[Really, seriously Infinities] Fenspace Infinite: The Multiverse Is Calling

[M Fnord]

Yeah, Mal's got the reboot bug again. The last one worked out okay, so let's give it another whirl, yeah? Everybody hang onto the lap bar 'cause shit is gonna get weird...

Cornell University
14 February 2006

"Test log seventeen: Since starting work with the handwavium samples directly I've noticed a direct effect to the nature and quantity of my work output. Research among handwavium enthusiasts online suggests this is a common thing - a sort of euphoric effect caused by 'working magic,' or somesuch. Euphoria, sure, but whatever they're feeling isn't what I'm feeling.

"I've now filled six notebooks with math and notes that I only dimly remember writing in the first place, and can barely recognize as workable. It's almost like being in an Ambien trance, or sleepwalking. Though I'm pretty sure that I'm not sleepwalking. I suspect that the effect might be similar it's not identical, because the notebooks aren't filled with incoherent gibberish like a dreaming or stoned person might scribble down. The math is absurdly high level but it all fits together. Apparently in a handwavium-induced trance I've managed to determine that the universe exists in a modified Everett multiworld continuum, and sketched out several interesting modalities that may be able to exploit that.

"And for today's experiment we're going to try the simplest of these out."

~***~

Diedre Greist carefully maneuvered the last bit of wire into her jury-rigged circuit board and soldered it into place. The board was the last piece of a small pile of junked TVs and chunks of handwavium crystal that made up her first attempt at what she was calling the Mark I Bridge. Assuming the math was right and she wasn't crazy, once powered up the Mark I would open a narrow pinhole between her universe and another one, allowing her to see what was on the other side. Of course if the math was wrong then it wouldn't work, or it'd catch fire or explode and there'd be a hell of a mess to explain to the Provost.

She waited for the last few connections to cool down, then doublechecked to make sure there were no loose wires or anything physically wrong with the Mark I. Seeing nothing wrong, she plugged the device into her handwavium-enhanced laptop, an old junker she'd picked up and treated specifically for this test run. The machine booted up agreeably enough and seemed to recognize the device without complaint.

"Right," she said for the benefit of her tape recorded. "Mark I Bridge test number one. The device is powered and on standby. Control systems are responsive. No faults detected in the assembly. Sooo... activating system-" she tapped a key and the laptop chimed "-and let's see-"

"-if this thing works." Said a voice that was very much like Deidre's but not quite identical. Deidre blinked hard and looked at the cathode-ray tube that served as the device's main viewport. In the middle of the screen was a crisp and clear image of another woman a few years younger, with more punked-out hair and clothing but with the same eyes and the unmistakable Griest nose. Deidre tapped the screen just to make sure she wasn't hallucinating and then gave a tentative wave.

The younger her looked back, confused, then broke out with a huge grin. "Hey, it worked!" she said. "Hi, other me!"

~***~

Ithaca, New York
20 April 2006

Noah Anderson adjusted his tie irritably. By rights he should be working on the Boskone post-mortem, calling Scaled about his handwavium-powered aircraft proposal and any number of things a professional serious person in the realms of business and fandom should be doing instead of standing around outside a warehouse in upstate New York waiting for a lunatic. But his contacts in fandom told him something was seriously up, and Noah trusted his contacts. More to the point, Noah trusted his instincts, and they told him that whatever was going on inside that warehouse it was worth checking up on.

The wait in the mid-spring morning chill was wearing on his patience, though. He grumbled a little, idly hoping that the interior was warmer than it looked. As he shifted around, a rental sedan pulled up to the warehouse and stopped beside him. A tall black woman in jeans and a windbreaker got out and gave Noah a puzzled look. "Noah?" she said quizzically. "What are you doing here?"

"Tanith?" Noah replied. "I could ask you the same thing." Tanith Curtis was a name in the Chicago fan circles, and the two had a professional relationship going back almost a decade. Normally very little could get Tanith out of the city, which made her appearance in Ithaca all the more startling.

"I got an invitation to something ‘world-shaking,'" Tanith shrugged. "It was delivered by people I trust, so I figured what the hell. I'm guessing that you got the same invite?"

"You could say that, yes. It's all very hush-hush secret stuff. I probably shouldn't have come but... I got curious. I have no idea what it means."

"Maybe I could help with that," a new voice interrupted. Noah and Tanith turned to see a woman in a labcoat and black gloves standing in front of the door. The newcomer smiled slightly and said, "Ms. Curtis, Mr. Anderson. I'm Deidre Griest. We've never met in person before, but we have had some online correspondence."

Tanith cocked her head in thought. "Griest," she said. "Oh, right, you worked on a couple programming bits for ACen in the past. I thought you'd left fandom."

Deidre shrugged. "Not precisely," she said. "I wasn't going to lose track completely but then academia and... medical issues took over my life for a bit, and then there was this new handwavium material. Fascinating stuff."

"Indeed it is," Noah said dryly. "And I'm guessing that's what we're here to see. Some sort of space colony thing, maybe?"

"Not exactly. Please, come inside."

~***~

The interior of the warehouse was divided up into a dozen offices and makeshift workbenches, in the center of the building a clear spot was carefully marked out with chain-link fencing. A group of students in the traditional garb of the college student worked on unidentifiable pieces of technology around them. "This doesn't look like much," Deidre remarked, "but what you see here is the beginning of the biggest advance in human affairs since the development of agriculture. We aren't on the bleeding edge of science; we've taken a running leap into the abyss and getting a good look at things man probably wasn't meant to know."

"That's... very nice hyperbole," Tanith said, eyebrows raised. "But I'm still not sure what you're doing here."

"We've discovered some very interesting properties of handwavium," Deidre replied. "This is our main research facility."

"And those properties are, what exactly?"

A bell tolled inside the warehouse, and Deidre smiled. "Perfect," she said. "Better to just show you." As she said it, a flash of swirling light came from the center of the fenced-off part of the warehouse, and all of a sudden the space was occupied by a metal shed. Tanith and Noah stared as the shed door opened and a stocky, bearded man in flannel stepped out with a pet carrier in one hand.

"Hey, boss lady!" the man said, lifting the carrier high. "Got you a present!"

~***~

It was the size of a turkey and covered in short dun-colored feathers. It looked up at the humans surrounding it with a vaguely confused expression, then started scratching its sinuous neck with a powerful, clawed hind leg.

"It's," Noah stared, gaped a little more, then started again. "Its, a, a, velociraptor."

The stocky guy from the shack - who'd been introduced to them as Mal Fnord - shook his head. "Nah," he said, pointing at the dinosaur's hind leg. "No sickle claw. It's a dromaeosaur of some kind, but I don't know which. I've not really seen many with the skin still on."

"Did you get the pictures?" Deidre demanded. Mal grinned.

"Did I ever! There was a whole herd of hadrosaurs about a mile from the insertion point. Had to have been thirty or more just sort of moving south-southwest through the hills. Real serious Jurassic Park stuff. I got stills and video. Bitey here-" he gestured at the dinosaur "-was sniffing at the shack when I got back."

"Time travel," Noah said suddenly, giving Diedre a hard look. "You've invented time travel, haven't you?"

Deidre shook her head. "Nope, time travel's impossible as far as I understand the math."

Noah gestured angrily at Bitey. "Then how do you explain that?"

"We're not travelling backwards and forwards through time, Mr. Anderson." Deidre said. "We're traveling across it. Sidestepping, if you will, into alternate realities."

"So you're not interfering with Earth's history... "

"Nah," Mal said laconically. "We're just playing tourist on a counterpart Earth that for whatever reason is still in the age of dinosaurs. And it doesn't stop there. We've gotten a look at a dozen different worlds so far."

"What are they like?" Tanith asked.

"A few are like dinoworld, uninhabited by sapient life but have megafauna. One's pretty much a hellworld like Venus, pretty scary. The majority we've seen so far seem to have changes based on history. Like if the Roman Empire never fell or the Song Dynasty expanded into Inda, stuff like that. We haven't really travelled to the inhabited places yet."

"Interesting," Noah said diffidently. "But dinosaurs aside, I'm not sure this qualifies as the biggest advance since agriculture." Mal snorted as he said it and gave Deidre an amused look.

"You used the agriculture line? Really?"

"Just because it happens to be true," she said loftily, then continued on in a more serious manner. "The technology is still in it's early stages, Mr. Anderson, but I believe we'll soon be able to seek out worlds that are not only as advanced as ours, but more advanced. Through trade we'll be able to bring art, culture and technology back that will enrich our world a hundredfold."

"Such as?" Noah asked.

Deidre shrugged off her labcoat, causing Noah to take an involuntary step back. What he'd initially taken as a glove of some kind on her right hand was actually a layer of artificial material covering the entirety of her arm to the shoulder.

"The beginning of my sophomore year at Cornell," she said softly, "I was out on my motorcycle when some drunk frat asshole sideswiped me. I lived through it but my arm was completely ruined. I built myself a prosthetic exoskeleton, but that only gave me fifty percent functionality and it lasted maybe two hours unless I had a wall socket to plug in on.

"On my first experiment with the dimensional viewer I contacted an alternate version of myself from a high-tech reality who'd had something similar happen to her. She built a completely new cybernetic arm for herself. After she talked to me she sent me the plans to do the same thing, and once I figured out how to start sending things through she sent me the tools I needed to do the job properly.

"That is the potential of sidestepping, Mr. Anderson. We have unlimited access to everything. We can bring it home and we can start making the world a better place. That's where you both come it. We're just about at the edge of what we can accomplish on our own. If we're going to do this right, we need operating capital, political influence and somebody who can keep track of big organizations." Deidre pointed at Noah. "You've got the money to get us started on better equipment, and the pull we'll need to get a fair hearing from the world once we go public." She shifted her finger to Tanith. "And you've got the organizational skills and experience to make a larger group work, and you've got a conscience to keep us from hoarding our discoveries instead of using them for the greatest possible good."

Deidre spread her hands. "That's the pitch. We're looking at the biggest thing in recorded history, and if you want to get in on the ground floor now's the time to say so. What'll it be?"

Meta Time: Fenspace + GURPS Infinite Worlds = fun!

The basic pitch here is that (as usual) things are a little different with handwavium this time out. Instead of providing easy access to space it provides access to, well... all the things. Biomod ability's been swapped out for interworld access and a sort of inspirational effect that you might as well call the Spark because I don't have a better name for it. From where we leave off the Fen (in the form of mad scientist Deidre Griest, well-connected rich guy Noah Anderson and organizer Tanith Curtis) go public, convince the world to let them keep running the show and the Convention is born as a slightly more anarchic version of IW's Infinity Unlimited. Hilarity, as you might expect, ensues.

Thoughts?
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

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