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Old 07-09-2018, 12:50 PM   #31
whswhs
 
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I was also wondering about the watch. My smartphone does tell me what the temperature is, but that's not because it has a builtin thermometer; it's because it's downloading it based on my location. I can put in the name of a different city and get the temperature there. Do watches work the same way, or are they actually measuring ambient temperature? If the former, then since there are no data channels in the specified era, the watch is going to be showing that it can't download the information, right?
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Old 07-09-2018, 01:44 PM   #32
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The sheer number of international labels that are entirely in English would also be a little startling, one would think. Above and beyond the number of labels, and the labels indicating nonexistant points of origin, would a garment made in China in the early 1900s have no Chinese on the label? The manufacturers being unfamiliar is one thing, the manufacturers being apparently anglo in all these foreign locations is also odd.
If they are unconscious for several days coming up with a bizarre world of the future concept that the investigators have decided on so that the questions are coming form odd assumptions could be entertaining.
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Old 07-09-2018, 03:40 PM   #33
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Given the future technology Special Branch would have to conclude that they are dealing with a time traveler. And probably an inadvertent time traveler because while he's equipped for violence, burglary, and undercover work, he's not equipped for undercover work in 1914 where he blatantly sticks out.
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Old 07-09-2018, 03:50 PM   #34
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Given the future technology Special Branch would have to conclude that they are dealing with a time traveler. And probably an inadvertent time traveler because while he's equipped for violence, burglary, and undercover work, he's not equipped for undercover work in 1914 where he blatantly sticks out.
There is at least one alternative interpretation: Extraterrestrial. It wasn't as well understood then as it is now how unlikely it is that beings identical to humans would exist on other planets. Of course the English labels would make that harder to support, but I can imagine a session where someone has to advance that argument against the "man from Mars" theory—and perhaps some of that theory's proponents adhere to it stubbornly despite everything said as to its implausibility.
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Old 07-09-2018, 07:40 PM   #35
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There is at least one alternative interpretation: Extraterrestrial. .
After a fashion it could be true if this is actually some kind of infinite worlds campaign but that's not an option that would occur to them in a pre-quantum physics time.

Incidentally the Inspector might find himself seconded to Special Branch just because he's their only witness and already knows too much.
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Old 07-09-2018, 08:21 PM   #36
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After a fashion it could be true if this is actually some kind of infinite worlds campaign but that's not an option that would occur to them in a pre-quantum physics time.
Why would quantum physics be necessary to decide "extraterrestrial"? We had ETs in fiction long before quantum mechanics, or even relativistic physics (The War of the Worlds was serialized in 1897, and the Great Moon Hoax, in which life forms were supposedly sighted on the Moon using powerful telescopes, came out even earlier, in 1835).
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Old 07-09-2018, 08:42 PM   #37
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Why would quantum physics be necessary to decide "extraterrestrial"? We had ETs in fiction long before quantum mechanics, or even relativistic physics (The War of the Worlds was serialized in 1897, and the Great Moon Hoax, in which life forms were supposedly sighted on the Moon using powerful telescopes, came out even earlier, in 1835).
Voltaire's Micromégas, Cyrano's Voyages to the Moon and the Sun, Kepler's Somnium, and Lucian of Samosata's True History are all older than that.
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Old 07-09-2018, 11:37 PM   #38
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After a fashion it could be true if this is actually some kind of infinite worlds campaign but that's not an option that would occur to them in a pre-quantum physics time.

Incidentally the Inspector might find himself seconded to Special Branch just because he's their only witness and already knows too much.
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Why would quantum physics be necessary to decide "extraterrestrial"? We had ETs in fiction long before quantum mechanics, or even relativistic physics (The War of the Worlds was serialized in 1897, and the Great Moon Hoax, in which life forms were supposedly sighted on the Moon using powerful telescopes, came out even earlier, in 1835).
Bolded relevant parts. If he's from, e.g. Infinity, he is, after a fashion, an alien, in that he does not come from the specific iteration of the planet earth he's on. However, even if that is the case, members of a society without quantum physics will probably not think of it as a possibility.
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Old 07-10-2018, 12:00 AM   #39
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Bolded relevant parts. If he's from, e.g. Infinity, he is, after a fashion, an alien, in that he does not come from the specific iteration of the planet earth he's on. However, even if that is the case, members of a society without quantum physics will probably not think of it as a possibility.
Yes, but what I was saying was not that this was a true answer that they would figure out, but that "visitor from another planet" is a conceivable hypothesis. Percival Lowell wrote three books about Mars between 1895 and 1908, which had the idea of Mars as an ancient culture that might conceivably be more advanced. And portrayals of beings from other worlds in popular culture included a fair number that were human or humanoid, both around that time (A Princess of Mars was serialized in 1912 and was popular enough to be republished as a book) and for decades afterward (both Kal-el and Klaatu are indistinguishable from humans, except for Kal-el's skin being impenetrable). A scientist might not believe it, but nonscientists might well assume that intelligent beings on other worlds would look human.

Of course they'd be wrong. But they could think of the idea!
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Old 07-10-2018, 01:00 AM   #40
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Yes, but what I was saying was not that this was a true answer that they would figure out, but that "visitor from another planet" is a conceivable hypothesis.
Mistaking future humans for aliens is the basis of a few novels. I can't recall who wrote one of them... but it's a great dramatic device.

Given Lowell's claims of martians, and Burroughs' novels...
... accusations of being a Martian are likely to fly pretty well.

And, given US Xenophobia in the era... could be even somewhat hostile. Be harder to get common folk to believe time travel over martian, and harder to get the educated to believe martian than time traveler. (Lowell was widely considered a nutjob, since no one else could see his canals.)
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