08-30-2017, 10:06 PM | #1 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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"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. |
08-30-2017, 11:29 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: "If The Cosmic Phone Rings...
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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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
08-31-2017, 02:56 AM | #3 |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
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Re: "If The Cosmic Phone Rings...
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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08-31-2017, 12:59 PM | #4 |
Wielder of Smart Pants
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ventura CA
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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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08-31-2017, 01:09 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: "If The Cosmic Phone Rings...
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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08-31-2017, 08:38 PM | #6 | ||
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: "If The Cosmic Phone Rings...
Quote:
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08-31-2017, 09:07 PM | #7 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: "If The Cosmic Phone Rings...
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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Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
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