Thursday, July 20, 2017

The Dark Energy Boogie

Kindred Propulsion Systems

In my soon-to-be published OldGuySci-Fi book of short stories titled GUT (it's about conscious micro biomes, of all things) there is a propulsion system that can accelerate and decelerate at huge G-forces.*

The Cube, a perfect geometric object, was at the center of a hairball of cilia waving around it. It approached the system, decelerating furiously from the edge of the speed of light. Ordinary visual observation of the Cube would not see the cilia.  They were displaced fractionally from the spacetime of the Cube, invisible except as a shadow in very hard x-ray.  They stroked and harvested the dark energy that is everywhere, waving their strands in synchrony with it’s chaotic flow.  Almost limitless energy could be captured by the cilia, and in this heavy deceleration, a great deal was being used.

So... the great mystery of Dark Energy, apparently countering gravity and pushing our universe apart from itself, becomes the much dreamed-for Infinite Free Energy Source that we can tap to scoot us around the galaxy.

This idea is - SURPRISE! - derivative, slightly adapted from the propulsion system of the SearchShip in A Reluctant God.

The ship was organic in shape and in the emotional impact it had on human observers. Poets and wags in the Dream Game described it as the head of an eyeless weasel with large, thorn-shaped horns growing from its nose, skull and neck, not the most flattering description, but once stated, the dominant one. The skin of the ship was platinum grey, with platinum’s ineffable depth. Not quite as large as the giant arks that plied the intra-empire lanes, it was still formidable. The ship’s keel was two kilometers and its nominal beam was 800 meters. The nine ‘thorns‘ averaged 600 meters, but were wildly different in size and not symmetrical. The shapes, size and placement of the horns hued to the spacial footprint of the highest power band in the mysterious spectrum of dark energy. The whole impact was of a large marine crustacean. Or a mutated spider. One expected the horns to writhe.

**

Until we actually find some dilithium in crystal form, my bet for starship juice is 
DARK ENERGY

Go on, Get 
A Reluctant God free e-BOOK HERE

For general mind bendingcheck out SeniorJuniorhttp://seniorjunior.blogspot.comby much of the same author.



*The many human souls in the ship are not squished flat because they are "uploaded minds," and exist in really tough solid state storage.

** The spider web is another part of the story.

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

ARG Predicts

Why Some Men Don’t Work: Video Games Have Gotten Really Good

NYTimes piece, July 3, 2017


Millennials - mostly male millennials - are working fewer hours and playing video games more hours. Big story, that. 

... Go on, take it to another level, whip in a little sci-fi:

The Dream Game: The common citizens of the Empire of Earth, those billions who populated the twenty terraformed planets and Mother Earth herself, led lives of great diversity, almost totally in the virtual worlds of shared dreams. The Dream Game. Approximately 99% of humanity spent most of their lives in the Dream Game  Dreaming became the superior form of virtual reality. VR, in all its verisimilitude, lacked the direct connection to the primitive brain that dreams have. Dreams to the practiced dreamer were more vivid, more real than reality.

Turns out, in A Reluctant God, gamers play a very big role in protecting all life in the Milky Way galaxy from the devil himself.


Go on, Get 
A Reluctant God free e-BOOK HERE