Re: Getting out of this world?
- From: Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall)
- Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 19:04:00 GMT+1
Nuny@xxxxxxx <Alien8752@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Tina_H...@xxxxxxxxxxx (Tina Hall) wrote:
N...@xxxxxxx <Alien8...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Perhaps we should take this to email? (My adress is valid.) It's
getting a bit big for a conversation that involves just the two of
us.
Try to be patient with my engineering-mindset-backbrain. It has
to characterize both origin and destination before imagining a
bridge.
So assume the destination is a kind of anti-reality. No matter,
no physical laws, no big bang, only thought-entities that make
whatever suits them (including their bodies).
I'm going to throw something in here that I should have earlier.
It seems to me that you've been using the term "physical laws" as
if it were something of a dirty word; to you it seems to have
strong a connotation of mundaneness- it is only capable of
describing the so- called solid, three (or four, depending on
your education) dimensional world.
It describes what we know of the real world, and gives options for
what's possible.
Made up stuff like magic and entities that make things by thought
doesn't fit into that. It's only possible under the assumption that
anything is possible. But I'd kick magic out of that, too.
I use a somewhat broader definition of "physical laws"; to me,
it is not that narrowly defined. It is the recognition that the
observed world is made of various kinds of stuff, and that stuff
is observed to interact in various ways, and after enough
observation of those interactions we can correlate them and
derive consistent rules about them. Those rules will be useful if
we want to do get some stuff to interact in some particular way;
it's helpful to be able to predict what will happen if we do
_this_ to _that stuff_ so we don't have to do everything the
first time so to speak.
Yep.
In this world "physical laws" are divided into rule subsets
about optics, mechanics, electromagnetism, gravitation, and so on
because that's what we observe and what is important for us to
know the rules of in order to 'make whatever suits us'.
And to make up stuff that's supposed to be rooted in the real world.
Now consider your 'entities'; in order for them to be able to
'make whatever suits them' they must be able to predict how
whatever they observe that passes for 'stuff' where they live
will interact,
No. There is no 'stuff'. That's the thing. _No matter_, no big bang,
no physical laws. There is only the thought-entities, and what they
make. There's not even empty space, before they make it.
I've in the past occasionally had discussions where people insist
that other worlds have to obey the same rules as they assume[*].
Usually about culture (every life, economy, behaviour, evolution,...
has to be the same as here), where my objection is that they've got
a sample of exactly one: Earth. Not very good to draw observations
from about what else it could be. It's not even very good to draw
observations about space we haven't yet seen, and whatever weird
laws may rule there.
The Nodeworld is just as different: What we know here simply doesn't
apply.
On the other hand, the way to get there has to be consistent with
'here and now'. It should be possible, even if unlikely or
improbable. Improbable just means the percentage of probability is
very small, not zero. 0.001% is ok. And since I want a native earth
human to build something that has the desired effect, it has to be
with knowledge said native earth human can have.
But basically all I need is a way to leave the 'here and now', where
an accident, due to some unlikely option of what may happen, is just
as acceptable as a deliberate attempt to leave the known universe
(searching who knows what - that's why even a whacko cult trying to
reach afterlife is an option).
[*] At one time about the culture of the S&E; they don't know crime,
and some people say that can't be. But their evolution went
differently, and not knowing crime is part of the definition of what
characters I wanted.
so as to get it to do what they want it to do. In order for them
to have that ability they have to have made and correlated lots of
observations of that stuff, and have assembled sets of rules of
how it interacts (even if that's not what they thought they were
doing).
No. There is no stuff, there's absolutely nothing besides what they
make. It doesn't interact any way beyond how they made it. If they
want a tree to grow downwards, roots set in ground above, then it
does. Right next to a tree that grows upwards, with roots in the
ground below. And if they want a square butterfly to hop between
them on roller blades, then that's what they get.
If they want to step from one entity's meadow into another entity's
room, they do that without crossing any space because there's no
space in between. No real substance, no real distance.
Since their stuff will be completely unlike our stuff, and the
way their stuff interacts will be similarly unlike the way ours
does, their rule sets will not resemble ours in any particular.
No physical laws; no rules.
The only 'rule' is that if a native earth human steps out of the
made environment into the nothing, they cease to exist.
They will however still fit my above broad definition of
"physical laws", they just won't look anything like ours.
No. That's the thing. I agree with your definition of physical laws,
and they don't have them.
In their world the rule sets will be divided into categories we
cannot predict any more than they could predict ours.
I think they could predict ours because of prior visits from similar
worlds, or this very visit. Or perhaps they're aware of the solid
world/universes.
Happy with that?
Statements that miss the 'no matter, no physical laws'? :) It
doesn't bother me, it's just not correct.
Good, now here comes the part you may not like. In order for your
travelers to physically get from here to there, there _must_ be a
linkage between "physical laws" _here_ and "physical laws"
_there_, if only in the 'metaphysical' sense I described earlier.
The link could be anti-something. It doesn't have anything we have
here, not even a void. A vague analogy could be that it's to the
real world like the lack of a proton is to an electron (without any
of the rest of the atom involved; it's _not_ there). I don't much
like it because there's an attraction that I don't want in the
analogy. It isn't sucking at the real world, after all.
IOW a being inhabiting the superspace our Universe and the Other
Place are both imbedded in will observe the transition without any
surprise; both Universes' "physical laws" will to him (it?) be
clearly delineated and _independent subsets_ of what the super
-observer considers "physical laws" to be.
If anything, they're outside all universes, and not in superspace.
They may be the observers, independent of all physical laws in the
solid universes 'beneath' them. (I don't like the up/down
implication of 'beneath'. Better would be to say they're kind of
outside.)
Said observer will see the travelers go from 'here' to 'there',
their matter and energy rearranging as necessary to survive in the
new place without any surprise because he (it?) understands the
translation so to speak in an overarching way that neither we nor
the inhabitants of the Other Place ever could.
I don't imagine any translation. In the space they made, native
earth humans can exist the way they are.
(Note: when I talk about magic I specifically mean thaumaturgy,
not theurgy.)
I'm not sure what either is. And my dictionary doesn't have either.
As I said, I strongly suspect it's religion-driven.Well, earlier I mentioned the Anthropic Principle.
What an odd idea.
I have lots of those. ;>)
Not yours. But that some funny religion could have an effect on
science. I find that not at all implausible, but a very odd, not
sensible event.
Your objection leads 'naturally' to the assumption of an
omniscient, eternal observer maintaining the Universe until we
showed up.
Not really. It assumes, sensibly, that there's nothing observing
it.
Not in the minds of those that require a "conscious observer"
in order for an observed thing to exist.
Which doesn't make sense, so what goes on in their minds is entirely
their problem. :)
There's absolutely no basis for belief in whatever god: it's all
just 'someone said so'. All the way back to superstitious folks
who didn't know how to better explain the world. Pretty silly
really to believe them.
Unless one's life is at literal stake; then the silliness
factor goes way down. Fortunately they're not doing that so much
this century.
Yep. But that isn't belief, that's saying what they want to hear, at
gunpoint (or other weapon).
As far as I'm concerned, any given electron is as valid an
observer (to the limit of what it can observe) as any human.
Interesting idea.
But it doesn't make it a proper observer, but none is needed
anyway.
Depends what is meant by "a proper observer". Is consciousness
a necessary property of a "proper observer"? Fine, please define
"conscious". That always throws them for a loop.
Someone who can observe something. Conscious is kind of the opposite
to instinctive; you know you're doing it.
(I've thought about that before. In the ME, magic needs conscius
thought. No funny things spring up from dreams, and animals don't
have any magic. If you've ever observed a cat growling angrily after
it bit its own tail, not realizing that the pain comes from biting,
you'll know what I mean. <g> Not that the cat here is stupid, or
chasing her tail all that often. But I recognize her as an animal,
rather than anthropomorphising her like some people do with
animals.)
And this is really digressing rather a lot from how to getPatience.
there.
In matters of waiting for something particular to happen, my
patience is somewhere in the negative. (I was patient to
convince the formerly disturbed cat that I won't harm her - took
ten years and a trick to get her to jump on my lap - but that's
a different area.)
Curious. I learned patience by observing and interacting with
cats.
My patiens is somewhere in the negative when it involves waiting for
something. It's just that I can't change it and have conscious
thought to not start acting funny when whatever I'm waiting for
doesn't happen at once.
For me, magic is what doesn't obey our physical laws - that it
doesn't is what makes it magic. If it has laws elsewhere, and
you want to define that as part of the laws _there_, it still
doesn't obey our physical laws, which is what matters for me.
Fine so far.
For example in the ME, the physical laws are the same as here
(and I assume that for most other places), plus magic that
doesn't obey them, only its own laws. That's what makes it
magic.
In the S&E (Seasons & Elements trilogy), magic is a mindless
force with sort of a goal, that drives life. It can and does
actively do things, but no more conscious (and thus not
'deliberate') than an electron wandering towards a positive
tension (or whatever the English word for electronic (German)
'Spannung' is).
It is variously translated as tension, pressure, voltage,
stress, potential (in the sense of 'force'). In the cited case
I'd use 'voltage'.
Right. Voltage does sound right now that you mention it, too. (It's
just that I keep forgetting appropriate words and replace them with
alikes, more often lately.)
Of course you can stuff it into laws. But that doesn't keep one
particular tribe (Air) from being able to lift themselves, even
while another (Magic, they're concerned with order) says that's
impossible.
They might even be correct by their own rules, because they
can't perceive whatever it is that allows the Air-ites to
bootstrap themselves.
<g>
Not really. The Magic tribe could do it, too (as the only other
tribe), and if the Air tribe doesn't work their magic so it's not
visible to the other tribes, everyone else can see it (not
necessarily understand it, but the Magic tribe is the most varied
one and most likely to understand it).
It's just that they're a bit rigid. :)
Alternatively, maybe the Air-ites can't perceive whatever it is
that the Magic-ers know damn well prevents bootstrapping. By
definition, if you cannot perceive a thing, it can't affect you.
It's just the magic they have, inside them (determining abilities
and steering instincts). The Air tribe can do magic to do with air,
the Magic tribe is rather varied (all tribes have magic, after all,
not just them), but also concerned with order and they're sort of
control-freaks (the mindless magic force aims to control the people,
too, after all), the Fire tribe is good with fire (and healing
burns), and can withstand great heat, the Water tribe can manipulate
water and adults can breate under it, the Autumn tribe (association
harvest and shifting colours) affect the environment to grow and
reproduce like wild, and do deceiving and confusing magic, and so
on... (There are ten, one for every resistor colour. <g> I just gave
each colour a term, then went with the associations.)
And lifting yourself is, by proper physical laws, not possible.
Well, there you are. There _we_ are. Whatever.
Hm.
Maybe, but does that make it any less 'magical'? Are rainbows
any less beautiful because Sir Isaac Newton found some math to
explain how they work? I don't think so.
I think the distinction is that you won't find maths to make it
work _here_.
People keep telling me that, but nobody so far can prove it.
That's asking to prove a negative. Like that there is no god.
If you get any weird things to work in the real world, it's psi, not
magic though, and likely explainable by yet-to-be found out science.
Patience. My backbrain does not think in straight lines;
Sounds familiar. :)
Particularly when what it's trying to think about won't lie
down in nice, straight lines.
:)
My backbrain usually thinks in anything but nice, straight lines.
...the only constraints are that it gets someone out of
this world (your post title) to a place rather distinctly
unlike this world, and there's no telling beforehand (or even
afterward for those that didn't go) what the other place is
like.
Yes. By what you said it didn't sound as the _only_ constraint,
though.
Basically I'm pointing out that there will be constraints of
some sort, or the locals won't be able to predictably manipulate
their environment ('make what pleases them')-
That's what you assume, but it isn't true there, because they don't
have physical laws. They might make some. Each one may make their
own in their home, different to those in the other homes.
they won't be immediately recognizable to the travelers as such
though because they'll reflexively look for the sort they're used
to.
The visitors might try to find laws, but won't get far with the
conflicting data they perceive.
...suppose there's a
'Magical Coupling Constant' that determines how easy it is for
magical interactions to occur, in a very rough analogy to the
Electromagnetic Coupling Constants that allow light and radio
and such to work here?
That would put magic into a scientific frame that is incompatible
with my idea of it. Basically the 'how easy it is for magical
interactions to occur' doesn't fit my idea at all. For me there's
no such thing. No magical interactions the way electrons
interact.
Magic is about a kind of interaction between bits of matter
No. Magic may be that, but it doesn't have to be. In the S&E it's a
force. In the ME it's an extra bit in matter. In both it's not
something comparable to what we know, because it's something _extra_
that we don't have any analogy for.
that isn't mediated by the forces involved in the mundane
"physical laws". It has its own internally consistent rules that
allow those familiar with them to predictably manipulate it just
like the other forces can be manipulated by those familiar with
their rules.
I agree there.
As far as I'm concerned there is no real difference, except
that I don't know anything solid about the rules of magic.
They're whatever you make up. For me they have to be consistent, but
that's all. No tie at all to any physical laws. Matter doesn't have
to enter it.
when you try to install plumbing, or direct water some other
way. Without an idea of 'what happens because of the magic', the
pipes will go anywhere but where they were planned, and if you
keep going you'll construct something that looks as if it came
out of an Escher painting, real and 3D, impossible as it is. (If
you know that that will happen, and understand enough about
magic, you can evade that, of course.)
And if you decide to abandon what you thought were the rules and
go ahead and experiment with pipes long enough you will eventually
figure 'what happens because of the magic', and will be able to
predict how to get the water to do what you want it to, yes?
You'll find out 'what happens because of the magic' straight away,
in most places, but in those places you would be unlikely to even
think 'it's because of the magic', has anything to do with magic. In
the remaining places you'll just be puzzled. Even my uber-fast
character couldn't make sense of it. (I've got some folks that are
impossibly fast that do automatic all-present-data-crunching with
absolute accuracy.)
You won't be able to get the water to do what you want it to without
a lot more skill than that. Either through growing to overblown
amounts over centuries or rather millenia, or being born with them,
and the overblown mind that's impossible to live with. (Of course if
you keep trying for millenia, you'll get the experience sooner or
later. But you need the millenia for the skill you need, in any
case. You could sleep them away instead without wracking your
brain.)
(The 'most places' are pretty much everywhere, the 'remaining
places' is where the effect is already in place, thus no difference,
all you see is pipes not going where they should, or a plan of a
building that doesn't match the corridors you see, while being
correct - as in the case of the uber-fast guy. The 'effect' is that
the interference liquids have on using magic lessens and disappears,
the bigger and more massive your Escher construct is. Because the
magic normally tied in the liquid - like a river - is drawn into the
solid parts of your construct, and thus easier to get at. But you
won't be able to check where the magic comes from that you use;
you'll never know that the river is 'empty'.)
In the story, it's that in some place that's too wet for most people
to use magic, some tried to install plumbing, were spooked by the
weird pipes, and then spooked by the 'witch incidents' (they've got
a sort of medieval take on witches), and gave up on plumbing.
The evil overlords' places are already sheltered; they've each got a
construct like that, most of them below ground. In one the uber-fast
character wanted to install plumbing...
Just like gravity, just like electromagnetism, and so on.
Not really. There's a bit inherent in the magic that isn't
explainable that way. That's the magic, what we haven't got here,
and no analogies.
Of course one can learn an ordered manner to manipulate it. One can
also learn a very weird manner to manipulate it, and it depends on
the person whether it works. Like the image-magic stuff. If you
don't believe it, it won't work. You can know all the theory, accept
it as possibility, but if you don't believe it (say, because it
would open a way to harm you, as anyone manipulating an image could
harm you if you and they believed it) it won't work. And if your
target doesn't believe it, it won't work either.
Gravity and electromagnetism and so on doesn't care whether anyone
believes it. :)
There's no constant where magic interacts. It's just that magic
is in every atom (or sub-atomic particle), including those that
make up the brain of the constructor. And magic does Weird
Things, that don't fit into any pysical laws, so you can't
explain it further than that, because we don't have the basis;
no analogy. There's something extra that doesn't exist here, and
has no equivalent, so none of our ways to describe what happens
are equivalent.
Not to us, no, but to those that do have it, yes. If they were
so inclined (and I'll assume they're at least as smart as we are)
they could esablish the Laws of Magic as easily as we have
established the Laws of Electromagnetism, Gravity, and so on.
Well, the evil overlords, particularly the two main ones, know
pretty much all there is to know about magic. But they're around
9000 years old, with appropriately overblown skill.
As easily as we have established... I haven't yet got a country that
has done that. One generation of scientists following the next, and
the prior theories, tested, new ones developed, old ones chucked
out... I've not yet looked at the equivalent of Japan (China, too,
and I don't really have anything on Scandinavia), perhaps I should
see what comes off that. (Have wondered what culture to place there,
anyway.)
The only sensible place on the Magic Earth hasn't done the
scientific approach either. More a superstitius approach (not
negative superstitions, just not very scientific), seeing what one
works well with and then having them work with that (like someone
good with weather working only weather, even though the talents on
that world don't work like that).
Talking about talents... They might get in the way of a scientific
approach, too. There's one that makes it easy to find new ways to
work magic. Which, I guess, focusses things on 'get <new idea>
done', not 'how does <old idea> work'. Plus of course magic not
working along straight paths tends to repell people from delving
into it.
To them the things magic does are _not_ Weird Things, they're
simply what magic does.
Actually, no. Ordinary folks tend to wander away from using magic if
left by themselves, because at first glance it doesn't make sense.
To get more than that you need talents plus living in an area where
you can use magic. (Deserts, or you need above average brainpower
and succeed at the first - untrained and usually subconscious, in a
stress situation - attempt, or lose said brainpower, and magic.)
Suppose your story's target world is entirely like this
Universe except the Magical Coupling Constant is much larger,
and magic is almost impossible _not_ to do?
That constant is still incompatible with what I think about
magic.
How so?
Because it exists. I imagine something without constants.
Is magic in the Other Place predictable _for those who grew up
with it_ or not? If it is, then it's (for them) the equivalent of
Just Another Physical Law, only one we don't have.
That's thinking along lines that aren't compatible. And there are no
laws.
What you say might apply to some other story, but not this one.
In order for magic to be used by an entity to control something
external to that entity, there must be some sort of connection
('coupling') the magic can work through.
Sure, in the ME there's the sub-atomic link, but in the S&E, the
connection would _be_ the magic; it's in the people.
In the Nodeworld, it is the people. There's nothing around them,
nothing external, no distance to cross thus no connection. They make
the 'around them' along with what's in it.
And the more we talk about it, the less I want to call it magic. :)
If there isn't any 'coupling', no effect. If the coupling strength
is always the same under the same circumstances, there's a
constant involved.
That assumes there's a strength involved.
The stronger the coupling (greater the constant), the easier the
working.
That doesn't even apply to the ME. There skill is what determines
how easy something is to do. (And skill is determined by raw
hardware brainpower someone is born with, plus what one grows to
over the years.)
The subatomic link is always there. But if some or all atoms (with
magic) around you are in motion (liquid), it's not at all easy to
work, or even use.
Example; in many 'real world' systems of magic, what I'm calling
the Magical Coupling Constant for elemental Iron is zero; magic
has no effect on 'cold iron'. Moving water has a greater Magical
Coupling Constant than does standing water. Living matter has a
much greater Magical Coupling Constant than does non-living
matter, and so on.
That's not very scientific; it's odd bits that don't add up to a
consistent picture, without reason or sense.
In the ME, thick metal walls underground is a good way to build a
room where you can use magic in an environment that's too wet for
your skill. Liquid lava and water, and to some extend even flawed
ice, cause an interference. Gas is too thin to matter. Living matter
makes no difference as long as you don't try to do anything 'living'
(like healing; you can alter a person into stone, something that
isn't alife, even while you couldn't heal a broken bone).
Manipulating or creating living matter (like complicated healing, or
altering a rock into an apple), needs a particular talent.
The only science entering it is that the talents are actually
determined by genetics (you can find them in DNA), but there it ends
for why one person intrinsically understands the working of cells,
and another doesn't. Why someone with low average skill can
genetically manipulate a cell (with some study of cells from various
people, comparing that with talents they have), and someone with
uber-blown skill can't do that without the talent, not even the evil
overlords, or the uber-fast guys.
Or another example: Adding magic. There are various ways to link
people. With one it just adds the magic all participants have.
Another adds to more than the sum. Another doesn't add anything at
all, and leaves people restricted to what each has.
Even the S&E is more straightforward than that in adding magic.
Winter and Spring makes Fire magic, and with some kind of inversion,
it's possible to substract Spring from Fire magic to get Winter
magic. (Same with Summer+Autum=Water. Btw, I made the table of
combinations before I even started writing, so that does have rules,
but it's magical rules, nothing to do with physical laws. Gravity,
electromagnetics, matter, energy,... doesn't enter anywhere. It's
the same magical rules that make a Winter person have a cold temper,
with the ability to metaphorically storm, gives Fire people hot
tempers, and gives Magic people medium tempers, which is a third
extreme.)
If I thought I was talking about an electromagnetism-type force
I'd start thinking about some sort of "magical charge" possessed
by various kinds of matter.
Doesn't fit into any of the three stories I mentioned here (I don't
want to ponder any of the beginnings I've got).
In the ME, as mentioned, it depends on skill and environment (no
charge, simply movement).
In the S&E, some folks from the Night tribe can become part of the
night, insubstantial, no matter involved (only needs more shadow
than light). Some people of the Earth tribe can become part of the
ground, or a mountain, walk right through it. Some of the Winter
tribe can create magic ice (which some from the Summer tribe can
then dry to solid, instable, magic, but that's another matter), or
even surround themselves with a real ice glacier. The Spring tribe
can shrivel living things to dust, or raise long dormant seeds.
The matter itself doesn't matter at all. It all depends on the magic
in the people.
And in the new story, the Nodeworld thing, there is no matter
besides what they make, anyway.
However what little is claimed for magical interactions denies the
likelihood of speed-of-light limited mediation, meaning no likely
'magical photons', hence no likely magical charges; I'd need some
other kind of model.
?
I have a really hard time thinking about magic any other way. If
it isn't predictable, if we can't make at least a rudimentary
science of it, what use is it?
Doesn't matter, because that's the destination. We've digressed a
bit from getting away from the starting position; here and now.
Maybe you should tell me exactly how you think of magic (in
this specific case) so I can build a better bridge.
In this specific case, I think of it less and less as 'magic'. It's
more like divine powers, in that they could, in theory, make their
own universe. It's just that I don't think of them as deities. The
similarity only occured to me; some (real) people think some deity
made the universe. They could make one, in that sense. But they're
just thought-beings that exist within a nowhere and make everything
a visitor would see. If I had to put the nowhere somewhere, it would
be outside all universes, or in the 'space' between them all. But it
was there before the big bang.
That sort of thing could create Universes without such
'fundamentals' as dimensions themselves, much less chemical
elements. We could never visit them but that doesn't mean they
don't exist; we just have nothing we can label 'physics' to
describe them with.
That's what I mean. Now there's just the constants and the big
bang that don't apply.
Remember that 'constants' are merely descriptors of the
interactions between different bits of various kinds of stuff.
Which don't exist there.
If interactions happen in the Other Place
Nope. Unless you count interactions of the thought-beings.
(and it would be a rather dull place if they didn't),
Don't know what makes you think that.
there will be _local_ things that do the job of constants, even if
they bear no relation to what _we_ call constant. Frinst if there
are no electrically -charged particles there, there need not be an
electromagnetic coupling constant.
There's _nothing_ but what the locals made. And no rules to what
they make but those they make.
However, whatever forces _are_ involved will be describable _by
the locals_ in terms of constants that make sense _to them_.
There's just them.
Of course these things need not be talked about at all in the
story, except possibly briefly when somebody wonders how they can
exist in a Place so extremely different from home.
I'll get to that, but forcing some explanation is a bad idea (solely
for the way I write - see what I know now after writing a bit that I
didn't know before).
Even though folks from there can watch our place (linking toMmmmm'kaaayyy.
the spots in atoms that on our world don't have the magic bit,
sort of sitting in the 'hole').
Hey, it's a fantasy story. :) It only has to be consistent
within itself. (I only explained that to show how I view that.
The ME is in the same place as the real world, parallel to ours.
There's no direction to travel into to get there, it's right
here, only not in our dimension. Thus no distance.)
Somebody with a science background (OK, me) will take that
information and think "You can see Here from There, which means
light (or something else that can carry information the way light
can) can travel from Here to There. That rather limits the
sort(s) of separation that can exist between Here and There."
Light isn't involved. A Farseer (one of the folks that can watch our
world) can stare at our sun for millenia without being affected.
There's not really anything 'here' to be affected. The information
doesn't go into the eyes, either, but into the part of the brain
that is different due to the talent, where it's translated into
sight and hearing (other senses not having a place to put them and
being too much; for example they'd 'smell' everything within 'sight'
if that were 'translated'). Theoretically an all-around view would
be possible, too, but that's lost in the translation (the brain
'wanting' something it can handle).
It's really just that they can 'look out of' any atom that lacks the
magic bit, which is every atom here. What they would, in truth, see,
is the raw data of all that's going on; sound waves, light waves,
currents in the air, electromagnetic stuff,... Which I imagine
would, just looked at, look like snow on a TV; a mess.
But as everyone on that world (usually unconsciously) perceives
their surroundings with magic, too, the brain knows how to translate
that into familiar shapes, colours, sounds,... It knows what any bit
of data looks (or doesn't look) like.
Also, when you say "not in our dimension" I visualize a
pages-in-a-book sort of thing with each page being a world.
I imagine it right here, or rather the Magic Earth globe in the same
place as our globe.
Which reminds me of a subject further up: The only bit of science
turned up when two Farseers wondered how to find out whether there's
magic on the moon. (Their moon, of course.)
Thing is, there _is_ a very small distance separating the pages,
but it isn't measurable _from within_ any of the pages.
I don't see any spacial distance at all.
I started writing (the arrival), and found that there isn't even
ground. Only what looks like ground (with nothing beneath and no
actual substance; the lair beneath someone's feet has no
thickness); all there is is what the inhabitants 'made'. Where
none of them made something, there's nothing (not even vacuum).
Even the bodies are just made. (The arrivals from our world can
exist and walk around in that 'made' landscape, stepping out of
it would have them cease to exist, while the locals can just
step into the nothing and start 'furnishing' it.)
And the traveler(s) bod(ies) come through unchanged?
Yep.
The thing I saw not falling to the ground appeared along with
the arrivals, and stood out for not being made by the
inhabitants. That doesn't mean the locals can't make something
that just hangs in the air. They make the air, too, after all.
That they look like humans will need an explanation that
involves prior visits from somewhere where humans exist, but
that could be anywhere; thus 'Nodeworld'; they could have had
visits from universes more similar to ours. Or another idea is
that they are remembering this visit, because time as we know
doesn't exist there either.
Could explain why the travelers survive; the locals 'see them
coming' and provide a suitable environmental bubble for them.
I think the 'bubbles' are already there, due to the prior visits.
For the moment please just trust me that faster-than-light
travel can put you somewhere in your past.
I'd be lying if I said I do.
Notice I didn't say "will", just "can".
Yep. I'd be lying if I said I do. :)
What they don't know is that it also realigns large stretches
of the volume of the higher-dimensional space I described
above,
Why not realign stretches of the real world?It may have say in early testing, producing blatantly
unacceptable side-effects.
Like bumping people elsewhere? :)
I was thinking more like producing writhing, miles-long blazing
stretches of tortured spacetime running parallel to major
highways or across the sky above major cities; the sort of thing
that isn't easy to explain away as 'swamp gas' or the planet
Venus.
Heh. I don't mind side-effects, unless you mean 'unacceptable' in a
physics sense, rather than someone not liking them.
I'm still missing the actual theory, the physics. What existing
theory could be used for an experiment? You mentioned time
travel up there, or faster than light travel, but I lack
something solid, an image, a name for the theory used, a vague
idea of what they built,... (By no means something as detailed
as an actual layout, only more than 'it may involve resistors
and a lens, and perhaps a laser'.)
People keep telling you there isn't _a_ theory to cover this;
the best I can offer is a collage of bits of several to get it to
work at all.
That's fine.
If that's what you meant by a 'built' theory,
You mentioned building a theory, I wanted something that already
exists.
try to remember that _all_ theories are built, frinst modern
thermodynamics was built, among other things, out of pieces of
Phlogiston and Caloric theories.
the difference is that that led to something accepted, where for the
effect I want we won't even get something just tested. If you use
many different theories, you'll have used them. No combined theory.
I don't mind different ones, as long as they're real. (The combined
one wouldn't be real; it doesn't exist.)
If it helps, also try to remember that as we go along we
discover that theories tend to 'eat' one another;
electromagnetics no longer exists, having been permanently
morphed by the discovery of quantum mechanics into Quantum
Electrodynamics. Theoretical physicists have been trying
desperately to combine QM and the Relativities for most of a
century now.
I heard about that, but don't even see the problem.
But an unlikely attempt to combine them (and tested in an
experiment) would be an acceptable means for the desired effect. But
then I think we've got the problem that I wouldn't understand the
attempt to explain it.
You mentioned earlier that the phrases "strong nuclear force"
and "weak nuclear force" meant nothing to you; the former was
'built' to explain why the components of nuclei (protons and
neutrons) are observed to combine and recombine the way they do
(extreme simplification, but do you want glazed eyes with that?),
I get headaches instead of glazed eyes, because I'm interested and
want to follow rather than fading out, evading the subject. (Trying
to build an image out of an incompatible explanation strains
something, or something.)
But with what you say I only know that protons and neutrons are
involved. I have no idea 'what way' they 'combined and recombined',
and no idea why whatever happened would be called 'strong nuclear
force'. Because that's the bits you left out.
the latter explains why some nuclei are observed to decay the way
they do.
Which just tells me that nuclei are involved, not how they decay, so
I don't have an image for that.
Just this year a Japanese physicist has been awarded a Nobel Prize
for using some abstruse math to help explain how the
electromagnetic force and the strong and weak nuclear forces are
_not_ separate forces,
Once I understand how something works, putting it in maths is
useful. To explain it it is unsuitable for me.
Just saying, before some formula turns up. If I understand
something, putting it in a formula is fine.
For example, saying I'm 1.8 times as old as the cat here doesn't
tell anyone either's age, even with knowing that '1' is added to
both each year. With something simple as this, saying I was twice as
old as she four years ago would help, because I understand the
maths.
With physics, I wouldn't understand either by that put into a
formula. I'd need the plain info that the cat is around 20, and I'm
36, and understand it, _then_ the formula makes sense.
but are actually aspects of the same force- two short-range and
the other long-range.
I have no idea what short and long range refer to. I can imagine
that three events to do with parts of an atom all have to do with
the same force, which seems kind of obvious. But I just know a tiny
bit about the 'electro' part, none of the 'magnetic' and the rest.
Two others are awarded a prize for showing how a curious bit of
math explains why much more matter is seen than antimatter.
You know, that (and the above) sounds like just the kind of
connections my backbrain brews up about made-up stuff. Shame I don't
know the subject, and the necessary maths. :)
The math all three used is about how some symmetries are perfect
while others are 'broken', and the broken ones account for a lot
of the more interesting aspects of reality, indeed possibly for
the Big Bang itself.
I very much like symmetry and balance. Broken ones sound very
interesting, but as said... I don't know anything about it.
What you're asking for is "Transdimensional Transportation
Theory" but at this point in time there just ain't no such thing,
But I'm not asking for that. I'm asking for something that could be
done with what we know, that then has an unanticipated, or with the
experiment tested, effect because of stuff that is not yet known.
I'm looking for a hole in the known knowledge that's so big that it
may just be possible to have the desired effect. So, I need a
theory, and the gap in knowledge where, one day, something may be
found that makes it possible, even if currently 9.999% of all
scientists think something else will be found. 0.001 possible is
enough. All I need is that it's not certain, tested (because of
course what I want isn't tested, it doesn't exist). I need a
possibility.
Telling me that there is no way to transport people elsewhere, when
that's well known, is kind of pointless.
so we have to cobble one up out of Cosmogony and an off-brand of
Gravitational Engineering based on Transmission Line Theory
stolen from Electromagnetism. But see, Physics is Physics; more
and more it appears that it's all one thing which we arbitrarily
divided up into pieces based on our incomplete understanding of
how the Universe works. As our understanding increases, the
divisions melt away.
That's fine. I don't see why it should be split up, either. It's all
the same universe, after all.
I don't understand the 'rotating objects out of thisThat's where the 'higher' dimensions come in. Can you imagine a
spacetime', though. Mainly the 'rotating'; it's obviously not
just turning them around, so on what axis are they rotated? (I
can imagine the process, but lack the axis.)
two- dimensional space (roughly like a sheet of paper; look up
"Flatland"), in which 2D people can move in two directions but
not in the direction of the thickness of the paper?
I have a problem with '2D people'.
Well, they live in a 2D universe. You're trying to set a story
partly in a universe where there are no dimensions at all, why
would you have a problem with a 2D universe?
Because I made up the locals of the other place. It's something I
can imagine. 2D is something someone else suggested as an analogy,
and doesn't work. With them, it's better to just drop them.
Take mud. On a large scale, the water and the earth are in the same
place. Only with universes, I don't imagine it combind to mud, but
still separate things; water and earth don't have anything do do
with each other, not even from an outside viewpoint. No mud, just
water and earth inhabiting the same space.
With the ME, we're the earth, they're the water.
With the S&E, we're the mud, they're a tree in a different galaxy,
far into the future. (I'd still like to know how long the Voyager
probes would last before they fall apart, and what would happen to
the components if they fall onto a different planet. I searched no
end - in internet - for something useful, but all I got was a pretty
picture of the golden disk. But that's another matter.)
With the new Nodeworld thing, we're the mud, and they're the space
an electron occupies, only not real electrons but the ME magic extra
bit subatomic link space electrons: nothing we have words or
analogies for.
Imagine rotating one of them on any axis that passes along a
direction contained in the paper; most of them would stick out
of the paper, one side 'above', the other side 'below'. The
remainder would look, to others who didn't rotate, like a
linear cross-section of the rotated individual.
Ok. But why wind down to 2D?
Because you can easily visualize that;
Not in a useful way that can be transplanted to the problem.
adding a thickness dimension and trying to visualize an analogous
rotation that puts the 3D person mostly outside of his 3D space is
a lot more difficult-
The 'mostly' would bother me, not the 'same space, same time,
different dimension' aspect. That's what I've got with the ME. I
just don't add any spacial dimensions. It's more like a different
time dimension; same direction but beside it.
For us, time is a line; one dimension. Now imagine it had three
dimensions, and someone were flipped from speeding along the X axis,
0-line Y axis, to speed along the X axis, 1-line Y axis. Same
direction, but no longer here. (I imagine they've got their own
three space dimensions, plus time.)
And rambling on about that, I come to think that the analogy of Z
axis applies to the new Nodeworld thing. Perhaps as a plane (X and Z
axis), or perhaps they've got the entire cube (X, Y, Z).
Does that help? :)
while it's easy to see the 3D space that the 2D universe and its
inhabitants are embedded in, and into which the 2D man is rotated,
visualizing someplace for a 3D person to rotate into is a lot
harder.
Not really. It's the same 'doesn't work' as the net&ball that's used
to depict bent space or whatever; it's 2D, not 3D.
In our space you have more options. You can do a rotation that
makes you look to the rest of us like a line, or you could be
'rotated' around a _planar axis_ so that others would see a 2D
cross-section. In either case much of your mass is no longer in
this Universe
Ok.
in the sense that it takes much less energy to accelerate you;
You lost me there.
OK, less force. Better now?
No, it's still talking about accelerating me. :)
Seriously, the more mass you want to get up to a given velocity,
the more energy you have to put into it.
I don't think it's useful to digress into that. If, for the
solution, you need a scientist who wants to accelerate something,
that's enough for me. (Words like 'velocity' give me a headache.)
Just moving furniture around should demonstrate that. But what is
the source of inertia (the inherent difficulty of moving an object
which, after eliminating such things as air resistance or
friction, depends solely on its mass)?
I think I'll put 'inertia' into the list of words that give me a
headache. :)
Nobody really knows, but Ernst Mach suggested it was the
gravitational attraction of all the other masses in the universe,
pulling equally from all directions. If that's so, and you can
rotate an object so that most of it is no longer in this space and
thus no longer subject to that pull, its inertia nearly completely
vanishes. A battleship would be as easy to move as a dust mote.
Ok, that makes sense.
In the Space thing (a story I begun), they just bump the entire ship
out of the universe, for no time at all, to arrive elsewhere. I
guess you'd want to twist that along space dimensions, too. (But for
me, it's just made up sci-fi mumbojumbo, any similarity to real
existing or possible tech is not intended and purely coincidental.
:) )
even if the scientist isn't trying for FTL it'd have obvious
military and commercial applications.
Sure. I don't like the line that's left, though. And don't know
where the rest of the person is. And I've got a problem with
trying to transplant 2D into 3D like that. We're looking at the
2D people from a 3D perspective, after all.
Yes, and to see what's happening to 3D people you have to look
at them from a 4D (actually 5D because of the time=4th D thing)
which is extremely difficult.
That's why I forget about the numbers and just imagine them in the
same space, same time, just elsewhere with 4D. :)
This is why the 2D example is so often cited; one can easily grasp
the principle there and sort of see how it extends another
dimension.
Just like the net&ball is often cited, and works for other people.
For me that would just complicate things. Assuming something that
doesn't work for me, and then working with that.
Plus it makes me wonder about 1D people; perhaps what's left is
a dot. (One that doesn't have any width or depth.) So why
wouldn't someone rotated in a 3D world have just a dot left?
Depends on the exact type of rotation performed.
Ok, so to use your words, we rotate them along all three axis, so
that there's nothing left.
But basically I just don't like the idea that anything is left.
Just an intermediate step. If you like, imagine rotating a
person around a point on their 'edge' (in the case of a 2D
person, for a 3D person it's be a point on their skin)- the whole
body rotates out of their normal space that way. Imagine 2D
people as stickers attached to their space, and grasping their
edge and peeling them up off their space. Now imagine doing that
to a 3D person. Personally I find the rotation less...
disturbing.
With a 3D person, you lack the flat surface of a sticker, and that's
where the analogy falls flat.
Can't visualize it?
No problem with imagining something (I only understand things I
can picture, including a conversation, or in other words, we
wouldn't be able to talk if I couldn't visualize all the plain
words used here - and that's why I get problems with funny terms
or formulas; no image).
I just hoped the axis would be something other than one of the
three spacial dimensions, or time. I was hoping for something
else.
Sorry, geometry is what it is.
So what else is there? (With geometry not producing fitting
analogies.)
Seriously, look up _Flatland_
I'll ask in the library, perhaps we're lucky. But so far I don't
quite know what it's supposed to help click into place.
The whole rotation thing.
I know what you mean, it's just that I don't like the analogy; it
doesn't do what I imagine.
I don't need much description, writing wise. In books,
long tedious descriptions of landscapes bore me no end, because
'forest' already does the trick, for example.)
Suppose you grew up in say Afghanistan, and your idea of
'forest' was three scraggly acacia trees within a half-mile
radius? You wouldn't visualize nearly the same as a person who
grew up in say California and vacationed in Redwood National
Park; immense groves of the tallest trees in the world are a very
different sort of 'forest'.
If someone in Afghanistan would call that forest, and has no idea
about other places' vegetation...
But if you say 'jungle' I have a different picture than if you say
'forest'. In dry climate I would imagine some other look, too.
There's more information in the story, after all. No need to
describe every leaf.
How to get working magic in that other Universe is your
problem; I just found you a way there.
Magic isn't a problem. It's physical laws trying to restrict
it, if they were to apply, that is a problem.
Everything has rules and restrictions. If it doesn't, it isn't
predictable,
The idea that it has rules and restrictions, or just that
predictable matters in any way, is incompatible with the world I
have in mind.
and is therefore not useful.
Don't know why you say that. Having to be 'useful' is incompatible,
too. The whole sentence lives in a different dimension than how I
think about it.
Well, we (think we) know that magic doesn't work at all here,
and it does work there, so the physical interpretation is that
there must be some specific difference that allows it there and
prevents it here. But if we're just looking at it wrong, that
in that place it's simply another physical interaction like
electromagnetism or gravity, but the coupling constant is so
small here that it's almost never seen, then it isn't _allowed_
there, it's _required_ the way gravity is required here.
That's what I don't like: I don't want it to be just another
physical interaction. If it were that, it wouldn't be magic, but
just another physical interaction.
So what?
It's not magic. You know, something magical, that by its very
definition isn't explainable by physical laws.
What do you think magic is?
Something that's outside physical laws.
If it can affect physical matter in a predictable fashion, then
it's a physical interaction, period.
Don't know where you get the idea. My whole point is that it's a
magical interaction. Something you wouldn't get with physics.
In the S&E, a Summer Priest (Priest is one of the two male genders)
can draw dryness out of plants, and it doesn't involve watering
them. A Winter Warrior (Warrior is one of the two neutral genders)
would keep a brew hot by keeping the cold out, not by heating or
insulating it. And up there I already mentioned Night people; a
Night Lord (for example; Lord is the other male gender) can become
part of the night. A Night Priest can enter others' dreams, and
bring others into them, and manipulate them (to deal with memories
and such).
Nothing physical in that.
But we're digressing.
I wouldn't call it 'just' another one though.
Anything explainable by physical laws is just another physical
aspect, nothing magical.
No problem except we'd never figure that out unless a scientist
(one mentally equipped to stay sane long enough to think about
what they see there) got to investigate both places.
Talking about staying sane. I wonder what other reactions folks
could have to arriving there out of nowhere. (So far I've only
got one, one similar to how I imagine I'd react.) But I guess
I'll find some more once I get to the viewpoints.
The best at adapting to new environments, or rather to radical
changes in their environments, are the young. They are not so
emotionally invested in the old one.
I'm more wondering about the initial reaction, those of adults.
That's all keeping something here, though. The idea is to place
the whole people elsewhere. Something kept here would mean
there's a tie to the real world, too. Some overlap to cross.
The line is merely the last bit to be seen; it's swept up along
with the rest of the bubble when it disconnects from this
Universe and heads for the Other Place.
Ok.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what transmission line theory is.
Very briefly (and incompletely), a signal must be gotten from a
generator to a load. The generator is a balanced AC type meaning
it outputs opposite alternating voltages on two wires (or via a
hollow pipe called a waveguide, or even along a single wire-
actually in the space near the conductive surface of the
wire/waveguide but don't worry about that right now); a
resistance connected to the wires completes the circuit, and
dissipates power from the generator. The wires themselves are
assumed to not interrupt the flow of power, merely to carry it
losslessly (ignoring resistance because it is an AC signal).
Kinking the wires or drastically bending them (introducing
'discontinuities') with a radius of curvature on the order of the
wavelength the wire is carrying results in the reflection of some
of the power back toward the generator; the worse the curvature,
the more the reflection. Doing one kind of bend, followed by
another kind of bend, properly spaced by a certain fraction of
the power wavelength, can result in the section of wire between
the bends that actually accumulates power- not reflecting it back
to the generator
So far so well. (I just don't know where the 'transmission line'
enters.)
nor passing it on to the load.
Not sure what a load is.
This is a "resonator". If you build it just right then cut it in
half, you get a structure that can actually radiate the power into
empty space; this is an "antenna" and is obviously a resonant
structure as well.
I'm lost here. Cut in half? Empty space (what space?)?
Your scientist could have built a gravitational-wave resonator
system that stores energy in the form of an _alternating_
gravitational field rather than a static field like what leads
to wormholes.
Sounds interesting, but not very possible. (To me, simple and
ignorant as I am, it sounds like something that stores gravity,
That's exactly what it would do.
Cool.
which sounds very odd. Never mind what effect that may have, and
why isn't anyone using it for anti-gravity devices?)
Because gravity is an astoundingly feeble force. It takes the
entire three sextillion (3 x 10 ^21) kilogram mass of the planet
Earth to keep you stuck to its surface; yet, we pathetically weak
bags of damp protein can, when properly trained, leap twice our
body length away from its surface.
Heh.
Equally, it would take the entire mass of another Earth
hovering just overhead to lift you off the surface via raw
gravity. That wouldn't be very practical, would it?
Right.
So I needed some way to 'store' gravity in order to get enough of
it in one place to bend spacetime severely enough to create the
bridge bubbles (or whatever you wind up calling it..
I kind of lost the connection to how these bubbles transport anyone
anywhere.
He's not quite completed his theory though, and instead of
being perfectly sealed the thing intermittently leaks a
spacetime distortion that manifests as a traveling twist in
spacetime that, instead of looking like a laser beam, tends to
break up into self-contained 'bubbles' of twisted spacetime
that occasionally snatch people up and then 'leak' away from
our Universe and zip off through that fifth-dimensional
nowhere, eventually impacting on and dissipating into the other
place, dumping the people in "what the f*ck-"Land.
Heh. Sounds cool.
The bubbles and that are easy to imagine, too. Just the tech
behind it still evades me. <sigh>
Forward basically started by analogizing from electromagnetism
to gravitation; to get high voltage from low-voltage batteries
you need an oscillator and a step-up transformer. He wanted
strong gravity fields to experiment with, but that obviously
means lots of mass in an inconveniently small space. The densest
available ordinary matter is the osmiridium alloy I mentioned,
but it's still not that much more 'gravitic' than say iron or
anything else. However, Forward's work-in- progress analogy
suggested that if you move it around very fast it generates
another field, the gravitational equivalent of the magnetic field
he called the 'protational field'. He never directly demonstrated
its existence, but he did manage to get a signal across his
workspace by getting one set of wigwagging weights to cause
another set of weights to wigwag in resonance.
Cool.
(BTW some people will tell you that what he generated wasn't
'really' gravitational waves according to accepted theory, and
they're right. However I'll remind you that the gravitational
waves accepted theory predicts have not been seen.)
So what did he produce?
Standard theory predicts free-flying gravitational quanta
called 'gravitons',
Why do they always want something flying around? :) (Somehow,
something flying around doesn't match my idea of gravity.)
but despite much effort nobody's managed to detect them directly
with the gravitational analogs of resonant antennas designed by a
guy named Weber, which are basically great big aluminum cylinders
that were supposed to ring like gently tapped bells when a
graviton passed through them. That's again largely because gravity
is so damn feeble. There has been 'second-hand- detection by among
other things something called LIGo which is basically a great big
optical interferometer (you'll have to look that up unless you
want to pay me to tutor you in this stuff)-
Heh.
point is, it's big enough that even feeble gravity waves can have
an observable effect on its operation.
Ok.
(Though the idea that gravity has waves doesn't ring any better than
it having stuff flying around. Basically, it goes in the wrong
direction; it leaves the source rather than attracting something.)
So the hardware will look nothing like any scientific hardware
you're likely to have ever seen; as dense as possible masses
moving very quickly along programmable paths, all focused on a
small space.
Wanting some analogue I can understand, is this (very vaguely)
like turning a spoon in a coffee mug, but instead of having the
coffee swap around and mixed, you keep the 'waves' (in a coffee
mug that's of course just waves like would be seen in a pond
when throwing a stone in)? In other words, the effect? And not
the turning of the spoon is what matters (the movement), but the
moved matter? (All I know about matter and gravity is that
matter attracts other matter, more the more there is. So if
dense matter is moved, it should have some effect.)
Yes. The waves will insistently yank nearby matter back and
forth like the waves from your spoon would cause another spoon
dipped into the coffee to wave back and forth in sympathy to your
twisting/ stirring motion.
Cool.
If the waves from several sources are made to converge on an
object with proper synchronization _and_ if they are not strictly
3D as many now assume, then whatever is in the volume of
convergence can be 'twisted' away...
That they're not strictly 3D sounds interesting. But the connection
to 'twisting' away into other dimensions evades me.
Sounds like one of those three-rings-three-axis ball things seen
in some other TV stuff. I've seen bits of some movie where they
built that to then drop through and end up with the aliens that
sent the layout, or something. And in the series Eureka.
Yes- the movie device is from the movie version of Carl Sagan's
_Contact_. Much smaller, many of them, about that fast.
Ok.
The array would take up most of say a medium-sized warehouse.
Ok.
Thanks much!
Welcome much. I hope enough of ths sticks that you get to write
your story.
Thanks.
Neither can I, nor as far as I know can anyone else. All you
can do is the Flatland analogy.
Which doesn't really work for me.
The pages-in-a-book image works for Flatland, but I have
nothing similar to offer for our world. Sorry.
I've got the image for the destination, and of course one of the
real world. :)
In more popular fiction, our collective inability to visualize
in more than three dimensions goes at least back to H. P.
Lovecraft. He did a lot with suggestions of spacetimes just a
little different from ours, but different enough to induce
raving insanity when glimpsed.
:)
Which I find hard to believe. If nothing else, the eye and
brain, used to 3D, would just pattern what it sees into
something it can understand.
And likely get it completely, probably dangerously, wrong. Ever
seen those sculpted-face wallhangings that seem to follow you as
you move around a room? Know how they work?
No. I know the effect from pictures, and there it's just that the
eyes look directly into the 'camera' (right at the painter).
If I play some game for a long time (whether Tetris or Settlers
or something else), I see the shapes from the game somewhere
where they aren't, either. Whether that's trying to mentally
sort cars, or 'seeing' a building in a stain on the bathroom
floor. Or in the cat's fur. :)
One day, after a long session of editing bitmap images, I took
a walk and was startled to see the world looked pixellated. The
illusion only lasted a few minutes though.
:)
(What with you trying to apply possible constants to the other
world.)
For the locals to survive there it must make some kind of sense
they can understand;
That's an assumption based on the rules of the real world. The rules
that don't exist there. :)
The thing is that 'must make some kind of sense they can understand'
doesn't apply because there's nothing but what they make. All that's
there is their doing. They understand how they make it, but that
isn't the same, since without them making anything, there's
absolutely nothing but their thoughts. They even make whatever rules
they fancy, which 'next door' might be completely different.
Thanks much for your efforts.
--
Tina
WISuspension: Seasons & Elements trilogy | Magic Earth series
Excerpts at: <http://home.htp-tel.de/fkoerper/ath/athintro.htm>
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