Signposts Perspectives 3001 AD-6000 AD Contents
The entity from another universe has somehow managed to sufficiently adapt to our reality to reach a more or less stable existence, and obtain crude sustenance. It has some basic sensory capacities and understanding of its environment now. Its living processes are becoming more compatible with this new world every day. But getting to this point was a trial of endurance the entity almost didn't survive. Never before had it been tested in this way.
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Roster of investors/contractors/allies-- or enemies/opponents/competitors-- or others related in one way or another to the Pearsall expedition, in the centuries before and after 3076 AD| Kenwi Industries | The Cadmum corporation | Project XCR14 | Ian Kelloff |
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Facing their first real competition in wealth and influence for half a millennium does not sit well with the top executives of the Narygil group. It's bad enough that the whole of the ER dynasty chose to split apart rather than cede control to the Narygil group. And now Narygil seems more diminished than ever, forced to share the limelight with M'crop, and now also with what must be the two luckiest primitives in existence. It's unbelievable, the sorts of miraculous exploits and dream promotional material which seems to just fall into the laps of those two. Narygil itself has spent away vast fortunes for promotional purposes and never gotten a fraction of the return on investment the Pearsalls did with their two broken down Rovers. And just when it starts to look like consumers are beginning to forget about the Pearsalls, POW! They grab the spotlight again with tales even wilder than before! Narygil execs had actually had the Pearsalls expedition investigated several times to determine if it wasn't really just a slick marketing scam put on by a savvy corporate competitor. But no, it checked out by every measure.
Feric Ganrussan was the third highest ranking executive in the entire Narygil group. He'd worked hard to get where he was today. He'd be damned if he'd let a pair of lucky tourists upstage his career.
Someday he'd find some way to ruin the reputation of the Pearsalls-- maybe even 'prove' somehow that the whole thing was a scam-- regardless of the truth.
After all, it'd be pretty difficult for the Pearsalls to refute his evidence from 200 lightyears away, with only lightspeed comm, and unable to even receive messages from Sol anymore anyway.
Signposts Perspectives 3001 AD-6000 AD Contents
Post-Reconvergence: 3000- 3450 subtrends and detours; differing paths for physicals and virtuals; the physicals differentiate into a still greater variety of forms and environments; there are also some small advances in time travel made
A major reason for the merging of organics and inorganics was the fact that the humn had actually developed an underlying software foundation and architecture far superior to that of the Inorganics-- mainly due to the need for their OS to cope with much more chaos and random dynamics than anything the inorganics might construct. As the physical universe itself runs in a similar fashion, such an OS offers many advantages to its users-- and so would ultimately have enabled the organics to dominate the inorganics in prolonged conflict (provided the organics could endure against the sometimes superior advantages inorganics enjoyed in the shorter term). Also, the two sides had discovered they were complementary in core strengths, and badly in need of the other to be complete. The organics excelled in areas of uncertainty, probability, subjectivity, and discontinuity, while the inorganic did better in facts, objectivity, statistical sciences, and linearity. Neither is significantly the superior to the other overall within any definite time span (which seemed proven in the Peer Proof War), yet together are much greater in power and capacities.In addition to all the above, the long ago discovery of alien ruins, loss of TME shifter expeditions, and more recent find of the Deja Vu disk, as well as lesser puzzles, seem to be indicators that both humn derived organics and inorganics are better served via union than divergence, considering the enormous unknowns still surrounding them in this and neighboring Universes.
Many Constitutionals regularly express anxiety and puzzlement that no more information about other civilizations has yet come to light at this late stage in local civilization, than the meager items listed above.
A whole new sexual dynamic exists now, based mostly on resolution power and novel ways of doing things. Male and female genders only exist as temporary role-playing elements, and then are only used by those with a greater-than-average liking for ancient history and arcane nuances.
Much of the previous male Sol have faded into history-- the largest single faction of previous populations lost in the transition to the newest virtual state (the majority of male Sol do not die, but instead are absorbed into other entities, or transformed into beings differing considerably from the original). Most neuter and female Sol and colonists (colonists are typically male and female, of human, dolphin, chimp, and other original biological descendants) successfully make the transition to the new state, or else continue in the realtime trends active during the time others were transitioning. In other words, humn-derived civilizations exist outside the Directorate citi-complexes, but those other civilizations are now peripheral in almost every way to the Directorate itself. Perhaps the primary purpose an outside observer might see for the non-Directorate peoples that dot space around the immense Directorates themselves, is as a buffer zone between the Wilds of Realtime and the sprawling virtual civilization the Directorate constitutes.
As many centuries pass with less and less contact between the virtuals and physicals, the two factions diverge still further.
Yes, the physicals still evolve, but they tend to purposely skew their evolution away from directions already taken by the virtuals-- after all, that route and its results are known, and if chosen is far more conveniently accomplished by simply permanently joining the virtuals themselves in their vast habitats.
No, the evolution of the physicals now takes a number of somewhat sideways (and quirky) courses....
The physicals separate into many differing factions:
Though most physicals tend to stay in or near the island habitats created for them by their predecessors and the virtuals, some do not. Below is a list and description of some of the more noteworthy roaming groups of the time and what courses they pursue.The Roddenberry Fleets: One group becomes bent on doing a much more accurate and complete survey of the Home galaxy and even more remote regions than has been performed to date, mostly because the Directorate and other communities became self-absorbed and satisfied in earlier centuries with what had already been learned.
This physical group, though themselves remaining within the island habitats, now create a vast number of something akin to hybrids of Unique class and long ago banned TME shift expeditionary starships, crewed with effectively immortal proxy intelligence-based androids of themselves, capable of manipulating their own subjective sense of time on-the-fly so that immense periods of thousands of years of nothing happening will not injure their psyches-- but when useful they may think at realtime or even virtual speeds again.
The ships and android crews are somewhat uniform for the sake of economy and speed in replication-- but also purposely reflect much of the current diversity which exists among the physical humn races (however, only the ship minds themselves are something akin to the virtual humn). The vessels are made plausibly self-sufficient for an indefinite timespan, but also allowed to call upon their fellows or unknown others for assistance too as need be.
Note that the ships and crews of the Roddenberry Fleets in many ways superficially resemble craft and peoples of the remote past. The android crews are specially designed to be difficult to distinguish from largely biological forms-- even if dissected. The androids themselves are usually unaware that they are proxies, or that they possess greater capacities than available to the biological forms they emulate, when the need arises.
The greatest subtlety in the design is the Unique-like intelligence of the vessels themselves. Each vessel functions as the corporeal form of one or more virtual mind proxies donated by the Directorate to accompany each craft, and oversee the android crew in the physicals' plan. Under normal circumstances the virtual proxies do nothing more than observe and act as a subservient craft intelligence for the crew. Only under extraordinary conditions will the virtual mind make itself known, or take command of the vessel. And even after such extraordinary events the virtual mind is guided by high priorities instilled before launch to erase its existence and intervention from the memories of the lesser proxies onboard.
All this subterfuge serves several purposes. One, the historical appearance and apparent moderate specifications of crew and ship should be less likely to frighten or intimidate alien star farers they might encounter, thereby perhaps making peaceful two-way contact more likely. After such relationships have proven the non-threatening character of the aliens, the humn may gradually reveal their true nature to their new friends. Two, the seemingly limited capacities of ship and crew may lure would-be rogues into showing their true natures earlier and more easily than they otherwise would, thereby accelerating the process of categorizing them by motivation and level of threat. The facade of the fleets would also serve well to hide from such rogues the true capabilities of the civilization which constructed them-- thereby allowing any entities determined to be a threat to be either swiftly dispatched, or their region of space marked off-limits to further humn ventures, and the defenses of the shared boundary space built-up for reasons of security. Three, it's possible the fleets might encounter a civilization peer or superior even to the humn itself in their journeys. In such a case, a relatively crude, low profile crew and ship would be expendable if need be by self-destruct, perhaps hiding the humn's true location and nature from the other race, and minimizing the probability that the other might feel threatened enough to retaliate or begin searching for the source of such primitive ships and peoples. If that fails, the other may still delay its response, or underestimate the humn sufficiently, so that in either case the humn may be able to mount a sufficiently robust response as to make the other reconsider their malevolent actions. Four, under extraordinary circumstances, the seemingly primitive and limited vessels and crew may shed their disguises, to reveal the powers that lie beneath, possibly destroying the foe which forced such disclosure, then undergoing self-destruction themselves, to hopefully leave merely a puzzle behind for the other side as to what happened to the enemy entity-- a puzzle which may be written off as merely a malfunction or some unknown space hazard.
There's a myriad of other reasons, but the above offers the gist of the idea. The fleets are to by default be friendly to strange peoples and craft, but respond to hostile acts similarly as to how the humn's biological forebears might have done. They will usually maintain their deception of only a moderately capable technology platform to the end-- even to the point of self-destruction. But if self-destruction is too late, or denied them entirely, or appears will not prevent the aggressor from learning too much about the ship and crew, and/or attempting to track down the ship's source civilization, the craft and its complement will reveal their true natures and display something much closer to the full technological might of the humn to hopefully end the episode quickly and in a manner which will prevent or delay a direct confrontation between the humn and the aggressor race.
The fleet's general orders are to simply explore and possibly make peaceful contact with new intelligent star-faring races if any are found, and periodically send back (via instant ERP or TME-shift communications as appropriate) detailed reports about their progress to their creators.
The fleet is ordered not to unduly interfere with the systems they survey, nor contact any civilization which appears still too early in development to satisfactorily absorb contact with another civilization, and to make a reasonable effort to leave behind no trace of themselves on worlds not yet host to 'mature' star farers. Too, the fleets are to withhold sensitive humn technological information from any alien star farers they meet, as well as the location of their creators, for security reasons.
Wherever a fleet vessel is in apparent danger of being captured by a belligerent force, or the location of the Directorate revealed, the vessel is authorized to use all means to repel attackers and escape, call for aid from other fleet vessels, or self-destruct (In most contingencies however, the Directorate itself is NOT expected to help them directly, as that could increase the risk of the Directorate's own location being revealed.).
One major fleet exploratory field is the primary disk of the Milky Way galaxy, excepting that sector towards the core already under close examination/colonization by the Directorate, and the more sparsely populated ring of space existing further from the galaxy's core than the Directorate's own earliest technosphere.
Other, smaller, and somewhat differently equipped starfleets of the Roddenberry group are also one-way TME shifted into faraway galaxies as well, to perform still more exotic explorations (including faint hopes by some of relocating one of the Far Colonies lost during the Peer Proof War). Equipped with a limited Realtime ERP instant communications to the Directorate, the fleets can relay back to the Directorate physicals any information deemed sufficiently interesting the moment it is discovered.
Like the home galaxy explorers, the far galaxy explorers possess two-way instant ERP communications with the Directorate, but only one way ERP and EM transport (from the Directorate to the ship), in order to prevent a sudden physical invasion of the Directorate by belligerents, but also to allow for substantial support from home for ship operations. Note that in many cases a limited onboard supply of essential ERP entangled particles (which cannot be renewed) will eventually silence the vessels in terms of ERP transmissions. The finite supply of ERP particles also means the ERP mechanism may be permanently disabled onboard by simply transmitting a huge load of information (or gibberish) all at once.
All the fleets described above are christened "Roddenberry" fleets, as they are so similar in form, function, and purpose to the vessels originally envisioned in Gene Roddenberry's classic 20th-21st century science fiction epic.
The Mudd Group: A second physical group (which either left or were chased out by other island inhabitants) secretly tailors its missions to be scavengers/parasites of the Roddenberry Fleets, utilizing reports from the fleets to guide various entrepreneurial and colonization efforts of their own in new regions-- despite the desire by others to uphold the original ideals of the Roddenberry fleets, and minimize their use for commercial gain, avoid undue interference with backward cultures, and to reduce the risk of backtracking such missions to the Directorate itself.
Fortunately the Mudd Group is unable to follow those Roddenberry fleets which visit far galaxies; unfortunately, they infest relatively large areas of the Home galaxy in the wake of Roddenberry explorations here-- until in subsequent decades the Roddenberry fleet creators realize what's happening and put into place severe restrictions on the Mudd Group's activities in this area. I.e., the ships of the Roddenberry fleets began actively seeking out and arresting vessels which are a part of the Mudd Group.
(The Mudd Group gets its name from an annoying and shady merchant of the original Star Trek classic sci fi; in reality the Group consists of many smaller organizations and associations, all duly and uniquely named something else entirely than "Mudd"-- but they find themselves popularly labeled "Mudd" by many Directorate citizens and their media, due to their behavior in relation to the Roddenberry Fleets).
The Edenists and Project New Earth: A third group of physicals (who mostly leave the island habitats) decide to resurrect Project Eden from pre-catastrophe days-- i.e., create a New Earth.
It's difficult to locate a suitable solar system nearby that hasn't already been developed and/or digested, but finally an isolated one is found in the galaxy's halo (the sparsely stellar populated regions outside the galaxy's main disk and central bulge), and New Earth is constructed there.
New Earth is almost nothing like the original-- except that the biosphere(s) might be vaguely familiar to a 20th century Earth native.
New Earth is actually a relatively small, modified design Dyson sphere, in a binary star system. A small white dwarf serves as the heart of New Earth, and the exterior of the Dyson sphere is warmed by a combination of a comparatively young red giant and a closely orbiting brown dwarf (a previously planetary gas giant set dimly alit by Directorate technologies).
Between New Earth and the brown dwarf a masking disk is placed to make the brown dwarf resemble the full Moon of the original Earth (to observers on the exterior of the Dyson shell), while a similar mask is installed to make the red giant resemble old Sol.
The builders chose this somewhat odd arrangement in order to end up with a New Earth offering complete and servicable biospheres both inside and outside the small Dyson sphere.
New Earth thus boasts a livable surface area perhaps hundreds of times larger than the original, with roughly half of that inside the artificial planet. The combination of the orbiting brown dwarf and red giant (plus other devices on-world) make for a narrow tropical band about New Earth's exterior equator, and large sub-tropical to temperate regions everywhere else (these are 'default' climates; complete weather control allows New Earthers to experience precisely as much Old Earth weather as the population might ever desire).
New Earth's interior however is much more homogeneous (as all regions receive an equal amount of star light from the white dwarf at the core), with a very mild climate ranging from subtropical in the summer to temperate in the winter (this variation is largely artificially induced).
Certain nagging gravity tides from the arrangement are artificially balanced by various buffer fields-- though even with total buffer loss the structure would not be in serious distress for many centuries, and only relatively small areas would suffer major problems (though the idyllic weather patterns for all would surely deteriorate).
There are few excesses of height or depth among New Earth's terrain-- what few exist are provided merely to accommodate biologicals which prefer them. For the most part however, there are no Himilayas or ocean abysses to be found, as these exact strains on the kinds of purely higher biological forms New Earth seeks to attract.
New Earth is so much more vast than the original that to simply copy the old geographic map precisely would be wasteful of resources. I.e., a 'north america' hundreds of thousands of miles across would be obviously redundant.
Therefore, only one portion of the exterior geophysical map of New Earth is based upon that of Earth circa 1700 AD, with the continents a copy in size and shape of the originals, and the biospheres genetically modified to offer the experiences expected, although under usually more moderate climates than existed on Old Earth of the original times and places (more extreme local weather conditions may of course be artificially generated as desired).
Other regions of New Earth's exterior are given over to other designs entirely...including recreations of fictional landscapes like Sarum 128 and other fantasy realms. Appropriate lower biological forms too are generated for the various locales, with suitable buffer fields and more passive obstacles installed to prevent undesirable mixing of life forms between different habitats.
The makers also position a contingency star system and suitable engines nearby to aid in moving New Earth when the red giant becomes a less reliable energy source in the future (carefully manuevering the contingency star past the red giant's system while also performing other planetary acrobatics can be used to safely move New Earth to a better neighborhood if necessary).
The builders of New Earth then populate their small Dyson sphere with reconstituted biologicals from original Earth-- only with the modifications originally envisioned for Project Eden (in those regions appropriated for New Eden designs). Namely, all flora and fawna is expressly designed to serve and protect any biological sentient of Earth descent which ventures into New Eden preserves. All are edible and nutricious, and automatically repair or upgrade any biological sentient injesting it to the best known specifications for that species (without materially affecting consciousness or personality already categorized as being within normal ranges).
In other words, certain parts of New Earth's exterior become the ultimate paradise for any terran-based biological sentient who happens to visit there.
Nothing obviously non-biological in origin (and of modern technology) is allowed to exist for long on outer New Earth (recall however that the Sarum 128 preserves utilize fairly old technology, even if that technology is far in advance of 20th century Earth means).
Inner New Earth is another matter entirely, encompassing the latest technologies and luxuries available to Directorate physicals of this period. Massive spacecraft hatches are placed at the north and south poles of New Earth, for entry and exit, in addition to the typical massive EM transporters/replicators for ship-sized objects.
However, despite a broad invitation to all biological sentients to visit Outer New Earth and even settle there to live, and the more modern resort conveniences of Inner New Earth, the complex is so far from mainstream Directorate civilization visitors are few and far between for centuries...leading to the New Earth builders themselves doing quite a bit of experimentation with their new world...
The Biomes and Onlynux: This group of physicals (islanders until their technology advances sufficiently) go further than most anyone else of the time in developing biotechnologies to compete with (and sometimes surpass) the less organic technologies which have become the mainstay of Directorate civilization. This group is actually considerably older than the rest, but it's taken them a long time to refine their work.
The Biomes make heavy use of typical inorganic technologies to help them in their projects, replacing that non-natural technology piece by piece as new developments allow.
Though they've been around a very long time, they don't really make much of a contribution to history until the latter stages of their progress.
One thing the Biomes did early on was set up an awe-inspiring VR model of the entire biosphere of Old Earth, circa 100,000 BC (before humanity had wiped out some large competing species or had other significant effects on the planet), and then run many parallel paths separated by arbitrary changes to see what happened to various species evolution-wise.
In one collection of these simulations the Biomes made a major breakthrough in biotechnology based upon a branch of humn technology apparently not pursued on old Earth around 15,000 BC, which offered a whole new world of possibilities never before imagined by Directorate Constitutionals....this information is so colossal in its implications that for centuries it remains the greatest secret of the Biomes, hidden from all others at a stupendous cost. As the Biomes had already been largely isolated from other elements of civilization for a thousand years or more, were physicals, and largely perceived by Directorate Constitutionals in a way similar to how many 20th century USAmericans saw the Amish in North America (i.e., eccentric, obsolete, boring, and harmless), it was easier for the Biomes to maintain this secret than it would have been for most other contemporary factions to keep such a momentous truth to themselves for so long a span of time.
Many other surprises not nearly as important, but still intriguing and useful, were also discovered by the Biomes in their many parallel models of alternate evolutionary paths for Earth biologicals, and incorporated into works accessible to almost anyone to examine if they wished.
The Biomes specially configure many models in express efforts to create replacements for particular pieces of inorganic technology, and then fast forward the simulation by thousands or even millions of years to see the result. Though they get many failures, they also are graced with many successes as well. And once a success is found, the genetic engineering required to make it real is right there in the model itself, ready to read and implement.
After a while the Biomes' technology becomes an approximate match for the largely inorganic technologies of the Directorate. Although it took the Biomes considerably longer to achieve parity in many particulars with inorganic technologies (and they needed inorganic technologies to help with their work), their imminent peer status with Constitutionals' technologies largely goes unnoticed until all at once the Directorate as a whole finds its attention focused upon it with some alarm. You see, the Biomes succeed in establishing a whole new layer of system redundancy for themselves, with the addition of biotech on par with inorganic tech. And redundancy is a major strategic asset in technological platforms of the fourth millennium.
In a somewhat perverse turnabout, the largely inorganic Directorate, ascended itself from biological life, suddenly is overly concerned that a small section of their population has matched inorganic technologies with biological ones.
Imagine being a late 20th century USAmerican who tunes in to the TV news one night to discover the Amish have built a working nuclear power plant entirely from wood and straw (with implications for weapons tech too). The Constitutionals of the Directorate are similarly stunned with the Biomes' new technology.
Though no overt efforts are made to force the Biomes out of the island habitats, the Biomes themselves feel compelled to leave after enduring the anxiety of other citizens over several decades following this realization of the fruits of their efforts.
As usual, the fabulously wealthy and powerful virtuals offer immense resettlement aid to the Biomes, and the Biomes take them up on it.
The Biomes wish to bring large elements of their advanced VR models to life, and to that end seek out suitable housings.
Eventually they settle upon a rogue (isolated and starless) planet somewhat larger than Earth (1.2 gravities), and of similar composition.
The Biomes shape and install into carefully synchronized orbits several hundred tiny moons, which tend to create an effective gravity on the primary world of around 0.87 G.
A number of these moons present immense, open faced nuclear piles towards the primary world; i.e., they act as small stars, providing daylight to counter the permanent night the sunless world would otherwise endure. Other purposes for these moons include an extension of the Biome's biosphere, and defense of same from potentially belligerent outsiders.
The Biomes adjust the primary's climate and create a biosphere to desired specifications.
Thus the Biomes have a world with several times the surface area of Old Earth, and a similar climate-- but populated with a far richer and more advanced biosphere than even the most radical of environmentalists of 20th century Earth could ever have imagined.
The end result of the Biome's efforts is a biological-based world raised to greater evolutionary heights than might ever be possible naturally-- and capable of sustaining/protecting itself from most of the threats which might come its way, natural or artificial.
The Biomes name their world "Onlynux".
Eventually the Biomes themselves are forced to flee Onlynux, as it progresses in ways which will no longer abide their presence.
Fortunately, the location of the Biome world is sufficiently isolated from the majority of the galaxy to act as a formidable quarantine on the world's suspect biosphere-- so the Directorate virtuals make no attempt to destroy it, but merely maintain a cautious long term surveillance on the strange world...
The Biomes (with the aid of the Directorate virtuals) try again, this time shaping a world less biologically advanced than Onlynux, but more hospitable long term to the Biomes themselves. This time the Biomes turn their attentions towards pursuit and development of their secret technology breakthrough from many decades past of which no outsider is yet aware...
The Omegans, the Dead Returned to Life, and Those That Never Were, Are. Perhaps to the astonishment of many sober 20th century minds, the seemingly outlandish concepts of the 20th century tome 'the Omega Point' are actually brought to fruition after a fashion, by one group of physicals of this time.
Specifically, the vast archives of historic DNA data and other information from millennia past are used to generate yet another variation on Old Earth, whereby every possible human being that could ever have lived is brought back to life again.
Actually, this project results in not only the effective simulated reincarnation of almost every physical human being who ever lived, but also many billions who didn't. ALL possible permutations of all the known human DNA matrices with nominal or better chances for sustained survival are generated in this project.
The matrix encompasses virtually all possible 100% biological human beings from 10,000 BC through 2050 AD. 2050 isn't an arbitrary cut off point, but simply the most practical one. Firstly, corporeal 100% biological humans declined drastically in numbers soon after 2050 AD, and human DNA diversity also began a sharp decline. Second, the 'overlap' between simulated beings and originals still alive in reality couldn't be permitted to be too large, due to potential legal and other issues.
So essentially the grand simulation reanimates almost all the dead of humanity, as well as the even larger group of human beings who had never been born at all, but existed only as potential beings within humanity's DNA pool.
The potential entities include a much greater proportion of mutations and mishapen beings than the dead group. The complexities and difficulties in creating and maintaining the potential group becomes the most painful, expensive, and controversial component of the entire simulation.
Perhaps ironically, the physical Omegans achieve all this within a sophistocated virtual reality simulation, with significant aid from the Directorate virtuals themselves.
Yes, all of us who happen to have been dead for centuries or even longer when this occurs now find ourselves 'alive' once more, in a manner of speaking. Some even enjoy some continuity of existence, as they are allowed access to humn records of the past, where their own original lives and deaths were noted-- and other 'memories' may be generated from indepth contextual analysis of all available information by the processing powers of the Directorate virtuals.
Certain contradictions, like the scarcity of resources Old Earth would have suffered in hosting this many biological human beings, are easily addressed in VR.
The Omegans go further with their VR, attempting to make of it the 'heaven' for its dead inhabitants envisioned by the original author. However, the goals of this project are too difficult and complex even for the Omegans of the fourth millennium, even aided by the Directorate virtuals themselves.
The Omegan VR actually succeeds only too well in its recreation of the biological human beings of past history. The result is a diverse and often antagonistic population, which more often than not defies all logic in its desires and behavior.
The VR quickly becomes utterly unmanagable, even given the near-infinite processing power of the Directorate virtuals themselves.
The Potentials are by far the worst part of the problem, and are soon isolated from the Dead to live within their own realm. But the Dead too prove more difficult to handle than anyone expected.
Despite far better intentions, the Omegan VR ultimately becomes just a much larger (by magnitudes) and nastier version of the Sarum 128 debacle of a previous century. Fortunately, the Omegan VR inhabitants cannot directly assault their creators; unfortunately, they can wreak havoc internally upon themselves.
Though some portions manage to maintain and even improve many of their intended 'heavenly' aspects, most tilt more towards 'hell' instead.
The Omegans and Directorate virtuals involved consider an indefinite cessation of both the Potential and Dead VRs, but such a cessation is problematic for the times and contemporary issues involved. After all, the inhabitants of the VRs are for the most part sentients, albeit only low level sentients, compared to modern Constitutionals.
In the end, the Omegan VRs are allowed to evolve on their own, with little more interference from outsiders. It is generally expected that the two VRs will depopulate themselves down to a negligible level eventually, making it much easier for the authorities to shut them down entirely.
The Omegan Realm of the Dead does eventually burn itself out, as hoped by the authorities. But the far worse Potentials Realm does not.
No, the Potentials do undergo great convulsions, but then rapidly right themselves and move on. One reason this isn't anticipated is that the Potentials are a race largely of genetic extremes and bizarre trait combinations, which often didn't appear in reality due to greater physical or mental frailty or handicaps than other embryos, or did appear but failed to multiply simply because of less robust reproduction capacities than competitors.
But the Omegan VR allowed most all those previously insurmountable obstacles to be defeated by the entities, thereby giving them extraordinary chances to survive and prosper.
Obviously many of the Potentials still fall victim to subsequent trials, but a surprisingly large number don't. The Potentials do splinter into many factions, of which most eventually wither and die-- but some eventually recombine to create a mainstream Potentials civilization, with surprisingly innovative forms of governance and economy.
Being unencumbered in VR by most of the physical laws and limitations their more 'normal' corporeal cousins had endured throughout evolution and the building of civilization and technology, as well as more free to embrace 'tangential' developments too, that likely would never had been pursued by more moderate beings, the Potentials develop many practices and technologies wholly alien to anything created previously by humn-related entities.
Eventually the Potentials achieve both the power and the comprehension necessary to fully exploit their virtual platform and hosts, and build a most improbable, but still impressive, fantasy human civilization and technology base. The nearest 20th or 21st century humanity could come to perceiving the Potentials Realm is as a wildy unpredictable universe which began as something like a mix of savants and disabled people (some severely so), all primed with the potential to work real magicks of one kind or another, plus all the ancient legends and myths of humanity come to life.
That was the beginning state of the civilization-- practically all modern observers would agree that it would be almost impossible to extrapolate from those beginnings the state of the Realm as it exists now.
The Potentials also succeed in getting the Directorate Virtuals to allow them to expand their Realm to include the now nearly uninhabited Realm of the Dead, in order to provide them with more resources to continue their development.
Individualism and libertarianism loom large in Potentials civilization, without the normal restrictions of history and realtime physics to hold them back. The Potentials over time cultivate and expand upon their individual differences, so that gradually individual families almost become their own species. Eventually this speciation process also takes place at the level of every individual being. A great portion of the Potentials population soon become unrecognizable as being once related to humanity.
Over time the Potentials Realm becomes a popular retreat for some Directorate virtuals-- but only the most daring, curious, or foolhardy. For the Realm will not allow the normal safety precautions of proxies by sentient beings entering the Realm, but rather insist that the primary Constitutional themselves become a part of the Scenario. This puts such Constitutionals at grave risk of damage, unwelcomed modification, or even cessation within the Realm-- a level of risk almost unheard of now in normal Directorate life. Indeed, the Directorate enforces tough regulations against casual entry by Constitutionals into the Potentials Realm, for this reason and others. To put such high risk tourism into 20th/21st century terms, entry into the Potentials Realm for Constitutionals at this time is much the same as late 20th/early 21st century USAmericans trying to travel into war zones or disaster areas in foreign lands, for purposes basically of tourism.
3000-3450: Some small progress in time warping/travel technology is made
Purposeful time travel now appears to be possible. The successful time trek that resolved the Peer Proof war is followed by other scientific projects which push the technology forward-- but only in vanishingly small ways.
For a long time experiments in this field are mostly good for only ridding yourself of test objects in a very complex and expensive manner. And that is if you are lucky-- in the vast majority of cases nothing at all happens.
TME shift technology seems the most likely avenue to successful and practical time travel for centuries...but ultimately proves too unreliable, limited, and dangerous to utilize for many purposes.
Some tiny successes bouncing time-defying signals off known ERP stations in the past seem to offer tantalyzing possibilities for practical time defiance there too-- albeit limited only to existing ERP stations of 2,200 AD or later, subject to utterly random destinations among those ERP stations and their Realtime timelines, and also far too dangerous for more than messages alone.
Despite all these disappointments, indications are that time travel and messaging are at least somewhat possible, and therefore must be considered by the Directorate for strategic and other reasons.
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The 'grandfather paradox' that scientists once considered to be an insurmountable obstacle to useful or theoretical time travel has been resolved by quantum physics. The paradox relates to time travelerers possibly changing their own past history-- such as a time traveler killing their grandfather before the traveler's own biological parent (their grandfather's child) has been conceived-- thereby preventing the traveler himself from ever being born.
The resolution comes from quantum mechanics always directing time travelers back to the past of alternative timelines, rather than their own. To slightly different universes, or dimensions of reality, from their universe of departure. So time travel looks to be equivalent to interdimensional travel, or journeys between alternate realities. At least where travel to the past is concerned. Somehow arranging safe travel or communications through a wormhole in the quantum foam of spacetime is the method used by writer Michael Crichton in his novel "Timeline". Such a method-- if possible at all-- would require staggering amounts of power to achieve. Theories speculate that natural wormholes may exist in the vicinity of blackholes and other massive objects. There may also be ways to create them artificially. Exotic ring-shaped black holes-- or rotating black holes-- are expected by some to offer one possible avenue to real time travel. The center of the phenomenon may be a wormhole leading to other universes or faraway spots in spacetime from the anomaly's native location and moment in time. If time travelers were already present amongst us, it might be impossible for us to detect such technologically advanced beings, or interact in any other way with them. -- 'Timeline's' travel may not be far-fetched By MATT CRENSON, Nando Media/Associated Press, December 5, 1999, http://www.nandotimes.com |
The Oroelle Loop
Eventually, most everyone in authority becomes reluctant to allow such time defiance, and instead decide to set up an intercept band for such potential messages and transports-- popularly known as the Oroelle Loop later on. The Loop acts as a wide net, capturing all detectable time defying signals directed towards any documented Heplinger-related (ERP) hardware in the past of the Loop's own equipment's present; any signals caught may be examined, and then allowed to pass on, or simply be deleted by Loop equipment; the default choice is deletion. The construction of the Loop essentially means all incursions into the past from 3450 AD onward (utilizing known ERP technology) are stopped here.
Of course, since the Fourth Directorate itself is far from an expert on such time defiance, it is debatable how effective the Oroelle Loop might be. However, a permanent research institute is set up to support the Loop, and continuously improve it as new knowledge is obtained.
Keep in mind the Loop cannot affect TME shift time defiance efforts. Also, the Loop is definitely limited to interceptions of only humn-based ERP enabled time-shift crimes; events making use of alien ERP stations would be undetectable and unaffected by the Loop.
The Staute AI is unique among modern Constitutionals by several measures, among them its age, and some deeply embedded programmed priorities of which very few outside the AI itself are aware to this day. Among these core priorities is the goal to make contact with the original human Staute programmer in his own time, prior to his death, and either bring him forward somehow into the future for benefits like effective immortality, or, failing that, submit critical information to him which might help him extend his life or better enjoy it during the span he is allotted in the past.
According to its own judgment, up to this time the Staute AI has only failed once to meet the goals originally set forth by its human programmer. The AI does not intend to fail again. And in this matter the ban on time travel instituted by the Directorate does not outweigh the mission of rescue-- at least not in the internal decision hierarchy of the Staute AI.
The Staute AI has made much history since its creation near the dawn of the 21st history. Now it may become the first known sentient to purposely change the past.
Signposts Perspectives 3001 AD-6000 AD Contents
Approximately 4,000 AD milestone: Computer science has become obsolete for much of humn-derived civilization by now...
...due to its full potential having been realized. Now only other fields may offer the types of opportunities, challenges, and relative potential rewards once found in the computer sciences. Computer hardware and software now are largely perfected in mainstream society and technologies. New applications are automatically and transparently performed on a realtime basis.
| -- Statements by David Tennenhouse, scientist with Darpa, as documented in DOD Scientist: Lose the Humans by Niall McKay, 24.Aug.99, Wired Digital Inc |
Signposts Perspectives 3001 AD-6000 AD Contents
Beyond 6000 AD in Perspectives...
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