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Old 08-30-2017, 10:06 PM   #1
sir_pudding
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Default "If The Cosmic Phone Rings...

...don't answer" - Simon Conway Morris

So I just had a dream which I thought was exceedingly clever until I woke up and realized it was the plot of The Expanse crossed with the end of Accelerondo (and probably Eclipse Phase even though I only know anything about that setting third hand).

In it the Hawking station object turned out to be, rather than a (highly unlikely) primordial black hole, an inert terminal in a wormhole network. All the poking at it wakes it up and the moment when the hawking radiation shifts into a coherent signal happens too quickly for anyone to do anything about as an an alien postsapient Infomorph attacks and occupies the station's frames.

Meanwhile the Oort cloud object is also a terminal but of a different network, and opens to a signal from a competing intelligence which installs itself on the Starswarm nodes on approach.

The solar system is now once again the battleground in a very long war, a war that explains the Great Filter.

In my dream Althea Station managed to firewall in time, but isn't aware of what, if any, other pockets of resistance exist, which is probably a great place to start a campaign.

Last edited by sir_pudding; 08-31-2017 at 02:47 PM.
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Old 08-30-2017, 11:29 PM   #2
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In my dream Althea Station managed to firewall in time, but isn't aware of what, if any, other pockets of resistance exist, which is probably a great place to start a campaign.
Ah, Transhuman Space as true cosmic horror. I think that's Case Nightmare Red. Now the question is, does Hir Majesty's Government have a Laundry?
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Old 08-31-2017, 02:56 AM   #3
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Default Re: "If The Cosmic Phone Rings...

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In my dream Althea Station managed to firewall in time, but isn't aware of what, if any, other pockets of resistance exist, which is probably a great place to start a campaign.
Shades of Traveller the New Era – something I thought was a really good idea that got dragged down in the general chorus of "this ain't proper Traveller" was having the old atlas of places to visit but having no idea what had happened to them since.
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Old 08-31-2017, 12:59 PM   #4
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Default Re: "If The Cosmic Phone Rings...

I have no idea how plausible it is that an artificial wormhole in standby mode might look to us like a small black hole instead. The logic of dreams doesn't usually bother with checking out the physics.
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Old 08-31-2017, 01:09 PM   #5
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I have no idea how plausible it is that an artificial wormhole in standby mode might look to us like a small black hole instead. The logic of dreams doesn't usually bother with checking out the physics.
A wormhole, iirc, is basically an almost black hole being propped open by exotic matter, so it would probably be hard to distinguish from a black hole.
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Old 08-31-2017, 08:38 PM   #6
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Ah, Transhuman Space as true cosmic horror. I think that's Case Nightmare Red.
Curiosity aroused, I came across this post from Stross:

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Charlie Stross replied to this comment from Greg. Tingey | June 19, 2015 12:38

Big picture: the CASE NIGHTMARE codes are all assigned to existential anthropic threats -- as in, they're types of event associated with extinction-level outcomes if we get them wrong the very first time we encounter them.

Obligatory Iain M. Banks reference: they're a taxonomy of Out Of Context problems.

CASE NIGHTMARE BLUE is the Lovecraftian singularity: the stars are coming right and we can't prevent this from happening. Side effects: magic everywhere and hideous incursions occurring with increasing frequency.

CASE NIGHTMARE RED is an alien invasion scenario: a side-effect of BLUE is that an awful lot of natives in other versions of our reality begin to get restless, and some of them decide our neighbourhood looks quieter and less likely to draw unwelcome attention from the Elder Gods. TEAPOT and the V-parasites are low-level manifestations of this one; "The Nightmare Stacks" is about a barely averted near-worst-case outbreak of CNR. (Hint 1: we call them "elves" but what they really are is another species of gracile hominid with elongated pinnae and a very bad attitude. Hint 2: any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from magic. Hint 3: they are currently exploring the consequences of having allowed a Mineshaft Gap to emerge, and don't like what they see.)

CASE NIGHTMARE YELLOW is the hard-take-off rapture-of-the-nerds singularity, with added tentacles, because you just know that nothing goes better with CASE NIGHTMARE BLUE like a simultaneous Vingean singularity taking hold in the age of the Internet Of Things That Go Bump In The Night.

There are other codes for things like malevolent/viral SETI signals, intelligent plagues (c.f. "Blood Music") and so on, but these are the Big Three as far as Bob is concerned.

The point is, none of these are particularly good things for the people who pay the Laundry's bills. (And by book 8 or 9 the Laundry, in full public view, is going to be reassigned by Whitehall as the primary agency under the purview of the Department for Existential Anthropic Threats, when it's spun out of the Ministry of Defense.)

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog...ok-launch.html
Sort of a RED-YELLOW, then? CN Orange?
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Old 08-31-2017, 09:07 PM   #7
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Sort of a RED-YELLOW, then? CN Orange?
I don't think so. In orthodox THS, the growth of information processing doesn't seem to be leading to a Singularity; in fact it's very much an Averted Singularity storyline. And that doesn't seem to be changed in this scenario. The existential threat seems to come from the alien invaders.
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