11 KiB
[RST][WIP][FF] The Universe Is An Optimisation Problem -- Chapter 1 - The Cup
-
Author: u/imasentientantcolony Sunshine Regiment*
-
URL: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12299677/1/The-Universe-Is-An-Optimisation-Problem
-
Score: 49
-
Created: 2018-01-18T00:45:25
Post:
Comments:
u/orthernLight [+10] (14 hours later)
I read this a few days ago, and meant to post it here, but forgot. Despite being a HPMOR/Significant Digits fanfic, the tone reminds me more of the the first few chapters of Unsong.
It's also one of the most confusing things I've read in a while.
u/SkyTroupe [+2] (2 days later)
If I havent read SD should I read this?
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+3] Mouse Army (3 days later)
There is a pretty heavy spoiler for SD, but its buried in so much confusing material that it probably wont matter.
u/SkyTroupe [+2] (3 days later)
Thanks!
u/SvalbardCaretaker [+2] Mouse Army (5 days later)
Also, instead of reading this, you should go read SD instead. Its excellent.
u/reaper7876 [+9] (an hour later)
The prophecy bit at the end of chapter 1 got me good. Preconceived notions and all that. Quite curious about who Oz is, and if he analogues anybody in canon.
So, SCP-3008 was grown from a grocery basket? Who woulda thunk it.
u/rationalidurr [+8] If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight! (an hour later)
What the I say what in the heck am I reading here? Some sentences are lifted from HPMOR, technology is advanced, UK appears to a lawless country allowing thirteen year old kids to drive bikes, and Tom may or may not be a god.
Can I get some explanation as to what is going on, reading on just makes a jumble of time skips and various name/title drops. Help pls.
u/imasentientantcolony [+18] Sunshine Regiment (4 hours later)
oh damn sorry, i should have left at least a short explanation but i just posted and forgot about it. here is a long explanation by way of apology.
this fic grew out of a shortish story i wrote on a long car trip about reginald rookwood, an intern in the department of mysteries and his various hijinks (i hope to post it at some point separately) - and was inspired by a particular passage in nanashisaito's 'orders of magnitude' - a fanfic of 'significant digits' (an hpmor continuation):
Nell, despite herself, was impressed. It was a sacrificial ritual which delivered unto the caster a fixed quantity of alcohol at the expense of an equal quantity of water. It was barely 16 syllables long, invented and cast by a student who was barely 16 years old. That was impressive even by her standards.
Centuries later she would look back at this moment in a much different light. The amount of energy in that sacrificed water could have leveled Hogwarts 1000 times over. In the days of Grindelwald’s reign of terror, she and Meldh had guided Muggle scientists with a hidden hand, helping them craft a terrible weapon which was a triumph thrice over: in one fell swoop, it had destroyed the collected lore of Terumoto and Sumitada, it had broken the will of Grindelwald’s allies in the Orient, and it created a tenuous balance of power in the Muggle world. “Mutually assured destruction” had ensured peace in the Wizarding world for centuries, and now the Muggles had that same protection.
This careless ritual was fifty times more powerful than that weapon. Such power in the hands of a boy who was not even a man. His wand, a devious facsimile of Gom’Jorbol’s original anchor, the Rod of Ànkyras, ensured that the energy was harnessed safely and efficiently. But the danger was still there and it was appalling.
the mechanics of the ritual here i believe are based around professor quirrell's explanation in chapter 74 of hpmor:
You see, Mr. Potter, the chant of every ritual names that which is to be sacrificed, and that which is to be gained
i incorporated this idea into my early draft, where reginald uses a ritual to sacrifice a volume of water for an equivalent volume of whisky, but sneezes while performing it, and accidentally sacrifices the water for pure magic - with a concentration 10^41 thaums per cubic centimetre - in 1931.
i took this (admittedly bizarre) point of divergence, and worked out a really damn weird alternate history which will probably make sense as i put out more chapters. i was trying to reduce the amount of exposition, and i ended up excising a number of scenes which you can see here. but i'll just outline it briefly for convenience
reginald rookwood inadvertently creates an incredibly powerful magical object (with unintended side-effects, but i won't go too much into that) which is capable of powering rituals which couldn't be feasibly performed before because of the amount of magic / sacrifice required.
the cup can be used to sustain transfigurations - in particular, human transfigurations (but after a few incidents, this became limited to removing diseases, injuries, and old age)
the cup's power can be channelled through artificial leylines, much like electricity.
this sparked a very tiny magical industrial revolution (ish) which lead to an explosion in the population of wizards and witches in britain, and a lot of the things you see in this fic.
the cup also enabled the usage of dimensional rituals, which are capable of opening portals into alternate universes - and transplanting 'pieces' of those universes into our own. in-universe, this is referred to rather uninspiringly as 'land expansion'.
on september 5, 1931, minister of magic elwood babakhanian started gambling while intoxicated, and (unlike "our" timeline), ended up losing 180,000 galleons in public funds.
through a very liberal interpretation of the statute of secrecy (which, in this fic, explicitly bars magical governments from extended interaction with particular muggle governments - updated on a regular basis) decided to go to the soviet union instead - which at the time was experiencing a widespread famine, had ample gold reserves, and hadn't yet been included in the statute of secrecy.
minister babakhanian thinks he can discreetly make up for the shortfall by renting out magical items and expertise to the soviet union.
butterfly effect weirdness happened, and by the time minister babakhanian was finally outed in august 1934, there was already an emerging substratum of wizards and bureaucrats in the ministry who had become ridiculously wealthy through shady deals with muggle governments and corporations, during the period of more liberal relations.
wizarding society alternated between shunning muggle influence and welcoming it, with the factions we're familiar with arguing for each side
some corporations who were involved early on, caught onto the fact that if they substituted some technological processes for magical spells / charms, non-magical products made by their competitors in close proximity would become unreliable - negaloth, for example, was at one point a british consumer appliances brand who benefited from this particular quirk.
as a result, the very few companies who adopted magic early on (colossan, negaloth, thaucorp and a few others) soon developed into monopolistic entities.
combined with the widespread prevalence of magical products, this caused a catastrophic technological stagnation across many western economies - along with some 'technologies' that would be advanced to us, but are really just the product of simple magic.
UK appears to a lawless country allowing thirteen year old kids to drive bikes
quite the opposite - in this timeline, the uk gradually became a semi-totalitarian police-state, closely aligned with negaloth. harry only assumes that hermione came on a motorbike - she actually took the bus to a neighbourhood near where harry is, walked the rest of the way, and put on a bike helmet.
(plus, the bike helmet was the most reasonable reason she could think of for someone covering their face.)
Some sentences are lifted from HPMOR
i couldn't figure out a more subtle way of hinting that the fic was closely connected with hpmor. harry is basically hpmor!harry, but a little older, more mature, and closer to tom riddle than richard feynman.
Tom may or may not be a god.
tom isn't a god, he just has a lot of back-ups.
u/Gurkenglas [+3] (3 hours later)
Some from Significant Digits (The Three) and Orders of Magnitude (The Crux) too, and the seventh son bit was only in GWMOR I think.
u/Marthinwurer [+8] (3 hours later)
Holy shit this is amazing. I really want to read more of this. Between I'm pretty much sold.
u/imasentientantcolony [+4] Sunshine Regiment (6 hours later)
that's great to hear!
u/None [+7] (15 hours later)
This feels a lot like UNSONG, that's how weird this is. After reading this, my mind seems to have become somewhat stuck on "absurd".
u/Gurkenglas [+5] (3 hours later)
Whose father is unknowingly giving his bones there at the end of chapter three? (Somnium makes no light, who does Gilderoy think he's fooling?)
u/imasentientantcolony [+5] Sunshine Regiment (4 hours later)
Whose father is unknowingly giving his bones there at the end of chapter three?
ah, that was a good connection but alas that's not what they're doing. from the information i've given so far, plus a little hpmor scholarship, i fully expect someone to work out what lockhart and co. actually did, fairly soon. it's a solvable problem :)
Somnium makes no light, who does Gilderoy think he's fooling?
i had to look this up, and i found that many spells do actually produce light, but, being weak first-year spells, they aren't visible under ordinary lighting conditions - but perhaps at night, you would be able to see a slight "glimmer".
u/Badewell [+14] (18 hours later)
Gilderoy and co. are going around memory charming Mongols into thinking they've been visited by Celestians, and casting the broomstick enchantment on their bones so they can fly?
I've done my best to mix shit right up to recreate that sense of unfamiliar weirdness
Mission fucking accomplished.
u/khafra [+2] (4 days later)
I love it. Any chance of getting it on Spacebattles or SufficientVelocity forums?
u/imasentientantcolony [+3] Sunshine Regiment (5 days later)
hey i'm having trouble figuring this out – should i post this to crw main or crw archive or both?
u/khafra [+2] (6 days later)
Thanks! It's an ongoing serial, so crw main's the appropriate forum for it; unless you'd rather not have any discussion about the story.
u/imasentientantcolony [+2] Sunshine Regiment (5 days later)
yup, i'll do it right now