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Ship of Fools: A Taylor Varga Omake (Complete)

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Ship of Fools: A Taylor Varga Omake (Complete) Demons and Angels Seven Days to Skitter
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Neruz said:
I think the author actually means second-last significant digit, as the first significant digit is the first non-zero number from left to right, and implies a very large degree of error. Ex: 00076059034000, first significant digit is 7, last significant digit is 4. Accuracy to the first significant digit would be 0007, accuracy to the last would be 000760534 (and something to indicate 10^3 magnitude.)
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Or on the other side of the decimal point. Such as Earth Bet's quantum Signature was 40311.000011109. But they thought they only had to go to just one-hundred millionth place and you need at least to the billionth to even be where things are different based on decisions. And to be totally exact without ROB tweaking things out of site, you have to go to several million digits deep or something.
 
Trufla said:
Huh. Given the fact that they could miss the Kaiju broadcasts just by discussing things, I take it they weren't able to salvage the runabout's computer core for their ship? Otherwise, it certainly should have been able to continue monitoring the communications signals while the crew was distracted and throw up an alert for the anomaly. (Given the sheer level of sudden media traffic that day, it would definitely have pinged even the most cursory monitoring program Miles could've input.)
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As far as I can tell, this isn't the day of Kaiju's introduction, it's just reruns. Vectura and Leet are already more or less parts of the Family by the first chapters in this series, and they're just catching the Kaiju broadcast by then.

Also, I doubt they waited that long before going to Earth after arriving (assuming that the weird jump now didn't make them time travel).
 
Troy Guffey said:
Star Trek transporters kill everyone they "transport". Then place a copy where the original wanted to go.
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I always thought of Star Trek transporters as some sort of subspace phenomenon that broke down all matter at a target point and reassembled it at the destination. Because anything else doesn't make sense.

A scanner powerful enough to read quantum states at a distance of hundreds of miles and powerful enough to vaporize a person but delicate enough to do it in a way that doesn't leave a crater seems a little farfetched.

More likely is that the tech behind both transporters and replicators use some sort of subspace magic to basically break something down into chunks small enough to travel like the subspace communications do and then reconstitute into the object again. Since the transporters have to do this at a distance and with higher precision it would be a bit bulkier than a replicator that just moved material (protein, fat, salts, metals etc.) from storage into roughly the right spot.

This to me make more sense.
 
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Lycanthromancer said:
I can't imagine the signal would be terribly coherent and viable, even to Star Tech (heh). Most modern communication satellites aren't designed for interstellar communications, and interference from the sun would most definitely scramble the hell out of it.
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Compared to today's Earth, the sun is actually fairly dim in the bands used for communication (which is why we use said bands), so even "local" UHF and VHF can be detected and cleaned up a fair distance out; I expect the Enterprise would have no problem with the signals from the 1938 Olympics, for instance, if it were in the right spot.

But yes, Satellite communications use tight band transmissions that leak less signal, and The Ship of Fools is no Enterprise. However, unless the Sun was directly in the path of the transmission, it likely would not be that hard to filter out as a source of interference.
 
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It's funny, I know "Ship of Fools" as the name of a song from the soundtrack of Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle which is an anime about a bunch of dimensionally displaced people going on a universe hopping journey collecting McGuffins trying to save the princess and get home.
 
My feelings about Star Trek transporter tech is that it is verified in-universe as not causing any existential dismay. There could be a number of reasons why this is so...

1) It's possible the subspace chicanery allows you to take apart a person and shunt their matter and energy through subspace for reassembly elsewhere. In this case, all of the screw ups in transporters from the series are a result of mistakes in the supporting technology and/or error correction methods.
2) In the Star Trek universe, your pattern includes everything you are, including your soul, so to speak. You don't need matter as long as you don't corrupt the pattern. Problems with things like de-aging happen because the system is designed to preserve your soul and memories first, with physical characteristics second.
3) Souls in the Star Trek universe automatically flow to your physical form when reassembled. Beings like the Sargon use advanced tech to store those essences in different format.
4) A wizard did it.
 
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Neruz said:
Even in the most benign interpretation, the Transporter kills you by disassembling you on an atomic level, beams those atoms to the target location (probably converting them into energy and back in the process) and then reassembles you there. By any measurement, you are dead while mid-transport and just get resurrected once the transport is finished.
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There was a Next Gen episode with Barkley that covered that, actually.
Showed that people are aware in the beam, it's just the process is so fast (generally) it's not noticed. It was one of the episodes O'Brien had a decent part in.
 
I did mean first significant digit, by the way. I think folks are making some assumptions about "quantum signatures," which is basically technobabble bullshit sci-fi writers use to assume you can assign a unique identifier to a specific reality in an infinite set. Here's the practical problem with that. If there truly are an infinite number of realities, or at least a high-enough number that we would consider it to be effectively infinite, then there is no such thing as an identifying number that is long enough such that only one universe will match it.

One possible alternative is that, if, and only if, different realities maintain some type of fixed "distance" from each other in a dimensional sense, then a long-enough identifier combined with some type of directional indicator and offset could be used to approximate a unique identifier, but that would be entirely relative to a starting point.

Think about it this way. If I wanted to identify a specific point in space in time on Earth, I could specify longitude and latitude down to a high degree of precision. I would then need to add altitude...which commonly is based upon sea level and is slightly arbitrary (but more than sufficient for most practical purposes for humans). If I wanted to be more specific, I could specify an exact distance from the geographic center of the Earth. For time, I could use a date and time down to the nanosecond...which is in itself relative to our perception of the flow of time on Earth and may not be quite so useful to somebody, say, traveling at a sizable fraction of the speed of light. Now, if I wanted to know a specific position in time on Earth relative to, say, the surface of the star Betelgeuse, the motions of the stars and planets make this much, much more complicated. If I wanted to define an absolute point in the universe as a reference (assuming such a thing is even possible and not just an artifact of limited human perception), then I would also need to take into account the relative movement and rotation of the galaxy itself.

So, what this means is that in my story, being able to ID a specific universe is a plot convenience. I obviously am not really a time or dimension traveler, other than in the mundane sense of the four that we are all moving through at a standard rate. Suffice it to say that the crew aren't quite good enough to really nail it down, but the lizards are a step above, because smug provides a significant advantage in such things.
 
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Derek M said:
I did mean first significant digit, by the way. I think folks are making some assumptions about "quantum signatures," which is basically technobabble bullshit sci-fi writers use to assume you can assign a unique identifier to a specific reality in an infinite set. Here's the practical problem with that. If there truly are an infinite number of realities, or at least a high-enough number that we would consider it to be effectively infinite, then there is no such thing as an identifying number that is long enough such that only one universe will match it.

One possible alternative is that, if, and only if, different realities maintain some type of fixed "distance" from each other in a dimensional sense, then a long-enough identifier combined with some type of directional indicator and offset could be used to approximate a unique identifier, but that would be entirely relative to a starting point.

Think about it this way. If I wanted to identify a specific point in space in time on Earth, I could specify longitude and latitude down to a high degree of precision. I would then need to add altitude...which commonly is based upon sea level and is slightly arbitrary (but more than sufficient for most practical purposes for humans). If I wanted to be more specific, I could specify an exact distance from the geographic center of the Earth. For time, I could use a date and time down to the nanosecond...which is in itself relative to our perception of the flow of time on Earth and may not be quite so useful to somebody, say, traveling at a sizable fraction of the speed of light. Now, if I wanted to know a specific position in time on Earth relative to, say, the surface of the star Betelgeuse, the motions of the stars and planets make this much, much more complicated. If I wanted to define an absolute point in the universe as a reference (assuming such a thing is even possible and not just an artifact of limited human perception), then I would also need to take into account the relative movement and rotation of the galaxy itself.

So, what this means is that in my story, being able to ID a specific universe is a plot convenience. I obviously am not really a time or dimension traveler, other than in the mundane sense of the four that we are all moving through at a standard rate. Suffice it to say that the crew aren't quite good enough to really nail it down, but the lizards are a step above, because smug provides a significant advantage in such things.
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Actually, if you are sufficiently precise, you can functionally get back to your own universe if not actually. 1st you set the general area of the multiverse, like the MCU, DCAU and so on. In this case, the Wormverse. After that you the other digit would specify other features, in this case most notably the Family.
Now you are saying that the nature of the multiverse means that there would be infinite number of such universes, but past a certain point it doesn't matter. See the universe is not just infinitely large, it is also infinitely dense. If I take a step forward, there's a split where I move my left or right leg. However you get an infinite number of universes just based on moving the leg forward. In one I move it with 10 of force, another 11N, 10.01N, 10.000001N, 10.0030205N and so on. But while these will be different universes, in most cases 0.1N of force won't make any difference.
What this works out as is that these universes are effectively identical. And they are so identical that if a person travels away from Universe1, the same sequence of events would occur in Universe2. So an infinite number of Taylors would have been rescued by an infinite number of Peters into an infinite number of warhammer universes all of which are functionally identical but may have tiny differences like say Taylor's costume being a shade darker. Hence an infinite number of Ship of Fools are also travelling to Taylor's home. So while you cannot get the exact universe same, after reaching a certain depth of quantum signature, effectively there is no difference. The difference may be something tiny like you pressed 0.1N more, something larger like you ate an extra burger or something even larger like Eidolon being a girl.

Also there's a type of paradox I would like to state. Say a person is born right handed. From this point an infinite number of universes will diverge. 10 years later what will be the person's dominant hand. Being the multiverse there will be universes where he is left handed, ambidextrous or somehow gets more hands or tentacles. But these will require more contrived circumstances. Intuitively there will be a larger share of universes where he will be right handed. This is because there are more split points for his right handedness. Probability favors it so to speak.
Hence while there are an infinite number of universes where he is not right handed, he is more likely to be right handed. Thus while the multiverse is infinite, you can assign a probability percentage for a particular event to occur.

Also despite the nature of the multiverse, that is to say being infinite and having all possibilities, it is possible to not have certain possibilities, if you set conditions. For eg. if the laws of universe function as per our current understanding, they cannot be violated in any way, no aliens/gods exist to interfere, then there is no world in which a guy will spontaneously turn into a girl. This is because though my conditions I have removed the ways in which he could have turned. (Even if you do find a method, I hope you understand my point in this example)

And now I'm seeing how long I wrote and it diverged.

Also the last line got me to 1K words which was not at all my intention. I'm now going to go to the appropriate forum and post this to start an argument on the nature of the multiverse
 
Really interesting even tho Daniel, Miles and Xander are people I'd hope never to be stranded with ever. Very interesting premise.

Tho I can't wait for the geek out when U&L really get in there.
 
Trufla said:
No, the Trek 'verse in TOS flavor had a civilization that built at least one device with a neutronium hull. To wit, the "space carrot" from The Doomsday Device. Though, I'm not sure that you can actually presume that the Trek 'verse tree of the multiverse is completely magic-free, given some of the edge civilizations that have been encountered through the years and various iterations of the series.
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The Dominion managed to somehow make a door out of the stuff as well (though the heroes by that point were more annoyed that it would take hours to days to cut through it when they were in the middle of an insurgency action). There's been a few other events as well. But, given stuff such as the future-federation's ability to modify spacial areas (see Kal Dano's borrowed timeship in Enterprise), it's safe to say they also have fractal folding. Regardless, apparently the EDM only requires Varga bullshit to make. Somehow it remains stable without Varga bullshit due to the way its made somehow.
 
Magic is the ability to persuade the Multiverse to look the other way for a while. Strong magic is the ability to tell it to look the other way very persuasively, and keep it distracted so it doesn't notice.

Demon magic at the level of the Varga is the ability to order it to not only look the other way, but forget that things were ever different.

And make it stick :)

Varga created matter, even if the rules of the reality strand in question would normally disallow it, works as designed. Even something as ridiculous as EDM. So moving it around isn't that much problem, it's not going to spontaneously go stale or anything.

Much the same is the case of the fractal dimensional techniques. What they create is stable, unless either designed to be unstable, or deliberately dismantled. They're essentially completely self-contained knots of spacetime that just are.

On another note, one can assume fairly plausibly that if you manage to end up in a universe where the physical constants are sufficiently different that most of your technology won't work, you don't really care, since they'll by definition be different enough that you won't work. If you've modified physical rules enough to make electricity not flow right, normal biological life is screwed...

Unless you have The Amy on your side, of course :D
 
I see a problem, if they knew that the quantum signature is different why would they even think that that might be Taylor's universe, they'd know right away that it wasn't and wouldn't run into Varga...

Instead why not make them think that the signature is the same, but once they see they are wrong have them develop sensors with a better resolution that can differentiate between Taylor Varga and SOF Taylor
 
SirTinal said:
I see a problem, if they knew that the quantum signature is different why would they even think that that might be Taylor's universe, they'd know right away that it wasn't and wouldn't run into Varga...

Instead why not make them think that the signature is the same, but once they see they are wrong have them develop sensors with a better resolution that can differentiate between Taylor Varga and SOF Taylor
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You're assuming full understanding of how this all works on their part, rather than half-memories from Ancient ascended knowledge and whatever Starfleet engineers not specializing in wormholes and dimensional physics would know. Miles knows a ton of stuff about subspace and warp fields. He knows general science background information on dimensions and such, but even in the show they relied on folks like Data and Dax to dredge up specialized theories on these types of incidents.
 
mp3.1415player said:
Magic is the ability to persuade the Multiverse to look the other way for a while. Strong magic is the ability to tell it to look the other way very persuasively, and keep it distracted so it doesn't notice.

Demon magic at the level of the Varga is the ability to order it to not only look the other way, but forget that things were ever different.

And make it stick :)

Varga created matter, even if the rules of the reality strand in question would normally disallow it, works as designed. Even something as ridiculous as EDM. So moving it around isn't that much problem, it's not going to spontaneously go stale or anything.

Much the same is the case of the fractal dimensional techniques. What they create is stable, unless either designed to be unstable, or deliberately dismantled. They're essentially completely self-contained knots of spacetime that just are.

On another note, one can assume fairly plausibly that if you manage to end up in a universe where the physical constants are sufficiently different that most of your technology won't work, you don't really care, since they'll by definition be different enough that you won't work. If you've modified physical rules enough to make electricity not flow right, normal biological life is screwed...

Unless you have The Amy on your side, of course :D
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Actually, there is one other kind of magic that works that way, but that set of universes is rather unusual. The powers and abilities of Solar tier Exalted pretty much say 'nope' to reality and force it to work the way the solar (or solar analog) wishes it to. Sorcery, especially in 3rd edition of Exalted, pretty much lets you write new laws of reality into effect with enough effort.
 
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SirTinal said:
I see a problem, if they knew that the quantum signature is different why would they even think that that might be Taylor's universe, they'd know right away that it wasn't and wouldn't run into Varga...

Instead why not make them think that the signature is the same, but once they see they are wrong have them develop sensors with a better resolution that can differentiate between Taylor Varga and SOF Taylor
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That sounds interesting, but I think you'd have to have some of that crazy math the Varga and Taylor develop to actually tune into the right universe, when you think of the trillions of universes that are practically vibrating at the same frequency its not that amazing that you have tv characters and book characters in the same verse.
 
mp3.1415player said:
Magic is the ability to persuade the Multiverse to look the other way for a while. Strong magic is the ability to tell it to look the other way very persuasively, and keep it distracted so it doesn't notice.

Demon magic at the level of the Varga is the ability to order it to not only look the other way, but forget that things were ever different.

And make it stick :)

Varga created matter, even if the rules of the reality strand in question would normally disallow it, works as designed. Even something as ridiculous as EDM. So moving it around isn't that much problem, it's not going to spontaneously go stale or anything.

Much the same is the case of the fractal dimensional techniques. What they create is stable, unless either designed to be unstable, or deliberately dismantled. They're essentially completely self-contained knots of spacetime that just are.

On another note, one can assume fairly plausibly that if you manage to end up in a universe where the physical constants are sufficiently different that most of your technology won't work, you don't really care, since they'll by definition be different enough that you won't work. If you've modified physical rules enough to make electricity not flow right, normal biological life is screwed...

Unless you have The Amy on your side, of course :D
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A very useful bit of clarification of the process of meta-trolling, defining new bits of reality to assist in the process of trolling. Like, the 'Good Stuff', which I still strongly suspect The Varga stumbled on by semi-accident, while beating his way through exotic thickets of math. You can make a good case that calling it 'EDM' is in fact a serious trolling exercise on people who feel that reality has to make consistent sense.

...

If you are walking the worlds (or wormhole-ing, hopping, dreaming...) then living things seem to be more resistant to weird bits of physical law variation. This is why biotech is popular for its portability. Cyborg implants for where biotech won't do - but, make sure you don't rely on them.

Worlds where life can't work, by definition, don't tend to get a lot of visitors, bar those armed with an Amy, or those who engineer non-living explorers to do the job - best avoided as a holiday destination. :)

I did see the suggestion that advanced alchemy might have portability advantages - but, that might fall under the magic/tech boundary heading.


Shadowcub said:
That sounds interesting, but I think you'd have to have some of that crazy math the Varga and Taylor develop to actually tune into the right universe, when you think of the trillions of universes that are practically vibrating at the same frequency its not that amazing that you have tv characters and book characters in the same verse.
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The odds are that Saurial will look at the bits of Ancient math which are the basis of how the SoF crew are identifying universes. Then, explain that while it is a good try, maybe a bit better consideration of dimensions 15 to 23 would produce more useful results - might help get rid of the epicycles...
 
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Another thing to consider is that federation tech s already effectively mass-produced tinkertech. Except it's the tinkertech your tinker wishes it could be. Look down, now up again--your technology is now portable with a fusion reactor the size of your head. What's that? A matter-rearranger with the ability to make anything you desire. The replicator is now a cloning machine with the ability to genetically modify to your hearts content. What's that? The device has taken you on a magical adventure to kiss the surface of the sun and let you play among the prominences! Look up, your omni-weapons have precisely been modified to tickle the stellar magnetosphere to trigger the most perfect coronal mass ejection ever seen! What now? See it again, by exploiting your real-space FTL drive to take advantage of the warped space-time around your stellar body to go FTL even inside your warped space-bubble to travel back in time and watch it again! *Infinite Improbability Reptile Stares Motherfuckingly* I'm in a modified space-time region inside a wormhole. *Old spice whistle*

Seriously, technically tinker-tech isn't even needed. Because they ARE the tinkers. Vectura is probably just going to create novel applications of what the Federation tech-base already has. Alongside Dragon (FTL COMPUTING! *every dog on the planet whines from the squee*), and Armsmaster, and all the rest. Because federation tech is just... better than tinkertech. They just don't leverage it properly.
 
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