[RFC] [Meta-riffic] The Untitled Multiverse Project

[M Fnord]

What The Hell Is Going On Here?

This project originally started as an http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/top ... -Multivers]alternate history of Fenspace. However, after careful consideration, the project as it developed in my mind had very little to do with Fenspace beyond borrowing some loose character concepts and a few names, at which point continuing it in the Fenspace forum seemed a bit silly.

Which brings us to here. Welcome to (The Unnamed Multiverse Project), a crosstime saga about dangerous geeks doing what they do best across the Multiverse: killing people, taking their stuff and (occasionally) saving the day. The goal here isn’t to recreate Fenspace. We’ve done that, twice even. TUMP is… something else. I’m not sure what it is exactly, not yet, but if you’re interested we might be able to figure it out together.

The original thread isn't required reading, JSYK. Though it does have exploding sparklepires in it. That's always cool.

Okay Kid, This Is Where It Gets Complicated – The Backstory

The late twentieth and twenty-first centuries saw a brief and terrible flowering of mad science, sort of like one of those incredibly rare jungle plants that flowers once every 5,000 years and smells like month-old rotten meat when it does. The whole thing can be traced back to an unknown, nameless engineer who managed to tap into something the world eventually called telluric energies before his or her device exploded and rendered them unable to publish (hence, nameless). Telluric fallout spread out across the globe, causing minor mutations in more than a few people and inspiring these people to start meddling with forces previously unknown to humanity. One of these was a woman named Deidre Griest, a postgrad student at Cornell whose exploration of telluric energy changed the world forever.

Deidre’s Inspired device allowed her to scan beyond the boundaries of the Universe and see what was on the other side. Her next Inspired device allowed her and a small group of close friends to explore the worlds they found out there. Eventually she brought in outsiders: with the help of financier Noah Anderson and fixer Tanith Curtis Deidre leveraged her creations into the Mobius Group, the largest and most powerful NGO ever created.

Mobius was the first group from their world to start traveling the Multiverse. They weren’t the last.

{short notes to be developed upon discussion: Mobius has not-quite 100% lock on mv travel, not as tightly-controlled as Infinity but not anarchy either; Griest & Curtis set up the Guild, a sort of part-Facebook part-Wikipedia part-Shadowland org for white-hat / gray-hat freelancers to chat, bitch & get contracts; basic assumption is main characters are white-hat freelancers working for Mobius or other white-hat orgs in various capacities; Mobius kept relatively vague in terms of structure, more the shadowy cabal back home; black-hats from home include the usual bugbears (nations, corps, criminals, terrorists) but also black-hat freelancers playing conquistador, etc.}

Travel To Exotic Places, Meet New And Interesting People

It should come as no surprise that Mobius wasn’t the first group in the Multiverse to poke around in timelines that weren’t their own (and if it did come as a surprise, then shame on you). At last count Mobius and the Guild were in diplomatic “it’s complicated” relationships with the following groups:

Infinity Unlimited is the (redundant) name of an NGO much like Mobius that travels the Multiverse for their own profit. Infinity keeps a very low profile at all times and really doesn’t like newcomers blundering into their affairs.

The one-world government called Centrum is Infinity Unlimited’s nemesis, a stable, conservative, parochial system with a complex about keeping the Multiverse “orderly.” Not fond of Mobius, really not fond of the Guild.

The Time-Space Administration Bureau hails from a very distant timeline rich in telluric energies and technology capable of utilizing it. They’re a sort of Time-British Empire (though not actually British: Guild members have seen signs of an actual Time-British Empire out there, so be careful) with a very British view towards their lessers. Have strained politeness relations with Mobius; many Guildies are on the TSAB’s most-wanted list.

The Domination of the Draka, a world of arrogant slave-owning quasi-transhumans who’ve taken to traveling the Multiverse to sate their genetic need to conquer. Not liked by anybody.

Mobius, through connections with Infinity and Guild reports, has run into three or four discrete groups of Time Nazis using occult methods and telluric superpowers to build their Thousand-Universe Reich. This would be a more distressing issue if it didn’t turn out that Time Nazis from different universes hate each other more than they hate everybody else, which keeps their numbers down.

On top of this, there’s various species of god, angel, demon, wizard, alien, superhuman, artificial intelligence, shambling horror etc. doing their things without realizing they’ve got company. And there’s natural hazards: universes shift and merge and vaporize and coalesce according to the actions of the inmates and just because fuck you, that’s why. The Multiverse is something of a dangerous place, if you hadn’t picked up on that.

Buzzwords, Buzzwords, Buzzwords - A Quick Glossary

Anything involving science, SCIENCE! and nerds will inevitably develop its own jargon. A few of the key words are listed here:

Telluric energy - Mysterious energy fields that seem to be endemic to the Multiverse. Generally assumed to be the source of supernatural and paranatural powers.

Inspired - General term for people who have been exposed to telluric energy and been changed by it.

Sidestep - To jump between universes.

Zero-Zero - Common term for the home universe of Mobius/the Guild, sourced from the Griest Multiversal Coordinate System (coordinates 0-0-0-0-0-0).

Looper - Slang for an agent/employee of the Mobius Group, as opposed to a Guild member.

Guildie - Slang for a member of the Guild.

Snakes - Slang for anything relating to the Draka.

Morrison’s Paradox - “One world’s reality is another world’s fiction.” The most annoying existential angst generator in the Multiverse. Source: comic book writer/Inspired shaman Grant Morrison.

Beebee - (sometimes "babby") Guildie/Looper slang for TSAB agents/soldiers, refers to annoying stinging attacks and/or TSAB tendencies for younger field operatives.

Magpies - Infinity slang for Mobius agents, due to their tendency to grab shiny objects before Infinity can get their hands on them.

{more to come as things develop, naturally}
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Seraviel]

I am always interested in that kind of universe.
-People may die, but ideas are forever. Je suis Charlie.

[classicdrogn]

It makes me sad that my reaction is "meh" and a shrug. This is the kind of thing I should be all excited over, but...

o_o
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

[Black Aeronaut]

It would be interesting to have a report from a Looper or a Guildie about an encounter a person like Douglas Sagnoir or Garrick Grimm and have it basically translate to, "If you see this person, just walk away. Generally nice person, yes, but you do not want to be part of what they're involved with. Just Sidestep your way out of there nice and quiet like."

[Mamorien]

Looks good, sounds cool. Just a few questions inspired by my eye for trivia:

From the use of "telluric energy" and "Inspired" as terms, would I be correct in guessing that the initial telluric explosion happened in 1998?

If that "actual Time-British Empire" be who I think they are, they'll presumably have a dispute with Mobius over who the real "Zero-Zero" is. (I assume Mobius' timeline is outside the Blight.) And if you're including the said Anglo-Germanic Imperium, does that also mean the Interdimensional Monitoring Bureau is out there? Brion Bayard got tangled up with the IDMB, after all.

I assume one of the sets of Time Nazis is Raven Division, but I'm drawing blanks on the others. Please advise?

[Cobalt Greywalker]

For some reason, I want the nickname for the TSAB to be Bebies (BBs). Part of it is that BBs are small and can sting like hell, with it being a backhanded insult on what several groups see as the Bureau's use of child soldiers (It's also one letter away from babies, to add insult).

In the opposite direction, I can see Mobians (for lack of a better term) being nicknamed 'Crows' by other groups due to their habit of going over dead civilisations and picking up all the Shinies (which they then proceed to SCIENCE! to work out how they operated).

I can also see Mobius being more space based than some of the other groups.

[M Fnord]

It would be interesting to have a report from a Looper or a Guildie about an encounter a person like Douglas Sagnoir or Garrick Grimm and have it basically translate to, "If you see this person, just walk away. Generally nice person, yes, but you do not want to be part of what they're involved with. Just Sidestep your way out of there nice and quiet like."

If a Guildie encounters a solo adventurer on a particular world, Morrison's Paradox indicates that whatever they're involved with is or is between your goal and you. So, you know, suck it up dude and get on with the show. ("Ordinary man spends his life avoiding tense situations; repo man spends his life getting into tense situations!")

From the use of "telluric energy" and "Inspired" as terms, would I be correct in guessing that the initial telluric explosion happened in 1998?

If that "actual Time-British Empire" be who I think they are, they'll presumably have a dispute with Mobius over who the real "Zero-Zero" is. (I assume Mobius' timeline is outside the Blight.) And if you're including the said Anglo-Germanic Imperium, does that also mean the Interdimensional Monitoring Bureau is out there? Brion Bayard got tangled up with the IDMB, after all.

I assume one of the sets of Time Nazis is Raven Division, but I'm drawing blanks on the others. Please advise?

1) *Orson Welles slow clap.gif* You get a gold star for keen reference spotting. As for the question, I'm trying not to put too many dates into reference material just yet, but it happens in the general area of 1992 - 2000, and as far as impact goes, more Hammersmith than Galatea.

2) "Zero-Zero" comes from the Adventures of Luther Arkwright, never read the Imperium stuff tbh. It's a big multiverse and they may very well be out there, but the Time-British Empire is meant more as a vague allusion to potential evil steampunk empires to be found out there.

3) Raven Division is obviously the first one (IW cross after all) the others... again, remaining vague for background purposes. Nazis + superscience will eventually get loose and ruin things for the rest of us.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Mamorien]

1) If anyone was going to spot that, I was going to; I'm a TU fan from way back, after all. (I'm the guy who did "This Day in the Trinity Universe" on his LJ, and who roleplays Divis Mal, Slider and Max Mercer at Milliways.) And I figured it was more Hammersmith, given the circumstances.
2) I've never read Luther Arkwright, so we're even. (I should probably remedy that one of these days.) I don't know that Talbot got "Zero-Zero" directly from Laumer, but the fact that both stories involve divergences in British history makes it seem plausible to me. (Also, the Imperium is cited in GURPS Alternate Earths 2 as an influence on Centrum, and the Cocini and Maxoni mentioned in the timeline on p.AET120 are namesakes of Giulio Maxoni and Carlo Cocini, the inventors of the parachronic drive used by the Imperium, so I recommend you at least give it a look-in.)
3) Time enough to develop it. I'm sure Reich-5 isn't the only world where Nazi science sneers at the dimensional barrier, after all. (I actually put that into an IW-style worldbox for Reich-5: "As the politics of the fascist superstates curdle, Nazi science sneers at the dimensional barrier, allowing elements within the SS to expand the Reich into other timelines." In the immortal words of Lucy More Marsden, had to.)

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Had some inspiration.

---

“God, I hate the PR goons. Do you know the wash out rate doubled in the months they started the Veilwatchers series? Still, it sells like drugs to a junkie.”

“Yeah, I’ve been around the place a few times. I was a wide-eyed newbie when we dropped on Scheherazade-4, shattered my left femur while holding off the bugs. Yep, got to see the Cap get ripped up and the General reprise. It’s mostly titanium and bio-plastic now; that was before the regen tech got off the ground, even the thaumotech. I’ve had the limp ever since. I got out of physio a couple of months later and transferred to Survey.”

“What else? You seriously want to know? When was your lunch? Right then. Lost my right arm, torn off keeping some kids alive even if I scarred them for life with all the blood. Their medic managed to put it back on after all the new suns faded away, at least there are some Beebees who don’t think we’re all tomb robbers. Left eye got replaced after Ghost, again after Runner-2, AGAIN after Steel-19…oh right, it’s Seed-1 now. Ribs rebuilt after Blaze-1, right foot replaced after Blaze-2, skin replaced on 40% of my body after Blaze-3, right foot again AND lower leg after Faust-1. Didn’t get to dance on the bitches grave, which was a downer. Not that there was anything left of her, and it’d be impolite to the real one. Fucking Beard Nates.”

“You can stop cringing now. There’s a reason Helljumpers have hardsuits and the Marines use heavy armoured suits. The multiverse is an uncaring bitch, and delights on showing us how she doesn’t even notice the ants scurrying about.”

“Good side? Bondi always has good memories. Heliopolis was so damn interesting I transferred to the ground team for the full three month planetary survey. Lucifer-27, yeah its weird but stopping the Second Wave was worth it man.”

“The Excelsior? Yeah she’s pretty. Tricked out better than a Bond Car. Yes, I have one. She’ll point out to the stubborn part of the Beebees and the groundpounders that we know what we’re doing.”

“Me? Hahaha…wait, you’re serious? I ain’t anywhere near the list. Arthritis has me grounded permanently. Oh, maybe the Academy for UNSAD or Illuminatus for everyone else. The Labs? I doubt it, not as much a brain as them.”

“Oh them? Problem of being in this business this long, you make friends. Not-so-friends. People who’d piss on your grave, but respect you. What’s it say about you lot if they all want their pound of flesh?”

“Yeah, the Embassy DOES have a lot to say. Toodles, and I’ll be sending the bill for the whisky to them. And this round, you got a tab system for the guys who have to move him? Cool.”

“Cheers.”

***

UNSAD – United Nations Space Administration Directorate: The supra-governmental organisation with the mandate to control Mobian expansion into space.

Nates – Short for Alternates. ‘Alts’ is used for very similar timelines. ‘Nates’ is used for differing versions of people.

Beard Nates – Alternates of people who are ‘Evil’, compared to others generally encountered. Your Mileage May Vary, and all that.

Illuminatus - Illuminatus University, Mobius sponsored University to pass on knowledge gained from Sidestepping.

[robkelk]

Illuminatus - Illuminatus University, Mobius sponsored University to pass on knowledge gained from Sidestepping.

Put (blonde and used to wealth) Helen Anderson in charge as the ArchDean, responsible for making sure the place is self-sustaining...

What?

"Illuminatus University", not "Illuminati University"?

Oh. But maybe that's where all the stories/rumors/myths about IOU came from.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[M Fnord]

A Spot Of Headhunting
Echo Minus Eighteen / 1024Late May, 2018 (Zero-Zero relative)

“Doctor Cooper? Draco Malfoy. A pleasure to meet you, sir.” The blond man smiled pleasantly and stuck out a hand, but Dr. Sheldon Cooper only looked at him with a dubious and affronted expression on his face. Malfoy kept his hand out for another second before putting it away with only the tiniest of shrugs.

“Draco Malfoy is a character from a series of sub-standard fantasy novels written for the lowest common denominator,” Sheldon informed the man. Malfoy twitched a little at his righteous assessment of the Hermione Granger novels. “Your bizarre and childish spy antics are transparent and I’m only doing this because the head of the department asked me to.”

Malfoy sighed a little and mumbled something under his breath. Sheldon couldn’t quite make it out, something to do with Morrison’s paradox, whatever that was. Some new theorem, maybe? “Well,” Malfoy said. “You do live up to your reputation, doctor. Let’s get down to it then. My organization, the Mobius Group, has an interest in theoretical physicists like yourself and dispatched me to evaluate your work.”

“I highly doubt that you’re capable of understanding my work,” Sheldon said loftily. Malfoy shrugged.

“That’s as may be, but evaluation’s not the same as understanding. If I may?”

Sheldon acquiesced with bad grace and allowed Malfoy into his office. On every wall there was a whiteboard, and every whiteboard was covered with dense mathematical notations. Having let the interloper into his office, Sheldon promptly tried to ignore him, retreating to the furthest whiteboard. Malfoy examined the equations for a moment, pulling out his phone and calling up a set of images for comparison. “Hmm,” he hmm’d. “This is interesting, yes. Parallel evolution.” Overhearing Malfoy’s mumbling, Sheldon looked up from his own work to see the man fumbling around with a smartphone near some of his more interesting equations.

“Hey!” he yelled. “That information is proprietary! You are not authorized to take photographs or recordings of my work! Police! Corporate espionage!”

Malfoy looked up from his phone. “Oh, sorry, not taking pictures,” he said. “Just comparing notes. See?” He flipped the phone over so Sheldon could see clearly the equations. Equations that weren’t photographed from his whiteboards, but also weren’t from his published papers either.

“That’s, that’s,” Sheldon gaped. “Where did you get that!? Those equations weren’t in my paper! How did you get a published version of something not in my paper?”

Malfoy smiled mysteriously. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Dr. Cooper.”

“Quoting Shakespeare as a rhetorical evasion doesn’t explain how you got my equations. I demand an explanation!”

“Hm. For one thing, this isn’t your work.”

“Are you suggesting that I, I plagiarized my work?” Sheldon squeaked in outrage. “Why am I arguing this with a man pretending to be a wizard? Get out!”

“I didn’t say that, doctor, please. The situation is a bit more complex, but think of it as Newton and Leibniz inventing the same math. Based on this,” Malfoy gave Sheldon what he assumed was a placating smile, “I’m authorized to offer you a long-term consultant position with the Mobius Group.”

“Not interested.”

“Please hear me out, the position is very well paid and–ah.” Malfoy held a hand to his ear. “Ah. I see. Dr. Cooper, I’m afraid we’re going to have to skip the job offer and go straight to the ‘mortal peril’ part of today’s program.”

“Wait what?” Sheldon started to say, but Malfoy had already grabbed him and hurled them both out the office window. And the office had exploded into a cloud of thick purple smoke.

~***~

Ten Minutes Earlier…

“See the infinite worlds Maico,” she muttered. “Go to new and interesting places, kidnap innocent scientists and destroy their work because Homeline doesn’t want their monopoly endangered. Yeah, this is what I wanted to do with my life.”

“You say something, boss?”

“No, not really.” Special Agent Maico Tange, Interworld Intelligence Service, sighed quietly. “Are we ready?”

“Just about,” her teammate replied. “Wells and Kirkland are moving up to your position. Give it another minute.”

“Copy that.” Maico touched her earbud, muting the feed for the moment. At least this particular worldline was advanced enough she could walk around without attracting attention. The last Coventry run she’d been on involved a world still in the 1950s - poodle skirts everywhere, the horror - and the kind of advanced communications gear Infinity favored didn’t mesh well with the surroundings. Maintaining a good solid undergrad slouch, Maico made her way to the right wing of the Physics department. The halls were generally empty, as expected for a university at this time of year and day. As she entered the building Wells and Kirkland, disguised as ordinary students much like herself, fell into step behind her.

Maico unmuted her comms. “Okay, Rogers,” she said. “You’re on cop-watching duty. What’s our ETA for police action here?”

“Ten minutes from the word go,” Rogers replied crisply. “Campus cops first, then LAPD.”

“Let us know the minute they show up,” she ordered, then turned to her compatriots. “Okay, we need Cooper alive, so non-lethals only. We sure he’s in the office?”

Kirkland nodded. “Bugs picked up activity a minute ago.”

“All I needed to hear. Tasers out, gentlemen. Wells, grab the stun bombs.”

The three Infinity agents sidled close to Dr. Sheldon Cooper’s office. The lights were on and Maico could hear a low current of voice from inside, clearly the good doctor talking to himself or someone on the phone. She made a sharp gesture and Kirkland took up position on the other side of the door. Wells stood in front of her, pulling a pair of gas grenades out of his UCLA fanny pack. Maico mentally counted down the next few seconds.

Three…

Two…

One. She clapped Wells on the back, and he kicked open the door and pitched the grenades through the gap. The room vanished in a cloud of purple smoke. Thirty seconds later the smoke cleared and the Infinity agents strode into the room, tasers at the ready.

“Clear!” Kirkland barked.

Maico took a look around, seeing no sign of Cooper. “Where the fuck is he?” she asked.

“Maybe he stepped out for a leak?” Wells suggested.

“Goddammit. Kirkland, check the john. Team One, target is not, I repeat not in position. Where the hell did he go?”

“Hey boss, check this out.” Wells nodded at a windowframe that had obviously seen better days. “Maybe he spotted us and ran?”

“Huh,” Maico said. “I read our guy’s dossier, never would’ve expected him to be that hardcore.” She looked around the office, searching for a sign of some sort that might explain why their target had escaped, or maybe where he was going. The room was Spartan, covered in whiteboards Cooper obviously used for his work on pandimensional physics. Not much else, few books, a desk and a set of neatly stacked papers…

Hang on a second.

On the desk, Maico spotted something that didn’t belong. Tossed haphazardly on top of the obsessively-orderly pile of paperwork on Cooper’s desk was a lone business card. She picked up the card, giving the name a casual scan (“DRACO MALFOY,” so somebody with a sense of humor apparently) and noticing the faint impression of a watermark. Holding it up to the light, Maico’s breath caught when the faint watermark resolved into the image of a mobius loop.

“Fuck,” she said softly, crushing the card in her grip. “Fuck. Fuck!” Maico grabbed her radio and yelled into the microphone. “Rogers! Park! Michaels! Spread out and start searching on all bandwidths! The fucking magpies got here first!”

~***~

Somewhere in Los Angeles…

Cooper was quiet. Maybe a little too quiet – since the moment that Draco had pulled him out of the office bare seconds before as-yet unknown persons dropped enough stun bombs to tranquilize half of LA, Cooper seemed somewhere between confused and catatonic. Probably ontological shock, Draco mused. Oh well. He’d keep until they got to the desert, back to the saucer and a quick sidestep home.

And on that note... Malfoy slotted his phone into the car’s dash and punched a key. “It’s me,” he said. “I got Cooper but there’s complications: somebody sent a snatch team, probably Infinity. I managed to scarper but they’re gonna be out for blood. Tell the crew to grab the rest of the acquaintance web now and head for exfil. Be there as soon as I can, Malfoy out.”
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Black Aeronaut]

.... I don't think that I would appreciate dealing with Infinity - that kind of attitude of "We're gonna keep any and all of this technology out of everyone else's hands because we don't think they can handle it" will rub him wrong something fierce. I'd be the sort willing to give folks the benefit of a doubt and let them prove themselves, although i would admit that there are some that you would definitely not want mucking around in the multiverse. *cough-spacenazis-cough*

[M Fnord]

Enh, Infinity as a group isn't much different from Mobius really. They're looking out for their own interests, and since those interests aren't 100% identical you get conflict and drama in the margins.

And now, a fragment of dialogue. Guess the context!

Flavia's eyes narrowed, hand edging closer to her sword. "Look, you," she said dangerously. "I'm not naive enough to think you're a god of rainbows, puppies and nice tits, but I do expect you to have some fucking compassion for worshipers hung out to dry by your own damned priests."

Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[M Fnord]

Not the best thing I've ever written, but it's serviceable.

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? Topic: Favorite Capers, Thread The Third
In: Boards ? Guild ? Private Chat

? Saletra (Original Poster)
Once again, it’s time for a new bragging rights thread.

For the newbies: Guildies like to talk about their exploits, the crazier the better. If you’ve got something you think qualifies as nuts enough for the favorite capers thread, post it here. Have at thee~!

(Showing page 3 of 120)

? The Big “D” (Veteran Poster)
We’ve heard a lot from the new kids, what about you graybeard guildies? Most of you have got to have some interesting stories from back in the day, right?

? Pyramid (N&W Acquisitions)
I suppose that’s my callout, considering I’m the grayest graybeard on the books right now.

I’ve told a lot of stories about the warehouse days in Ithaca, but they really aren’t my favorites. Some of my faves I was only just sort of there for – I got so watch Draco shoot Satan in the face, honestly one of the highlights of my career & it wasn’t my job. But my all-time favorite has to be the Titanic caper.

? Lone Gunman
@Pyramid Please don’t tell me you stole the Titanic.

? Pyramid (N&W Acquisitions)
Nah. Well, not yet anyway. Stealing the actual boat’s still on my bucket list, so maybe someday.

The Titanic caper started out as somebody at Mobius getting a weird romantic bug up their ass about playing white knight at famous historic disasters. I think the idea was something about looking good for the cameras on Zero-Zero humanitarian-wise while getting a good solid idea on how large operations could affect the parachronic balance, as the distinguished competition might say.

Mobius put out a bid, and it was luck of the draw that Flavia & I were just coming back from our honeymoon and ready to get back into the scrum. Not gonna lie, the idea had a lot of appeal to both of us: playing capital-H Hero is one of our big drivers, and rescuing people off the most famous shipwreck in the multiverse? Hell yeah we were up for that. The job was big, real big – we put together a scratch crew of about fifty people. But it went off fucking beautifully right up to the end.

(I didn’t know this until way after the fact, but there was a divide in Mobius about the whole op. A good chunk of the operations division didn’t want to farm it out to the Guild. We won, mostly anyway. Pretty sure that a couple of our guys were Mobius and not freelance, but they did the job so w/e.)

? SnakeLyfe (Malfoy’s Malefactors)
You know, I remember reading about the Titanic op during training. Something about large-scale rescue operations in the middle of historic or potentially historic events. I don’t remember anything about something going wrong at the end of the mission, though. Sure your memory’s not acting up on you, old man?

? Pyramid (N&W Acquisitions)
Har har, Dray. And here I go being all nice and talking about you gunning down the Devil.

No, if you read about it in training you were focused on the rescue part of the op, and all the bad stuff went down (no pun intended) on the salvage part.

Okay, lemmie start over:

The caper as we planned it out was twofold. The first part was rescuing the passengers and crew off the Titanic before she went under. The rescue op is where most of our scratch crew went: we ended up buying an old Liberty Ship from, oh god, I think it was Campbell? Something like that, one of those vaguely dull Mad Men-esque dystopic timelines. We figured that the Liberty Ship was big enough to hold everybody, advanced enough that we could knock together a crew that could run it and just primitive enough to pass muster as a tramp freighter to a bunch of traumatized Edwardians.

The crew was actually the easiest part, because we lucked into running into Jake Nielsen, the Flying Newfie while headhunting. You ever work maritime ops for Mobius or one of the bigger corps you’ve got a better than even chance of meeting Jake, him and his boat have been pretty much everywhere there’s water. So the Flying Newfie put together the crew and we focused on getting the timing down for the rendezvous and the salvage op.

Now scan this: the Titanic was the biggest, most luxurious liner of her day. She didn’t quite have a cargo worth millions, but there were some interesting baubles aboard worth a fair amount, not to mention collector value for more mundane stuff on Zero-Zero and elsewhere in the network. So while Jake and his guys worked with the Titanic’s crew on evacuation, me, Flavia and our own crew would go through the boat and tag everything we could for retrieval. That was the salvage op.

Jumping ahead over all the planning and waiting, the Liberty Ship is in position, ready to get Titanic’s wireless signal and charge to the rescue. We’ve got the ship on radar, we see the collision and as soon as we get their SOS we’re off. Jake pulls us up to the side neat as you please, we’re throwing open doors, extending gangplanks and soon enough we’re moving everybody off the ship.

In the tumult of the evacuation, it doesn’t take much for the salvage crew to sneak off and start tagging things. We get down to the cargo hold and the ship’s vault, which is still mostly dry at this point and we’re happily tagging things and portaling them out to our standby warehouse on Mt. Nebo. We got a good chunk of the cargo out before the water finally got too high for us to work, actually.

Both sides of this operation are working perfectly, we’re grabbing minor valuables out of the ship’s interior while the last of the crew are being picked up. It’s about two in the morning which mean we had just under ten minutes to wrap up and get out ourselves. And that’s when the snakes showed up...

? Burning Sky
You’re fucking kidding me. Snakes on the Titanic? Seriously?

? The Big “D” (Veteran Member)
So you’d had it with those motherfucking snakes on that motherfucking boat?

? Bull (Garrett’s Privateers)
Damn, talk about shitty luck, @Pyramid. What the hell were snakes doing on the Titanic, of all things?

? SnakeLyfe (Malfoy’s Malefactors)
Careful now, let’s not get all hot and bothered. I’m a little surprised though. Nothing I’ve heard about the Titanic caper ever said anything about Draka being present. Isn’t that general zone out of their way?

(viewing page 4 of 120)

? Pyramid (N&W Acquisitions)
I never did figure out why there were Draka on the boat to begin with. @SnakeLyfe makes a good point: the timeline we were operating in was a good metaphysical distance from their usual stomping grounds, and you have to figure that if they were there for a specific purpose they’d have evacuated with the rest. Either way, it really doesn’t matter because we’re turning a corridor heading for our jump-out point when three drakensis leap out and block our path. At first glance it doesn’t look bad. Drakensis are stronger and tougher than the average human, but there’s only three of them versus six of us and we’ve got weapons. Not great weapons, just simple tasers disguised as antique Webleys, but enough to fuck up a snake.

And then the lights go out. The water had finally reached the generators and so much for light. Now remember that the Titanic sank on a moonless night and we’re still inside the ship, so we’re completely in the fucking dark & the drakensis take advantage. The next sixty seconds or so I don’t remember very clearly; just a lot of fists and thinking “we need to get out of here right fucking now” over and over again. Flavia gets a light spell up, one of the snakes is down (she’d lit the spell off right in his face. Fell in love all over again when I spotted that.) the salvage team managed to fend of the other and I’m flat on my ass with the third doing his best Muhammad Ali impression on top of me. And I can hear the ship start to groan, really, really loud.

Flavia takes out snake #3 since I was distracting him quite nicely, grabs me, grabs the rest of our guys and we just book it for exfil. The ship’s groans turn into screams, the deck’s shivering and you can just tell in your bones that the whole damn thing is literally about to come apart. We don’t manage to get into position, we hit the promenade deck and there’s this huge CRACK and the deck tilts: Titanic is breaking up and we’ve officially run out of time. I punch the panic button and we portal the hell out of there as the deck drops out from under our feet.

And that, children, is the story of Nepos & Wildman’s Titanic caper. We saved the day, beat up the surprise guest stars and escaped to tell the tale. The rescue operation went into the books as a success, the salvage operation was... well, to be fair it wasn’t the success we wanted (not enough people/time) but we picked up a good chunk of cargo and various sundries for auction. As for the Draka presence, I know Mobius did a few followup operations looking for nests but I don’t know how that ended up. All in all, it was a fine caper.

? The All-Seeing Eye (Intel Mistress)
Mobius put a few people into Europe and the US following Sam & Flavia’s report. They uncovered the remains of a Draka nest, probably the one the three snakes they met onboard came from. They didn’t find anything more substantial, at least the reports I have access to don’t say so. How they got there is still a mystery, but Mobius put the word out to IU just in case.

? Burning Sky
Well, that was certainly a thing. Hell of a story, @Pyramid. Do you still have any of the stuff you recovered?

? Pyramid (N&W Acquisitions)
You’d think so, but not really. Most of the stuff went to auction on Zero-Zero, a couple other places, and the take from that went to paying off the Flying Newfie and his crew. We ended up returning a few things to the original owners anonymously (The legend of the Ghost Post strikes again!) and that was mostly abandoned keepsakes, photos or stuffed animals and the like. The most we kept for ourselves was a set of the first-class china for dinner guests. I really wanted the ship’s pennant, but there was no time and no good way to do that without anybody noticing. Ah well.

Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Cobalt Greywalker]

You know, I'm wondering how Mobius is structured. There is obviously something like Infinity in its structure (Ops, Survey, SAR, Trade group, etc...), but I'm guessing there's some legal department for dealing with the Guild.

Oh, hey... Maybe a story start.

---

There were times where Colin wondered if his Inspiration hadn’t made him crazier than the norm. How else would he be here, on a formally very nice temperate world off in the Zorch axis crossing Echo minus 13/251, when he should be enjoying his retirement? OK, 42 is a bit early for retirement but he’d put on a fair chunk of mileage since he’d joined Mobius at the start of the tour. He’d only wanted to be a tech analyser in the labs, instead someone in the self-defense training had spotted him and he’d been put on a SAR team as their techrat.

Why was he here again? The whole Alpha-12 civilisation remains of course, given he kept running into them at least once a year all over the bloody place. Now being contested by some locals and a pack of Nazis, which was why there was all the smoke and fire about. It was ALWAYS the fucking NAZIS. Plasma rifle toting jetpack Nazis at that. No snakes; that would have put a cherry on the epically messed up day. Hopefully the rest of the dig team got to the saucer and DDRed the hell out in the confusion. Of course, having to set the clean-up charges manually to cause that confusion meant he’d missed the boat. No matter, he had his own way out. Extraction Gamma was 50 klicks relative south-south west. He was getting too old for this shit, and really should have seen about getting a scout exo-frame.

Still, he had the data backed up in his not-standard-omnitool, his also-not-so-standard Survey loadout, some salvaged supplies, and a sensor feed projected into his left eye. Which had just detected a telluric spike round the bluff edge he’d been heading for. Of course.

He shouldered his rifle, letting the smartgun systems add to the PAN tac-net, then swept round the edge to come face to face with the most impractical blade he’d seen since the Helljumpers dropped on Howard-3. Obviously a telluric thaum-linker like the second group to attack, what with the stupidly long barrelled revolver integrated into the blade and the blade-edged buckler and stereotypical bad guy black and blades conjured fighting suit. Hell, he even went the red-eyed, silver-haired, tattooed bad boy look.

The boy babbled at him, surprised, holding up the stupidly bladed gauntleted hand (at least moving the buckler on that arm up into blocking position, proving he wasn’t totally stupid). Translation subtitles scrolled across the bottom of his left-eyes HUD. “Whoa! Easy! TSAB officer.”

“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.” Colin growled, lining up the head-shot and tweaking the setting to sniper mode. It was the only sure way of taking down a thaum-linker. “Specially since the only other person I’ve seen with a stupid blade was slaughtering Nazis, which’d get you a pass if her fellow psychos weren’t using spray-n-pray and grinning at the all the death. And turn on the bloody translate function you idiot.”

A couple of the holo-windows the Bureau liked popped up, one showing what was supposed to be the guy’s ID, which Colin ignored as the picture had blue eyes and brown hair.

The second window was a vid feed of a dark brown haired woman in Beebee Navy Blue with a white cloak, sat at a desk.

“Good Afternoon. I am Colonel Hayate Yagami, Special Duty Section 6 commander.” She introduced herself in the weirdly Upper-Class English-slash-whatever accent they all had. This one had a hint of Japanese for added verisimilitude to match the name.

“Corse you are dear.” Colin snorted, only not doubting the said rank because of the Beebees stupidly young recruitment policies. “Not like any civ with holos can’t fake a vid feed. Also, we’re way out of Bureau space so even IF you are who you say you are you got no authority over me.”

“Given you’re pointing a weapon at my subordinate, I have all the right I need.” She replied. “It looks like a Seburo D34 MAC assault rifle, so I’m guessing you are from Mobius.” Colin didn’t bother to reply. “I know some of you aren’t the grave robbers most of the Bureau seems to think you are, the last one I met lost an arm saving the lives of some friends of mine. But that was over a decade ago now so I could be wrong.”

“Did Pinky get those 7 creds from Specs on the game the next week?” Colin asked, causing the Colonel’s eyes to widen. “Right, sit rep is that we got some old civ remains if the others haven’t blown them up.” There was an explosion. “Well, any more blown up. My lot’ve cleared out, you’ve got Time Nazis with plasma rifles and jetpacks, and a group with equipment as impractical as your boy in black here who I’m guessing you’re here for. I’M outta here, but I might pop back in a week to file our reports with you. Maybe if you’re lucky, I’ll bring Specs the site report. Toodles. Oh, and with Nazis? Man up and kill them, better for all of us.”

Walking past the rather frazzled Beebee, Colin ignored the twitch in his right arm. In Survey you kinda got used to the feeling of impending doom. After all, there were plenty of ways things could get worse.

All he needed was to get to Gamma to sidestep out of here. Knowing his luck, that would be a challenge.

***

DDRed – A series of rapid Sidesteps to shake pursuit. Some have actually used a DDR game to do this. The smart ones recorded the sequence so they could get back.

[Cobalt Greywalker]

Why brain? Why world building stuff BEFORE the story? Couldn't I at least double post the story?

Two bits here, so first:

When picking up shiny tech, always try and get at least three. One for the gamers to play with, one for the hackers to take apart, and one for you. Anything else is just gravy.

The second bit is more involved. I tried to give everyone strengths and weaknesses while being vague, but feel free to rip it apart.

Stupid Brain.

---

Multiversal Travel for Dummies – Guild Edition (Updated 2 Months, 17 days, 5 hours ago)

Section 6: Car Envy

So you’ve learned the difference between a stepper, a saucer, a slingshot, and a portal.

But how do they stack against what everyone else uses?

Parachronics is what Infinity and Centrum call the math they use. It organises things for them in energy bands, and they have analogues of our stuff. They can trundle up and down a band easy as you like, pop across to a neighbouring band with difficulty, and only just reach the band past that. Given how they get on with each other, it’s good luck for them they’re three bands apart.
That sounds pretty pathetic doesn’t it? Especially as they don’t have space travel, and it doesn’t allow relative moving. They’ve got two things going for them though. One is it’s fairly easy to find a timeline in a band, so they’ve got a lot of easy access to world. Two is their method has far better access to walled locations (which is what the Intel groupies think the world Infinity calls Coventry is).
On the bad side though is how unstable the echo timelines those bands are. Heck, we think Infinity and Centrum actually ENGINEER timeslips to move timelines out of each other’s reach. And they call US crazy.

The Time Nazis have all sorts of methods, from using natural path ways to mutated creatures with jump capability to draining jumpers to power portals. Most of these aren’t good for anyone but the Nazis. Nazi mad science seems to have a lack of real understanding of how it actually works but, as we’ve found to our horror, a lack of morals allows for quick development times.

The Draka seem to mainly use a wormhole portal system, though they’ve nicked stuff from everyone bar the Bureau. This allows them better precision in jumps. Not so much as to pop snakes on your head but still good enough to target an apartment in a building, and yank the fuckers back when their asses are getting kicked. It also limits how much can go through until a significantly sized gate can be built at the local end. They also seem to have problems getting it to work at all in space. The biggest disadvantage is they’re fucking loud telluric wise. Those pocket telluric scanners they sell as kids toys can pick them up at half a klick, the standard ones people should have in their kits will pick them up within ten to fifteen. Standard FOB setup will cover a continent, but FOBs are rare on the ground.

The Bureau undoubtedly has the mobility advantage. Any flight capable thaum-linker can do a hop, given the skill and tech (‘cause, y’know, inertialess supersonic personal flight and portable naval weaponry they can set to freaking stun isn’t ENOUGH). There’s also the fact they’ve got some sort of relay system for their chunk of the Multiverse, so can deploy from anywhere they have a Nexus. Yay for teleport spam. It’s their ships that really take the bloody cake. Not only are they capable of sitting in the freaking Interstitial Void (not merely hurrying through trying not to look like anybody sane would do, oh no), but they can portal forces off to wherever’s in range as well as acting as a relay (which says their ship portals have at least worrying range, if not the WTF range the relay system has) while there. The void drives can target their ship exit points well enough that they can flank fleets as well.
Do we have any good news? Because of all that flitting around in the Void, they’re fairly slow to get around anywhere not on their relay network. All their travel stuff is stupidly sensitive to telluric surges as well, so they’re even slower than you’d think if they don’t get blocked.

[Dartz]

A hack of something from another fic of mine, inspired by a video that inspired something else and gave me headaches for the last 4 hours trying to write it. Submitted for consideration....

A similar explanation is Here, deep in the fic. If you CTRL-F for 'I fell asleep in the Eva', you'll find it.

--------
So, multiverses, how to they work?

We'll start with a point, first of all. It's nothing more than a single singularity in space and time. It has nothing more than the fact that it exists. It's a Zero-Dimensional Object. It might aswell be nothing and only really exists to make the math work in our computers.

If we extend that point in one direction, we get a line. It has no width, or height, only a single dimension - length. You can draw it on a page if it helps. A line can also be seen as a stack formed from an infinite amount of infinitely small individual points.

Add another direction... we give that line a width. Like a square on a sheet of paper.... it's a two dimensional object. It lives on what's called a 2-dimensional plane. If I turn that square on it's end though, and look at it from above, what do I see? The same line we started with. Would it be wrong to surmise then, that a 2 Dimensional object is formed from a finite stack of infinitesimally thin 1 Dimensional lines, of varying lengths and character?

This is analogous to the concept of an Integral in mathematics. And these individual slices are roughly analogous to the differential.

So. Can I assume you're familiar with the concept of Flatland? It's a two dimensional world where squares, triangles and circles and various hideously complex polygons go about their daily business. They each have length and width, but no height. They can only perceive things in 2 Dimensions. Let's extend that concept to Lineland. A single dimensional world where the lines live. The Lines of Lineland can only perceive a world in One dimension.

But, as we've discussed above, Flatland is just a whole stack of Linelands built on top of each other. They're basically intertwined together.

A flatlander can potentially meet a linelander. If so, what does each and every one of them see?
The Linelander, will see the Flatlander as a Line. What the Linelander sees is the part of the Flatlander that intersects with his dimension - or his plane of existance - a single dimensional slice through the Flatlander. And as the Flatlander moves around the Linelander, what the Linelander will see is a rapidly changing and morphing Line as it's perception is limited only to slices of the Flatlander. Depending on how complex a shape the Flatlander is, it may even seem to split into multiple lines, before reforming into one object.

This would, to the Linelander, appear to be some form of hideous cosmic horror, and would likely result in a fairly hefty SAN loss.

The Flatlander will, we assume, see a Line and assume it is another Flatlander. Right up until he looks at the Linelander edge-on and sees him disappear - because he is only a line. He has no second dimension. This is, doubtless, a spooky experience for our Flatlander. Furthermore, because the Flatlander is one dimension higher up the pecking order, it can see each and every point that makes up the Linelander. It can see the totality of the Linelander. This is a fairly hefty advantage the Flatlander has. Living a dimension higher tends to have some Godlike advantages.... the bigger the dimensional gap, the more Godlike things get.

Let's get back to Flatland for a second.

Peter Polygon goes out for a stroll. He sets off and walks in a dead straight line from his home. He walks for an hour or so (Let's avoid calling Time a dimension for the time being), and suddenly arrives at the back door of his house. What's happened to him? Assuming he's of a scientific bent, he might start to conclude that the 2 Dimensional space-time he lives within is curved through another dimension - a mysterious and spooky Third Dimension. In essence, both ends of the piece of paper he lives on have been folded over and taped together - like a map folded over. (More likely, it'd be something like a sphere.).

You can get something of the same effect yourself if you leave your own home, then walk and swim for a few years in a dead straight line - and arrive back at your own back door. The world never really seems anything but flat from a human scale - compared to the size of the world, you're small enough to effectively be considered 2-Dimensional.

What this tells us, is that beyond the world that might be familiar, it's possible for us to still observe higher dimensions and their effects... even if one cannot actively control how one travels through that dimension. The flatlander will automatically travel through the Third dimension as he moves around his 2D world. But he can't especially control it. At the same time, he's also constantly travelling forward through time, and through every other dimension that lies above him.

Above him, is The Third Dimension, of Length, Height and Width is where we 'live'. And it's a pretty funky place.

If a Flatlander were to meet one of us, what would he see? Chances are, he'd see

He'd see the part of us that intersects with the plane of his existance. That might be a horizontal slice through our body. It might be vertical, like a carboard cuttout. If you've ever seen the images that come from an MRI scanner - thousands of individual slices of the human body - that's probably what he'll see. And as you move through his dimension, what he'll find is that his perception of you is rapidly changing and morphing in some form of obscene cosmic horror that defies the explanations his 2 Dimensional world gives him.

This would, to the Flatlander, appear to be some form of hideous cosmic horror, and would likely result in a fairly hefty SAN loss.

To us, the Flatlander's a shape on a page. We can see every single thing about what the Flatlander is. He can only see a slice of us. We're higher up the dimensional pecking order.

Now, comes the question of Time, which some call the 4th Dimension. Some have argued that humans are 4th-dimensional beings because we also move forward through time - they're wrong. We are three dimensional lifeforms. But, we are aware of the passage and existing of Time. We know it's moving forward because we have memories... we can still perceive the presence of the 4th Dimension indirectly. In more complex terms, our current 3 Dimensional self, includes information from all past 3 Dimensional selves as part of its makeup. Our memories and natural awareness allow us to perceive this fact.

But, from instant to instant, we are 3 Dimensional creatures. Only, each instant includes some information from all other previous instants, the result of irreversible changes upon changes across time. This, is Entropy. This is what gives Time it's Arrow.

If we go back to the Flatlander whose world has been warped within the Third Dimension... What would our world look like if it were folded back on itself through the Fourth Dimension in the same way?

You would leave your home with the intent to travel around the world and back to your home. As you leave, there's a chance you'd see yourself arriving again. You wave to yourself if you do and you wave back. You leave, you travel for what feels to you to be a year, then arrive back at your home just in time to see yourself leave, and wave at yourself. Congratulations, you've managed to move through the 4th Dimension.

But, what would a 4th Dimensional Life-form look like, and how would they perceive the world? What does a human being look like in the 4th Dimension.

A Fourth Dimensional lifeform would be able to move through time as it saw fit - as easily as we can move through our three dimensions. It can exist in any instant or places it chooses in its life, between the moment it is born and the moment it dies and it exists in all moments simultaneously. A 4D lifeform when confronted with a locked door, can simply take a step to the side to a point in time when the door is open - or never existed. It can walk around a wall by simply stepping to a time when the wall didn't exist, then back again.

That's a freaky concept to get your heads around but there's no need to worry... Kurt Vonnegut explained it better than I can in Slaughterhouse 5. The Tralfamadorians are Fourth Dimensional Life.

To a Fourth dimensional lifeform, our entire existance would be - essentially, a line in the Time dimension (A timeline, geddit?). It would be a trace of everywhere and everywhen we have ever been, and can access each and every one of those points at will.
It would see the Integral of your 3 Dimensional life, with respect to time - for the mathematically inclined. It would see you being born and dying of old age and sitting at your computer monitor reading this rambling spiel, and it would be capable of stepping to any moment of this at will.

What we would see looking at a 4th dimensional lifeform? We'd see a three dimensional slice of it, interacting with our planes of existance. And that slice would likely be morphing and changing rapidly in ways that defy rational comprehension, flitting from point to point regardless of barriers or gates. It would wink in and out of existance or appear to step through solid walls.

This would, to us, appear to be some form of hideous cosmic horror, and would likely result in a fairly hefty SAN loss.

Here's where things start getting really fun.

Let's go back to our example above. Let's say, you leave your home intent to travel around the world - again - now aware of the fact that you will also move through the 4th dimension in the process. You come outside, and look for yourself to wave at - and see nobody. Being a sensible person, you conclude that maybe you died along the journey and that maybe making the journey would be a bad idea - so go back indoors and never go around the world to meet yourself. Or, if you're feeling gutsy, decided to tell destiny to go spin on a finger, have a great trip and try to enjoy it as it comes - then through some miracle, come home just in time to see yourself leave. Inspite of never having seen yourself arrive when you left.

Some would call this a Time Paradox.

Time Paradoxes can't happen. They don't exist. What just happened above, is perfectly possible. And what you should be doing is congratulating yourself on discovering evidence for the Fifth Dimension too. Give yourself a pat on the back. Or test the theory by blowing the younger you's brains out. Or shoot your older self, pick up his gun, come back around and shoot your younger self. Or get surprised when your older self shoots you for no good reason. The Time Paradox is only possible in a Deterministic universe - what some people call a clockwork universe. The Universe, does not run on clockwork. It runs on probabilities - what 'might' happen. It's all Quantum and really, really complicated and far beyond even my understanding.

When you set off on your journey, you might have a 75% chance of making it around the world to see yourself leave. Which means there's a 25% chance - or one time in four - that you'll leave your home and not see yourself arrive. Or even stranger - arrive to find that you didn't see yourself leave and so decided not to go. It's entirely possible to see yourself arrive, and then die along the way - the probabilities still work out. If you carry on around the world after seeing yourself arrive, secure in the knowledge that you can't possible die because that'd cause a Time Paradox, you're in for a rude awakening if you try play Russian Roulette. Even less likely... you might get a knock on the door and be met by yourself having chosen never to set out.

All of these are possible outcomes, some more or less likely than others.

It's these Probabilities, these 'Might Be's' are what form the Fifth Dimension. The Fifth Dimension is everything that is possible for your to start as, and for you to become. It is everything you are capable of doing an not doing, all at once. It is the sum total of every probabalistic interaction and even that makes up your life from Start to Finish.

If you visualise yourself in the 4th Dimension as a Timeline - the you in the 5th Dimension will will be that timeline and all the possibilities attached to it. It could be a trunk with an infinite number of branches spilling off it - each branch thicker or thinner depending upon how likely or unlikely the event that spawned it actually is. If you chose to play Russian Roulette - each time you squeeze the trigger, the branch leading from that decision gets thinner and thinner, as the likelyhood of you surviving to reach this point and continuing to play gets lower and lower. You might squeeze the trigger six times - and marvel at surviving when the bullet misfires. But 9999999 instances of you ended with brain splattered on the wall.

But more than that, the You in the Fifth dimension will have many, many roots too. These are all the possible startpoints, based on the lives your parents and their parents and their parents before them have let. This doesn't form a tree of life, so much as a tangled mangrove - or a tapestry if you feel prosaic (or like Star Trek TNG).

And all of these tapestries of stars and planets and people and galaxies and STUFF all interweave and tie together to form the Universe we live in and everything it is possible for that universe to become.

What you get is the most intricately woven multidimensional tapestry imaginable. It's the tapestry of time and space itself.

For exactly one universe.

All of this, springs from the roots of one single Big-Bang, one single possible start for the universe. And rather than tracking You as such, these probabilities instead track the individual particles that make up You. How these elementary particles form and collapse and exist through all space and time leading from that one Big Bang. For multiple Universes- where things might start differently, with different weightings of particles and the like and different initial conditions and laws of physics for each one - you get an entirely different set of 5-dimensional probabilities.

That's you're sixth dimension... Hence, Six Coordinates. X, Y, Z, I, J, K That's where we can play right now. Different universes, and the tapestry of probabilities within those universes.

Beyond that, are Seven, Eight, Nine and Ten... And, it might surprise you to know that in some theories, there can be 11 or even 21 possible Dimensions. What does that look like? A Tapestry, of Tapestries, of Tapestries..... a multi-dimensional weave of time and space itself, of all that might be and all that can be.

Does your head hurt yet?

As for how this works for the Side-Step.... well, that's another post.

----------------
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[Black Aeronaut]

M Fnord wrote:

---

The most we kept for ourselves was a set of the first-class china for dinner guests. I really wanted the ship’s pennant, but there was no time and no good way to do that without anybody noticing. Ah well.

Personally...  *grins his lunatic grin*  I would have gone for broke and bagged the whole damn ship as she went under.  And then kept it for myself... unless, of course, I could find a buyer that would give the girl all the love and respect she was due.

[M Fnord]

? Pyramid (N&W Acquisitions)
C'mon man, seriously, the ship was breaking in half at the surface. Once she hit about 20 degrees off horizontal the hull was not going to hold together. Trying to bag an intact Titanic once the iceberg hits is a total non-starter.

Now. I have put some thought into bagging the ship, whole and intact, but the starter conditions are really tricky to locate and would probably mean a) wandering into the echo bands, b) setting off what the distinguished competition calls "severe parachronic disruption" not to mention "significant diplomatic incident upon the inevitable discovery" and c) a lot of pre-production work, as much or more than the first Titanic caper. It can be done but it's like moon landing tough.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Dartz]

once the iceberg hits is a total non-starter.

I'd disagree. With the technologies available to us, Titanic is salvageable up to the point that water begins to wash over the foredeck. Up to that point, the flooding is constrained solely to what waters can flow through the damage in the hull. Beyond that point, every single opening in the ship's upper parts allows her to rapidly flood. And we do have that containment foam from Zion Beta.

All we need is a ship large enough to hold the passengers, a few million period pounds, and Mr. Bruce Ismay's signature on a bill of sale. I would propose that we buy the Titanic from him after she strike the iceberg, after it is determined by the crew that her sinking is a certainty. This leaves us approximately an hour and a half window to 'negotiate' - and some salvage company willing to buy a sinking ship will seem like a Godsend for Ismay so he'll probably fold quick enough - Leaving us with time to sufficiently seal the damage in Titanic's hull to save her. We would need to seal at least two compartments to be certain, but with divers, expanding foam mats that will be driven into the hull fractures by water pressure and flow, and proper pumping equipment we can bring aboard, it should definitely be possible to keep her afloat.

Once her bow's under water however, she's terminal.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[robkelk]

once the iceberg hits is a total non-starter.

I'd disagree. With the technologies available to us, Titanic is salvageable up to the point that water begins to wash over the foredeck. Up to that point, the flooding is constrained solely to what waters can flow through the damage in the hull. Beyond that point, every single opening in the ship's upper parts allows her to rapidly flood. And we do have that containment foam from Zion Beta.

All we need is a ship large enough to hold the passengers, a few million period pounds, and Mr. Bruce Ismay's signature on a bill of sale. I would propose that we buy the Titanic from him after she strike the iceberg, after it is determined by the crew that her sinking is a certainty. This leaves us approximately an hour and a half window to 'negotiate' - and some salvage company willing to buy a sinking ship will seem like a Godsend for Ismay so he'll probably fold quick enough - Leaving us with time to sufficiently seal the damage in Titanic's hull to save her. We would need to seal at least two compartments to be certain, but with divers, expanding foam mats that will be driven into the hull fractures by water pressure and flow, and proper pumping equipment we can bring aboard, it should definitely be possible to keep her afloat.

Once her bow's under water however, she's terminal.

And where are we going to get "a few million period pounds"? You know what Anderson thinks of counterfeiting - or anything else that could affect his bottom line.
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[Dartz]

Gold. Silver. A decent printing press and some historical examples to work off of? Dollars or Pounds, either would easy enough to replicate on a 21st century printing press.

You want an expensive and iconic ship, you've got to pay an expensive and iconic price. It's just the price is much less expensive and iconic in 1912 money.
________________________________
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?

[M Fnord]

How It All Began
Cornell University14 February 2002

Test log seventeen: I’ve filled six notebooks now with math and notes that I only dimly remember writing in the first place. It’s all workable... I think. It doesn’t resemble the sort of incoherent gibberish that I’d expect if I sleep-wrote it, or if I had been writing while stoned. The math is absurdly high-level, almost to the point of needing new notation, but it fits together.

Research indicates that others around the world have been making similar discoveries in a similar dissociative state, something I find reassuring and troubling at the same time. Reassuring because I’m not the only one, troubling because at least one of these people has taken to riding a zeppelin of his own design around and calling himself “Baron Zorbo.” I fear that whatever force is driving my math might also drive more unusual instincts, but I suppose I can deal with that another day.

Professor Newman has seen a carefully-selected sample of the equations backing today’s experiment and was impressed enough that he wanted to bring the Dean in. I’ve fended him off so far, but it won’t hold up forever. Publish or perish might be the mantra but damn everything I want positive experimental proof of the multiworld continuum before letting it get out...

~***~

Deidre Griest carefully maneuvered the last piece of wire into her hand-crafted circuit board and soldered it into place. The board was the last part of an array of junked televisions and computer parts making up what she called the Bridge. Assuming the math was right and she wasn’t crazy the Bridge, once powered up, would create a pinhole between her universe and another one, allowing her to see what was on the other side. Of course, if she was crazy then it’d probably explode and there’d be a hell of a mess to explain to the Provost.

She waited for the last few connections to cool down, double-checking to make sure against loose wires or anything physically wrong with the Bridge. Assured that everything was where it was supposed to be, Deidre plugged the Bridge into a throwaway laptop. The machine booted up agreeably enough, the custom drivers recognizing the Bridge without complaint.

“Right,” she said for the benefit of her test log. “Mark I Bridge test number one. The device is powered on–” flip of a switch, check the meters “–and currently on standby. Control systems are responsive. No faults detected in the assembly.” She let out a quick breath. “Right then. Activating system–” Deidre punched the go command into the laptop “–and let’s see–”

“If this thing works,” said a voice very much like Deidre’s but not quite identical. Deidre blinked hand and looked at the cathode-ray tube that served as the Bridge’s main viewport. In the middle of the screen was a crisp and clear image of a woman a few years younger with punked out hair and clothing but also the same eyes and the unmistakable Griest nose. Deidre tapped the screen twice, just to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating, and waved tentatively.

The the younger Deidre looked back, confused, then broke out a huge grin. “Hey, it worked!” she said. “Hi, other me!”

~***~

Ithaca, New York20 April 2003

Noah Anderson adjusted his tie irritably. By rights he should’ve been working on the Boskone post-mortem, calling Scaled about his electric aircraft proposal and any number of things a professional serious person in the realms of business and fandom should be doing instead of standing outside a warehouse in upstate New York waiting for a lunatic. But his fandom contacts told him something was up in a very big way, and Noah trusted his contacts. More to the point, Noah trusted his instincts. Those instincts told him that whatever was going on inside that warehouse was worth checking up on, no matter how the wait in the mid-spring morning chill wore on his patience.

As he shifted around and grumbled, a rental sedan pulled up to the warehouse and stopped beside him. A tall black woman in jeans and a windbreaker got out and gave Noah a puzzled look. “Noah?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

“Tanith?” Noah replied. Tanith Curtis was a name in the Chicago fan circles, and the two had a professional relationship going back a decade. “I could ask you the same thing.” Very little could get Tanith out of her city, making her appearance in Ithaca all the more startling.

“I got an invitation to see something ‘world shaking.’” Tanith shrugged. “It was delivered by people I trust, so I figured what the hell, right? I’m guessing you were invited too?”

“Something like that, all delivered by ninja in the night, very hush-hush secret stuff. I probably shouldn’t have come but... I got curious. I have no idea what it means.”

“Well then I can help you with that,” a new voice interrupted. Noah and Tanith turned to see a woman in a labcoat and black gloves standing in the doorway. The newcomer smiled slightly. “Ms. Curtis, Mr. Anderson. I’m Deidre Griest. We’ve never met in person before, but we’ve had some online correspondence, if you remember?”

Tanith cocked her head in thought. “Griest,” she said absently. “Oh, right, you did some programming bits for A-Cen a couple years ago. I thought you left fandom.”

Deidre shrugged. “I wasn’t going to lose track completely but academia and, er, medical issues took over my life for a bit, and then it was back to academia where, well. That’s what you’ve come to see.”

“Some sort of new invention?” Noah said dryly. “Let me guess, you’ve built a spaceship in your garage.”

“Invention, yes. Spaceship... not exactly. Please, come in.”

~***~

The interior of the warehouse was divided up into a dozen different offices and makeshift workbenches, in the center of the floor a clear spot was carefully marked out with chain link fencing. A group of students in the traditional garb of the college student worked on unidentifiable pieces of technology around them. “I know it doesn’t look like much,” Deidre remarked, “but what you see here is the biggest quantum leap in human affairs since the development of agriculture. We’re not on the bleeding edge of science so much as we’ve taken a running leap into the abyss and are getting a good look at things man wasn’t meant to know.”

“That’s very nice hyperbole,” Tanith said, eyebrows raised. “But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

“That’s a little tricky to explain,” Deidre hedged.

“Please try, Ms. Griest,” Noah said, irked. “I’d rather not have been dragged out here for fancy statements and bullshit.”

“Alright, fine. You’ve seen the reports of the people everybody seems to be calling the Inspired, right? Sudden bursts of genius coming up with inventions or theorems that break all the known rules?”

“I’ve seen them,” Tanith said cautiously. “I’ve also seen that most of these so-called Inspired aren’t the most stable people in the world.” The implication hung thick and greasy in the air. Deidre shrugged.

“Stable is in the eye of the beholder,” she said. “Granted the guy who puts on a cape and calls himself a supervillian isn’t the model of mental health, but I doubt his inspiration made him that way. In any case, what we’re working on started out as an investigation on where inspiration comes from and turned into something much, much more.”

Noah leaned in a little, intrigued despite his sinking fears that yes, he had been dragged out to Ithaca to listen to a madwoman. “And that is?” he asked.

A bell tolled inside the warehouse. “Perfect timing,” Deidre said. “Easier to show you than to explain.” As she said it, a flash of swirling light came from the fenced-off portion of the floor, and all of a sudden the space was occupied by a beat-up panel van, standing on clawed feet instead of wheels. Tanith and Noah stared as the driver’s door opened and a stocky, bearded man in flannel climbed out with a pet carrier in one hand.

“Hey, boss lady!” The man lifted the carrier high. “Got you a prezzie!”

~***~

It was the size of a turkey and covered in short dun feathers. It looked up at the humans surrounding it with a vaguely confused expression, then scratched its sinuous neck with a powerful, clawed hind leg.

“It’s,” Noah gaped, stared, gaped a little more and started again. “It’s a velociraptor.”

The stocky guy from the van – introduced as Sam Wildman, “part of the research and acquisitions department” – shook his head. “Nah,” he said, pointing at the dinosaur’s hind leg. “The sickle claw’s wrong, and this looks to be an adult. It’s a dromaeosaur of some kind, but I don’t know which. Haven’t really seen a lot with the skin on.”

“Did you get pictures?” Deidre demanded. Wildman grinned.

“Did I get pictures? Boss, I got me some amazing pictures! About a mile from insertion there was an entire herd of hadrosaurs and some ceratopsians sharing a meadow, maybe a hundred animals all told just grazing on the ground cover. Incredible stuff. Bitey here was sniffing at the car when I got back, managed to lure him in with a bit of sausage.”

“Time travel.” Noah said, giving Deidre a hard look. “You’ve invented time travel, haven’t you?”

Deidre shook her head. “Nope, time travel’s… well, it’s not completely impossible if I understand the math, but it’s a great deal more, hm. Well. In any case, this isn’t time travel.”

Noah scowled. “Then explain that!” he snapped, gesturing at Bitey.

“This isn’t traveling backwards and forwards through time, Mr. Anderson,” Deidre said. “We’re moving across it. Sidestepping to alternate realities.”

“So you’re not interfering with Earth’s history...”

“Nah,” Wildman said laconically. “We’re playing tourist on a counterpart Earth that for whatever reason is still in the age of the dinosaurs. And it doesn’t stop there. We’ve gotten a look at, oh, a couple dozen different worlds so far.”

“What are they like?” Tanith asked.

“A few a like dinoworld, uninhabited by sapient life but have megafauna,” Deidre replied. “One’s a hellworld like Venus, really scary. Most of the ones we’ve seen so far have radically different histories, like Rome never fell or Song China expanded into India or the Mongols crossed the Pacific to California, stuff like that. We’re staying away from the inhabited places for now, but they’re next on the list.”

“Interesting,” Noah said diffidently. “But dinosaurs and alternate history aside, I’m not sure this qualifies as a quantum leap on the level of agriculture.” Wildman snorted and gave Deidre an amused look.

“You used the agriculture line?”

“Just because it happens to be true,” she said loftily. Locking eyes with Noah, she continued. “The technology is still in early stages, Mr. Anderson. But soon we’ll be able to seek out worlds not only as advanced as ours, but worlds more advanced. We’ll be able to bring art, culture, science and technology back that will enrich our world a thousandfold.”

“Such as?” Noah asked.

Deidre shrugged off her labcoat, causing Noah and Tanith to take an involuntary step back. What they’d thought was a glove of some kind on her right hand was actually a layer of artificial material covering her arm all the way to the shoulder. “My sophomore year at Cornell,” she said, “some drunken asshole of a fratboy clipped me going about sixty-five while I was on my motorcycle. My arm was wrecked, almost to the point where the doctors wanted to remove it. I built a prosthetic, but that only gave me fifty percent functionality and it lasted maybe two hours unless I had a wall socket to plug in on.

“My first real test of the dimensional technology, I accidentally contacted an alternate version of myself from a high-tech reality who’d had something similar happen to her. She built herself a completely new cybernetic arm, and she sent me the plans to do the same thing. Once I figured out how to send objects through she sent me the tools I needed to do the job properly.

“That is the potential, Mr. Anderson. We have unlimited access to everything. We can bring it home and use it to make the world a better place. And that’s where you both come in. We’re just about at the edge of what we can accomplish on our own; if we’re going to do this right, we need operating capital, political influence and someone who can keep track of big organizations.” Deidre pointed at Noah. “You have the money to upgrade our facilities, and the pull to get a fair hearing from the world when we’re ready to go public.” She pointed at Tanith. “You’ve got the organizational skills and experience to make a large group work, and you’ve got a conscience. We can’t simply hoard all this for our own enrichment, it has to be shared for the greatest possible common good.” Deidre spread her hands. “That’s the pitch. The biggest thing in recorded history, and if you want in on the ground floor now’s the time to say it. What’ll it be?”
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Bob Schroeck]

I'm enjoying everything I'm seeing in this thread, even the retreads.

Typo in the newest material: "The the younger Deidre looked back"
-- Bob
---------
Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

[Cobalt Greywalker]

New piece of fic! Yay!!

---

Nothing made Colin feel more human than a good hot soak. Three days in the forest before he could sidestep out safely, bloody hidden gorge. Even cheating like he did it still took too bloody long. The arthritis was starting to really kick in. Still, it had let him do most of the contact reports before he arrived back. That had let him clear out-processing in a couple of hours. Now all he needed was a decent meal and some sleep.

Which was when his omnitool started bleeping. Colin groaned and popped up the call window, then groaned harder at who it was and killed visual.

“Womack.” He answered, with his best I’m-too-tired-to-deal-with-this growl. “I just got myself back from the transfer port, it’s quarter past oh fuck in the morning, and I’m just about to eat. No, I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Hey Green.” Womack said cheerfully, the Helljumper Instructor not caring in the least at Colin’s tone due to being in a timezone with a reasonable hour. “Glad to hear you’re all right. They want you at the Tower ASAP, so eat quick.”

“I’ll eat as fast as I bloody well like, I’m retired. I’m not on their time anymore.”

“The Board reactivated you, you’ll get the notice any second now.” Colin could practical feel the grin on Womack’s face. “I always knew you’d go places, didn’t I tell you?

“I went lots of places, and your man-crush is getting freaky already. Seriously, the Board? Get real. When I’ve made up my mind you’ll be the first to know. Later.” Colin hung up and hit privacy mode. What he felt like was some bacon sarnies; that he had left in the fridge as it would keep, and he had picked up some bread on the way back. He wanted to get something in his middle so he could go to bed.

Which is when the doorbell rang. Colin slumped, then flicked open the security feed from the porch. Why the hell was there a skybike courier at his door this early? Prepping his omnitool for emergency KB and blade deployment, and streaming the security feeds to the offsite server he made his reluctant way to the door.

The courier was disgustingly cheerful for the so-late-it’s-too-early as Colin opened it, and remained that way as he verified Colin’s ID, address, signature, fingerprints, and eye scan before handing over the heavy document envelop, saying good bye, and taking off quickly but quietly on the skycycle’s repulsors.

~ At least he was considerate of the neighbours. ~ Colin mused, closing the door.

He dropped the envelope on the scanner by the door (too many practical jokers had taken him for an easy mark during his time in SAR and the early days of Survey), then went to cook his food. A regrettably short time later he finished the sandwiches (he’d been hungry), and checked the status on the scan.

It was clean. Everything was verified, even the RFID chip on the Next Hour delivery sticker.

Colin’s right arm ached again, and his blood ran cold. Womack may have been telling the truth, and if he was… The only way for things to get fucked up this quickly was when the REMFs made a decision and lit suns under people’s asses.

Slowly, he broke the seal and poured out the contents. On high quality Mobius headed paper was his official reactivation notice, the full details in the stapled together normal sheets it encapsulated. On heavier than normal paper was an official waiver for his health problems, issued by the United Nations Transworld Oversight Authority’s Medical Department. There was a new ID card, a warrant allowing him concealed carry, and an unmarked travel token.

He read the details; reinstated for up to five years at his previous rank of Scout Captain under clause 17 section 2 sub-section 3 of the Transworld Compact, all his clearances restored and upped a rank across the board. That was interesting, and explained the concealed carry permit. Salary and pension also upped to the next band, health coverage restored, re-signing bonus, possibility of promotions… Report to Mobius Group HQ as soon as possible, like yesterday, we really mean it; just in prettier language.

Colin swore to himself and went upstairs to get dressed. The Tower WOULD have the delivery notice by now.