14 KiB
[Weekly Challenge] Dueling Time Travelers
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Author: u/alexanderwales Time flies like an arrow*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3iiztn/weekly_challenge_dueling_time_travelers/
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Score: 25
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Created: 2015-08-26T23:00:04
Post:
Last Week
Last time, the prompt was "Science Is Bad". /u/MugaSofer is the winner with their story "Fantastic, or, Reed Richards is Useless", and will receive a month of reddit gold along with super special winner flair. Congratulations /u/MugaSofer! (Now is a great time to go to that thread and look at the entries you may have missed, especially the late entrants; contest mode is now disabled.)
This Week
This week's challenge is "Dueling Time Travelers". Two people, with access to time travel, in some sort of conflict with one another. Your choice of time travel model, though it's highly recommended that you keep it rational. Yes, you can include more than two people in conflict, or just have one person in conflict with their past/future self. Remember, prompts are to inspire, not to limit.
The winner will be decided Wednesday, September 2nd. You have until then to post your reply and start accumulating upvotes. It is strongly suggested that you get your entry in as quickly as possible once this thread goes up; this is part of the reason that prompts are given a week in advance. Like reading? It's suggested that you come back to the thread after a few days have passed to see what's popped up. The reddit "save" button is handy for this.
Rules
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300 word minimum, no maximum. Post as a link to Google Docs, pastebin, Dropbox, etc. This is mandatory.
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No plagiarism, but you're welcome to recycle and revamp your own ideas you've used in the past.
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Think before you downvote.
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Winner will be determined by "best" sorting.
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Winner gets reddit gold, special winner flair, and bragging rights.
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All top-level replies to this thread should be submissions. Non-submissions (including questions, comments, etc.) belong in the meta thread, and will be aggressively removed from here.
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Top-level replies must be a link to Google Docs, a PDF, your personal website, etc. It is suggested that you include a word count and a title when you're linking to somewhere else.
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In the interest of keeping the playing field level, please refrain from cross-posting to other places until after the winner has been decided.
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No idea what rational fiction is? Read the wiki!
Meta
If you think you have a good prompt for a challenge, add it to the list (remember that a good prompt is not a recipe). If you think that you have a good modification to the rules, let me know in a comment in the meta thread. Also, if you want a quick index of past challenges, I've posted them on the wiki.
Next Week
Next week's challenge is "Dinosaurs". Genetically engineered creatures pulled from blood trapped within a mosquito and mixed with frog DNA? Rich men hunting for a trophy in the distant past? Throwback creatures on an island lost to time? We all know everything is better with dinosaurs.
Next week's thread will go up on 9/2. Please confine any questions or comments to the meta thread. If you want to discuss the week's theme, feel free to make a post about it.
Comments:
u/Anakiri [+20] (a day later)
2988 words
u/avret [+2] SDHS rationalist (a day later)
Excellent job! I always enjoy Novikovian oracles.
u/nolrai [+1] (2 days later)
I can't access it.
u/Anakiri [+2] (2 days later)
u/nolrai [+1] (3 days later)
Yes!
u/DCarrier [+1] (7 days later)
I feel like that final message shouldn't be that clean. If it would work as-is, it would work with a few spelling errors. And there's a lot more possibilities with a few spelling errors.
u/Anakiri [+7] (7 days later)
It's more coherent than you might expect because it's not ASCII. It's encoded in a way that is designed specifically to preserve human speech at a high level through low-bandwidth, high-latency, high-noise ship-to-ship communications. It would actually be harder to send something that is just slightly wrong.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
u/STL [+1] (7 days later)
Sounds like an evocation from Vinge's A Fire Upon The Deep.
u/None [+9] (a day later)
[deleted]
u/Kishoto [+2] (a day later)
Pretty interesting. Really curious as to how these cycles get resolved if you have two opposing factions who both have access to time travel. Is it a question of who runs out of resources first? Keeping in mind that these resources would need to transcend time somehow.
u/electrace [+1] (a day later)
That's how I was thinking of it. Each faction
Game theory and time travel.... someone should write a paper on that.
u/ZeroNihilist [+3] (a day later)
[Further,] (#s " since resources can be drawn from the future, even very old losses could be re-evaluated with new equipment or personnel.")
u/electrace [+2] (a day later)
[If] (#s "anything was changed about the original mission briefing, you risk a paradox. As long as that original mission briefing is the same in each cycle, there won't be a paradox. That's why they send in an additional agent each time something goes wrong, rather then adjusting the mission statement of the first agent." )
[Also,] (#s "I don't see how they could arrange a system where interfering would cause a paradox. Once the note is retyped, exactly as it was before, the paradox is effectively avoided, and telling the agent "you will succeed" doesn't actually guarantee their success. All that would happen, if the opposing faction intervened, would be that the agent would think 'Oh, guess that bit about me succeeding was wrong, then.'")
[However,] (#s "they could make an announcement to the world saying 'If you don't do exactly as we say, we will cause a paradox.' If the world found them credible, fear could motivate people into compliance.")
u/ZeroNihilist [+2] (a day later)
What would the consequences of a paradox be, by the way?
u/electrace [+2] (a day later)
[Well,] (#s "no one knows for certain, since one hasn't happened before, but it's an x-risk, one both parties try to avoid. They probably assume that it will destroy the Universe or something.")
u/RMcD94 [+1] (7 days later)
Tense seemed inconsistent and you used with 20 metres rather than within.
Interesting take on the prompt
u/electrace [+1] (7 days later)
Tense seemed inconsistent
I do tend to struggle with tense, even after proofreading. Hopefully, it wasn't too distracting.
with 20 metres rather than within
Fixed, thanks.
u/Kishoto [+6] (4 minutes later)
3175 words
u/avret [+2] SDHS rationalist (13 hours later)
I feel like I would have understood a good deal of the story better had I played any Prince of Persia games, especially sands of time... This was still an entertaining read though.
u/Kishoto [+2] (14 hours later)
Yea, it definitely would've been more enjoyable but I tried to write it so that you could still appreciate the story even if you'd never played the series. I guess I was partially successful? :P
u/avret [+1] SDHS rationalist (14 hours later)
Reasonably so, yeah. (I went back and looked at the wiki page for Sands of Time. It explained a lot.)
u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (a day later)
Not... really sure what was going on. I got some of the gist, but it didn't draw me in enough that I want to spend time reading up and down the wiki to understand the rest.
u/Kishoto [+1] (a day later)
Thats disappointing, I guess I wrote it too much like a fan fiction instead of a standalone. I prob should've had a paragraph at the beginning that made the implication that he's trapped in a loop clearer.
Question. Was it at least clear that he was being controlled by fate to act out the role of the enemy he briefly spoke about in the beginning?
u/callmebrotherg [+1] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (a day later)
No. Heh. Because of the prompt, I was trying to interpret it through the lens of the vizier somehow doing this. I reread parts of it trying to find a hint that this was a new timeline being created, or something like that.
u/Kishoto [+1] (5 days later)
Well. My response is super late. But the implication is that he is, ironically, fighting himself in the loop, albeit a self being puppeteered.
Edit: so it can be seen as a Prince vs Prince duel set up. Although it wouldn't be wrong to say it's Fate vs Prince either.
u/_brightwing [+2] Feathered menace (a day later)
Speaking as a die-hard Sands of Time fan.. fantastic. Loved the loop twist and the perspective of the vizier. It feels more appropriate for fate to manifest like this instead of Dahaka. Insidious.
And using those lines to end it like that - it was perfect for the story.
u/Kishoto [+2] (4 days later)
Thanks! I found that ending paragraph really impactful in the game, and just had to work it into my story. Glad to hear you enjoyed the read.
u/VocalComedy [-7] (21 hours later)
Time Duel
449 words
u/VocalComedy [+4] (21 hours later)
This might not have enough (or any) rational elements. Feel free to downvote until it's hidden. Figured it better to post than not.
u/Chronophilia [+3] sci-fi ≠ futurology (a day later)
better to post than not.
Absolutely! You've got nothing to lose, and you're not wasting anyone's time or attention (if I had more important things to do, I wouldn't be on Reddit).
u/Empiricist_or_not [+3] Aspiring polite Hegemonizing swarm (2 days later)
I'm not sure if I didn't get it or if it's that bad. That said It's infinitely more story than I've posted so take my up-vote for bravery, to your self criticism.
u/VocalComedy [+3] (2 days later)
u/Kishoto [+2] (a day later)
Yea, this wasn't a very good story. It was too short, fairly non-sensical, and only adhered to the prompt in the most tenuous of ways.
u/VocalComedy [+2] (a day later)
Delete it?
u/Kishoto [+1] (a day later)
I personally delete stories I write that I'm not happy with.
But, that's if I don't like them. If YOU like your story, that's all that matters. Feel free to leave it up.