0omnidirectional
05-22-2009, 12:05 AM
So I just got back from tinkering with the with the deepest structure of spacetime, and on top of that I was near the galactic center with dense matter concentrations abound. It is irresponsible and dangerous to use FTL travel in those conditions, but it was either that or death. . . The Xeelee were hot on our tail.
I was reading the novel "Exultant" by Stephan Baxter again, which is a highly technical, deep future, hard sci-fi, which I highly recommend if your into that sort of stuff.
So the Assimilator's Claw was repeatedly jumping through spacetime, "pivoting through its higher dimensions, . . . even millennia after the technology's first use the philosophers stil couldn't agree whether the entity that emerged from each jump was still in any meaningful way, "him.""
One of the Xeelee had followed them but the cloud that was on their tail had not, this bought them some time, and allowed for contemplation.
So he starts thinking about the history and the ideology of the Doctrines of the Third Expansion. It was forged by Hama Druz after mankind's near extinction. During this Expansion "in the fierce light of human determination lesser species had burned away. At last only one opponent was left: the Xeelee, the most powerful foe of them all, with their concentration at the very center of the Galaxy." The Third Expansion had already closed around the center a millennia ago, and the Xeelee responded. "The Front had become a great stalled wave of destrction, a spherical zone of friction where two empires rubbed against each other. And seen from factory worlds scattered a hundred light-years deep, the sky glowed pink with the light of endless war." The Xeelee were supiroir to humans in every way that can be measured.
Doctrinal thinking taught: "if humans must be vermin, humans would fight like vermin, and die like vermin." They hope to overcome the Xeelee with sheer numbers. "Many soldiers feared that if the Doctrines were ever even questioned, everything would fall apart, and that defeat, or worse would inevitably follow."
The Doctrinal brainwashed navigator Cohl said as they were retreating from battle where they were caught off gard and everyone was slaughtered, ". . . We have orders to stand and fight. We are already dead. It's our duty to be dead. A brief life burns brightly."
Ok, enough background, now for the "Friends of Wigner." The engineer Tuta, aka Enduring Hope, is an "infinity-brother". The very existence of this cult violates Doctrinal Law.
"Oh, I forgot. You're one of those infinity-brothers, aren't you? So what do you believe? Is some great hero from the far future going to swoop down and rescue you?"
"You can mock," Hope said. "But you don't understand."
"Then tell me," Dans said.
"All of this"--Hope made an expansive gesture--"is a first cut. Everybody knows this. In this war of FTL ships and time travel, we stack up contingencies in the Library of Futures on Earth. History is a draft, a draft we change all the time."
"And if history is mutable---"
"Then nothing is inevitable. Not even the past."
"I don't understand," Pirius admitted.
Dans said, " if you can redraft history, everything can be fixed. He thinks that even if he dies today, then history will somehow, some day, be put right, and all such unfortunate errors removed."
"Hope, is that right?"
"Something like it."
Dans snapped, "Pirius, the creed is anti-Doctrine, but it's just as much a trap as the Doctrines. A Druz junkie thinks death and defeat reinforce the strength of the Doctrines. A Friend believes defeat is irrelevant because it will all be erased some day. Either way, you don't fight to win. You see? Why else has this damn war stalled so long?"
Pirius felt uncomfortable with such heresy---even now, even here.
With a trace of malice Hope said, "But you're as doomed as we are, Pilot Dans."
The origins of this cult are explained in the novel "Timelike Infinity", I've never read it because it's difficult to find.
This far future cult is based off of an alteration of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelike_Infinity
From the Wigner thought experiment they have postulated an unusual theory on the ultimate destiny of life in the universe. They believe that quantum wave-functions do not collapse like the Copenhagen interpretation holds, nor that each collapse actually buds off separate universes (like the quantum multiverse hypothesis holds) but rather that the universe is a participatory universe: the entire universe exists as a single massive quantum superposition, and that at the end of time (in the open universe of the Xeelee Sequence, time and space are unbounded, or more precisely, bounded only at the Cauchy boundaries of "Time-like infinity" and "Space-like infinity"), when intelligent life has collected all information (compare the Final anthropic principle and the Omega point), and transformed into an "Ultimate Observer", who will make the "Final observation", the observation which collapses all the possible entangled wave-functions generated since the beginning of the universe. They believe further that the Ultimate Observer will not merely observe, but choose which world line will be the true world-line, and that it will choose the one in which humanity suffers no Squeem or Qax occupations. However, the Ultimate Observer cannot choose between worldlines if no information survives to its era to distinguish worldlines- if the UO never knows of humanity, it cannot choose a worldline favorable to it. In other words, some way is needed to securely send information forward in time.
Pretty interesting to think about.
You know, its like sci fi and fantasy novels are like mythologies of the new aeon. Fiction trying to convey higher possibilities and ideas.
I was reading the novel "Exultant" by Stephan Baxter again, which is a highly technical, deep future, hard sci-fi, which I highly recommend if your into that sort of stuff.
So the Assimilator's Claw was repeatedly jumping through spacetime, "pivoting through its higher dimensions, . . . even millennia after the technology's first use the philosophers stil couldn't agree whether the entity that emerged from each jump was still in any meaningful way, "him.""
One of the Xeelee had followed them but the cloud that was on their tail had not, this bought them some time, and allowed for contemplation.
So he starts thinking about the history and the ideology of the Doctrines of the Third Expansion. It was forged by Hama Druz after mankind's near extinction. During this Expansion "in the fierce light of human determination lesser species had burned away. At last only one opponent was left: the Xeelee, the most powerful foe of them all, with their concentration at the very center of the Galaxy." The Third Expansion had already closed around the center a millennia ago, and the Xeelee responded. "The Front had become a great stalled wave of destrction, a spherical zone of friction where two empires rubbed against each other. And seen from factory worlds scattered a hundred light-years deep, the sky glowed pink with the light of endless war." The Xeelee were supiroir to humans in every way that can be measured.
Doctrinal thinking taught: "if humans must be vermin, humans would fight like vermin, and die like vermin." They hope to overcome the Xeelee with sheer numbers. "Many soldiers feared that if the Doctrines were ever even questioned, everything would fall apart, and that defeat, or worse would inevitably follow."
The Doctrinal brainwashed navigator Cohl said as they were retreating from battle where they were caught off gard and everyone was slaughtered, ". . . We have orders to stand and fight. We are already dead. It's our duty to be dead. A brief life burns brightly."
Ok, enough background, now for the "Friends of Wigner." The engineer Tuta, aka Enduring Hope, is an "infinity-brother". The very existence of this cult violates Doctrinal Law.
"Oh, I forgot. You're one of those infinity-brothers, aren't you? So what do you believe? Is some great hero from the far future going to swoop down and rescue you?"
"You can mock," Hope said. "But you don't understand."
"Then tell me," Dans said.
"All of this"--Hope made an expansive gesture--"is a first cut. Everybody knows this. In this war of FTL ships and time travel, we stack up contingencies in the Library of Futures on Earth. History is a draft, a draft we change all the time."
"And if history is mutable---"
"Then nothing is inevitable. Not even the past."
"I don't understand," Pirius admitted.
Dans said, " if you can redraft history, everything can be fixed. He thinks that even if he dies today, then history will somehow, some day, be put right, and all such unfortunate errors removed."
"Hope, is that right?"
"Something like it."
Dans snapped, "Pirius, the creed is anti-Doctrine, but it's just as much a trap as the Doctrines. A Druz junkie thinks death and defeat reinforce the strength of the Doctrines. A Friend believes defeat is irrelevant because it will all be erased some day. Either way, you don't fight to win. You see? Why else has this damn war stalled so long?"
Pirius felt uncomfortable with such heresy---even now, even here.
With a trace of malice Hope said, "But you're as doomed as we are, Pilot Dans."
The origins of this cult are explained in the novel "Timelike Infinity", I've never read it because it's difficult to find.
This far future cult is based off of an alteration of:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wigner%27s_friend
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelike_Infinity
From the Wigner thought experiment they have postulated an unusual theory on the ultimate destiny of life in the universe. They believe that quantum wave-functions do not collapse like the Copenhagen interpretation holds, nor that each collapse actually buds off separate universes (like the quantum multiverse hypothesis holds) but rather that the universe is a participatory universe: the entire universe exists as a single massive quantum superposition, and that at the end of time (in the open universe of the Xeelee Sequence, time and space are unbounded, or more precisely, bounded only at the Cauchy boundaries of "Time-like infinity" and "Space-like infinity"), when intelligent life has collected all information (compare the Final anthropic principle and the Omega point), and transformed into an "Ultimate Observer", who will make the "Final observation", the observation which collapses all the possible entangled wave-functions generated since the beginning of the universe. They believe further that the Ultimate Observer will not merely observe, but choose which world line will be the true world-line, and that it will choose the one in which humanity suffers no Squeem or Qax occupations. However, the Ultimate Observer cannot choose between worldlines if no information survives to its era to distinguish worldlines- if the UO never knows of humanity, it cannot choose a worldline favorable to it. In other words, some way is needed to securely send information forward in time.
Pretty interesting to think about.
You know, its like sci fi and fantasy novels are like mythologies of the new aeon. Fiction trying to convey higher possibilities and ideas.