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As most of you probably already know, many of the credulous and superstitious have their panties all in a wad today because it's June 6, 2006, which can be written as 6/6/6. OH NOES!!!1! The Number of the Beast!!! Maybe something really bad is going to happen. Or maybe it's a sign of the End Times.
Unless, of course, you follow the Julian calendar, in which case it's May 24. Or the Celtic, or Jewish, or Islamic, or Mayan, or Chinese, or .... Well, enough of that silliness.
Now, wait a minute. Back up a step. What was that about the Number of the Beast? Robert Anson Heinlein's protagonist in The Number of the Beast, both an engineer and an n-dimensional geometer, proposed that the transcribers of the Bible had misunderstood, and the number being cited was not six hundred, threescore and six, but rather an attempt to represent six to the power six to the power six (a rather larger number, some 36,306 digits in length). This, he suggested, was the number of possible continua accessible if one postulated that space-time actually possessed six dimensions, which we can refer to as x, y, z, t, tau, teh, and that one could select any four of these six to use as three spatial dimensions and one temporal, and then step along the remaining two axes incrementally, one new continuum per integer quantum step.
Based on this theory he built what he referred to as a continua craft, the unforgettable Gay Deceiver, whereupon the whole group went haring off exploring the continua and stumbling into various other universes, including that of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom and Edward Elmer "Doc" Smith's Lensman universe.
OK, now we're starting to get somewhere. So, here we go:
Picture this. By chance, mysterious provenance, the honest sweat of your genius brow, or the benificence of some n-dimensional geometer from who knows where, you have possession for a while of a continua craft much like Gay Deceiver. You can make three, but ONLY three, trips to other continua -- any continua you like. If you've ever read about it in fiction or in scientific speculation, assume that somewhere, at some point along some chosen combination of axes, it exists.
So....
Where would you go? Would you stay there?
Who, or what, would you take there?
If you didn't stay, then who or what would you bring back?
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I wouldn't mind visiting the X-men universe, though which one and at what point would take some thought. Not so sure I would stay there. Again, I'd take anyone with me who wanted to go. *grin* I'd consider kidnapping Nightcrawler to bring him home with me.
I have no idea what I'd choose for my third visit. Babylon 5's universe sounds appealing for some things, and so does Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange land. Then there's David Weber's Honorverse, and Laurell K. Hamilton's worlds, and Anne Bishop's Black Jewels trilogy. I'd want to stay long enough in Stranger to learn Martian. A bit more difficult to pin down what I'd want or how long I'd stay in the others.
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I cheat. Cheerfully, even!
As a Burroughs Bus driver...
Re: I cheat. Cheerfully, even!
Re: I cheat. Cheerfully, even!
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But off the cuff?
1)a) Blade Runner Universe -- no, not the DADOES bookworld, the Harrison Ford/Rutger Hauer it-never-stops-raining-here-would-you-like-some-noodles-he-say-you-blade-runnah universe
b) I would take my beloved husband
c) Bring no one back, sorry, it's a vacation
2)a) Heinlein's standard Universe
b) Again... can go without
c) While I'd be thrilled to meet such luminaries as Lazarus Long, Jubal Harshaw, Maureen, Pixel, et al... no one comes back, sorry - like they'd want to be in this dull ol' universe... what? hrm... a nice, sporty little personal space ship... to replace Gay of course when i can't have her anymore
3)a) the one in my head -- I know it exists out there someplace, but for now, until I get it out on paper, its only evidence of existing is inside my mind
b) see above
c) not sure on that yet
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festival universe.
bring back and armload of cornucopia seeds.
wheeeee
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IIRC the festival universe corrupted societies by dropping from orbit seeds that produced all worldly goods, and by that means purchased all non-tangible/intellectual property.
I prefer another variation, forget the author of it, but has slightly more realistic cornucopia machines - they take waste material in, and contain a quantity of an extreme radioactive isotope (way beyond the bottom of our periodic table), and literally transmute the matter to the desire forms, producing waste radiation in the process (not good to stand next to).
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Totally limitless post Singularity devices, can create other conrucopias or seeds, nuclear weapons, anything goes.
Which is scary, but since you can get a spaceship out of one easily enough, breathing room becomes less of an issue :)
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Yeah, I can think of definite uses for a few of those......
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1a. Yes.
2.
3. A GSV.
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actually, i think i'd load the ship with ammo for my .44 and get a couple of good swords and head off to faeron! if i needed more ammo or whatever, i'd head back home for a few k rounds!
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"But you don't want to do that. You like me. You want to give me your magical device." *Mage Casts suggestion*
*Fails will save* "Yeah, you're right. I do..."
"Thanks." *Mage casts PW:K. You die.*
Fae'run is a scary, scary place if you don't know how to use armour/magig.
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The first place I'd personally want to go, though, is someplace that could fix everything that's wrong with my body. Ideally, I'd want to have the capability to update the engineering spec a little while I was at it -- increase bone strength and toughness, increase specific muscle strength to pan troglodytes spec (it's not just that chimpanzees are proportionately more muscular, their muscle fibers are seven to eight times as powerful as human muscles; we all have a defective muscle-fiber gene), increase speed of nerve impulse propagation, conscious control over time-rate perception, conscious control of peripheral vasoconstriction, additional color receptors in the eyes and improved resolution, some modifications to the structure of the spinal column ... and make them all genetically dominant traits. A quick trip to Jack Chalker's Well World universe for a chat with Obie would probably take care of that.
The Culture could probably do MOST of those same things ... but I'm not actually totally certain even the Culture could do all of them.
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(Actually, I've considered at different times making changes quite a bit deeper and more fundamental than I mentioned above, given complete carte blanche.)
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Though arguably not as extreme as the book I was reading once in which an entire planet of colonists voted to genetically reengineer themselves into what amounted to sentient fish by means of a virus. Not even aquatic mammals; fish. I recall hoping the people who voted against it were allowed to leave first.
I also recall a book in which a human space probe discovered a race that had re-engineered themselves into almost cryogenic, non-technological creatures with glacially slow metabolisms that "saw" via shortwave radio, apparently in an effort to have a sufficiently low-energy existence to avoid destruction by what amounted to a race of ragingly paranoid space-travelling crabs. The crabs had built robots as ragingly paranoid as they themselves were to construct and manage their technology, then handed over control to the robots, and now went around doing their best to sterilize their region of the galaxy of every other form of sentient life but themselves just in case one of the others might someday decide to attack them. (Thereby ensuring, of course, that any race that survived, or that discovered what they were up to, would do its very best to exterminate them.)
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They're a collection of SF short stories, set for the most part on Pendor, a paired ring world, with sufficently advanced technology. The author,
He was also one of the leading voices of alt.sex in it's early days, and the stories are more then a little pornographic in nature. But it would still be a cool place to live. Short reasons include motorcycles that you can keep in your coat pocket, nanchine that lets you fly, and never ending glasses of iced tea. And, when you get sick of advanced life, there is always BackWater, an area of a few dozen thousand square miles that is basically everquest.
Yeah, I could live there.
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That concept exists below the Mason-Dixon line.
I really need to get another gallon glass jug with spigot. Or barring that, BAE needs to hire me so I can quit Intel and take a week's vacation and head south to pick up my old gallon glass jugs with spigot.