Future culture – Page 3 – Nanofic~Sci~Fi

Cosmology

If you could see the notes they’re taking . . .

As time increases without bound, the probability of
existing within a simulated reality approaches unity.

There are exactly two possibilities: either we exist in a simulated reality, or we do not. If we’re simulated, this almost certainly evidences a creating group of entities in the enclosing universe with a reason for doing it.

At this point, you can speculate on motive. For example, maybe they’re doing a simulation: a group of cosmological grad students. (The idea of a “god” in the classic sense seems cretinous; what depraved being would build a toy universe and then have trite interactions inside of it for eternity?) But these lines of inquiry become dull rather quickly.

More interesting is to speculate on the existence of the parent universe itself. By applying the same logic recursively, we find that they’re probably simulated too. So you have us, inside a parent universe, inside a parent universe, inside, inside, and so on until you reach some root universe. It will always reach a root universe in a finite number of nested universes. (Why? Because by assumption, the probability of existing in a simulated reality only approaches unity. And even if we were to know we’re in a simulated universe, you toss the problem to the next one up, and so on until an assumption breaks. Anyway, you can’t have turtles all the way up.)

For example, let’s say that we think the probability of existing in a simulated reality is p_s=0.93. Assuming this is constant for each universe (each universe likes simulating universes approximately the same as itself), we’d expect on average to be the 14^th or 15^th universe down. If it’s p_s=0.5, on average we’re the first universe down.

What’s fascinating is that this implicitly involves a problem: we can’t define time very well. If you observe a universe right at the big bang and then live through until its end, your p_s grows monotonically from 0 to 1 but the truth remains constant. What the original conceit really is saying is about time in the root universe. That, as time progresses, the number of recursively simulated beings collectively grows faster than the number of real-lifes. It’s a hyperexponential growth, too, since each simulated reality makes its own recursively simulated universes too.

This suggests something interesting: we can devise an a-priori experiment to see whether we’re in a simulated reality. See, this hyperexponential growth starts exactly when the root universe starts simulating things. The population growth in the root universe continues at an ordinary exponential rate, so the simulated universes very quickly outpopulate the real one.

This means that after the root universe develops universe simulation, your chances of being born in the real world drop abruptly, asymptotically, to zero.

In the absence of better data, we assume that any parent universes are like ours, since people are interested in creating applicable simulations. So:

If we are simulating our own universes, then probably we are the child of a parent universe that is also simulating universes (one of which is us).
If we’re not simulating universes, then we don’t have a parent universe, because that parent universe wouldn’t be simulating us either. So we wouldn’t exist (and yet clearly we do).

The intriguing thing is that the simpletons who authorize science funding get the implication backwards, reasoning that if we don’t invent universe simulation, then we’ll be living in real life (as if such post-hoc decisions could influence the very nature of reality). If this carries back up to the root universe, then no child universes will ever exist (which makes the fallacious chain of reasoning even more appealing).

Ed. note: this isn’t actually strictly fiction.

In Case of EMP . . .

Nostalgia costs mass.

The sign read: “IN CASE OF ELECTRICAL FAILURE BREAK GLASS”.

Johnson broke the glass.

“The hell is this?”

“It’s a slide rule. And it’s going to save our asses.”

“Lotta fancy numbers. What’s it do?”

“It multiplies, divides, square roots, all the usual things ‘cept addition. This one does trig and exponents too. It’s more precise than your brain, but less so than a computer. That EMP means we don’t have a computer, though. Both backups are dead too.”

“Well, we had no way of knowing that that particular CME would hit us way out here at Jupiter. The chances of that must be pretty absurd.”

“Not really. Happens all the time. But our electrical shielding clearly wasn’t up to par, and this was a particularly big one. Right now, we’re dead fish in a very big sea. See if the emergency sparkgap is working. Tell Ganymede we’re scrubbing the mission—and we’ll use this thing to figure out how to burn for home.”

Ed. note: Idea from Atomic Rockets. I myself restored a K&E for work, and have another at home. They’re useful for one-off calculations that would be too slow to do in my head and too unimportant to boot a shell.

In Port

That’s a stiff one.

“Buy you a drink?”

“No.”

“Ma’am, I’m trying to be considerate. It’s about your ship.”

“The Willow? What?”

“Thought so. Eh bartender!—A double algae on the rocks for the lady here.”

“What are you doing?”

“I think something bad is going to happen to the Willow. Just some talk I heard around the docks. Something about a defective neutron moderator.”

“Are you threatening me?”

“No. I’m offering a deal. I know these guys. Hold some sway. Might be able to convince—”

[leaving] “Disgusting. Keep your drink.”

Ed. note: we last saw Beth here.

Material Science

A song, broken by tears.

“What is it, my dear? What’s wrong?”

“I . . . I broke it, mommy!”

“Well, what did you break?”

[looks up with sorrowful eyes]

“You don’t mean . . .”

“It was dirty! I tried to wash it and—”

“Show me!”

The violin lay on the bed in a crumpled, twisted heap. Traditional violin bonding is water-soluble, and modern strings put nearly 50 pounds of pressure . . .

“I’m sorry!”

[examining] “Ugh, and the wood is all warped too. You should have called me sooner!”

“I’m sorry!”

[sighs] “Well, there’s no way to fix this at all. The wood is cracked and the water warped it more. Even if it weren’t, there isn’t a luthier within half a light-hour.”

“. . .”

“It’s okay sweetie. You couldn’t have known. You’ve never seen wood before.”

Artwork by Dizzy Chen.

First Impressions

To learn a profession is not to wisen to it.

[From foreword to Introductory Xenosociology, 3rd Ed.]

First (radio) contact with an alien civilization happened on 2318-01-01 13:44:57, Earth Standard Time (EST). It was a Tuesday.

Specifically, we picked up the Haðu^{[note 1]} radio chatter from something like 500 light years away from Earth—a statistically fortunate stone’s throw away in the immensity of a galaxy—even one containing (at least!) the hundreds of sapient species known today. Just as the young queen was drawing the 13-year civil war to a close, the planets and moons of the newly reformed UFP stood unified in awe—finally, aliens! Besides hastening the end of hostilities, the announcement also spurred the development of interstellar seedships in the coming decades^{[note 2]}.

Mistakes were made. Truly, alliances can be obliterated by sheer incompetency.

Nevertheless, due to the vastness of interstellar space, humans have only recently colonized far enough out to practicably encounter Haðu in the flesh, after 6000-odd years. The Haðu are not the first (we’ve of course already had an entire war with the even-more-improbably-close Tassad), yet as with any such case study, students would do well to learn from the mistakes that were made.

The first was in our haste to prepare to make the visit ourselves. The Haðu are a cautious race, and the departure of a hibernation-emissary-ship from a nearby system was viewed with alarm. Due to light-speed delay, it was five years before the system could retract the ship, and another five years after this before the Haðu could reassure us that they were merely nervous, that an emissary was welcome, and that the ship should be un-retracted.

The second error was cultural. Ambassador López, upon orbiting the single planet^{[note 3]} of the Haðu, Praðeb, pronounced it dead—nevermind the indignant radio transmissions which disproved that conjecture. The Ambassador simply didn’t see any cities, and mistook this for a sign of underdevelopment. This is the sort of dangerous insensitivity that can obliterate alliances.

The third error was operational. Praðeb is larger and less-dense than Earth, combining in favor of mass to produce a 2.3x stronger gravitation. López (also acting captain; his military crew disappeared after hibernation under what can only be called suspicious circumstances) believed that the strong gravity would put himself and his aides at a diplomatic disadvantage, and adamantly refused to land. The aptly-named battleship UFP Enforcer, passing through at a distance of one light-month and so acting upon its own authority, rectified this by dispatching from its escort the light cruiser UFP Polaris, which saw to it that López and his aides disembarked right-the-hell-now. Besides the obvious confusion and embarrassment, the Haðu were thus made to suffer a federation warship in low orbit.

The fourth error was actually more a misunderstanding of scale. The federation shuttle came in slowly, saving nearly all of its fuel for the single-stage ascent to orbit, relying on aerobraking to absorb the brunt of speed on descent. The computer then performed a hard burn just above the surface, bringing the shuttle to a soft landing with minimal fuel consumption.

Haðu are each actually about the size of a small house, and enclose themselves in mounds of earth as they move. It was on one of these mounds that the shuttle had alighted, scorching it—and the hapless Haðu farmer underneath.

Fortunately, the creature was not seriously injured, and diplomatic relations were finally established. The patience and honor of the Haðu testify that such incompetence—tolerated at all levels—was not catastrophic. It is fortunate that the case of the Haðu can serve as a pleasant—if motivating—object of future study.

^{[note 1]}N.B. “ð” is transliterated as a voiced dental fricative; “th” as in “then” (not as in “think”). Haðu produce the sound by a resonant and extremely loud thrumming.
^{[note 2]}This colonization effort would ultimately be largely overtaken by faster, laser-accelerated ships, but this initial thrust is what made later efforts successful—and possible.
^{[note 3]}The system, a binary, has two habitable planets and three marginally-habitable planets. Yet, the Haðu have no space program whatever, and have not colonized any.

Space Bums

Immigration should do something.

“Spare change, brother?”

“Get a job!”

“That’s quite impossible.”

“Eh?”

“Impossible: adj.: not possible; unable to be, exist, happen, etc.”

“A wise guy, eh?”

“Yeah. Everybody out here has an IQ over 110. ‘Cept you, ‘parently.”

“Why, I never!”

[sighs] “We’re all descended from Earth, one way or another, but the smartest all moved out to space. So us second- and third-gen folks are all the sons and daughters of the upper-bracket erudite—including a fair measure of genius. The funny thing about IQ is that 100 is always average, so the average Earther is 80-something and the average Belter is 120.”

“I take grave exception to—”

“Oh can it already. Where are you going anyway?”

[testily] “. . . Bureau of Careers. Just shipped in with my last dime.”

[sarcastically] “And may lady fortune herself light your path to employment.”

“I will too!”

“Nope. Yer too dumb. If I can’t get a job, then you sure as hell can’t get a job. And you’re in the same boat as I—without any cash, you can’t buy your way off this rock. Might as well take a seat next to me. Yer gettin’ no job, brother.”

Request

We’ll get right on that, then.

From: Lt. Samuel Biggs
To: Sgt. Anton Maieux
Timestamp: 2154-07-07 06:07:11 EST
Subject: Re: (no subject)

Hey Anton,

We considered your request, but unfortunately, it must be denied. While Andromeda is in high berth, we’ll need every man onboard for inspections and extra duties. Additionally, Mars STC cannot handle any more traffic since Phobos is being developed. Advise next opportunity at Jupiter rendezvous.

-Lt. Biggs

> Lieutenant,
>
> Some of the boys and i were thinking of heading
> planetside for some r&r. We’ve been in spce for several
> months, and it’d improve morale
>
> -A
>
> This e-mail is confidential and may be legally privileged.
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> copies from your comconsole and notify the sender
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> prohibited and may be unlawful. Planet-net does not
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> replicating or self-executing code, nor does the sender
> accept liability for any such deficiencies.

Haven’s Scavengers

The best nuclear engineers are bachelorettes.

Beth nudges her tiny spaceship on RCS power the last 100 km to Haven, the orbiting metropolis dangling perilously by space elevator from Pasiphae, one of the outer retrograde moons of Jupiter.

“Haven approach, U.F.P. Willow cleared for docking, junction 900 E. Advise no open-cycle nuclear propulsion within 100 klicks.”

“Duh,” Beth thinks. “Why do you think I changed orbits with docking thrusters? That’s the only other burner this thing has.”

“It’s not much,” she reflects as the dull clack, felt through the berthed ship, signals the dry dock closing behind her. She’s carrying a brown paper bag filled with treasure: Tellurium superconducting wire, spare plasmabrick for reactor lining, even a canister of propulsion-grade Xenon.

It’s a high-quality, if small, collection. It will fetch a good price, but it’s getting harder. There’s simply not much left unsalvaged. And sometimes you spend delta-V and months of transit time to intercept with a derelict that’s already been picked over. 4000s is pretty good ISP for a NTR, but after months chasing wrecks in interplanetary space, that’s still an awful lot of Hydrogen and Uranium-Hex to buy at a gas giant—to say nothing of food.

Ed. note: we first saw Beth here.

Concerning the Subject of Lifeboats

Are you really so alive anymore?

Women and children are always the least willing to get into the lifeboats, it seems.

In an emergency, this horrific state of affairs costs lives. Death in space frequently strikes with almost no warning whatever, and quick action by all parties is the only even remotely tractable approach to stemming the hemorrhaging of precious human lives into vacuum.

All too often, a woman and a child board a lifeboat, only to have the kid forget her teddy bear in the cabin. So the kid slips away in the chaos, and the mother panics. And of course they can’t launch the boat until they’re reunited. Thirty seconds later, the reactor goes supercritical, and everyone dies horribly when the vessel explosively decompresses.

By the year 2290, such ghastly death tolls became so commonplace that the latest interplanetary liners began rolling out new standards: lifeboats would be deployed, with or without people, precisely 60 seconds after the alarms began sounding.

That got people’s attention.

By 2294, and despite escalating concessions by the United Planets Transportation Authority, international pressure was approaching the breaking point. The basic practice indisputably saved countless lives, but too many were orphans, widows, and grieving parents. The tens of thousands of ships in the fleet—and the dozens lost every year—became breeding grounds for discontent, even as passengers were snatched robotically from the jaws of certain death.

In fact, it was the survivors who argued most assiduously and caustically: better to doom the many than to devastate the few. Such, they argued, was the price of our humanity.

Rhyme of the Future Mariner

With apologies to STC and mollymawks.

I begged to stay, but could not win;
My job was to obey.
To blast away from house and home,
And fly to far away.

I packed a bag and kissed goodbye;
Tears rolled down my cheeks.
I thought I’d never last that long:
Return in 90 weeks.

I’d tried to read their dossiers;
To do my rightful share.
I did my duty best I could,
To pay my rightful fare.

But once above, with world below,
I lost my mental grip,
On those I loved I’d left behind,
While on that worldly ship.

I ceased to work; I’d seen the void;
I’d lost my sanity.
They tried make me go back home
To save on delta-vee.

But I had no home—not anymore.
I’d left behind my charge—
Once forth I’d leapt to heaven’s grip,
And to those endless stars.