Brainstorming: The anti-ROBbery squad

[DataPacRat]

R.O.B. is short for "Random Omnipotent Bastard".

Seeking outside perspectives, such as ideas about further implications.

A few descriptive quotes:

"I don't like the term. Sure, they can usually apply any superpower you care to name, transform whole populations, edit societies, and rewrite history, but they're generally not /omni/potent."

"We're dealing with an infinite multiverse, with the sort of infinity where anything you can imagine, if you look hard and long enough, you can eventually find it. The trouble is, I can imagine somebody with both the power and motivation to permanently wipe out all alternity of sapience. On the plus side, I can also imagine that there's some way to stop such beings from doing that; the trick is going to be finding the latter before the former get the opportunity to kill us all."

"Some of the simpler sorts of missions for trainees like us will be dealing with what are now called Worms. Some ROB will pick a random person in a random universe, give them a super-power or reality-editing widget, tweak their minds to make sure they'll use it, and generally to use it in a specific theme, then sit back and watch the 'fun'. Fortunately, while such Worms may have abilities that seem pretty omnipotent, the mental nudges generally mean they focus on whatever they're doing instead of taking basic precautions. A lot of would-be Emperors of the World-Harem can be taken out with a single bullet. Mostly, the sponsoring ROBs don't object or interfere - watching mere mortals try to scramble and clean up after a half-finished worldwide rewrite seems to satisfy their urges about as well as watching it go off without a hitch."

"There are some problems which can best be solved by sending Superman in his full, ridiculously over-powered Silver Age self in. And for those problems, we send him. But only a certain percentage of universes support the particular quirk of exotic physics which Kryptonian cells take advantage of to metabolize yellow-sun radiation. In universes which support, say, probability-manipulating magic instead, he's not only no better than any other unpowered humanoid, most of his hard-won instincts no longer apply. Similarly, uber-powerful psis sent to universes with a planet Krypton but without telepathy are easily squished. Where we come in is that with very few exceptions - stick around long enough and you'll find out that all rules have exceptions - almost every universe in which humans can exist at all, we're still the same. We only depend on baseline physics, which gives us the chance to become more versatile than the big guns. That may change - you might get caught in a rewrite and turned into some kind of over-endowed catgirl that needs narrative-based physics just to be able to stand up, or you may find you've got a talent for one field or another of exotic physics, power yourself up, and get reassigned - so enjoy your humanity while it lasts."

"Given the stakes we're playing for, I hope you can handle moral ambiguity. We work with a few God-Emperors with humanity-wide harems, and also with strategic assets of some kind. If it comes down to it, if the choice is between letting a tyranny like that survive or all sapience dying off, I'm going to try to help the tyranny. Fortunately for my conscience, very few tyrannies are even in the running to be competent enough to be useful, let alone have better odds of being the last shard of humanity standing than more rights-respecting regimes. But if you're not willing to consider making a bargain with the devil to keep heaven from being destroyed, we can drop you back off home while the rest of us do the important work keeping your world safe."

"Of course we're not telling you everything. Or even much of anything important. You haven't even learned how to constantly do multiplication in your head to keep low-powered telepaths out yet."