Michael Crichton's Timeline

[Rayzorium]

Mild semi-spoilers. Though if you don't already know this book relates to time travel, then... whoo. It's been a while since this book was published, but I picked it up again because I have a friend that says Michael Crichton screwed up on his Latin, which seems highly unlikely to me.

Anyways, on this read-through, I came upon some weird ideas regarding multiverse travel. Pages 178-180 are what I'm talking about.

In the control room, David Stern watched the flashes on the rubber floor become smaller and weaker, and finally vanish entirely. The machines were gone. The technicians immediately turned to Baretto and began his transmission countdown.

But Stern kept staring at the spot in the rubber floor where Chris and the others had been.

"And where are they now?" he asked Gordon.

"Oh, they've arrived now," Gordon said. "They are there now."

"They have been rebuilt?"

"Yes."

"Without a fax machine at the other end."

"That's right."

"Tell me why," Stern said. "Tell me the details the others didn't need to be bothered with."

"All right," Gordon said. "It isn't anything bad. I just thought the others might find it, well, disturbing."

"Uh-huh."

"Let's go back," Gordon said, "to the interference patterns, which you remember showed us that other universes can affect our own universe. We don't have to do anything to get the interference pattern to occur. It just happens by itself."

"Yes."

"And this interaction is very reliable; it will always occur, whenever you set up a pair of slits."

Stern nodded. He was trying to see where this was going, but he couldn't foresee the direction Gordon was taking.

"So we know that in certain situations, we can count on other universes to make something happen. We hold up the slits, and the other universes make the pattern we see, every time."

"Okay...."

"And, if we transmit through a wormhole, the person is always reconstituted at the other end. We can count on that happening, too."

There was a pause.

Stern frowned.

"Wait a minute," he said. "Are you saying that when you transmit, the person is being reconstituted by another universe?"

"In effect, yes. I mean, it has to be. We can't very well reconstitute them, because we are not there. We're in this universe."

"So you're not reconstituting...."

"No."

"Because you don't know how," Stern said.

"Because we don't find it necessary," Gordon said. "Just as we don't find it necessary to glue plates to a table to make them stay put. They stay by themselves. We make use of a characteristic of the universe, gravity. And in this case, we are making use of a characteristic of the multiverse."

Stern frowned. He immediately distrusted the analogy; it was too glib, too easy.

"Look," Gordon said, "the whole point of quantum technology is that it overlaps universes. When a quantum computer calculates -- when all thirty-two quantum states of the electron are being used -- the computer is technically carrying out those calculations in other universes, right?"

"Yes, technically, but --"

"No. Not technically. Really."

There was a pause.

"It may be easier to understand," Gordon said, "by seeing it from the point of view of the other universe. That universe sees a person suddenly arrive. A person from another universe."

"Yes...."

"And that's what happened. The person has come from another universe. Just not ours."

"Say again?"

"The person didn't come from our universe," Gordon said.

Stern blinked. "Then where?"

"They came from a universe that is almost identical to ours -- identical in every
respect -- except that they know how to reconstitute it at the other end."

"You are joking."

"No."

"The Kate who lands there isn't the Kate who left here? She's a Kate from another universe?"

"Yes."

"So she's almost Kate? Sort of Kate? Semi-Kate?"

"No. She's Kate. As far as we have been able to tell with our testing, she is
absolutely identical to our Kate. Because our universe and their universe are almost identical."

"But she's still not the Kate who left here."

"How could she be? She's been destroyed, and reconstructed."

Do you feel any different when this happens?" Stern said.

"Only for a second or two," Gordon said.

I took this to mean that the person our universe sent is destroyed, gone forever, while an almost identical person takes their place. This means another universe never gets their person back, and our universe's person is actually dead, or at least their subatomic particles are floating around the multiverse, never to reconstruct again.

But then Stern asked about feeling different. So your consciousness takes over the body of the other universe's person? Or maybe combine into one? I'm interested in what you guys think. It's a doozy, I know, so it's quite cool if nobody responds. But it's interesting.

 

[sirmyk]

How many lines of text from a published work can be posted on this forum before it violates plagiarism?

 

[ions]

How many lines of text from a published work can be posted on this forum before it violates plagiarism?

Less than posted here.

 

[Rayzorium]

Eep! Sorry, guys; that was my first post. I was slightly wary about posting that much text myself (for fear of annoying forum members as much as copyright infringement), so I took a look at section 107 of the 1976 Copyright Act just to be safe. I thought Fair Use covered me! But I have no idea what any local, or other laws might say about copyright. It wasn't safe enough, I guess >.<

Don't kill me! I'd edit or delete my first post, but there don't appear to be avaliable options for that. =/ This thread should probably be closed, actually... But just for future reference, I'd like to know what the number is so as to not anger The Man. >.>;; Scary stuff...

EDIT: Oh wait, yeah there is. . But it doesn't appear for me on my first post for some reason. Weird.

 

[MonkeyCatcher]

EDIT: Oh wait, yeah there is. . But it doesn't appear for me on my first post for some reason. Weird.

You only have the option to edit your posts for a certain amount of time after posting. I think it may be 15 mins? Just ensures that people can't change their post after complaints and such have been laid against them.

 

[Minacolada]

A good writer

Michael Crichton is a good writer, my favorite novel by him is Rising Sun. I like how he can combine an interesting story and true facts at the same time. He's very anal about getting things right, so I am surprised he screwed something up, but at the end where he lists all his sources he usually does include that any errors are his fault entirely. The only thing that bugs me is that he gets a little off topic and boring when discussing a fact (does that a lot in Jurrasic Park).