Inventing Science

One of the first sourcebooks I wrote for The Artifact was an update about what happens five years after the Earthers arrive. Now its writing is somewhat simple to me but that’s not why I haven’t released it.

The update was intended to peel back the curtain of what’s going on with Loc. What he’s been working on.

My problem is that I’ve really bitten off more than I could chew. The whole concept of The Artifact is that it’s a device that does something unimaginable. The whole “sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic” concept. Only I don’t do magic and that would be a copout. I want to be able to explain how this wondertech works or more accurately, might work.

You’ve seen a start to that in The Warp quickstart and the post The Anatomy of A Warp. At first, warps to me were just field effects. Kind of like a force field that does something to the laws of physics.

While working on The Warp, I realized that the effect isn’t a field, it’s an effect on matter. That the only way you’d get an enduring effect like the warps described in the quickstart is to have the distortion be tied to the matter. Then while contemplating the tie between motion time and gravity one afternoon (yes, yes, I really do that kind of thing) I realized that the effect isn’t tied to the matter, it’s that the matter has been altered in its hyperdimensional movement. What do I mean by “hyperdimensional” ? It’s those dimensions that physics math keeps saying are there but we can’t see. If you listen to Brian Greene for any length of time, he’ll talk about math models of our universe pointing to the idea of more dimensions or directions in space than we can see. Dr. Greene didn’t invent the idea he just popularizes it.

Now physicists look at these dimensions and ask “If these dimensions are there, why can’t we see them?”. And I slowly began to reason, “Maybe we do see them, only they just don’t look the same.” Maybe we see matter moving along these “extra” dimensions all the time, recognize the movement but miss attribute it to something disconnected from movement? I got the idea from looking at the relationship between motion time and gravity (thank you Einstein for relativity). If you followed that, and want more look at The Anatomy of A Warp.

So I am speculating but I’m not conjuring up magic. All this is based on real world and theoretical physics.

My next question was, “How would you produce the effects I’m describing in the real world?” The only place that I’m aware of time and space being distorted on a large scale is around a black hole. Now I have a how! If the matter is entangled with matter around a black hole, even for a brief period, it in theory could give a “kick” to the matter, giving it altered properties without the requisite crushing down to oblivion.

So I admit I’m stretching here. I’m reaching into the realm of technobabble where I’m just “inverting polarities”. So I’ll stop there.

This is important though. I need a framework to work off of so that I can develop (in game) the technology Loc has been working on.