird energy and some changes start to happen.
But in your own experience it's groundhog day, but every time you restart things get weirder.
And if you ever get away from the manastorm then you can stop looping, in theory
but in practice
if your body adapts to use the mana
it might need the mana
and leaving could kill you.
... past a certain point of looping most people would risk it.
... past a certain point of looping most people would have some big reactions from the wider world once they could see them.
So. Demons.
As a word, not polite.
But it covers beings who were denizens of other realms and have now broken into ours.
Only, nobody asks them if they wanted to? Or what the alternative is? And if they say they got out of hell, all these rude bastards try and send them back!
Sure, sometimes you'll get someone who arrives wanting to rule
and sometimes they've got strange powers or foreknowledge
but really, is demon the word we need here?
... possibly, if it involves souls, but if they're just like, oh sure you can have my powers ish but you'd have to go where I've been, a lot of people would jump in and then complain a lot. Like, a lot. So possibly demons have a bad rep?
Oooor they've got a new schtick to go with the Star Trek age, who knows.
But speaking as someone dreaming as someone slipping between universes and trying to get everyone to obey them
because I know how it works out
well.
... that was a very big theory wrapped around a boring dream.
... ice caverns and hot springs and really unique smells, oh my,
and round the loops again.
Of course the other way people go into the storm and come back changed
is if they are in fact swapping universes
but to somewhere the events are all near enough nobody notices, just their bodies turn out to be different.
Or people could go fishing for alternate selves
and then call the new ones mutations?
All sorts of fun if mana storms are funnels to everywhere.
... not fun for the traveller, in the whole, but story fun.
and half awake pondered it until I had a whole theory of the multiverse to go with it.
It was either at the poles or on an ice planet, and I thought ice planet, so that was cool.
We were in a hollowed out ice base, trying to get the ship repaired and get out of there before whatever it was that kept resetting us happened. Getting closer to it too.
I had been looping the longest (so very long)
but I'd acquired a couple of friends.
They had been developing superpowers the more times they looped
and I had a whole bunch of magic at my command, though only very limited amounts that actually show. Telekinesis, but as if I could grab with my hands, not stronger.
One of the people with me could get light and go fast over water or other unstable surface
and the other went full on tinkerbell or wasp, shrink and wings and fly.
... they weren't very good at flying yet. They had a really complicated arrangement of wings and they kept veering off and crunching.
These are not typical side effects of time loops
but
we were trapped at the near center of a mana storm.
It was a big old one and logically it was what the base was there to study, but we hadn't built it, just arrived in it when we died elsewhere.
I'd started out alone but met the other two, and we'd been looping pretty much together ever since. And there was maybe a fourth person, but they were very traumatised and not very interactive, so we didn't know if they were time looping or just there when we started lately.
Because the loops only stayed very similar, there were, eventually, changes.
And just when we were going loopy wondering if we were imagining change, whoosh, a big one: the base was inhabited.
So we'd finally reached a point we thought we could get out - we'd been able to launch, we just needed to fix a thing first next time - but suddenly there were so many people around there?
So I made a call and said we were part of the colony now.
Meaning, now we needed to save them all.
Preferably without dying again, because who knows how that would work out.
So in the dream there was getting people to respond and telling them to airtight the base and actually getting them moving because we could count down to when the worst weather events hit, including the purely weird glowy ones.
And I recruited some very sketch people, because getting everyone working together means different tactics for different people.
And one guy, who fancied himself the local crime boss (and I had not figured out why the place had one of those)
I whispered something to him
something that would probably get me killed if the others knew:
my rank? Admiral.
So that was cool.
But out on the surface, uniquely to this loop, there were new, violently active, mana storms breaking out. Someone had figured out how to start them. Someone was blowing things up, just to watch reality burn.
Or they thought they had a plan, who knew, they weren't the same people as we were with, and they'd probably kill them all if they knew they were there. But the storms they were making were still tight glowing tornados, like fire twisters but cherenkov blue, whereas our storm was an old one, way more diffuse. Their experiments would tell them nothing could survive a mana storm, but our experience said sure it could, just by changing.
Experience also suggested it could not get out again.
We were ignoring that bit.
So: theory of the multiverse.
Punching a hole in the multiverse both requires and generates energy.
And other universes can have laws very different to our own, so some of that energy is stuff you don't get around here.
It can't exist outside its own universe, so it gets trapped in the overlap.
In the new fierce phase of manastorm, that overlap is very tightly focused, and spins. But it can calm down and widen out. Still spinning, so what it does to local air is storms, but other, weirder, things are happening to the new sorts of energy.
Lacking a better word, we call that energy mana, and its effects magic.
If there were only two universes in play this would be simple to model. Relatively. Plug hole down the drain maybe, but both sides are in some sense draining.
A black hole is another model. Yes, eventually either the universes in some sense equalise or they disappear into each other. That's a concern, but it takes longer than centuries, so it is not concerning the powerful people, just the theoreticians.
Stuff can cross between universes, but the conditions it has to survive are spectacular.
The theory is this means nothing can cross.
In practice, it means it crosses while dead.
Groundhog day, resetting at death.
In the travellers' experience they are in a time loop. But it's like that one spook story of time travel I read, where he's slipping between universes and has been treating it like a groundhog day and has a horrible moment of realising every single thing he did is permanent somewhere.
So we've been slipping a layer in the multiverse every time, and we've finally gone far enough that the differences are notable.
Think of the multiverse as a stack of tissue paper. Or very thing plastic of the sort that stretches before it breaks. You can punch a hole in it, but enough force to break one is enough to bend many and then boom, hole in the stack.
In some senses this bends timelines around the hole. Hence waking up at the same moment. It's when something important broke, so it's the way in.
There's a theoretical temporal orbit to be stably achieved in one place, but it's in a storm and subject to butterflies, so it's not very likely.
More likely is dropping a layer through these tissue thin differences, and waking up somewhere else.
Doing so exposes you to all the weird energy and some changes start to happen.
But in your own experience it's groundhog day, but every time you restart things get weirder.
And if you ever get away from the manastorm then you can stop looping, in theory
but in practice
if your body adapts to use the mana
it might need the mana
and leaving could kill you.
... past a certain point of looping most people would risk it.
... past a certain point of looping most people would have some big reactions from the wider world once they could see them.
So. Demons.
As a word, not polite.
But it covers beings who were denizens of other realms and have now broken into ours.
Only, nobody asks them if they wanted to? Or what the alternative is? And if they say they got out of hell, all these rude bastards try and send them back!
Sure, sometimes you'll get someone who arrives wanting to rule
and sometimes they've got strange powers or foreknowledge
but really, is demon the word we need here?
... possibly, if it involves souls, but if they're just like, oh sure you can have my powers ish but you'd have to go where I've been, a lot of people would jump in and then complain a lot. Like, a lot. So possibly demons have a bad rep?
Oooor they've got a new schtick to go with the Star Trek age, who knows.
But speaking as someone dreaming as someone slipping between universes and trying to get everyone to obey them
because I know how it works out
well.
... that was a very big theory wrapped around a boring dream.
... ice caverns and hot springs and really unique smells, oh my,
and round the loops again.
Of course the other way people go into the storm and come back changed
is if they are in fact swapping universes
but to somewhere the events are all near enough nobody notices, just their bodies turn out to be different.
Or people could go fishing for alternate selves
and then call the new ones mutations?
All sorts of fun if mana storms are funnels to everywhere.
... not fun for the traveller, in the whole, but story fun.