4.7 KiB
[RT][HSF] Ra, alternate ending part 5, Epilogue "Nonlocal" (draft)
-
Author: u/Ilverin *
-
Score: 21
-
Created: 2018-05-22T03:47:26
Post:
Comments:
u/Ilverin [+5] (a minute later)
Main story and original ending can be found at
This is the fifth (draft) part of the alternate ending. The first (draft) part of the alternate ending can be found at
u/MaddoScientisto [+4] (2 hours later)
Why stop at interplanetary war when you can have intersystem war?
u/Fuguenocht [+4] (23 hours later)
This new ending might be more satisfying to him in some technical way, but it's lifeless.
One thing I liked in the old ending was the judgmental verdict 'We find magic to be absurd'. That seemed like it came from the author's own anguished ambivalence. The whole story is a doomed attempt to synthesize magic and hard sci fi -- he kept looking for explanations but ultimately had to handwave it away under "nonlocality". One of the things I like about this book is that in its story of how King & co came to create their illusion of magic, it's also examining the urges that spawned itself -- why does someone who prioritizes logical rigor want to write a story about magic? The author can be seen as self-inhibiting due to this constant enchainment of his fantasy impulses with the requirement for logical backing, but that's part of the charm, and the fact that those impulses made him write Ra means they must be strong, at least strong enough to prompt a doomed war for synthesis.
u/valeskas [+2] (7 hours later)
Wont encrypted humanity eventually build multiple stellar computers, run out of memory and crash?
u/JackStargazer [+5] Primordial Apologist (10 hours later)
No, they'll die when the Sun runs out. That's likely to happen first, as the sim is running at less than realtime because it has low priority. They could be running hundreds of times slower than realtime, but it would be indistinguishable for people inside the sim.
They've been trapped inside an inescapable bubble with no way to interact with the outside universe, and no way to even calculate when their doom will come. It's certainly a bad end, albeit not as bad as just dying when the Earth exploded.
u/valeskas [+3] (11 hours later)
level of time compression allocated to it.
Natalie's guess is that it averages out to somewhere within six orders of magnitude of real time.
My read is that encrypted humanity experiences 1e6 seconds per 1 realtime second, so they should reach required level within one realtime year.
u/JackStargazer [+2] Primordial Apologist (12 hours later)
Could be, but I think it's the other way around. She mentions the world has low priority. Look at the whole quote:
Being encrypted makes it impossible for any external force to materially interfere with the running of the virtuality, short of introducing wild corruption and causing a fatal crash. A crash is not impossible, if some heavyweight and hostile pre-existing denizen of the Ra ecosystem were to come gunning for the processing resources Kasta consumes. But why would it? It's running in the deepest available background, at the lowest possible priority, there are trillions of parallel processes to choose from, and meanwhile there's an entire unclaimed frontier of free solar power out there, unfolding minute by real minute.
The Bridge was not able to supply Natalie with detailed information about Kasta's placement or the specific level of time compression allocated to it. Apparently, this latter factor is prone to some fluctuation. Kasta can even suspend completely for long periods of real time, as a form of camouflage. Natalie's guess is that it averages out to somewhere within six orders of magnitude of real time. But, she hurriedly clarifies, that's simply a guess.
I read this as meaning that it's slower, as it can even sometimes suspend for 'long periods of real time' and then afterwards it mentions the compression as an average including those periods of suspension.
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (16 hours later)
Test Shot Starfish - Re-Flight was on on the SpaceX launch stream as I was reading this, and for some reason it felt like it really fit as an outro music for this.
u/pleasedothenerdful [+1] (6 days later)
Looks like draft parts 1-5 are all gone from the OP link now...