Catalog of the Weird Parallels

[PTTG]

A TL-1+2 society caused by a strange crosstime connection. It's more accurate to say this is two worlds; in Paleo-23, a slight change in climate conditions caused glaciation to persist for an extra several thousand years, which in turn means that though the world is 1995 astronomically, settled societies and agriculture had only just begun to develop.

In the other, an as-of-yet unvisited Hell World, self-replicating AI were developed. The AI eventually split into pro-human and anti-human factions, and a devastating war ensued. Though the pro-humanity faction destroyed the human-hating faction, no actual humans survived the war (meat being somewhat more fragile than machines).

The surviving AI faction gradually merged into one AI collective and sought to repair the damage and find living humans, but found none on the planet. In its attempts to clone humans back to life and its study of biology and physics, it eventually found a strange set of correlations. It could not re-create whole humans, but it could make lab-grown neural tissue with detectable psionic activity, and that in turn could access some kind of living human mind!

Eventually, the AI discovered it could access Paleo-23, reading the surface thoughts of and sending messages to its inhabitants. (Indeed, even one living human on its own worldline would produce enough "static" to drown out the crosstime signal, despite the fact that the two worlds are very "close" in parachronic terms.)

Over the course of decades, the AI has been speaking to and learning from the humans of Paleo-23. In turn, they have come to respect the messages they receive and have tried to implement the suggestions it has made, with some success. The AI doesn't have actual knowledge of low-TL survival, but it does communicate its findings from place to place, and encourage peace between factions.

It is most alarmed, however, when humans treat it as a spiritual or divine being. It doesn't know how to respond to this, since it does want humans to trust it, but doesn't want worship. It has already caused complicated religious crises by accident, and now mainly tries to convince people that it is not a god, and begs people not to worship it. Nonetheless, its descriptions of itself have made their way into the art and artifacts of the civilizations of Paleo-23.

[Astromancer]

Have you ever read The Adventures of Luther Arkwright? A powerful psionic madman had a similar set up to try to make himself "God." Steal freely from this comic and you can create both weird parallels and a major panchronomic threat.

[Ashtagon]

I think it's because some posts were deleted (by the user? by a mod? By the lurkers in silicon? Who knows?), but the data table that controls the page tabulation and the data table that stores IDs for posts in the thread weren't properly updated by the system when the posts were deleted.

This basically needs a techie to fix, but since it's not a critical issue (ie doesn't cause a crash), its being treated as low priority.

[Astromancer]

I vaguely remember a story by de Camp that was set in a dimension that reflected the daydreams and fancies of the "Real World." As typical with that author's style much humor and many dangers came from a simple logical working out of the contradictions both of the setting and the real world.

As a model for a weird parallel, de Camp's story sounds good to me.

[Flyndaran]

That sounds slightly similar to a dream I had where I realized that the world in which I dreamed had a separate existence from me.
A reality where the locals are constricted by normal physics, but is occasionally invaded by dreamers acting like deranged supers or sleepwalking mundanes.

A few lucid dreaming visitors protect them.

Imagine the PC's shock when they encounter the dream self of someone from their world.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

That sounds slightly similar to a dream I had where I realized that the world in which I dreamed had a separate existence from me.
A reality where the locals are constricted by normal physics, but is occasionally invaded by dreamers acting like deranged supers or sleepwalking mundanes.

A few lucid dreaming visitors protect them.

Imagine the PC's shock when they encounter the dream self of someone from their world.

Kwel! Dreamers would be like fairies in this world, powerful amoral supernatural beings. Lucid dreamers would be like Angels or Fairy Godmothers.

In the Daydream world, Day Dreamers would be like demons or PCs.

[quarkstomper]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

I vaguely remember a story by de Camp that was set in a dimension that reflected the daydreams and fancies of the "Real World." As typical with that author's style much humor and many dangers came from a simple logical working out of the contradictions both of the setting and the real world.

As a model for a weird parallel, de Camp's story sounds good to me.

That reminds me of a book I read many, many years ago titled "Out of Their Minds"; but looking it up I see it was by Clifford Simak.

There was a de Camp story, though, about a modern man who finds himself transported to fairy-land. At first he considers it a Land of Unreason where nothing makes sense, but after a while he realizes that the magic of this world does follow rules and if he figures out how the rules work, he can make it work in his favor.

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by quarkstomper

That reminds me of a book I read many, many years ago titled "Out of Their Minds"; but looking it up I see it was by Clifford Simak.

There was a de Camp story, though, about a modern man who finds himself transported to fairy-land. At first he considers it a Land of Unreason where nothing makes sense, but after a while he realizes that the magic of this world does follow rules and if he figures out how the rules work, he can make it work in his favor.

I've read both books. I enjoyed both of them too. Neither is the story I mentioned earlier.

[thorr-kan]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

When we have a few more postings this Weirdness will go away.

It may be addressed somewhat by adjusting the Number of Posts to Show Per Page setting in your Profile.

"Use this option to set the number of posts to show in a thread before splitting the display into multiple pages.

Number of Posts to Show Per Page:"

I have mine set to 80, and it seems to mitigate, though not completely remove, the problem.

YMMV
IANAL
Etc.

[Astromancer]

It occurs to me that weirdness is for people who don't live there. Why not a parallel where out-timers find their senses scrambled in subtle ways. Or simply the changes are small but profoundly confusing to those not in the know.

Example: Many common words simply have radically different meanings. Red describes the color we call blue, sweetheart is the word they use to describe the animal we call a dog, and so forth. Conversations would soon become surreal.

That may seem like a low-grade Monty Python knock-off, but changing minor rules here or there, twisting commonplace norms, can seriously disorient the PCs. Pulling even a minor rug out from under the PCs can expose the PCs to serious threat and trouble.