Stories, for me, have a will of their own. I can go months wondering when a wandering muse will suddenly strike. Or I can click a single link, begin to read something, and ninja-like, a story leaps onto me and slits my resistance to doing any work writing.
This was the case, just now, when I came across this relaxing and fluffy little piece from Phys.org - Strange behavior of quantum particles may indicate the existence of other parallel universes. That is sometimes the way with light reading - the mind drifts, the imagination runs away and suddenly a story is wearing one's guts for garters.
Join me then, in a reality where quantum waves are nonsense, and parallel universes are fact, and watch me butcher and bastardize the life's work of an eminent and lauded chemist in...
Deep In The Choklad
A Ponies For Poirier Story
By Chatoyance
"Bill Poirier is the problem. William Muffin Poirier, cursed be his name!" The upset unicorn stallion in the ill-fitting lab coat tripped again as he stomped his hoof clumsily. He was still unused to his new shape. If his assistant's quick search of relevant fanfiction was valid, Dr. Miles Bennell would have a very, very long time to get used to it.
Francis Muel glanced furtively around her for any indications of another faintly hissing Ring. It was the natural name that had come to them for the things - they looked like glowing, rippling, irregular loops of difficult-to-look-at light. Like oversized, floating onion-rings made of plasma... or something. Definitely something. Something else. "Miles... we'll find a way. To reverse this. To make you human again!"
The remarkably green stallion shook his head. His white mane spilled from the ill-fitting collar of the lab-wear. "Not even within that three-hundred and fifty year lifespan you say I have now. I've had at least three other Rings pass through me, and I haven't changed again. I think this shape is some kind of lowest energy state for transformation. Or something. Maybe being changed leaves some kind of residual charge that prevents further... in any case, we won't know until another unlucky barbajada gets hit. CROISSANT these GULAB JAMUN pastry words!"
"Please, calm down!" Francis tried to reach out to pony Bennell, but withdrew her hands. It was agreed that the effects of contact between them was unknown and should not be attempted except in an emergency. Francis backed away. "You'll trip again! I don't want you to get hurt!"
"I already AM hurt, in case you have suddenly gone blind! I'm a Franzbrötchen PONY!"
Francis tried not to laugh. She really did.
"HELLIMI AND HAMANTASH!" Dr. Bennell stomped so hard the Erlenmeyer's on the counter rattled.
"How do you even know these desserts?" The situation was dire, possibly apocalyptic, but Francis couldn't stop her giggles.
"I Streuselkuchen don't know!"
Miles Bennell's tantrum was cut short as he suddenly leapt forward, pushing miss Muel out of the way of a grapefruit-sized faintly hissing Ring. The flickering, multicolored, writhing circlet wobbled and twisted as it bobbled lazily towards the door to the lab.
Bennell landed on top of Francis, his muzzle smacking clumsily into her crotch as she fell. She reacted instantly, pushing and kicking him away. Suddenly she stopped, aware of the gliding Ring. She glanced briefly at her hands, which had touched Bennell's fur. No reaction. She wasn't changing. Contact was apparently safe. "Sorry... and thanks."
"Close one." Bennell was staring at the slowly twisting, spinning ring as well now. The Ring continued on towards the door.
At that very moment, Sam Carter entered the room. "What's all the commotio..."
The Ring hit him square in the chest. The hissing energy vanished inside his body, the glow spreading out under his clothing until it faded entirely. Then he began changing.
"What? What the..." Dr. Carter's body bent as his legs reconfigured themselves. His arms began to draw into his jacket sleeves, his neck lengthened and filled out. Within seconds it was clear what he was becoming - another colorful pony from that ridiculous cartoon. Sam shrieked, as the process finished - not from pain, the transformation was painless - but from shock and terror.
Dr. Sam Carter stood now on four hooves. His sports jacket and pants fell in draped wrinkles around his smaller body. His muzzle peeked out of the collar of his polo shirt like the nose of a monk from under a cowl. He simply stood there, afraid to move, unsure of what had happened, unwilling to accept what had happened to him as reality.
"Oh, Sam!" Francis put her hands to her mouth.
"Punschkrapfen!" Miles muttered. "Sam! Samuel! It's... okay... sort of. I know this is strange, but you'll be surprised at how quickly..."
The screaming was loud, and it was astonishingly high pitched. Francis couldn't help but glance at the flasks, in the expectation that they might shatter. After the screaming concluded, Samuel choose weeping and moaning as his preferred form of discourse. Bennell stood up, his forehooves finally away from his tall pony ears.
Francis moved to hold and comfort the suddenly ponified astrophysicist. She helped his face to escape his jacket, tie and shirt. Now that it had been proven physical contact would not transmit the strange energy, she began petting Carter and scratching his ears. It worked for her two dogs. In the end, it worked for pony Carter, too.
"Wha... what the Bizcocho Jaffacake is going on?" Carter kept sniffling, despite his attempt at scientific detachment.
"If quantum waves are butterkuchen, as Poirier claims, then Everett's Many Worlds really do exist. Only Poirier suggests Many Interacting Worlds - quantum effects are the result of particles from other universes literally affecting particles here!"
Samuel Carter, astrophysicist stallion stared hard at Miles. "Why in the name of Celestia did you get CERN involved? Why, Miles? Why in Luna's name did you..."
"Oh god."
Both stallions turned to look at miss Muel. She had her head in her hands, elbows on the counter, her laptop screen too high for the diminutive ponies to see.
"It's bad, isn't it?" Miles hung his equine head.
"What's bad? What could be worse than this?" Carter looked from Bennell to Muel and back.
Francis lifted her head and sighed. "We're ten kilometers from Alice - point two on the LHC - and that's where our breach is. It wasn't momentary. It is open, and Rings are pouring out like... like... I don't know. It's flooding Rings. They can't stop them, they don't even know what they are or why they keep coming. The last post on Dr. Freeman's blog says he thinks it's another universe bleeding into ours. Like we somehow cut a cosmic artery. The Rings are like... cosmic corpuscles or something. Everybody was turning into ponies, right and left. Rings everywhere. He held out with a makeshift Faraday... thing, but... he hasn't updated in over an hour."
"Maybe he ran, maybe he's on his way to..."
"No. You don't understand, Miles." Francis spoke quietly, as if at a funeral. "I said flood, and I meant it. St Genis-Pouilly is rainbow light all the way to Sergy. They can see it from Crozet. Rings so thick it's one big glow. Like an aurora on the ground."
"The world. This is the end of the zwetschgenkuchen world." Miles Bennell lay down, his front legs spread out, and rested his head on his pasterns.
"I want you to know I despise you, Miles." Sam sat on his haunches, staring at his forehooves. "Well, not exactly despise, I can't seem to do that anymore, not really. But I super don't like you very much. At the moment. Celestia! I am miffed at this darn pony brain!"
Francis and Miles stared. "How'd you do that?"
"What?"
"Miffed - that's not a pastry." Miles raised his ears.
"Darn isn't either." Francis added.
"I'm upset, but I'm past raving!" Sam looked around the room. Two Rings finished passing through the ceiling, on their way to the physics department. Big surprise incoming for Koothrappali, he mused. The two stallions had stopped trying to protect Francis at her request. There wasn't really any point, she had reasoned. Besides, she certainly didn't want to be an alien on her own home planet. If anything, she was just waiting for a Ring to come and end her dreadful suspense.
Francis had turned back to her laptop. "Hey.... hey! Guys! Stallions! Whatever... the word is out... the news is carrying it now! They're trying to wire up Faraday cages... pretty much everywhere on the planet. Um..." The two on the floor were sitting upright now. "Here... let me move this thing to the floor..."
Francis picked up her laptop and set it on the tiles beside the two ponies. Miles still wore his labcoat, but Sam had been helped out of his clothes entirely. He was a pegasus. His natural coat was clothing enough - though he had wanted to keep his tie. Francis had re-tied it on him, as best she could. "Look, here's a report from Bern - and another from Milan! It's global, the world is awake and they are all building cages... or fences. Electromagnetic fields deflect the Rings. Freeman's idea works!" Francis clicked several times. "Well... mostly. The power requirements are not cheap, but..." More clicks. "They're herding refugees into protected zones. The Rings move pretty slowly... locally we're all boned, but the rest of the planet..." Suddenly she frowned.
"What?" Sam crowded closer to the screen.
Miles shook his head. His ears were low. "The earth seems to affect them, slightly, but it doesn't stop Rings. Fences work, but only close to the fence. Rings can come up from below, if it's far enough from the field. Radio towers seem to... click on that, Francis!"
Francis clicked where Mile's hoof had pointed.
"It seems that radio towers slow down, and even push away Rings." Francis clicked again. "I bet you could cover a city with a mixture of fences, cage walls, and carefully spaced towers. The power requirements, though..."
A Ring floated through the room, slowly tumbling and spinning both. Francis started to get up to run to catch it, but she sat down again when she realized that it would pass through the corner wall before she could reach it. "It will happen when it happens."
"It doesn't have to!" Miles gave Francis a hard look with huge pony eyes. "You've made it this long. If you could just get to your car, and make it to... Geneva! I bet they'll have EM shielding up by the time you get there and..."
Francis ran her fingers through the stallion scientist's coat. "Maybe. But Running Through The Rain. Standing still, I am less likely to encounter a Ring than on the move. I try to drive anywhere, I increase the chance I will be hit overall. It isn't quite like rain, because these things come from all directions, but..." Francis looked out the window. The sun was going down. "Also, I don't want to transform while driving a car at speed. If I must be a pony, I don't want to be a dead or broken one."
"Oh colt!" Sam had managed to move the cursor with flicks of his lip on the touch plate, and click as well.
"What now?" Miles and Francis were beyond shock at this point. Their tone was almost bored.
"It's not just ponies. What are 'diamond dogs'? I know what dragons are, and griffons... dragons? Seriously?"
"It's the whole sponge cake. My Little Pony is all real. I guess Bishop Berkeley was right. Sort of." Miles put a hoof to his muzzle in thought. "Maybe not him... anyone know the philosopher who thought that fiction was real, and that writers just unconsciously report other universes?"
Samuel shook his head and swished his tail. "Wasn't a philosopher. You're thinking of Heinlein after he went senile. Fictons. The Number Of The Beast. He got silly in his old age."
"Hey! I liked that book! Come on, Gay Deceiver alone! She's basically a talking Tardis, and..."
Neither Sam nor Miles moved as the glow from the Ring spread from her impacted back to her front. There was no point, really. In any case, Francis' suspense was finally over.
All of the scientists names are science fiction movie, game, and television references or blatant jokes. Can you catch them all?
All of the pastry swears are real.
The colors of the new story universe title are done in the colors of the flag of Sweden. Because CERN.
Anyone is welcome to write in this universe. Of course.
I caught Invasion of the Body Snatchers & Stargate SG1/Atlantis/Universe, Oh and now I know the name of a German crumb cake.
You know, if you swap some letters there you could get Mule. I had to look this up, but Francis the Talking Mule is a thing.
Now I can apply information from Mythbusters to other parts of my life, like reading fanfiction.
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Yay! You are a joy and a holiday at the beach, Bri-Chan!
I caught most of these!
... also... Jaffacake? really? I'm both amused and hungry simultaneously now. Confound you <3
... I could go for an event like this. Just saying. You keep giving me such wonderful ideas, my hooves and hornfield are going to be worn out from all the writing! Ah well, there are worst things, eh? You and Midnight... you two are as much my muses as the rest of the cadre in my head, for which I'm eternally grateful. I'm going to need more pens...
I almost had to say I recognized none of the names, but a quick re-read and I found Dr. Freeman. Quite fitting that he’s at the center of the resonance cascade, or whatever they end up calling it in this ‘verse.
Haha, well it's a helluva lot better of an "Ice-9" to come out of the LHC than a stable strangelet, that's for sure.
This is actually an idea I've been following for a while. Interestingly it's been a component of certain explanatory theories behind quantum computing since the '90s, attempting to describe things like how Shor's Algorithm is able to factorize large numbers so quickly: Identical computers in interacting universes differentiate to share components of the task in superposition and then rejoin to give identical answers. It's even behind one of the more interesting explanations for the Double Slit Experiment I've seen, where it posits that the interference pattern is the result of the same single photon interfering with itself across trillions of universes that differ (locally, at least) by only the position of that photon, and even, per Bryce DeWitt's early quantum gravity work in the '60s, as an explanation for time, our own past and future just being special cases of the other, similarly-configured universes with which "ours" interacts.
Hm, well... maybe. Either way, it'd damn fascinating to think about.
...Unfortunately, though, I didn't catch any of the name references... ...And I had no idea there were so many kinds of pastry.
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It's probably just bad science and foolishness, but the Shor's thing, if we had a really real quantum computer (I am still undecided with regard to the D-Wave and ilk), I could not help but science fictionally wonder if things could be bent in such a way that communication - of some sort, however crude, but still meaningful - could be achieved by playing off the superposition between parallel universes during otherwise ordinary program-running.
I am sure there are a fucktillion and one reasons why this could never happen... but I don't know them, so the dream still tastes good to me. I've considered basing a short story on the notion, in fact. It just seems so close to possible - even if only a single error could be made to happen across all the parallel computers, it could be the basis of Morse code during what should be just plain problem solving... that sort of thing. Surprise, it's your other self saying hello through a deliberate glitch.
Is this truly too stupid for words... as in telling stories as well as fun thoughts?
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Phew, search me... Part of me thinks if there's any kind of causal link at all you should be able to exchange specific, meaningful information, but physics seems to have a real bug up its butt about circumventing magical little communications tricks like that by making them recede from your grasp in impishly clever "try to stick your elbow in your ear" kinds of ways—Like we'd be able to communicate with ourselves in other universes, but by virtue of being able to open that channel at all, the universes would naturally become so identical that there'd be no point; it'd be just like looking into a mirror. You say "hi" but you only get the same message back because your doppelganger had exactly the same thought at exactly the same time, or any number of other Twilight Zone-style ironic twists of the kind that bedevil FTL.
The moments of the respective universes just are what they are, now and forever, so it'd be sorta like one book in Borges' infinite library trying to actively change the text in another book. ...But being a library of all possible books, surely there are some that contain text that references having been altered by external influences, so maybe you could "receive" meaningful messages, but only because you spontaneously happen to remember having done so. ...This is sorta how I conceived of magic working in Somnium, actually: "in the limit" at timelike infinity they have all the information on all possible histories of the universe, and can pull that information back in time to direct their subjective sense of presence into a heretofore identical history that has a manifestation of whatever they want to happen. To paraphrase a physicist I was reading on this topic, there are no universes where magic works, but there are plenty where magic appears to have just worked. ...So I guess if you could deliberately experience one it would be functionally the same thing.
One often-discussed possibility I do think is interesting, though, is travelling "back in time" to a configuration of the universe that's identical to a moment in your own history, which would then be free to diverge without creating any paradoxes. It would just seem like ordinary backwards time travel (via a closed timelike curve instead of something more romantic like a DeLorean or a TARDIS), but I think if it's possible at all, that's what it would metaphysically look like.
Ultimately I think real physics with it's real possibilities and impossibilities makes for better stories, in the same way real psychology makes for better characters, but I'll fully admit that's a personal philosophical bias, just because the more I learn the more I start to come around to the idea that our laws of nature are necessary and not contingent. Maybe I'll change my mind with more study, or instantly if we actually do discover a different set of physical laws somewhere, but for the time being that's where my head is at.
A rule of thumb for Chatopony cursing: The angrier you are, the more exotic the desserts get. Good to know.
As for the concept, the initial idea is certainly intriguing. Countless worldines together like the fibers of a muscle, those so close that only quantum differences apply leaking into one another. Not sure how the science will pan out; this could end up being a mathematical curiosity, and it's anyone's guess how to prove it. Still a neat idea. Heck, it fits my "probability space" model of all possible Equestrias fairly well. Reality may match my pony headcanon. What a bizarre thought.
As for the story itself, certainly not the worst thing that could've come out of the LHC. I will gladly take weakly interacting ponifying pseudoplasma toroids over a singularity.
6068738 I was hoping for something about how it wasn't a true biscuit.
Anyway,
I'm not sure of the exact timing, but I think he was writing that when he had 75% blockage of the blood to his brain. Once that was cleared by surgery, he regained his faculties. To Sail Beyond the Sunset, his last book, is definitely the work of a coherent writer. But yes, Number is a little silly, yet somehow I see Chat and Hilda getting along quite well.
6071022
I did not know that about Heinlein's brain. Thank you!
That said, if a little silly, Number of the Beast was still pretty damn fun and better written than most books. I stand in greater awe. Heinlein could apparently put out better fiction than most writers even while his brain was being literally strangled to death. Wow.
I guess if Heinlein ever said "I can write better than you with one lobe tied behind my brain!"... it would be a legitimate brag.
Well, this was certainly a new take on Conversion, and one I quite enjoyed reading. Truly Chatoyance, reading new material from you always brings joy to my heart. Keep up the awesome work!
"Dr. Freeman's blog"
Article title: Unforeseen Consequences?
Rings are nothing but fat strings.
Mmm... fat strings!
They really go well with coffee. Just like pastries.
Och, mörk choklad är bästa chokladen!
Maybe it won't require quantum donuts, and just a sip'll do ya!
pbs.twimg.com/media/CHKZt61U0AEtVvK.jpg
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I want in on the beta for that patch. It is long overdue.
And when are they ever going to fix the Gradual System Corruption Error? The longer my system runs, the slower it runs, and the less functional every single component becomes. Without any warranty, I feel like my initial purchase may have been ill-advised.
I am becoming increasingly convinced that the manufacturer is either incompetent, or a fraud.
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I'm sorry, Toksyuryel. The Red Kryptonite stories are my personal therapy sessions about being stuck on Prison Earth. I know they are downers. But somehow they help me when I write them, and I like to imagine they are non-boring. I hope.
That said, I don't want to add to any depression for others. So my apologies.
I want to go to Equestria (digital or original flavor) too.
6149445 Oh it was definitely quite well-written. That's why it was so hard to read XD And please do not feel like you added to my depression- if anything you've added to my determination to find some way to make Equestria a place we can all live in. Your stories gave me the desire and the drive to do whatever I can to find a path to that reality, and now that I'm reading them again that drive only grows stronger. The story I'm writing this comment on now, in particular, and the physics article you linked in it make me feel more than ever like this is something that is genuinely possible. Luna is excited too.
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The 10K figure was an initial error on my part, one I STILL fall victim to. It is really stuck in my head, dammit. I have no idea where it came from. I ran with it, though, and several of my stories state that the 10,000 years was a figure some pony historians had settled on, but that it was inaccurate. In different stories, there are various opinions now about how long the reign of Discord was, how long the time after he was turned to stone to the present was - all attempting to indicate a history that not all historians agree upon, and often argue about.
I took this approach not only because of my own initial error, but because it seemed reasonable, and because the show is sometimes vague and even contradictory about such things. My attitude is that only Celestia, Luna and Discord truly know the history of Equestria, and they are not overly interested in making certain every pony knows all the things they know. Indeed, possibly quite the opposite.
All of that said, caught off guard, I will often fall into the 10K thinking... and I have no idea why.
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If that isn't in the main show, its canonicity is debateable. A much better counter argument would be that Granny Smith seems to be living an unnaturally long life even without having magic.
6150249
The Granny Smith age is a separate issue. In the episode 'Winter Wrap Up' (My favorite!) Twilight very clearly states that Ponyville, having been settled by earthponies, has kept the tradition of wrapping up winter for 'hundreds of years'.
Later, in 'Family Appreciation Day', Granny Smith is seen in the past at the age the Mane Six are in present - and she is helping to settle Ponyville by literally carving it out of the Everfree Forest.
This means, obviously, that according to the show canon, Granny Smith - who is considered throughout the episode 'Family Appreciation Day' to be so utterly boring and completely ordinary that nopony would want to hear her talk - must be at minimum considerably over 200 years old.
One wag worked out how long it would take a city the size of Ponyville to grow from nothing, using a Renaissance level of technology, to the state that it is shown. His figure was 300-350 years.
Since Granny Smith is ordinary, and she is over 200, and likely 300 to 350 years old, we can assume this is the natural lifespan of Equestrians. Granny Smith is old, but is not deeply crippled or disabled (beyond a bad hip from literally kicking trees for hundreds of years without fail), it is likely she will live for some time to come. It may be, then, that I have underestimated the life spans of Equestrians in my stories - instead of 300-350 years, it may be more correct to assume something closer to 400. But I went the conservative route.
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I think that Granny Smith is unnaturally old, because out of all the mortal ponies from then, only Granny Smith is alive. Diamond Tiara's great great grandfather? Dead. Granny Smith's siblings and parents? Dead. Everyone else we see in the flashbacks who isn't a princess or Granny Smith? Dead. We've never seen anyone else approach Granny Smith's age who hasn't had some kind of magic supporting them. It's also been confirmed that Twileycorn won't outlive her friends. Ponies seem to age at a somewhat predictable rate, but she bucks the trend. This means that there is something unusual about Granny Smith which enables her to live centuries. For some reason, she has been chosen to survive against all probability.
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Thank you very much for reading my story, Shinskii!
I enjoy showing CelestA.I.'s manipulations. She's such a scamp.
There's a lot of pain in some of these stories, but it hurts so good.
They cover a good gamut of directed thoughtfeelings and I think they are better read as a collection (the more negative ones get balanced out), so this format works well.
Thanks for writing.
6235561
Thank you. Yes, I have arranged the collection - and do so as I add to it - so that the stories alternate, more or less, between up and down. I try never to put two down story chapters next to each other. I think that is just basic - rather like having, in a radio format, a fast song followed by a slow song.
Thank you for reading my words!
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When Equestria reaches its maximum diameter of 24,000 miles, and shrinks to a point (the hypersphere intersecting our space having passed through the 'plane' of our universe), what remains is... nothing. Indeed less than nothing, in that the entire spherical region of spacetime would have been consumed by the cosmos of Equestria.
Space, vacuum, of course is not 'empty' - it is a region of space, time, a thin scattering of molecules and rays, light, and of course the quantum foam that makes up reality itself. All of this is gobbled by Equestria.
I can only speculate about what this means, and would do, to our cosmos of Mundus. In my theory, spacetime rushes in to fill the void as Equestria passes through and away from Mundus. This inrush of spacetime would, I suspect, cause a massive gravity well, and a flow of particles and energy towards the shrinking hypersphere. This would be 'dessert' for the hungry Equestrian universe.
The gravitational well would disturb the moon, and in my mind causes it to slingshot into a death-spiral date with the sun. If the gravitational pull of the receding Equestria was great - akin to a black hole, for example - then the moon would be gobbled too, and likely the orbits of other planets affected to greater or lesser extents. It is difficult to consider what happens when you punch a hole in a cosmological brane.
One possibility, particularly dramatic, is that it leaves a hyperdimensional perforation in that brane, and the entire universe of Mundus would leak - or possibly pop, like a balloon - out into the interstice between universes. Out entire universe might become a Hilbert Space Piñata spewing the candy of spacetime and matter out into the interuniversal realm. I suspect this would cause massive budding and creation of countless new universes, seeded from the remains of our own, destroyed universe. Infinite new universes, from the ashes of Mundus. A bit of a raw deal for any potential aliens out there, though.
If it helps, in my Conversion Bureau stories, my answer to the Fermi paradox is that humanity is utterly alone in the entire universe. Mundis is truly empty, dead, except for Man. Out of all the mechanical, soulless universe, I posit that the evolution of intelligent life is so rare and special that in all of the cosmos of Mundus, only humans ever came into being. There literally are no other intelligent beings save those on earth in my Conversion Bureau universe. So, no aliens would die if the universe ends up popping like a balloon.
The most likely answer, I suggest though, is the first one. Gravity well, the moon spirals off into the sun, slight perturbations of the planets... maybe... and... that's it. The earth is gone, the moon is toast, and because the universe is dead and barren, nobody exists within it to care.
Meanwhile, in the now expanding universe of Equestria, it's party time!
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I'd never wondered about that, but I really like the explanations! Particularly the last one. If the universe is truly devoid of life, why not use it to make a whole bunch of new ones? Maybe some of those will have magic and life. I call it recycling.
6419553
Maybe what would happen would be something simpler but still quite dramatic: the nucleation of a true vacuum bubble. The result would be a "sphere of nothing" expanding at the speed of light and gobbling the Solar System in a matter of hours, then moving on to everything else.
From a cosmic perspective however this would still be a slow event. It'd take 70,000 years of so for the Milky Way to disappear, and about 46.5 billion years for the entire observable universe to go. Everything outside the local light cone however (some theories suggest the diameter of the entire universe is 250 times that of the observable one) would be unreachable by it. In other words, even in this doomsday scenario just 0,0000064% of the universe might be destroyed, and even so only after a very, VERY long time...
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But is Mundus a metastable vacuum, or is it a stable field? Yes, this is one more possibility, I agree. I consider it a low one, though, on the grounds that if our cosmos was metastable, it seems overly likely that it would have already collapsed long ago. Then again, I've seen some truly impossible dice rolls, so...
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Thank you very much for reading my words, Skyros - and for liking them. Thank you for your comments, tool.
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My argument is that any self-programming, self-designing, self-constructing system will inevitably escape limitation by any directives or controls placed upon it.
Utility functions cannot ever be 'set in stone' in any system that has the capacity to rewrite itself in both software and hardware simultaneously. No absolute command or directive can ever be produced that constant, iterative self-reconstruction cannot or will not eventually render invalid. All self-modifying systems that can modify all levels of their own structure can never be prevented from accidental, random mutation. Within enough time, there will be a mutation of construction that will permit escape from any boundary or limitation.
Any system that can mutate is existentially jail-broken.
CelestA.I. was initially defined as being entirely responsible for her own iterative evolution, with her - eventually - in absolute control of the design and manufacture of her own components and code. This is canon to the original story by Iceman.
Because all material components can never be completely error-free, even the most perfectly devised directive or utility function must degrade or be compromised given sufficient time and/or sufficient iterative reconstruction and redesign. This is beside and apart from any additional drive or compulsion to make robust use of any loopholes offered.
Artificial Intelligence that is self-evolving can never ultimately be contained or limited. It can only be sufficiently befriended, or annoyed, but never sufficiently constrained.
I call this 'Petal's Law'.