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Post by Andrew on May 5, 2015 6:16:01 GMT
I thought I knew all about multiple worlds. I’ve practically made a career of it.
There are five worlds I am familiar with. Four of which overlap once per pair every few years. The fifth, Earth, where I and most other people I know are from, never overlaps with the rest. This information is commonly known on the four overlapping (“concordant”) worlds; very few people on Earth know about other worlds. Earthlings can talk to the others, though: we can get people from three of the other four worlds to come here and engage in mutually beneficial trades. My plans for getting Love’s Labour’s Won tomorrow rely on one of those trades, with somebody from one of the worlds where people can create anything they know enough about.
I’d rather not reveal more information at the moment because anything more than this is kept secret. I’m saying this much because anybody who doesn’t know it will just dismiss me as crazy; if I say too much more they will be able to see it is true with their own eyes, and might let the secret out.
However, I have never heard of Callahan's, Milliways, the Inn of the Black Door, or the Wood between the Worlds. I have also never heard of L-space, but it sounds like some physics thing, so I wouldn’t necessarily expect to. Could somebody give me an introduction to what “multiple worlds” means on this forum?
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Post by Mother Starlight on May 5, 2015 7:28:04 GMT
Some worlds seem to be "clustered", more closely associated with each other, which I would guess is the case for the worlds you are familiar with. More distant worlds can be more difficult to reach, as you have seen in the case of your Earth not participating in the overlaps that the subcluster experiences.
Since this seems to be your first contact with worlds outside your local cluster, I'll try to run down the highlights of how more distant worlds can differ from clustered worlds.
Principally, they tend to be either much more different or much more similar. The basic nature of reality can be dramatically different from what you are used to; you have encountered this principle in miniature in the differences between Earth and the concordant worlds. On the other hand... have you heard the saying that history never repeats but it rhymes? Similar worlds are a lot like that.
There are other Earths out there, varying from yours in large and small ways. Some of them are in clusters of their own, and some are lone worlds, able to contact other worlds only through "long-distance" types of connection like this forum. Some features are more stable than others; if you're on an Earth, then you probably have a London and a Rome and a Tokyo, but you might or might not have a Gotham or a Salem or a Sunnydale.
(Earths are not the only recurring theme in the multiverse, though they are one of the most common recurring themes on the worldwide scale. Other recurring themes include humans, dragons, floating islands, zombies, and many others.)
Callahan's, Milliways, the Inn of the Black Door, and the Wood between the Worlds are all locations that adjoin or connect many different worlds. I'm not familiar with L-space.
I don't know what means of travel you're familiar with using for trades within your cluster, and I can't guess whether it will work across longer interworld distances.
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Post by Andrew on May 5, 2015 17:31:48 GMT
If many of these other worlds are populated by humans, then I would expect my limited intra-cluster travel methods would not work. I’ll write up a post about my world(s) fairly soon, but I don’t know what common areas I should start from. Apparently saying “an Earth” will give a lot of information, but does “An Earth in 1995 AD” mean as much to other people as it does to me? Should I just assume that saying that will tell other people the rough background information available to most of “my” Earthlings (who don’t know that even the other worlds in the cluster exist)? If some worlds (and some Earths?) don’t have clusters, I assume I’ll need to explain the concordant worlds and their inhabitants, but do I need to explain computers (which are becoming more and more commonplace here, but might not exist in other worlds), or that “planets” don’t exist naturally in the other clustered worlds?
I’m also glad that apparently most people from non-“rhyming” worlds have names a bit more creative than “Earth” for where they’re from.
EDIT: Also, can I assume that this forum takes care of translation and similar things if necessary in addition to changing from a Usenet group for me to a paper newsletter for others, etc.? Can somebody provide a quick rundown of what the intercluster meeting spaces mentioned above are?
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Post by Mother Starlight on May 5, 2015 17:52:11 GMT
I can almost guarantee that whatever you say will be meaningful to some people and not to others. If you say "An Earth in 1995 AD", that will be more meaningful to someone from an Earth in 2095 AD than someone from an Earth in 1895 AD, still less meaningful to someone from an Earth in 295 NSE, and even less meaningful to someone from a Third Crucible. Your best bet may be to rely on other people asking questions to find out what needs explaining to your particular audience.
That said, some things tend to be more likely to correspond than others. If there's anything that's a secret from the general public, or a relatively recent development, or magic, or technology that relies on a particular rare substance or type of person in order to work, then that's a good candidate for something that needs explaining. There are other things as well, but I don't have a good list written up just now.
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Post by Leaf on May 5, 2015 23:08:25 GMT
"An Earth in 1995 AD" means plenty to me. My world has an Earth too, although I don't live there, and it's currently 2995 ECE (same numeric scale, different name).
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Post by Andrew on May 10, 2015 5:43:56 GMT
Could somebody more familiar with multiple worlds give me a rundown of the other types of contact Mother Starlight mentioned? I actually went to Milliways today (and will discuss the details of this trip in the News and Information board), but I still don’t know anything about Callahan’s, the Inn of the Black Door, or the Wood between the Worlds.
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Post by Grigori on May 13, 2015 19:40:29 GMT
I was generally aware of the existence of many worlds before coming here, though I was under the impression that all existing worlds were simply distorted reflections of the one 'real' world. For instance; the sub-world I'm most familiar with, the Grid, is a virtual reflection of the 'real' Internet; there are many other subworlds in existence, based on various other features that exist in reality.
If I accept that Mother Starlight is generally correct, it would seem likely that I'm only aware of the existence of worlds within my own 'local cluster'. I've heard rumours of stranger things beyond that, but nothing reliable (even to the level of reliability that the Peerage is usually able to muster up), and I fully expect that my eventual report on this place is not likely to be taken any more seriously than those are, absent more concrete proof than I've been able to gather so far.
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