[IW] Ordinary Worlds with valuables!

[Pragmatic]

Doesn't one of the Time Travel, Alternate Earths, or Infinite Worlds books have a list of "alternate books by authors"?

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Pragmatic

Doesn't one of the Time Travel, Alternate Earths, or Infinite Worlds books have a list of "alternate books by authors"?

Yep - it's on page 41 of GURPS Infinite Worlds.

[Captain-Captain]

Fossil 1

A unique world in local 1928. Archaeologists uncovered a skeleton with organic remains. Silicon based organic remains. Some time after the turn of the century this Earth got visited.

[vitruvian]

Originally Posted by sir_pudding

Isn't interfering with echoes a really really bad idea? What if you cause it to shift?

How is nabbing stuff that's about to be lost or destroyed and never recovered interfering with the timeline? After all, if nobody ever finds out it went missing to another timeline rather than the bottom of the sea, it won't affect anybody's decisions or lives, will it?

[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by Apache

Actually, straight mirror parallels (with no discernable differance from Homeline other than the fact "it's in the past") have tons of valuable stuff.

Very good point.

Drop into Constantinople just before the Turks capture it.

Better yet, since the sack of 1204AD, caused by a venomous Doge of Venice, destroyed more Greek literature than all the burning of Alexandria's Library combined, drop in in 1203AD. Bring a means to photograph tens of thousands of books and art objects.

[Flyndaran]

All the native American Mayan codices and artifacts destroyed by the missionaries during the European conquest would make for quite the treasure.

[martinl]

Rome-17 is yet another "different end of the Roman Empire" parallel, currently 2006, TL6, and politically incomprehensible to someone without a lot of background info. Althistorians and their ilk love to study it, but White Star loves it for a different reason: cuisine.

Rome-17 has three separate "gourmet" traditions that exceed (in critics reviews, at least) anything done on Homeline, and the local chefs are secretive, paranoid, and clannish, so the knowledge of exactly HOW they are making all this wonderful food is still not out.

But carefully prepped Homeline muckymucks pay a LOT to eat a fancy meal at their premier establishments, before heading out clubbing on Nergal-4.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by martinl

Rome-17 is yet another "different end of the Roman Empire" parallel, currently 2006, TL6, and politically incomprehensible to someone without a lot of background info. Althistorians and their ilk love to study it, but White Star loves it for a different reason: cuisine.

Rome-17 has three separate "gourmet" traditions that exceed (in critics reviews, at least) anything done on Homeline, and the local chefs are secretive, paranoid, and clannish, so the knowledge of exactly HOW they are making all this wonderful food is still not out.

But carefully prepped Homeline muckymucks pay a LOT to eat a fancy meal at their premier establishments, before heading out clubbing on Nergal-4.

I know that no matter how awesome other realities are, I would have to occasionally visit this one if only for Diet Pepsi.

What if some amazing tastes require alternate physics to create, but can exist in Homeline?
Or based on alien organisms. Giant snail mucus jelly is all the rage and quite delicious if you never see it farmed.

[wellspring]

Originally Posted by Astromancer

Very good point.



Better yet, since the sack of 1204AD, caused by a vennomous Doge of Venice, destroyed more Greek literature than all the burning of Alexandria's Library combined, drop in in 1203AD. Bring a means to photograph tens of thousands of books and art objects.

If I were in the art extraction business, here's how I'd do it. I'd commission a very convincing, historically plausible fake (perhaps after having surreptitiously photographed the original). Matching pigments, technique, brushstrokes or the medium's equivalent, etc. As close as possible. Then I'd simply pull a switcheroo. The timeline gets its (convincingly faked) Mona Lisa, and I get the original. This is blatantly illegal from Infinity's perspective, but devilishly hard to catch. By the time it comes to light in a given world-line, if ever, often a century or more has passed.

A legal version works for pieces of art or artifacts that are lost forever to history (eg paintings on the Titanic). I'd do exactly what Astromancer is talking about: stage my theft immediately before the disaster, subbing out a convincing but not necessarily perfect forgery. The forgery is bombed by nazis or communists, lost in shipwrecks, nuked, eaten by rats, consumed by fire, whatever. The timeline suffers virtually no disruption.

Recordings of famous events or people, obviously, would be another valuable export. Genetic harvesting for genome projects would be another. Not just scientific: how about people trying to trace their lineages? I just saw Finding Your Roots on PBS, and imagined how interesting it would be to view a historical echo for this project. You could use DNA analysis to determine lineage, and even get some footage of ancestors and the circumstances of their birth. Stuff we have to infer from archeology.

Then there's the whole can of worms opened if you found more worlds like Blip. Major computing project? Just have a stealthy data center there, exporting the results when you're done. Among many, many other abuses. Try to find an uninhabited version if you can.

For an alternate work of fiction, try the world where Patrick Stewart left Star Trek: The Next Generation at the end of the third season. The series goes just as long, is just as highly acclaimed, and is a MUST SEE for star trek fans, especially the season 7 episode "Parallels", where First Officer Worf ends up in an alternate reality where Picard is still captain (guest star patrick stewart), Worf never married Troi, and Wesley is gone from the Enterprise.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by wellspring

...
Recordings of famous events or people, obviously, would be another valuable export. Genetic harvesting for genome projects would be another. Not just scientific: how about people trying to trace their lineages? I just saw Finding Your Roots on PBS, and imagined how interesting it would be to view a historical echo for this project. You could use DNA analysis to determine lineage, and even get some footage of ancestors and the circumstances of their birth. Stuff we have to infer from archeology.
....

All those kinds of things specifically requires unmodified echoes and not just really close parallels. You also have to find people that care about the exact times those echoes comprise.
It would be fun to prove so many marriage based genealogies false. Infidelity is far too common to ever trust lineage more than a generation or two, and often not even then without D.N.A. corroboration.