Some interesting books…

 Cordelia’s Honor by Lois McMasters Bujold is two books…Shards of Honor and Barrayar. Its set in the Miles Vorkosigan space opera universe. A number of her MV books I’ve reread three times. One of her books made me laugh out loud and cry in the same book.

St. Valentine’s Night by Father Andrew Greeley is one of his romance novels about love and the Irish in Chicago. Its not neccessarily the most memorable. Greeley taught me a lot about love and humanity.

Wolftime by Lars Walker is delightfully demented as it describes the human condition. Good and evil warring with the background of comedy. Odin has come to post-Lutheran Minnesota to face off against a dissapointed English lit professor who cannot lie. Very funny.

Blood and Judgement also by Walker is stranger, probably less well done, and much harder to understand with grimmer topics.

Infectress by Tom Cool, Commander in the USN…which makes him ‘Commander Cool’! A bioterrorist in the near future and a man’s loyal AI duel over the fate of the man. Cool has an interesting bit where he has two halves of the AI arguing with each other as to whether the spiritual realm exists. He also posits an interesting reason for pain…after the AI is first turned on, its a total sophist…err, solipsist. Its only after being tortured for some time that it admits reality exists outside of itself. A ‘cool’ read.

The Moon is Always Full by David Hunter is a set of short, true, Southern cop stories. Yes, the South is sometimes violent and crazy. But while it can be depressing in too large a dose, a small bit can be quite amusing.

Vigilant by James Alan Gardner. He also wrote ‘Expendable’. He has some seriously wild ideas, and some deep thought about forgiveness. In his universe, there is no interstellar war because the godlike League forbids it. If you intend to, or have murdered by act or ommission, knowingly, you die as soon as you hit interstellar space…no exceptions. But you can send someone off to likely death. And it helps the locals back home to know that the people sent off to die are ugly. So if you’re born with a facial birthmark, you don’t get the easy surgical repair. Instead, you get drafted into the Expendables as they call them selves. He’s very good.

Count Scar by Robert A. Bouchard is a medieval fantasy about an old soldier given a castle for his retirement and he’s put in the midst of a religious war. The opposing side has the doctrine of Perfected aka once God accepts you, you don’t sin any more. For those of you, who’ve met a Christian for longer than ten minutes, you’re no doubt laughing by now. One benefit of this doctrine is that it breeds arrogance, and arrogance makes for more powerful magicians.

Its an unexpected book in a lot of ways.

 Jannissaries by Jerry Pournelle has a group of American mercs given a ride to an alien planet populated with different groups of humans so they can grow drugs for the aliens. Its a conquer the locals, scheme against the aliens military SF with a lot of drawings in it as well. I’ve read it a number of times. Its one of the military SF that ends with a large battle which gets drawn out on a map. This is a common thing in a number of military SF.

Cradle of Saturn by James P. Hogan offers a startlingly different take on human history and the formation of the solar system. Its also a blistering slam against the Bishops of Big Science, and thats the first half. The second half is the predicted disaster.

All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot is not the first book in the series. They are the tales of a Yorkshire vet working in the 40’s and 50’s. In one book, he discusses the first time he used pennicillin. They are terrifically funny as he narrates the various hardships like sticking one hand up a cow’s butt while laying on slick stone at midnight without a shirt on in freezing weather with good humor.

A critique of the replacement theory of time travel

The replacement theory of time travel was developed by Mark Joseph Young to sort out various anomalies appearing in time travel stories. It is described in detail on his website Temporal Anomalies in Popular Time Travel Movies and illustrated by logical reconstructions of many complicated movie plots. The author recently had a lively email exchange with Mr. Young on the subject of time travel. On his suggestion this critique is posted here for comment and discussion. The article is self-contained, but the reader will benefit (and have fun) from reading Discussing Time Travel Theory section on the Temporal Anomalies website. The site also contains some previous discussion between Mr. Young and the author concerning time travel and the replacement theory (see A Critique of the Spreadsheet Theory).

Replacement theory

The gist of the theory is that if the past is changed by a time traveler from an original timeline, causes of changes must be replaced within the resulting new timeline. In particular, there has to be a person in this new timeline, who travels into the past and makes the changes that created it. Every time trip into the past, say from 2030 to 2000, terminates the original timeline at 2030 and rewinds the history back to 2000. The traveler then has until 2030 to re-justify his appearence in 2000 within the new timeline, e.g. convince his younger self to repeat the trip in 2030.

Otherwise, time snaps back to 2000 again to avoid a causality violation. Snap-backs are the main enforcement mechanism in the replacement theory and they are instrumental to its claim that a time traveler impacts his own life. Mr. Young sees this last point as a distinctive feature of true time travel as opposed to parallel dimension jumps. I will take up both ideas here and express my reservations about them. At the end, I will outline some approaches to modifying the theory.

By his own bootstraps

To get a feel for the replacement theory let us briefly illustrate how it deals with the classical time travel paradoxes. In cases with a single time trip to the past there are two basic types of them, often called bootstrap and grandfather paradoxes.

In a typical bootstrap paradox a traveler (Oldie) gives his younger self (Newbie) a book describing construction of time machines. Newbie reads the book, builds a time machine and goes back in time to hand over the book to himself. Where did the book come from? This is not a logical contradiction, but there is a mystery of that self-existing book with all its knowledge, which is forever trapped in a time loop.

The replacement theory is at its best in handling such bootstrap scenarios. In our example, it postulates existence of an original timeline, where Newbie invented time travel without Oldie’s help and wrote a book about it. Intending to save himself the trouble he travels to the past as Oldie and hands over the book. The original timeline is aborted as soon as he arrives at the past and time restarts from that point. In the new timeline, Oldie instructs Newbie to close the loop by returning the book to himself, and goes back to the future to live the rest of his life. This is the bootstrap timeline we started with. The genuine cause in the original is replaced by circular causality in the final timeline.

The entire process, called N-jump, can be pictured as a zig-zag of the original timeline terminating in 2030, snapping back to 2000, and continuing undisturbed into the future. Most of the reconstructions on the Temporal Anomalies website feature an iterated version of N-jump, where the first Newbie fails to close the loop, but after several intermidiate snap-backs one of his successors does.

Killing yourself the hard way

But suppose Newbie disregards good advice, throws out the book and turns his mind away from time machines. Or perhaps, Oldie discourages him from pursuing them. Then time is forced to snap back again from 2030 to 2000, the original timeline is replayed with invention of time machines, trip to the past, snap-back, new timeline with no time machines, snap-back, etc. This is replacement theory’s infinity loop that traps time forever between 2000 and 2030.

This is also a variation of the grandfather paradox. Classically, a time traveler goes back to kill his grandfather and prevent his birth, but we can do just as well with him killing himself. This is a true contradiction since he can kill himself if and only if he does not kill himself. To get what happens under the replacement theory simply replace ‘build a time machine’ with ‘kill yourself’ in the above example.

In fact, all grandfather paradoxes result in infinity loops and trapped time. Although the contradiction is removed, perpetual snap-backs do not give an appealing resolution. If time travel functioned according to the replacement theory it would likely trip up our universe soon after being discovered. If original inventors experiment with sending an ice cube one minute into the past and see it appear one minute prior to scheduled sending, they may well decide to see what happens if they do not send it after all. The result will be an entire universe forever trapped in a one minute infinity loop.

Time also gets trapped in more general situations, where instead of endless repetition there is endless production of new timelines, all aborted. These are called sawtooth snaps. In fact, iterated N-jumps ending in bootstrap timelines are the only scenarios having a satisfactory resolution. They are also the ones most commonly encountered in time travel movies and literature. But there are serious logical issues with the entire mechanism of snap-backs, which we discuss next.

Dead timeline walking

Time always moves from the past to point A and beyond to point B; at point B, when Traveler leaves time and heads to point A, time ends; but Traveler cannot arrive at point A, because he could not have been there in the original time line… The instant Traveler reaches point A, he destroys point A, replacing it with point C… Time will now continue to point D.

In this passage point A is year 2000 in the original timeline, point B is its year 2030, points C and D are counterparts of A and B in the new timeline. A time jump at B triggered a snap-back to C. The AB timeline has been aborted, obliterated, metaphysically erased. In my opinion, once AB sinks into oblivion its former existence should exert no influence over CD except through the traveler’s presence, which is available at C in the entirety of its relevance. One would think that time would not ‘know’ any different if the traveler simply popped out of nowhere as a result of some spontaneous fluctuation in space. After all, AB timeline is no more, vanished into the metaphysical past. In other words, one would expect time to be metaphysically memoryless. Not in the replacement theory.

Time has to make sure that traveler’s appearence at C is not a miracle, that it is supported by the new timeline. And there is a deadline for compliance — 2030. For an N-jump to occur the matters at D must stand as at B ‘in every pertinent way’, otherwise time snaps back again. In other words, time has to raise B from its metaphysical grave, compare D to B, decide if the differences are sufficiently pertinent and then snap-back or continue. There does not have to be any time travel attempt in 2030 for this to happen. When time is trapped in an infinity loop, no time machines are ever built in CD and nothing special happens in 2030. Somehow, AB timeline extends a dead hand from its grave and snaps time back. I understand the intent to preserve causality, but I do not see through what physical means such a snap-back might be accomplished.

Even if we accept that ‘nature abhors causality violations’ and the time traveler must reproduce circumstances of his appearence in 2000, why is he only afforded 30 years to do so? From CD’s point of view this due date is completely arbitrary. Oldie has left the scene, Newbie has better things to do, there are no time machines around. All that matters is that the traveler’s appearance in 2000 must eventually have a cause within the same timeline. This cause may be a time jump from 2030, or 2050, or 10327. At some point down the line the traveler or his clone must make a trip to 2000 to save causality, but other than that there are no restrictions. Perhaps, time patrol from a distant future will uncover the wrinkle, clone the time traveler, instruct him accordingly and at the appropriate age send him back to 2000. There is no immediate cause for the snap-back in 2030 within the CD timeline, which defeats the purpose of saving causality.

This is like a bill that comes due eventually but the payment can be deferred indefinitely into the future. Of course, in practice this means that the bill never comes due. The miraculous appearence in 2000 may remain a spontaneous act forever. There is no physical mechanism in the replacement theory to prevent that. Forcing a snap-back in 2030 is simply a deus ex machina.

Banana peels

This is not the only problem with spontaneous snap-backs. What if after dissuading his younger self from pursuing time machines our older traveler decides to visit 2040? Under the replacement theory there is no 2040 in this timeline, so no 2040 for him. But why? He would have had no trouble making the trip under the N-jump scenario, and his younger self still has time to change his mind and enact it. According to Mr. Young, travel to the future is benign and should raise no red flags on Time’s radar screen. But to stop the traveler, not only should CD know in advance that the history will end in a loop, it also has to keep diligent watch for any future travel attempts.

And what if after reaching whenever instead of 2040 our traveler decides to return and convinces his younger self to build the time machine after all? The timeline recoheres and 2040 that he allegedly did not reach exists. Then he did reach it despite what we thought before. If we maintain that the trip can happen then there is no snap-back in 2030. If it can not happen we need what is called a ‘banana peel mechanism’. There must be a strategically placed banana peel in the CD timeline, upon which Oldie slips, bumps his head and loses his memory before he can jump to 2040. We saw this mechanism at work in the fixed timeline theory. To paraphrase Mr. Young, Time is a very clever gentleman if it can do all that.

Replacement causes

It isn’t time travel unless the traveler arrives in his own past. That means he can impact his own life; and that means we need a theory that addresses what happens when someone impacts his own life.

In a bootstrap scenario a traveler does change his own life, but only to make it what it was. What one really wishes is to change the course of events into something other than what is remembered. The challenge is to make new events happen to the same person that made the changes, to transmute the time traveler into his younger self. What is vaguely imagined is exiting the flow of time, improving events in the past and then re-entering time as the same person under new circumstances. There are two visions of this re-entry. You can relive your own life from the time the changes were made, or you can skip part of it and slide back into the new you at a later date.

Both scenarios miss the target. Someone has to live through the new life, and if it is not you the only way to slide into it is to displace that new person. If on the other hand, you regress back into childhood and relive your life, then it is the old self that is displaced. In this version of the dream the memories of time travel vanish but its effects linger on. Perhaps, they retain some supernatural influence reminiscent of reincarnations in Buddhism with forgotten past lives and karma. But dreams have the luxury of ignoring logic. In the light of day, it what is asked can not be delivered, it is a logical impossibility. But it can be approximated.

Parallel worlds do the next best thing. They duplicate a person into a changer and a changee: the older traveler makes changes that affect his younger duplicate. This duplication destroys the possibility of changing own past even if you start with exactly the same past. The replacement theory tries to mitigate the problem using snap-backs. In my opinion, it does not succeed.

Duplication still happens as attested to by descriptions of infinity loops and sawtoth snaps, where the older and the younger self have separate origins. Spontaneous snap-backs are unleashed to save the appearences by preventing a meeting between them when they are of the same age. In N-jumps replacement causes are generated to make it look like the older and the younger self are one and the same. But all of this is smoke and mirrors. Having observed the original timeline, we know better. The true old self is gone, vanished into oblivion. The younger traveler growing up, jumping back and changing himself is a sleight of hand, an optical illusion like wheels of a car appearing to roll backwards in old movies.

In a way, the replacement theory fails better than its alternatives. If duplication does not produce an illusion of transmutation the entire timeline gets punished by being aborted at the original travel date. The replacement theory is a crime and punishment story with causality as the victim, time traveler as the perpetrator and Time itself as the police, the judge and the executioner. Many oddities of the theory can be traced to this forcing of Time into roles that it fiercly resists to perform.

Identity crisis

The time traveler in the timeline that marks the final, stable history of the world knows nothing about any previous history of the world… This time traveler has no first-hand knowledge of the original history; that version of him was erased…

It is rather mysterious how exactly the old traveler transforms into his replacement. In the new timeline everything is done by the new traveler who originates in it. The old one is shut down as soon as the old traveler steps out of it. So where exactly did he go, or rather wherewhen did he perform the changes that created the stable timeline with everything performed by his replacement? This is supposed to be explained by the spreadsheet illustration: “Although the cause of the value at A1 has changed, the value itself has remained the same, and all the values springing from it are likewise preserved”. If it means what I think it means, we have another optical illusion.

In the ‘first run’ along the new timeline it was the impostor (as in visitor from another timeline) that instructed the authentic youngster on the fine points of building time machines. After that he conveniently leaves the scene. As the youngster grows up and jumps back we get a ’second run’. He ends up ‘having the same value although not the same cause’ as the impostor, and now instructs himself on the subject. Of course, we are not allowed to think about it this way, because the timeline is complete in its eternal glory and there are no ‘runs’.

As a result, there is no particular occasion at which the replacement happens or a process by which it happens. This reminds me a common experience of making two lampposts look like one by keeping them in the same line of sight. Identity of indiscernibles hardly applies to physical objects. Besides, I would argue that even metaphysically entities with different causes are discernible.

The curse of parallel worlds

Mr. Young sees duplication as a hallmark of parallel worlds and dismisses them as non-time-travel. Although I agree that traditional parallel worlds are probably not time travel, this broadening of the concept goes too far. According to the strictures of Mr. Young’s definition, his own theory is not time travel. Let me demonstrate.

Consider an N-jump: the original timeline terminates in 2030 and the jump takes the traveler back to 2000. This is the branch point. Replacement timeline then proceeds unhindered into the future. Since the original timeline is gone into oblivion the traveler can not return to it, but he can travel freely along the new timeline. Sounds familiar?
One may object that in parallel worlds the old timeline still exists, while here it is obliterated. First of all, in some versions of parallel worlds only one timeline can be active. But more importantly, if it is impossible to access the old timeline the question of its existence is a moot point.

In parallel worlds you could go back to the branch point and reactivate the abandoned timeline. You simply need to undo the changes made there. Well, under the replacement theory you can also jump back to 2000 and undo what you did. This will reproduce the old timeline in its fullness including the snap-back in 2030. Technically, this is a ‘new’ timeline while in the parallel worlds you reactivated an ‘old one’. But you will be none the wiser unless you are a philosopher preoccupied with identity of indiscernibles. I trust that the reader can perform similar analysis on infinity loops and sawtooth snaps.

Of course, 30 years into the new timeline our brave new traveler will go back to the branch point to satify the N-jump requirement. Then he can finally rest and admire his(?) handiwork. But do we really know that? Or perhaps, he deactivated the new branch and created a newer one just like it? Who knows, and more importantly who cares. In one respect, admitting the second and subsequent branches is an improvement since it would resolve the identity crisis discussed earlier.

As long as two theories make the same predictions their differences are irrelevant. In terms of predictions, the replacement theory is a variant of branching parallel worlds (broadly construed) with return to the branch one creates.
The only remaining distinction are the snap-backs that cap failed branches, but they are not particularly vital. The spirit is preserved if failed acausal branches are allowed to play out, they are just second class citizens.

Temporal kinetics

The idea of replacement causes seems to be the right one for time travel. If the past can be changed and existing causes removed the only way to preserve causality is to replace them. But the enforcemant mechanism of snap-backs is not only incompatible with relativity and quantum mechanics, but also almost inevitably leads to the pathology of trapped time. Snap-backs themselves should be replaced by more plausible physical processes.

A close analogy is the Le Chatelier principle in chemistry: if a system at equilibrium experiences a change, then the equilibrium shifts to counter-act the imposed change. Le Chatelier principle can predict outcomes of chemical reactions but it does not explain them. To explain the shift one needs to understand physical mechanisms that enforce it. Taken at face value, the principle seems to ascribe to a chemical system a mind of its own. In reality, it is a corollary of perfectly mindless equations of chemical kinetics. Now replace a system at equilibrium with a causal timeline, a change with a causality violation and counter-action with snap-backs that seek to establish a new equilibrium. To wit,

Le Chatelier principle of time travel: If causality is violated by a time travel event, then the timeline shifts to counter-act the violation.

This is the driving motive of the replacement theory, but its implementation there is only a first approximation. To continue the analogy, shift in the chemical equilibrium is not instantaneous. If we solve the kinetic equations we discover that in the process of shifting the system undergoes transient stages that are not equilibria. We can also trace chemical forces that drive the shift.

Temporal kinetics is what I am after. Non-equilibria are acausal timelines that appear as intermediate stages between causal ones. Mr. Young has such high intolerance of them that he is aborting them in the womb at the cost of spontaneous snap-backs with all their dubious physics and supernatural baggage. I am not so radical: as transient objects acausal timelines are not that threatening. We also have to account for a possibility that a new equilibrium can not be attained. In this case I would rather have a succession of acausal timelines than endless snaps and trapped time.

But most importantly, I would like to trace the mechanisms by which time polices itself. Anthropomorphic detection of causal violations with abrupt abortion of the violators at an arbitrary date is hardly satisfactory. It is plausible that in the extended theory we will see key features of the replacement theory reproduced, but the point is that they ought to be explained. Resistance of time to causal violations can not be postulated, it has to be derived. We need a mechanism by which time drives events within timelines towards restoration of causality.

Middle course

In the article Toward Two-Dimensional Time recently posted on Outpost Mr. Young suggests a possible alternative to the replacement theory. In the new theory once root changes are made in 2000 the entire timeline instantly changes to incorporate their consequences. If you kill yourself back in 2000 you will produce a history where your time machine was never built, and your murderous trip never took place. Time will follow through on all the consequnces and wipe out the old you from 2000 as well. But then who is going to kill the young you? Do we get an endless oscillation between two timelines again? Mr. Young himself finds this theory wanting.

But the problem with it is exactly the opposite of the previous one. In the replacement theory timelines are too rigid and snap back if time travelers fail to promptly replace uncaused causes. In the two-dimensional theory they are too flexible with no regard for existing events. There is no resistance at all to making changes, they can be made at will and spread across time instantly. In the replacement theory there is so much resistance that any residual violation snaps time’s back. Perhaps we should follow Daedalus’s advice to Icarus and fly the middle course.

The idea is that there ought to be temporal resistance to changes that do not conform with the future already in place. A good model of such resistance should explain how acausal timelines manage to recohere themselves. If a traveler or his successors fail to restore causality on their own there ought to be a mechanism that compels them or others to do so.

Let us apply this idea to the grandfather paradox. If you go back and kill yourself the timeline will start incorporating this change. Taken to the extreme, it should erase your presence completely. However, the previous history where you were in place, will resist alteration. Since time is not a reasoning entity it will likely take a path of least resistance, i.e. make minimal changes that restore causality. Your spot may be filled by others, they replace you as causes of events already in place. Since you conveniently removed yourself from the timeline in 2030 this does seem like an economical solution. Your double presence in 2000 remains a wrinkle to be smoothed out, but again someone else may take your place as your childhood killer.

This holds assuming that you did not go back after the self-killing but put a gun to your own head. Your return would change things. Now you are alive before 2000 and after 2030 but not in between. This will not do. It makes sense that the wave of changes is strongest near the point of origin, by 2030 it loses some of its strength. In contrast, your return to 2030 triggers a much stronger backlash wave. The two will have to balance out on events between 2000 and 2030. In the final stable timeline your childhood wound is not fatal and you recover to make your ill-conceived trip in 2030.

Working out a physical mechanism behind the time waves is beyond the scope of this article, but it does seem to be a worthy undertaking. It will allow a better reconstruction of time travel plots that do not easily conform to a bootstrap scenario. This includes stories where time seems to resist travelers’ efforts to change it as in the movies Deja Vu and Time Machine. It will also handle multiple interlocking time jumps more robustly and perhaps satisfy our curiosity as to what history ends up persisting. An example is the Terminator series, where the replacement theory predicts infinity loops over minor inconsistencies and does not tell us who ultimately has the timeline, the Skynet or John Connor.

The author is known for, among other things, his web site Temporal Anomalies in Popular Time Travel Movies, and its exposition and defense of the Replacement Theory of time travel.  In this article he explores the possibility of an alternate theory of time.  The article is presented here at Gaming Outpost for comment and discussion, with the expectation that it will be added to that web site after a reasonable period for comment.

Many have written to me mentioning Poul Anderson’s Time Patrol stories, and I have written back to say first that I had not read them and second that I did not do analyses of books for a variety of reasons.  This past year, though (2008), one of my readers decided to mail me a copy of the complete collected stories, along with some other science fiction and fantasy books he thought would round out my familiarity with the literary side of the genre (and I did and still do thank him for that).  I read it, and would say that to some degree I enjoyed it; they are good stories well told.  They do not, however, fit into any model of time travel familiar to me.

This led me to wonder whether there was a plausible model of time travel I had missed.  I long pondered what sort of description of time might make Anderson’s stories plausible, and began to tinker with a model I am presenting here.  I still will not analyze books, and am not going to do so here.  I merely wondered whether the Time Patrol stories might become possible with a different model, whether Anderson actually had a clear, coherent, and plausible theory of time and time travel from which he was working, and whether I could discover it.  This is not, then, an analysis of those stories, but only an effort to develop an alternate conception of time in which stories like those, if not those stories, might be conceptually possible.

Model Failure

In Anderson’s world, people travel to the past all the time–but most of them do so because they work for an organization dedicated to preventing changes to the past.  It seems that the day people, somewhere in our future, discovered time travel, they were visited by people from a yet much more distant future, an incomprehensibly distant future, who had a vested interest in preventing change to the past, and so informed those earliest inventors of the technology that they were now drafted into a temporal police force to prevent anyone else from using their technology to change the world.  They also recruited at least a few people from earlier times, including several from the twentieth century, to work as researchers, historians, and enforcers.  These were provided with the equipment needed to travel through time, and given life extension therapy so that others from their own age would not wonder either why they aged so quickly or where they were all the time.

Even a causal reader of this site should recognize that such a scenario is not possible under any of the familiar models of time.  Bear with a brief exposition of the flaws.

Under fixed time, perhaps the most popular model of time travel, the people in the future are wasting their efforts trying to preserve the past, because the past cannot be changed–all effects of all time travel events are already part of history, and those who will at some point in the future travel to the past in some sense have already done so, have already arrived in the past.  The time patrol itself is nonsense, as it is enforcing rules that cannot be broken by attempting to break them.  One might was well organize a police force to enforce gravity, and say that in their efforts to enforce the law of gravity they are permitted to break it.  Of course, Anderson’s stories would be rather boring in that case.  That’s not to say that you can’t tell an interesting story in fixed time–only that a story about a police force that attempts to correct changes made to history before they become serious problems is not such a story.

Parallel and divergent dimension theory is vexed by the problems outlined in The Two Brothers:  Why Parallel Dimension Theory Is Not Time Travel.  Notably, our future society that is attempting to preserve itself is simply creating other universes.  As with fixed time, the society of the future cannot be changed–in this case, because its history is fixed, and the time traveler is tampering with someone else’s history.  Further, if we assume that someone from the future has traveled to the past and created a new universe in which that future society does not exist, then someone else from that future “fixes” the universe such that that society is restored, we have gone from having one universe in which that future society exists to having three universes–one in which the future society existed and was never endangered, one in which the future society never existed and never would have come into existence, and one in which the future society came into existence because after a traveler from the future tampered with history, someone else tampered with history again.

Even more problematic for telling such tales under the parallel/divergent dimensions theory is the problem created by the linear nature of each such dimension.  Although Back to the Future Part II is a disaster of a time travel story, it gets this part right:  once Doc and Marty are in a divergent dimension, they cannot go forward to the point from which the time traveler departed to correct the problem, but only backward to the root where the change occurred.  Once a change has been made in the past that would destroy the society of the future, there is no society in that future who can detect and correct this.  In that dimension, that society never came into existence.

The replacement theory–the theory supported by this site–also rejects such a concept.  For there to be any future universe, all anomalies must already have resolved. Let us suppose that the future society lives in twenty thousand A.D.; let us suppose that time travel is discovered in three thousand A.D.  If our time travelers in three thousand travel to two thousand and completely alter history between two thousand and three thousand, maybe they will destroy time, and maybe they will be very lucky and preserve time–but by twenty thousand, that’s all ancient history, more ancient to them than the earliest Egyptian inscriptions are to us.  Whatever that society is, it became that because of whatever changes were made to history by all time travelers before then.  Their intervention cannot prevent settled history from changing, because for them the changed version is and has always been the settled version.  They exist because of every change that was made, not in spite of these.  There is, again, nothing to protect.

Yet the stories seem plausible.  It suggests that there is a way of understanding time that does not fit any of these models.

Dimensionality

The solution that seems to be in view is to perceive time in two dimensions.

On one level, this is similar to the conception of time outlined in The Spreadsheet Illustration of Temporal Anomalies–similar enough that the reader should understand that concept before attempting to grasp this one.  In short, there is a sense in which all of history occurs metaphysically simultaneously.  The future is not unformed, merely undiscovered; the past is not unalterable, merely known.  If there is a change in 2000, there is a consequent change in 3000, an immediate change because the events in 3000 are in direct causal dependency upon the events of 2000.  It does not take a thousand years for the change to occur; it takes a thousand years for us to reach the place in time where the change occurs.

Each of the popular theories of time travel treats this problem differently, but in each case it can be comprehended by visualizing time as if it were space.  In the fixed time theory, that space is unidimensional:  time exists in a continuous line from the past to the future, and cannot be altered.  With the parallel and divergent dimension theories, there are multiple timelines lying alongside each other, and travelers leaving one arrive in another.  This is the concept of sideways time, suggested in a John Pertwee Dr. Who episode and exploited in Sliders.  In this conception, these parallel or divergent universes exist temporally “alongside” each other, but are disconnected save by the acts of time travelers, who are really dimension hoppers.  Also, the past is immutable, but the future is being created.

The replacement theory gives the impression of two-dimensional time, but it does not support the conception.  Rather, as with fixed time, it maintains that there is only one history of the world–but that it might be altered, and if it is then there is still only one history of the world, the other having existed only in some metaphysical past, something like the program on your video recorder that you erased to record another.  Still, the description of history in this case involves tracing causal lines to determine whether the past still supports the future which supports the past.  The past can be changed, but once it is, nothing from the original past remains.

For Time Patrol to work, there needs to be two-dimensional time.  Time moves from the past to the future, as is familiar to all of us; but it also moves laterally, from one version of history to another.  Yet lateral versions of history still exist, and anything which originated in one can continue to exist in another.

Fixed and Fluid

What ought to make this work is the interaction between chronological time and lateral time.  Having accepted that chronological history all exists simultaneously, and that time is merely the way we experience it, we can understand that a change in 2000 could cause an immediate change in twenty thousand.  We would have to wait until we reached twenty thousand to see that change, but there are people in twenty thousand whose lives would change immediately.

The problem is, no one in twenty thousand would know that history had changed.  It would always have been thus–unless there is another aspect to time.

That other aspect would be the lateral.  This rests on the notion that change requires a medium within which to occur.  In history, change occurs through chronological time:  I drop my pen now, and it hits the floor now.  We are accepting that this is perception, that the falling and landing of the pen are accomplished instantaneously in various points in time.  Yet if we involve time travel, and we eliminate at least some of the conception of time as the medium in which changes occur (because we are now looking at global changes, changes which occur instantly across all of time), it might be asked how that change can happen.  The answer then is lateral time.  With each tick of lateral time, the history of the universe is established; if a time traveler from a previous tick makes a change to the past of this one, the entire history of this tick forms to accommodate that change, but still accommodates causes which have moved from the previous tick into this one.

That means that time is not really moving “forward” toward the end of history, but it is really moving “sideways” from iteration to iteration of all of history.  Anyone who moves backward in time also moves sideways, into a subsequent iteration of the entire history of the world.  He might undo his own birth, but this paradox is inconsequential, since his birth still exists in the iteration of history from which he came, a spatio-temporal location as real yet inaccessible to him as yesterday is to us.

The Disappointment

Unfortunately, this does not solve the notions promulgated in Anderson’s work.

As noted in connection with parallel and divergent dimension theory, the problem still remains that in any iteration of history in which the desired future society is destroyed, it does not exist.  Thus it cannot send enforcers back to correct a problem that it cannot detect.

Anderson’s answer to this seems plausible on its face.  Time Patrol training facilities exist in an era in the distant past–prehistoric past, dinosaur past.  This facility includes among its resources everything that is known about the future history of the world, and specifically what events are thought to be important in establishing the existence of the future society which sponsors their work.  Since this facility exists at a point prior to any known ventures to the past, it continues to exist despite changes made in its future.  Since it can still possess information and personnel and equipment which were delivered from the future of one iteration of time, the shifts in the existence of the future society will not impact its ability to perform its mission.

The problem is finding the relationship between historic time and lateral time.  Think of it this way:  those who are stationed in the past are charged with preserving the future whose records they have in their files.  The moment some change in that future is detected, one of their own must undertake to identify the change, determine how to restore what would be as near as possible to the original history, and travel to whatever point in time this repair can be implemented.  But it is that aspect of knowing when the future has been changed.

From the perspective of historic time, the answer seems to be either that it will be changed or it will not be changed at a particular moment.  Our theory of two-dimensional time, though, suggests that there is an original history of the universe in which no time travel events ever occurred, and then “when” someone traveled to the past, we moved laterally across time to the altered history.  That lateral shift, though, is not something we can perceive or experience; it also is not something that happens at a specific moment in the historic timeline:  it happens to all of history simultaneously.  Thus at time L1, the original history of the world, no one can detect any change in history.  Then at time L2, following the “first” time travel event, everyone who can detect such events detects that one simultaneously.

To clarify, let us suppose that the time patrol base in the past exists for a thousand years.  In the L1 moment, no one ever detected any change in the history of the world.  Then as we moved to the L2 moment, a change occurred.  That change became detectable–but it was detectable simultaneously through every second of those thousand years.  Then the L3 moment occurs, due to another trip through time, and both changes are detectable for that entire thousand years.  More significantly, those who live in the time patrol base when it reaches L3 cannot know which of the two detected anomalies occurred first.  Further, those who live at year 1 have no means of knowing whether they are actually detecting a change made by their own people at year 5.  In fact, every time someone is sent back to the base, it creates a detectable anomaly, a change in the history of the world, a next tick on the lateral timeline.  Without a complete roster of everyone who was recruited and sent for training, the people at year 1 cannot sort out who is what.

You might think it a simple enough matter for the people at year 1000 to send a that complete roster to the people at year 1, so that they can use that to compare against whatever they detect.  The problem is, as time moves laterally the information at year 1000 will change but the information already sent to year 1 will not–otherwise, the record of the history of the future society these people are trying to preserve would also change, and they could not know whether history had changed or not, or what it was they were trying to preserve.  In order for the people at year 1 to have current information, the people at year 1000 must send back an update with ever click of lateral time.  That, though, is impossible.  Even were we to suppose that our time travelers have a way of detecting clicks of lateral time, they cannot act in lateral time, only in linear time.  They can send a roster back from the earliest lateral moment in which they have that roster, but in order to send an updated roster they would have to be able to send both rosters simultaneously.  Again, if we assume that having sent the one roster at L1 they automatically will have sent the most currently updated roster at L1000, we must also assume that whatever history of the world was sent back from the distant future is that version that exists at L1000, having been updated by virtue of the fact that the people in that future will have sent the most current version.

Too, this ignores the detail that the very sending of the current roster is itself an event, a change to history which needs to be recorded on the roster of those events which are to be ignored.

The concept of lateral time does not solve the problems created by the Time Patrol stories, nor does it appear to resolve any other problems.  My impression is that the replacement theory is still the best theory.  However, I offer this as a starting point for any readers who think there might be something of value here, and invite you to make your suggestions for how this might be brought to a functional theory of time.  I am available by e-mail, but would prefer to have such discussions publicly, and so invite anyone interested in posting at the official Multiverser forum at Gaming Outpost, where there are at least a few persons interested in such discussions.

I have of late been ignoring the role playing theory discussions on the Web.  This is not because I chose to leave them but that they left me–the places where I was participating shut down those parts of their discussions and recommended that those interested in continuing the discussion do so in other places.  My schedule already overburdened, I did not attempt to tackle these larger areas in which what I would have considered discussion on point was considerably diluted by other topics.

However, one of those discussions wandered into an area I do visit periodically–and unfortunately ended before I was aware of it.  Still, I was not satisfied with the conclusion–or perhaps lack of conclusion–reached in the conversation I read, and the desire to provide a response (I hesitate to say “an answer”) has stayed with me for a few weeks.  I’ve not written a Gaming Outpost article for a while, but thought that I would address the matter here and see where that leads.

The discussion came to my attention in a thread entitled [Legends of Alyria] Traits! Traits! on the Dark Omen Games forum of The Forge.  That thread cites several previous threads in an ongoing discussion concerning how “Traits” are used as a game mechanic in various games, and noting two distinct mechanical applications.  Respected theoretician and game designer Ron Edwards brought the discussion to the Dark Omen Games forum because their game Legends of Alyria uses traits in an effective way in play, and so provided context for the discussion.  The issue at stake is how the use of traits is controlled in play.

To clarify this, the example of Legends of Alyria will help.  In that game, characters have three attributes and some number of traits.  Ron explains thus:

Traits are always defined as attitudes, expressed as a way to do something; for instance, they cannot be neutral abilities (good climber) or people (my brother).

Examples of traits might include fear of heights, love for a friend, self-effacing, proud of combat skill. 

In play, all conflict is between player characters.  When such a conflict arises, each player selects a character attribute (of his own character) on which to rely for resolution of the conflict.  This provides the target number for the other player to roll for success.  Each player then has the opportunity to invoke a trait, of either participating character, to replace either target attribute, provided that the involvement of that trait is supported by the flow of the narrative to that point.  One could, for a crude example, invoke an adversary’s fear of heights to his detriment if the conflict occurs in the web above the Citadel, but not if it occurs in the library of The Ark.  Love for friends could be invoked if it can reasonably be established that there is already a recognizable benefit or threat to one of the friends of the character, but such a factor cannot be invented on the spot–the player cannot decide abruptly that he is holding someone hostage without having established actions to capture that individual in advance.

Edwards makes the distinction between “Before” and “After” trait use.  Legends of Alyria, as he understands it (and author/designer Seth Ben-Ezra later confirms), is in the “Before” category.  This means, as noted, that the inclusion of the trait must be based on facts already established in the Shared Imagined Space (SIS in the cited thread).  Using his example, if I have the trait “Quick-witted” and I wish to rely on that for resolution, I must be in a situation where my use of my wit has been established in action in play, or I cannot use it.  The “After” category allows traits to be invoked without any established connection to the current situation, requiring only that if the character is then successful, the narration must incorporate how this trait led to the desired outcome.  Thus a character trying to climb a cliff face might in an “After” design invoke “Quick-witted” as the trait by which he hopes to succeed, and thereafter someone must determine how his wits enabled him to do so.

The question Edwards raises at that point is the one that caught my attention:

I’m not sure whether my own previous play or Seth’s play has been entirely faithful to that, but the trouble is, both groups are Trait-friendly, which means we have been making it work without knowing how or why.

He continues pointing up aspects of the problem:

There’s also an important issue hidden [here]. I’m talking now about the common constraint, or attempted constraint, of having the trait be plausible when used. I think this phrasing is actually code for a lot of different things….

The puzzle for me is that it’s never been an issue during play, but it’s also clear, upon looking at it (in its myriad forms throughout game texts) that the instructions themselves are not providing actual procedures to keep it from being an issue.

Even with “before,” explaining it isn’t as easy as I’d originally thought. For one thing, the trap exists of the always-there always-useful Trait. For another, apparently a number of groups fall into the problem of “sing for my supper,” in that a player feels he or she must put on an elaborate thespian act in order to get the bonus. With “after,” it’s hard too. If I can activate my “quick” trait and thus bring my quickness into things, then it’s basically always on-call unless some mechanical limit applies (as in “use once per session” or some equivalent). This is especially tricky when Traits are either qualities like quickness (which are in many cases redundant with other mechanics like a Speed attribute) or whole allied-characters….

I intend to reflect as accurately and critically as possible on how these mechanics play during our Alyria game….The thing is, I don’t anticipate any problems with them, so the question is, why is that?

Seth Ben-Ezra responded, noting:

I had to think pretty hard about the fictional constraint bit, because I don’t recall it ever having been problematic. Though, it might be better to express the Trait constraint as either being the result of previous actions taken or being a reasonable response to the conflict at hand.

He continues, recognizing the same uncertainty:

I still haven’t discussed why this works in our group. As Ron said, my group is a Trait-friendly group. How did this happen?

At this point, the best that I can figure is that our group has a lot of experience together…, which has resulted in a synchronizing of our aesthetic vision. Hmm. “Synchronizing” might be too strong. Perhaps “harmonizing” of our aesthetic vision might be a better way to put it. At this point, we generally know what the group will accept and what it won’t. I’m guessing that Ron’s group is similar.

It has taken us a while to get to that point, though. I wonder if applicability rulings on Traits is something that needs to be vested in a GM with the understanding that he is speaking for the group. I’m thinking here of a Sorcerer GM’s responsibility to hand out bonus dice. Sure, this is the GM’s job, but he is supposed to be aware of the “sense of the table” and respond accordingly. Perhaps Trait adjudication for “before” style games needs to be formally stated in this way.

The problem is summarized, not resolved, by Edwards:

I think we’re in the same boat in terms of not being able to articulate this well. You’re pretty much saying “we can do it because we can do it.” The closest I came to breaking out of that was in describing demo play, and that may not be the best indicator of what I, and you, are doing, or what our groups are doing, in the context of an ongoing social and creative situation. And to make it more difficult, clearly the process occurred a long time ago while playing some other game, so it’s probably not possible to observe us now to see how such an understanding can be brought about.

To make it even crazily more difficult, we’re not only talking about one kind of Trait usage, but about a group understanding of the range of Trait use, such that we can pick up games with widely differing approaches to the concept and make any of them work, without even knowing that we’re processing them differently. I mean, for ten years, you and I have been dissecting out role-playing processes with every ounce of self-reflection and critical thinking we can muster, and neither of us recognized this entire issue until Markus pointed it out.

Their discussion continues, involving several others, for what prints out as nine pages of small type.  However, it did not seem to resolve this essential issue:  how is trait use constrained in practice during play?  Yet it seems to me that the answer lies in the discussion of the question.  Perhaps as Edwards and Ben-Ezra admit, they have resolved the problem so long ago that it has not been a problem for them, and thus they cannot recall how it was resolved.  The moderator closed the thread before I was aware that it was open (I had a bad month or so from Thanksgiving to New Years, and must have missed every one of my regular Thursday visits to that forum), and I was left wondering whether I had an answer they had overlooked.

It seemed easiest, for some reason, to put my answer here.  Abstract theory posts are still welcome here, and they’re the sort I tend to write–I think much more about how people think than about what they do.

I think that that thing around which Edwards, Ben-Ezra, and others were all talking could be described, in a phrase, as the inherent limitation of credibility dictated by the social contract.

There is often (or at least, has been in the past) a significant amount of freestyle role playing happening in Internet chat rooms.  My experience with these dates from Quantum Link, the online service designed specifically for Commodore 64 users whose operators eventually launched America Online.  There were many chat rooms with specific characteristics in those days.  One of the outstanding ones was the Red Dragon Inn.  There, fantasy gamers appeared as invincible characters from any milieu and announced what they were doing.  There was a clear one-upmanship happening, as no participant (and I hesitate to call them players) would ever admit that any other was superior, and so all these incredible magical, psionic, technological, and body-based powers were bouncing around the room wreaking great havoc in the first breath, and being completely undone by someone else in the next–perhaps something like this:

• Brakkus:  I fireball at the bar; the glass of the mirror and the bottles melts, the alcoholic liquor flaring up and lighting the room.
• Mentat:  Seeing the fireball, I focus my crygenesis on it, chilling it to a simple sphere of light which harmlessly illumines the room.  Then I telekinetically left Brakkus from his place and pin him to the ceiling.
• Brakkus:  As Mentat attempts to grab me, I phase shift to a parallel dimension so that only an illusory form of me remains in the room, and there is nothing to grab.

Nothing was ever resolvable, and I learned a great deal about how not to play role playing games from those visits.  It was truly much more enjoyable to visit the various coffee house chatrooms, where one imagined music playing while talking with other visitors over hot beverages.

The point is, what constrains trait use in Legends of Alyria is, ultimately, exactly the same thing that prevents Dungeons & Dragons players from inventing secret escape hatches:  the social contract apportions credibility such that each player can say so much and no more.

That is certainly nothing new nor anything original.  I wrote of it in Theory 101:  System and the Shared Imagined Space.  Others deserve credit for recognizing this aspect of role playing games, that events are resolved according to the social contract, the interactions of the players in ways structured by specific rules which determine what can be posited into the shared imagined space by each of them.  I do not think this is stating something new.

However, it surprises me, given that understanding, that the process is not also equally clear.  The social contract is developed through the social process.  Every participant gains an inherent understanding of exactly what the social contract allows, primarily by observing and following each other’s examples.  If one player tends to up the ante, taking more liberties with what is permitted in the use of traits, one of two things happen.  Either everyone else follows suit, using these parameters as the new definition of what is permissible, or the group balks and disallows the use of the trait as a group.  It will often devolve into a brief discussion:

• “I’m using my fast reflexes trait”
• “Wait–you can’t use fast reflexes here”
• “Oh, I don’t know–I think maybe he can.  What are you envisioning?”

The consensus is reached as to whether this use is reasonable within the shared imagined space, and it further defines the standard within the social contract concerning limits of credibility in relation to trait use.

Of course, the “rules”, including whether the trait must previously have been established in the situation (Edwards’ “Before” case) or can be incorporated in subsequent narration (the “After” case), are part of this.  They remain as authority, as described in the aforementioned Theory 101 article, something objective to which players can appeal in forming the social response.  Players gain credibility for their statements by appealing to these authorities.  Thus when the “fast reflexes” trait is called, someone can state that the rules require trait use to be “plausible when used”, and on that basis assert that the “fast reflexes” trait is not plausible in the present context and so should not be permitted.  The rule does not answer the problem–rules never do, it is the interpretive application of rules by those given credibility to make those interpretations in play that provide the answers–but it gives a basis for the group to determine whether the first player has the credibility to invoke that trait.

It is my hope that this recognition both of the role of social contract in trait use, as in rules applications generally, and of the formation of social contract through social interaction, will help our understanding of game design and play.

Thank you for your consideration of these ideas.  I invite response in our Gaming Outpost Roleplaying discussion forum or by e-mail.

We goofed about for Saturday morning, with the Ladyfaire getting three hours of sleep. And then it was off to the Tiger Cub hike.

The local area is ridges, hollows, and ravines.

So the hike starts with a steep, multiple switchback down several hundred feet. And then across river bottom woodlands which had been the subject of a recent windstorm which blew down branches and small trees.

It was a fine autumn day. The only time I saw an animal was when I was away from the group. Otherwise the woods were empty. (It was a whitetail deer next to the Natchez Trace.) As the Ladyfaire pointed out she had a toddler to protect her from all the scary woodland animals.

The Cuteasaurus bravely and boldly did the walk (although he did use me as a tractor pull.) Mr. C had issues about wanting to be carried. I was unsympathetic.

This is part of the Tiger Cub requirements as a Go See It for historical things. We started from Merriweather Lewis’s tomb, and circled back to it. This is also part of some Outdoor Activity badge. We’ve done a campout, and now a hike.

I’m really enjoying taking Mr. C thru the Cub Scout electives. It gets me out of my rut. It helps teach him useful things. Its a way for us to bond. Its like taking short little recesses to do something fun, and then getting a little recognition for it.

We took along on the trip a family mobile we had made. Each member of the family had something to symbolize them. Mine was a dice.

We went to McGee’s, a new local restauraunt, to try them out. Tony’s Awesome Nachos was HOT. A real man’s man dish. Take a half a jar of picanted sauce, and a dozen jalopeno’s…and go on from there. It was visually stunning as well. Quite a treat.

The baked potato the Ladyfaire had with her chicken and green beans was soft all the way through (unlike the last place we ate at), which is nice, but not special….except when you realize that it was about eight inches long, a true monster spud, easily twice the size of what I would consider a large spud. If you get a potato at Wendy’s, well you might be able to fit five of them into this one Spud O’ Doom.

And it was very good.

Mr. C got a bowl of spaghetti, and Cuteasuarus got fries and chicken tenders (which were again mega-outsized). Cute’s child meal would have suited many an adult as a largish meal.

So it was pretty neat. The cooking felt like my own style of cooking–Mad Scientist.

After that, we went to the Glasshouse Arcade, and spent a few bucks. It was neat and clean, and had pool tables, a foosball table, air hockey, and some road race video arcade games along with a few others.

Cuteasuarus played three games of “Let’s Watch teh Car Explode” although the game has another name. He loved it. He’s a car loving young tyke.

We also played air hockey, and played with frequent substitiutions. When it was moi vs. the Ladyfair, she won 3-1. She pointed out that 2 of them were ones I did to myself. True. What I didn’t point out was what Inigo Montoya said to the Man In Black…

NO! Not that phrase…the other one.

“I am not left-handed.”

It was a great day, and deo gratia, if that means ‘glory to God’ would be a good phrase about now.

I’m still coughing, but I’m better. Got Mr. C to school, and was halfway to Wally world with the Cuteasaurus before the first cough this morning, I guess. Maybe if I do another day of mostly goofing off, I’ll finally be on my feet sorta. I have the fearsome example of a few years back where I spent three weeks with a flu to remind me of the dangers of pushing too hard. So even though I feel relatively perky, I’m going to try to be patient, and force myself to goof.

Psi Conditions:

Magic tends to have all sorts of limitations you can do to make your skill rolls easier. In fact I’m trying to put together a list of at least fifty specific limits you can use. But the psion has it harder.

1. Fasting: Traditionally fasting ungrounds the mind from the body, and prepares the mind for more ethereal realms. Also of use in magic.

2. Empty Your Mind Meditation: This shuts up the noisy fellow inside your skull who is jabbering away, and lets you hear other voices, and see more clearly. Perhaps you will hear voices on the wind, or the voice of your own Talent. Perhaps you will see auras, and gain enlightenment.

3. Concentration: It helps to focus. Just as its hard to do the IRS tax forms at a rock concert so its hard to do psi at a rock concert unless you can focus.

4. Sanctum: Using psi often means opening yourself to other perceptions. After all, its hard to be a good recon scout in full body plate. Unfortunately, that means lowering your guard, and occasionally there are nasty, hungry creatures out there ready for a bit of psion with a side of panic. And then there are those who see someone travelling the astral sea, and think how nice it would be to help them…into servitude to a superior mind. Sanctums provide exterior defenses so that the psion can more fully extend herself without retaining some defensive stance.

5. Good vibes: Often related to the Sanctum, but it can be hard to open yourself in a place that is unfriendly. Its like trying to study math while a fly buzzes about. He’s doing no real harm, but its distracting. A room or other area with good vibes aids in concentration.

6. Fury: Anger, near-berserk and sometimes over the edge battle fury has possibly helped create more Telekinetics than any other force in the Multiverse. For some, its a neccessary precondition. They have to be at least ill-tempered to force their will on the Universe. Some have to descend into a screaming frenzy before the power rises. For others, its a source of strength to boost their power.

7. Uncontrolled: Some gifts are purely uncontrolled. Telekinesis is a common example, but Precognition is even more so. Retrocognition is another one. And for a few cursed or blessed, Touch Healing is another one.

8. Emotional boosting: Using your own emotions as kindling, and timber in the fire of your power. Love, fear, and anger are common ones, although hate works well too, but it opens you up to Dangerous Attentions. A driving need to save the life of another could be pushed by love and by fear for example. Typically the end result of such an effort is a state of mild emotional shock as apathy overwhelms the tired character. A danger in botches is that the power will go uncontrolled and run until the very limits of one’s endurance sending the psion into the hospital or the morgue if they fail a simple stamina check after four failed stop checks.

9. Tapping into your Life Force: Tapping into your own lifeforce is inherently dangerous. In some universes, thats the only way such powers work due to a powerblock by the reigning deity of that universe. Simple stamina checks are made every time you use your power. A failure indicates tiredness, and another failure indicates exhaustion, and another failure indicates death. It may not be easy to de-activate a power in such universes. This is a typical joining of limits.

10. Powers Do Not Deactivate Smoothly: Some powers once you get them running want to keep running. Some are merely difficult, and require a simple Willpower roll to stop them. Others, especially Pyrokinetics, and worst Uncontrolled Pyrokinetics require multiple Difficult Willpower Checks. Using Emotion Feeding makes such checks more difficult.

11. Tapping into Other Life Forces:
a. People: Its generally considered evil to do this to unwilling victims. There are creatures known as psionic vampires which are strongly addicted to this procedure. For some psions, the desire to turn vampire, and drink the mind of another down like a slurpee is always a temptation. However, it offers a great deal of power, and a buffer against any botches is a typically related skill. One is bathed in power, and little things like brain burns don’t bother you inside the cocoon. Whether they will once you come down off the high or not is another question. Frequently such ‘draining’ is more addictive than the most powerful drugs.
b. Plants: Not as blatantly evil, and much more difficult. The typical user is generally a more cautious and contemplative person who doesn’t go in for the thrill kill either. Most such users try to save the plant while they drink of it.
c. The Universal Field of Creation and Destruction: If you can tap into this, then, in all seriousness, and humble respect, why are you taking Doctor Mentalman’s class? Please, O Great One, do not evaporate the college where this class is being taught./Gulps nervously.

Okay, thats a 1d10 chart. And I think I have a few more in my brain, but its folding up, so I’ll move on to Chart the Second.But first, let me clarify…11c (hmm, its not a d10 chart after all) is about a PC tapping into the power of an Ascended Psionic Being, and one of truly awesome power.

It is possible to have psi aid from another psi which should be another slot, but this is as an evil example of humongous power for this slot….

“Death, Chaos, and Despair, you revealed yourself to me. Fill me with your power that I may cast down this foolish Alchemist.”
The psi call goes out along the previously established link (which may or may not require a skill roll. I’d require one.) And the psi beings who took those three names who have the 15@ skill of Permanently Transcending Physical form, here, and decide to pour their mental power into the evil mentalist.

One reason that the Ascended Ones might do this is that they learned a version of the Ascend Skill that requires non-direct intervention.

At this point, the Alchemist is considering his options as he watched the evil mentalist whip up a hurricane out of the blue sky…..

At this point, I think the Alchemist could still win, but it would be an interesting technique to take a bunch of second-rate psions, and turn them one at a time into world-beaters because they were vessels of the power of Ascended Masters.

Botches of Telepathy (as broadly construed–any form of mind-reading, communication…)

1. Switch minds in psionic triangle. Psion A botches as he talks to B. C is standing nearby. A goes into C’s brain. C goes into B’s brain. B goes into A’s brain.

2. Aphasia. You try to say “Lets get supper.” You really say. “Fire purple cello.”

3. You’ve cut off communications with the lower part of your body. Your brain is active, but your Central Nervous System isn’t getting any signal. Yup, this is usually fatal.

4. A random someone in the same universe, or another universe can hear your thoughts as you can hear theirs if they project. They think they’re going nuts. They are already not all that well-balanced, and although a nice person, they have a real hard time getting through the day without messing up. You are sooooo not helping. This is good for guilting the player. This gives the player a chance to help someone normal with normal issues.

5. Everyone who hates you in this universe now knows where you are. You don’t realize this.

6. You’re broadcasting your thoughts to anyone who sees you.

7. You can hear the thoughts of everyone at the same time within a hundred yards of you. The babble is overwhelming.

8. You’ve established a control link for your body to someone else. When he tries to move his left arm, he has to contest with you. You may not be able to move. He may not be able to move. You both may be able to move with both of you are in partial control of each other’s bodies.

9. You can hear the thoughts of (dogs, cats, mice, birds….whatever). They realize this, and want to be social. They frequently have no sense of manners, and a number of them have issues which they expect you to deal with…now.

10. You’ve tapped into the brain of a man with Secrets. Lots of Secrets. The type of Secrets people kill for. Good thing he got a flash of your face (which you did of him as well) so he can come and discuss it with you, isn’t it? Most common types of targets are National Security shadow warriors, Mafiosi dons, and terrorists planning a mission.

11. You’ve tapped into some sort of intergalactic clairvoyant scanning beam, and telepathically downloaded all available information. Now your brain is full. Really. You have to make Willpower checks to concentrate enough to walk because there simply is no room. Plus, your brain is about to explode in 5 +1d10 hours. Maybe the aliens can help you, if they believe you’re not a data pirate who did not respect their copyright. Frequently a Botch Rider of the next one is included.

12. Random Personality Traits: You’ve picked up a little bit of this, and a little bit of that. You botched in the street, and you picked up the construction worker’s appetite, the skateboarders love for heavy metal, the UPS man’s seriousness, and the tendency of the cab driver to scream insults in Nigerian. You pick up very little of any use, but just enough to find yourself scarfing down a footlong meatball sub, listening to Cruxshadows with a thoughtful look at the newspaper as you curse the stupidity of politicians in Nigerian. And you don’t like subs, enjoy Celtic, and never bother yourself with politicians as they are boring. Roll simple Perception or difficult Willpower checks to avoid acting not like yourself.

A more comedic version of this has it as an ongoing process. You walk down the street, and pick up traits (but no skills above 1@1 even if the original possessor has it much higher) from people you pass.

13. Congratulations you’ve summoned the Fleet of the Alien Conquerors (whats that praying mantis group from NagaWorld?) to your Home World. If really bad, you called their mother something nasty in Alien. They might not have a mother, but they do take insult. You have 1+1d4 days until the Total Subjugation of the Earth begins.

14. You did not realize it, but your Shout-Out attracted attention, Dangerous Attention. The Forces of Evil cannot always directly intervene, but there is usually at least a serial killer in the neighbourhood who they can call his attention to you as you walk past. And if you’re in a high-magic world, you’re really lucky cause they’re coming to deal with you personally. You’ve just dropped into 1)A serial killer stalker movie. 2) A Hockey-masked Maniac, or a Dreaming Monster, or Dracula is coming to drop by for a screaming good time. If you’re really unlucky, they all are.

15. You make a connection to some doomed historic figure in the past. I hope this is not temporal loop causing, cause otherwise I’ll have to do something.

The figure could be a priestess of Atlantis as the island grows more disturbed, or it could be a passenger on the Titanic. They know they’re doomed. All they want is for someone to hold their hand over the next 1d10 days, and to bring their existence to light in the modern world.

This is three-handkerchief time. And also an excellent time to have a would-be apprentice to the verser mentor, or a male-female long-distance totally doomed relationship set up.

16. Your subconscious brain now has a direct link to your will. It wants, it needs, it desires, and its going to go for it. Happily, its not really a great planner as logical considerations don’t really enter in that much. Also forethought, and good judgment are somewhat absent as well..

This can be played as tragic, and it will be Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde but with less sense on Hyde‘s part, and more animalism. Or it can be played for comedy, and it will still be pretty scary as the character dives in front of moving buses to try to retrieve the luscious looking sausage that he knocked off the hot dog vendor’s grill, and then dropped because it burned his hand.

With a difficult roll, your Superego can temporarily restrain (RS for ten seconds) your Id.

17. You can’t talk, and you can’t hear. So the only form of communication you got (other than writing) is telepathy.

18. You’re hearing smells, and seeing sounds, and tasting pain, and smelling sight. It is a complete mind-trip.

19. You’ve lost your mind, literally. Actually, you’ve lost your brain. It is the receiver for the mind. And your mind cannot find its home brain. You are a detached viewpoint looking out from behind the eyes of various people. You are able to jump to them and test them to see if they are you. You don’t see people as people, but as aura fields which makes the whole thing much more difficult.

20 Amnesia. Amnesia is good, right? I mean I think it is, but I can’t remember.

Items:

1. Ring of the Sensitive: This orange stoned ring allows one entry into the Towers of the Sensitive, and serves as a Mental focus.
2. Draken Voirze Stone: Holding this stone provides a feeling of good vibes, and the occasion uncontrolled flicker of clairvoyance tied to danger sense.
3. White Crystal: +10 Sit-mod to Telekinesis as it helps one to keep their thoughts in order.
4. Mindtrapper: This crystal is capable of removing the mind from the body of a practising psion.
5. Psionic receiver–Various items are rigged to be sensitive to telepathic coded messages. This can trigger a wide varity of effects.
6. Sunstone: Power hides in this. +10 DR to all psion skills while holding this.
7. Mirror of Hiding: This gives +10 to pseudoinvisibility, and +20 if the searcher is a psion.
8. Silk Scarf: This causes a Suppress at 1@5 of psionic activity in whatever it is placed over. Silk naturally absorbs psionic energy.
9. Syringe of Mindstill—25 Sitmod to all psionic activity, and its a Difficult check to try.
10. Liquer of Madness: This causes a +20 to learning a new psi skill. However botches are typically 2d10+ 10 on the GE chart as they are expecially powerful. At best, the character is drunk and stoned out of his mind on something similar to acid (for the skill to succeed, he must be.)

Okay, I’m hungry, and kinda risen from my creative trance to be surprised by the time passage….

Eric

Out here in Hohenwald (sounds like ‘hole-in-the-wall’ or close to it), we have a week-long yard sale running down State Twenty. It goes along with the celebration in town called ‘Oktoberfest’ which since this is a Swiss-German community makes sense (hey, we have a cemetery labelled the Swiss Cemetery which I drive by every day practically.)

On Wednesday, I intended rest.

This did not quite happen as the house needed some work, and the computer had crashed (probably due to some virus) and the demigoddess of electronica was trying hard to get it back in order. Plus the kids weren’t in a mood to relax.

It was a good day.

AWANAs that night at First Baptist, and I took the Ladyfaire out for cokes and conversation which is always nice.

The next day, Thursday was more genuine relaxation with the computer still down. The Ladyfaire took the opportunity to spend much of the day yard saling as I took care of the tykes who were very agreeable this day.

She found some Palladium books for sale, and after calling me, bought them. An educated to your tastes, shopaholic wife is a blessing in disguise. She also found that the seller was a gamer (of course) who had some friends who wanted a Gamemaster. So….perhaps I’ll be running.

I talked to some of them later that day when we all went out for a bit of shopping (the weather was wonderful, fall weather, and not getting out would have been a crime). Oddly enough, one of the potential gamers for this group had played Multiverser. Weird, since I try to write for them, and MV is an indie press (with a game that should take the world by storm since its just so cool!)

I hope to run my Temple of the Dying Sun d20 for them this week which is a game of serious morals, and very clever puzzles, and lots of strategy.

On Friday, I took the tykes down to Babba’s house with Babba and Grandmother Ashley. He’s ‘Babba’ for the typical reason that when Mr. C was younger, thats what Mr. C called him.

But I’ll discuss Friday in my next post…

Mr. C and the Cuteasaurus had a week off from school for the Fall Break. Of course, Mr. C was supposed to go to school for an hour and a half on Monday morning, but that was ridiculous. Besides, it spoiled our plans to go to Chattanooga for a very long weekend.

So, no perfect attendance this semester unlike last one (which earns you bucks at a local bank).

We left about 3:30 on Saturday which was good since our latest leave time was to be 4:00. Somehow, I had thought we were going to Knoxville, and thats a long drive so I was set to drive five hours. When I had to do a nice three hour drive it made it easy.

I kinda wished we’d gone to a KFC buffet, but the exit zipped by too fast, and later we went to a McD’s. We’ve been playing the Monopoly game at McD’s, and winning Mcflurry’s and a free breakfast….so far no fifty thousand dollars, but we keep trying.

The hotel was nice with a microwave and a fridge. It was situated between a Shell station and a Subway, and just up the road from BK and McD’s.

We got settled, and found out that the laptop connection had problems. So the hotel manager and I think owner, a charming Indian gent, gave us a different room. The boys liked that as they got to tote stuff down the sidewalk between rooms as they raced between the two of them.

I played on the laptop, and we all watched Journeyman which is a new take on Quantum Leap. Its not as good, but it has its own quirky charm. Also, its more of a story arc than episodes with the background being formed by our hero’s struggles with his marriage as he and his wife try to cope with his uncontrolled timejumping, and the fact that he meets his former fiance’ who ‘died’ in the past.

The boys are always wound up in hotel rooms. A bath does not calm them much. In the end, I’m forced to put one on his own bed, and the other on the floor as the adults try to get to sleep. Y’see, they want to play and goof off if they are on the same bed. I had to mention many times…

“Keep your feet on the bed.” As one or the other tried to put his feet up or down where his brother was.

Part of this is the result of being confined in a chair in a car, and part is the new surroundings and excitement of being on ‘vacation’ which was Mr. C’s favorite word for a while.

The next day is the Aquarium to which we have year-round tickets.

First we park down from the Coldstone Creamery ice cream shoppe, and overlooking the Tennessee River. The boys played in Riverside Park on the play gym, and Da got to get Mr. C and himself to climb over a rock-climbing wall twice. Kewl.

We go through River Journeys and the boys are both enthralled with the extremely playful otters. Mr. C’s new favorite word is ‘otter’ delivered in a mournful tone as he wants to go back. We buy him an otter plushie in the gift shop. It feels a bit cheap, despite the price, and yup, it is. It rips, and once we get home, Da and Mum have to needle and thread it back up.

The Cuteasaurus was fascinated by the turtles. And he should be. We saw one poor turtle that kept trying to get up on a log, and kept falling back, or falling over on the other side as his turtle buds had all the good spots already. Later, he played with his turtle plushie, and even later, back home, when asked by the Ladyfaire what he wanted to watch…

“Thomas the Train?”
“No, no.”
“Ninja Turtles?”
“Turtle.”

So a new word for the Cuteasaurus which was great.

We went to eat at the TGoodnessIF restaruaunt in the same complex which was decent. Last time we did this, it was superfabulous. This time, the AC was cranked to Artic Breeze, and I may have confused my waiter into not tossing my salad. And the wait was….glacial. But, we got our food, and refilled and recovered after much walking. Both boys ate well with Mr. C eating very well so I was glad for that.

Sometime I want to go across the street to Cheeburger Cheeburger and see what that is like.

Back at the Aquarium, it was time to let the boys splash in the ‘creek’ and climb down the ‘waterfalls’ with all th eother little kids. Lots of fun was had by them as they .

We checked out the local Zoo, and found it. We had not been really aware that Chattanooga had a zoo. Its way back in Hank Warner?? Park behind a bunch of sports fields. They were renovating the Park which should be nice since it already looked pretty neat. Perhaps on another trip we can go to the Zoo.

That night we went to Subways, and I went first because Da needed a little alone time. Bought two subs for ten, and got the clerk who was cool to wait and let my wife pick out hers when she got there. Which messes up their inventory a little bit as they need to type into the system when I buy, but like I said, he was cool.

Next day, more Aquarium–this time Ocean Journeys. The Penguin exhibit was a fine exhibit of penguins napping. We went quicker through this building.

More ‘creek’ time with much more Da chasing kids up and down the waterfall trace to keep an eye on them. I hear that Cuteasaurus when he went around a corner climbed up twenty feet up a stone step hill. He’ scautious, but he’s young too. I let Mr. C climb the whole thing.

We went to ‘America’s Thrift Store’ and I got some books, and Mr. C got some pants. Let’s see…Retief was one.

Later, we went to the Missionary Ridge Railroad Ride. It was six miles there and back which did not take very long. The bulk of the trip was getting out at the turn-around, watching a ‘wheelhouse’?? in operation as it turned around the train engine, and looking at some trains and hearing a tiny lecture.

We got some pictures with the tykes and me although Cuteasuarus was mostly against thijs whole picture thing.

The tunnel through the ridge was dissapointing. Light, see a little of the sides, and then its dark. Can’t see anything outside. Maybe they should have turned off the lights inside or somethign to make for a better view.

That night, we saw a Dragon Caves game store. We checked, and they had moved. A nice hairdresser guy and his bud from next store gave us directions, but in the dark, we could not find the new place. Besides, I think it was closed.

The next morning we found it. It was going to open late, and it did not seem that big. Perhaps if I had not already been scheduled to go to Constellation, I might have gone.

We went to Eastgate Mall which was a lot of fun. The boys got to go to the toy store, the Disney Store, and I think maybe another toy store. We did most of the mall in relatively quick fashion–just enough time to explore a store, and absorbs its interest, and then on our way.

We ate at the food court at a Chinese place. As is customary, the various Chinese places (there were four) were all handing out samples of chicken. We swung around the whole court, and decided that the first was the best (being the cheapest helped). At first, Mr. C had thought his sample was hot, but evidently he got a different kind.

So he ended up sneaking up to the guy handing out free samples, and demonstrating why he is a top-notch moocher. I think he got something like four samples for himself. Of course, he’s not old enough to know better, mostly.

After that it was playground in the mall. And Mr. C got chased around by a younger girl who decided he was a dog, and needed to be c hased.

We went to see the dam, and walked along the river. My Ladyfaire showed me the place where she and some fellow SCAdians used to fence with rapiers before she met me.

We ate late at Kacey’s Home Cooking, a family buffet style place, which despite our arriving at fifteen minutes until closing made sure we got enough to eat.

We went home, and the boys napped on the way home. Which meant they were wide awake when we got home. A few hours later, and finally bed for them.

Our Chattanooga long weekend was over.

McCallister said in response to my asking for ‘Bug World’ weapons—

Ummmm, you could have fly cruisers. Gnat personal transports. The outsider Moth-nectar collector teams. Spider-tanks. Beetle-class destroyers. Wasp pirate-vessel

====I’m not at all sure how you’d build a vehicle. Much less how you build an animal.

Also, these strengths and what not would have to be relative strengths since the spider is not on the correct scale for a typical setting.

For size measurements, a foot equals one millimeter in the Normal Human Scale.

But lets give it a try…

Character Name: Jack the Spider Tank Gender:Male Height: Ten feet Weight: Species:Spider

Persuasion (PER): 1@5
Charisma (CHA): 1@5
Animal Magnetism (ANMAG): 1@5
Strength (STR): 2@5 (Average insect str is going to start at 2@1 and go up to ants at 3@10)
Stamina (STA): 1@5
Resistance (RES): 1@4 (spiders are somewhat feeble here)
Density (DEN): 1@1
Flexibility (FLEX): 1@5
Agility (AGI): 1@5
Hand/Eye (H/E): 2@5
Intellect (INT): 0@5
Intuition (TUIT):1@5
Education Level (EDLEV): 1@2 (Basic commands known.)
Willpower (WP): 1@5

Averaged Attributes
Target Value (TV):
Damage Value (DV):
Ranged Strike Value (RSV):
Martial Strike Value (MSV):

Skills:
Wall-crawling: 2@5
Web-spinning: 2@2
Jumping: 1@7
Pincer bite: 1@8
Leg Grab and Pin: 1@10
Dodge: 2@1
Wear Armor: 1@8
Understand Language: Bug People Pheromonal Language 1@5
Hold Platform Steady 1@5

Armor shifts attack down one damage level. Armor is made of chitin shell.

Catapult on howdah on top of spider. Catpult launchmaster is Bugfolk as are his two assistants. They require the spider to hold the platform steady in order to have any chance of success.
==============================More McCallister below…
For actual monsters you could have E.Coli(insert common bacteria name here), the Plague(octopi-looking viral/bacterium, a crossbread, it’s the age ol’enemy!), Colony010(monstrous looking failed attempts at the original idea), machinos(nanites from other experiments, usually benign but still deadly if you are caught while they are building something).

There would likely be some kind of schism between the outside frontier, and the inside lab, so maybe two factions.

Bug weapons:
claw-grapplers, stinkbug gland(jams transmissions), acid grenades, melee weapons, venoms, neuro-transmitter scramblers(or instinct reprogrammers), paralyzing jellies, webbing, mandibles, limb-blades, egg injectors, parasite injectors…

I’ve begun The Templar Legacy which is yet another of the Da Vinci Code style books. And it occurs to me that flipping this attempt at subversion around would be a good idea.

Such books tend to start in the Middle Ages with some esoteric conflict between powerful men with the hero dying, but his secret is safe.

Now after this, there is a secret order which keeps the secret and a bad guy order which hunts for them. There is a lot of secret codes and symbology, and famous people in history are part of this conspiracy.

Gnostic gospels tend to be a large part of this as well with some highly questionable revisionist history.

—————————————

Now to flip this around:

Verser arrives in Middle Ages in prison with injured man with secret. Man takes him for an angel, and promises he kept the great secret. He’s delirious from being tortured. He gives hero item of secret worth. Its a cryptic key which will unlock the secrets of the ages.

Victim dies. Later prisonkeeper comes and sees dead man, and verser. He wonders where the verser came from but is willing to torture him as well. Verser dies somehow, perhaps in some sort of desperate escape attempt.

Verser comes back a couple worlds later in the modern contingency world of the preceding world. He finds a subtly disagreeable world….one advances through ranks toward the Ultimate Truth meanwhile doing all sorts of frequently degrading favors for your Teachers. Its like Frat Pledge Week for life, although not quite so blatant. And unless one reaches the 32nd level, one does not know one is truly Worthy, one only hopes one is worthy of entry into Paradise.

But each level tends to reveal truths that the previous level might have disagreed with. What starts at Level One through Five as a fairly decent and simple religion, by level twenty has mutated into something fairly awful, and by Level 32nd the Ultimate Truth is revealed–Its all a hoax. God is dead, miracles never happened, and the whole thing is a hoax to keep the fools content enough so they don’t kill themselves in despair. The Ultimate Enlightened Ones who are supposed to be assured of entrance into Heaven where all others are merely possible know that Heaven doesn’t exist.

But, but….there is a secret order….its symbols can be found in diver’s places, in public squares and in the keystones of buildings. Some of these symbols lead to secret truths, in part because the Crossbearers have been persecuted down through the ages with extreme venom. Whole countries have been overthrown to get at them. But they survive. It helps that they are frequently some of the brightest men of their time.

And they have a Truth. God lives, miracles are real, and anyone, not just the wise, can know with ease that they can enter into Glory as a gift. But this Truth is profoundly subversive, and so the Powers That Be have deliberately tried to suppress it for centuries.

==================================

The other writer is Terry Brooks. He writes Shannara and the Knight and the Word series. He’s joining these two histories together. The Knight is a modern day warrior mage trying to hold off the end of the world. He’s going to fail. Shannara is the reborn world of magic after the end of the technological world.

Its quite an impressive intellectual feat in its way.

However, he’s started a bridging series where there are still Knights, and the Elves are moving into play. The world is falling apart as Demons and Once-Men assault anything Human, and put them in slave camps, and Freaks (transformed people who I think become the basis of the later Races of Shannara) run around. Human society has broken down, and most Humans live in large walled cities. Demons gather Armies and go smash these cities.

The Knight tries to tell the people to leave the cities and go into the country.

I don’t get this. You have a defensible position with organization. Granted you have a fixed position, but still…. And its not like Terry Brooks is not familar with the value of fixed defenses. One of his earliest of his many, many books is a wonderful tale of the onslaught of a possibly unstoppable army into layers and layers of defenses.

I think he’s trying to say City=Badness without actually coming out and saying it. Or ‘the old society must be completely destroyed in order for the new and better way to be born’ but you can’t sell people on that either.

In some ways it reminds me of the Tower of Babel. God wanted to destroy Earth’s culture as it was, and put something new in its place. It is instructive in this that two apparently equal forces, the Word and the Void are in contest. These are gods.

I find this type of thing to be a bit annoying. Perhaps its justified, but I usually dislike it when someone has an ulterior motive, a hidden agenda. Gods are allowed to do this, of course. But it seems that the deity should make a better arguement instead of a transparently false one….even ‘trust me, I’m smarter and wiser than you’ would be a decent arguement from the deity.

Of course, in some ways, the Knight does get that arguement, and perhaps one might say its merely his human failing that he does not pass it on to the people.

Its an interesting religion. Its not very evangelistic at all. There are a few chosen, and thats it. Otherwise, the Word acts in the quiet places of one’s heart. It doesn’t recruit worshippers, but it does want people to live according to its way. Problem is people have been deliberately choosing to go toward the Void for some time now.

I’m not sure what to think of this, and I suspect that that may be deliberate, or it could be that I am simply obtuse.

In any case, I can make a variant of this.

In this world of sin and sorrow, the righteous who put service to the Logres, to each other, and ultimately to themselves are few and far in between. Instead a false rationalism abounds, a rat race of pointless ambition is the highest goal of humanity, ethics are disdained as old-fashioned, and cowardice is enshrined as a virtue.

Madness and conspiracy are common parlance, but the only true conspiracy is the only one not mentioned.

It is understood that evolution has been punctuated, and occasionally accelerated by cosmic rays in past days. There have been times in the Earth’s pre-history where great bursts of cosmic radiation turned Earth into a wildly sped up evolutionary experiment.

So why not do this with Science?

The fact that its immoral to bombard fetuses with radiation is ignored, and shoved aside as irrelavent. And those who protest are ‘anti-science’ and ‘anti-progress’.

Other possibilities seem to be appearing in the human genome. It develops that the human gentetic structure is at least ten times more complicated than realized. And among other things, it holds the ability to alter itself to deal with radical changesin the environment. Most such changes are in teh children of a parent who suffered.

So ‘Alties’ are started to be rumored. Beings with inhuman visages, and strange powers are seen in dark alleys.

Meanwhile the children of the Ray Experiments are growing up in their State Orphanages. They have little love, and seem to need little. The experiment is judged a failure; its in reality far worse. In reality, they are a bunch of buddng sociopaths. In a good environment many of them could be saved, but in the orphanages managed by uncaring gov’t officials they develop their own society based on a currency of power abused.

There are a few heroes trying to build something that can survive the End of the World. Some of these dream dreams sent by God.

The corrupt cities with their present day only focus, and their love of consumerism, and hatred of true individuality and righteousness are like fat, diseased cows to the wolves of the Ray Experiments once the cohort is released. Its remarkable how quickly the great institutions in some cities folded. All it took was kneecapping three writers for the New York Times to decide to toe the line.

But things fell apart. The Rays were not deft enough to run the society on their own. So they didn’t mind too much when people fled ‘their benevolent rule’. It gave them an excuse to cut loose with Hunting Patrols.

At first these were Apache gunships. Later as technology failed, they were on horseback. But an organized patrol with weapons and skills was worth many times its number in fleeing refugees. It is a truism that most of the dead in a battle come when one side flees.

But some few fought back, they urged those in cities to fight back, and many did. The Rays were thrust outside the great cities which were now but a fifth of their old size.

This was okay for the Rays as well. They still needed a smaller society. They set up armies, and forced the ‘recruits’ to engage in diabolical practises in order to bind them to the new order. Then they sent their cannon fodder against the great cities.

Unfortunately, most of the cities were soft still. They fled, and were pursued and slaughtered.

A few fought back against the Rays. Some military forces held together. Some Alties formed the core of various groups, and with their powers they taught the Rays respect. Some of the Prophets developed small powers as well, and even some few developed Altie powers. But none of the Rays could get either. That was okay…they had learned what drugs to take to make themselves temporarily superhuman.

The war between the Logres and his poor pitiful counterfeit, the Power continues. No man, not even a Prophet knows the end.

Eric