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newnumber6Okay, the following is what I'd do with some means to travel from dimension to dimension with alternate history.
To start with, I'll assume the standard initial Sliders premise and conditions:
1) I can't choose where I go to, and so therefore can't go to the same place twice. My trip is essentially random, except for the trip back.
2) I set a timer to any time I want, at which point I'm automatically retrieved so long as the timer's operational and anywhere near me.
3) If I'm not retrieved, or if I'm forced to activate the timer early, I'm 'lost', and can't return home (but if I go early I can, to a limited degree, continue travelling so long as I have access to the timer device.. so in the case of an emergency I can leave and 'look' for home, though it may be hopeless)
4) Although my destination is random, a probability distribution exists such that it's much more likely for me to land in a world which diverged in the past few hundred years than from anywhere beyond that. However, landing in a world which diverged very recently (seconds to weeks) is also unlikely for some reason.
5) For the purposes of my contemplations, I'll assume that I'm never going to slide into a world that's immediately or inescapably fatal. If I was really doing this, of course I'd have to worry about it, but I'd probably take the risk.
General duration of explorations: 3-5 days. That seems a good length of time to get a good feel for a world, and explore options.
Base of Operations: Someplace temperate. In winter months at least, I'd want to be somewhere in the southern US at least, maybe California. During the summer, I might move back to Canada so I have easier access to my likely doubles and in the case of worlds with no civilizations I'll suffer from less horrible heat.
Travelling Gear: I'd carry with me a warm coat (in case of ice age worlds), but one which could be shed quickly. A generic survival kit, for those roughing-it-worlds (the kit suggested in the SAS Survival Handbook, which I'd also take along), swiss army knife (in case the swiss army is in power on whatever world I visit), that sort of thing. Some basic medicines, etc, for 'travellers' type disease and antibiotics in case of bacterial infection on a world where I have no resistance to the bug (and hopefully, the bug has no resistance to the super antibiotics)
Backpack, of course.
Laptop, high powered, with a lot of information about my world history, works of art (as they are, a 'home library' type thing, as well as info on great 'lost works'), a digital camera, handheld scanner, microphone for MP3 recordings. Some sort of cord which allows hooking up into a TV and recording directly off there onto laptop.
For money, I'd carry valuable goods rather than currency; diamonds, gold, jewelery, etc. Those should be relatively stable and I can trade them in for local cash if a world looks promising.
General plans:
If it's an uncivilized world, or undeveloped, first order of business is to hunker down and wait for the timer to go off. If there's a civilization that looks promising and not obviously dangerous, I go around and get some spending cash by turning in some gold or jewelery. Get a hotel room (I do intend on paying the tab, rather than skipping out on the bill by not being there when it comes, unless I'm in dire straights for some reason). If there's internet, I go directly for that, look first for any technological advances we don't have, and any research on them I can find (I also keep my eye out in travels for high technology of various sorts, anything I don't recognize). Try to acquire anything I can in that regard, prototypes or otherwise. Then, I go looking for videos or DVD sets, assuming there seems to be compatibility of digital systems. Acquire copies of really odd or offbeat stuff... actors in roles they never played on our Earth, adaptations of books. One big thing I'd do is go look for Star Trek episode lists, see if there are any episodes I don't recognize, or that sounds substantially different from what I remember. I could imagine a 'lost episode' that was never filmed would be worth an awful lot. I'd have to be very careful selling it or expose my secret (which could lead to all sorts of problems, so I'm not inclined to go that route), but it'd be really one of a kind things. Plus, for my own benefit, episodes of other shows killed before their time on my world. Also things like checking to see if any of the lost episodes of Dr. Who weren't lost in this world, for whatever reason. If I can snap them up, I'll just ship them anonymously to the place that's trying to restore them, let them wonder about where it came from. (Likewise, in reverse, I'll try and have burned copies of various movies and TV shows. These I'll sell freely on other worlds for high prices and let them wonder how they got there, since I plan to be gone before it's investigated)
Failing that, hit bookstores looking for works that authors never completed, or by completely new authors.
It'd also be worth keeping an eye out for 'fads'.. they won't necessarily translate, but they're something you can keep your eye on back home and try and invest in back home in the hopes they'll really take off.
If situations warrant it, I can also try the reverse on this... making money from stuff I have (coats, small bits of technology, etc, information), selling them to people on these other worlds who might be interested if they're lower tech, in exchange for valuables. To do this, and prevent getting screwed, I'd try and arrange for such exchanges to occur near the callback time, so I can grab the stuff and disappear. The one thing I wouldn't do is sell the alternate universe travelling technology itself. I'd also attempt to avoid selling technologies that could lead to serious abuse. Heavy weapons, nuclear energy, etc.
If I created the alternate history travelling technology or understand it enough to replicate it, I'd probably look up versions of myself, try and quickly judge whether they're good (or at least, not obviously bad), and tell them the truth and give them information on how to travel on their own. Why? Because quite simply, I'd want someone else to do it for me (in fact, I suppose at this point, that'd be the only way I'd ever get such a technology if it were at all possible). In return, I'd get their view on the world and what might be good ideas to take. And, just for my own interests and curiosity's sake, I'd probably look them up in any event, whether I could replicate it or not. If any of me got famous for something like writing or moviemaking, I'd certainly take copies of whatever it was that was my work, but I'd be generally interested in different paths my life could have taken.
Generally I'd pretend to be a tourist if that looks feasible, as that allows me to not understand the situation. I won't break out my 'tourist' story until I've established that tourists can walk around without being checked for papers. Otherwise, impersonating my double is a good tactic when I have one, assuming I'm not a scumbag on the world. I wouldn't steal from them or use it in a situation which could get them in trouble (I'd make up an alias for that), but just for casual investigative stuff.
Of course, if I have to leave early to escape some horrible fate, I will. Risk comes with the territory!
On ethics: As a matter of general policy, unless something was written by one of my own doubles, I don't feel right about publishing them under my own name. For other things, I'd try to publish only works that are written by people that, as far as I can tell, don't exist back home. I would then publish it under a pen name- that of the original author. That way I'd still, in some sense, be 'honest'. I'm not taking any credit for anyone else's work, I'm just taking the money as something of a 'finder's fee' (since nobody else appropriate can take it). For people who do exist but haven't published the work, I might try and look into some sort of agency deal, where I'd be officially their agent, try and help them get published on their own efforts (under the theory that, even if they don't publish the same work, they may still publish something just as good), in exchange for a share of their profits.
Technically speaking, using money not minted in the world I'm on would be counterfeit, but I'd do so, as long as I could detect no differences between their money and mine.
Murder is murder, even if there are billions of copies of everyone, so I'd avoid anything which would cause death of anyone, anyverse.
Other people: I'd probably start out on my own, but might
bring in someone like, say, my brother to help. If I was stuck in a 'travelling until I find home randomly' mode, I'd certainly bring along anyone who had a reason to want to leave their world permanently that I trusted and felt wouldn't be a danger. Need someone to watch my back. To a lesser extent, if someone really needed to get off a world because of horrible conditions (slavery or a genocide going on in their world) I'd help them, but if I didn't trust/like/feel like continuing travelling with them, I'd just find them a relatively decent world they're happy with and just slide there. I wouldn't move them to my Earth (except of course as a stopover), because that would more likely to get me noticed and in trouble.
With Control: If I didn't have these conditions and can choose (or at least, choose again, once I've been there once randomly) worlds I want to visit, well, the whole thing becomes a lot easier, and I can probably assemble wealth pretty quickly using some of these methods, or just finding a world that's undeveloped and has some easily obtainable natural resources. (Or, alternately, find some world where civilization is extinct and spend some time looting the banks and such). I'd also establish a
beach-head somewhere. Find a world where it's apparently uninhabited, and slowly start moving stuff over to make myself a home, including replicating Sliding technology. It'd be rustic of course, but I'd like to build a small home, maybe out of modular parts, add a few generators. Try to make it so everything I can either carry, or load onto some forklift type thing and just drive through. I'd also put it in some place with a beautiful view because, well, why not.
If I had people I trusted, I might get them to pitch in and build something more elaborate. (In this scenario, with control over destination, I'd also be a lot more open to moving people from worlds where they're persecuted, etc, since I can choose decent worlds to settle people on)
With this level of control, if I had enough people I trusted, I'd probably set up something like Stargate to scout new worlds.
I'd do all my travels from this secondary world, except when I visit Earth, so that if the worst happens and I happen across someone who can track me back to where I came from and has hostile intentions, I don't immediately compromise Earth.
Make a simple probe (with a timer and various video equipment), mount it on an ultralight aircraft thingie, and send it into a new world for a couple minutes at first to get a lay of the land. Included in that would be a radio receiver and something to record radio signals to try and get a sampling of channels along the spectrum, so I can get an idea of language, etc. Follow that up with a stationary probe on the ground in a fairly deserted area, to record a specific station for a couple hours and then report back. Once that's done I should have a lot more information and can go scouting in person if I think it's safe enough, for short jaunts at first, with longer ones as time goes on and I'm confident about the safety and value of a site. If it's undeveloped, I can look for famous valuable mineral deposit sites on our world (since they should be in roughly the same place, many of these things take millions of years to form). Not ones that are really hard to access, of course, or it'd not be worth the effort... but there should be some that are pretty easy for one reason or another.
Contingencies:
I'd need some standard operating procedures for various contingencies.
If I have control of slides, and a backup, if I ever miss my return, someone will send a new timer to the same world in either a pre-determined spot (if we can target locations finely enough that I can know where it's going to be), or a deserted spot with a radio signal I can use to track it (if it lands in a random location within a certain radius of the target).
If I get arrested with the timer, and the timer taken away, I'll try to arrange things so I'm nearby it when it goes off. Faking that it triggers a bomb may be one way to do it, although it's risky. (I'd try to use reason... "It's counting down to something. It can only be disabled in the last 10 seconds. Either *I* turn it off, or it goes off. If I trigger it before it goes off on its own, you've lost nothing and you can shoot me in the head. If I turn it off, well, you've just prevented it from going off. Unless you find out what's going to happen before the timer reaches 0, your best bet is to let me do it.")
Then of course, I fake turning it off in those last 10 seconds, and when the timer does reach 0, I disappear. The timer would hopefully be designed so that it seems to bear out my story, maybe even with a cell phone built in so I can claim it just lets me communicate with the bomb.
If my entry into a world is witnessed, I'll try to get out of the area as quickly as possible, but if I have to talk, I'll explain that what they witnessed was a top secret scientific experiment, and disclosing any of what they saw here will be considered treason so it's best that they forget all about it.
If I get into a situation where the fact that I'm an interdimensional traveller is known, I'll feign a lack of any knowledge of the specifics of how it works, and claim to be a test subject who got into this because I'm being paid. I'll tell them that I have to press in a certain code when the timer reaches 0, and if I don't, they don't retrieve me and I'm stuck here for ever, because they'll just assume it was a hostile world. But if they let me press in the code, they can watch me leave, and, because each trip is random, I'll never be back, and they can gather whatever scientific data they can grab to help them start their own research. (I'll say each trip is random even if I have control over it, safer that way). In the
meantime, I'll be more than cooperative on the state of our history and such.
Anyway, that's about all I have so far. Lots of different things could happen in such a scenario, so it's hard to plan for everything, but this makes a good plan to start out. Comments and such welcome.
(This and all other WIDWs archived in my Memories section)
To start with, I'll assume the standard initial Sliders premise and conditions:1) I can't choose where I go to, and so therefore can't go to the same place twice. My trip is essentially random, except for the trip back.
2) I set a timer to any time I want, at which point I'm automatically retrieved so long as the timer's operational and anywhere near me.
3) If I'm not retrieved, or if I'm forced to activate the timer early, I'm 'lost', and can't return home (but if I go early I can, to a limited degree, continue travelling so long as I have access to the timer device.. so in the case of an emergency I can leave and 'look' for home, though it may be hopeless)
4) Although my destination is random, a probability distribution exists such that it's much more likely for me to land in a world which diverged in the past few hundred years than from anywhere beyond that. However, landing in a world which diverged very recently (seconds to weeks) is also unlikely for some reason.
5) For the purposes of my contemplations, I'll assume that I'm never going to slide into a world that's immediately or inescapably fatal. If I was really doing this, of course I'd have to worry about it, but I'd probably take the risk.
General duration of explorations: 3-5 days. That seems a good length of time to get a good feel for a world, and explore options.
Base of Operations: Someplace temperate. In winter months at least, I'd want to be somewhere in the southern US at least, maybe California. During the summer, I might move back to Canada so I have easier access to my likely doubles and in the case of worlds with no civilizations I'll suffer from less horrible heat.
Travelling Gear: I'd carry with me a warm coat (in case of ice age worlds), but one which could be shed quickly. A generic survival kit, for those roughing-it-worlds (the kit suggested in the SAS Survival Handbook, which I'd also take along), swiss army knife (in case the swiss army is in power on whatever world I visit), that sort of thing. Some basic medicines, etc, for 'travellers' type disease and antibiotics in case of bacterial infection on a world where I have no resistance to the bug (and hopefully, the bug has no resistance to the super antibiotics)
Backpack, of course.
Laptop, high powered, with a lot of information about my world history, works of art (as they are, a 'home library' type thing, as well as info on great 'lost works'), a digital camera, handheld scanner, microphone for MP3 recordings. Some sort of cord which allows hooking up into a TV and recording directly off there onto laptop.
For money, I'd carry valuable goods rather than currency; diamonds, gold, jewelery, etc. Those should be relatively stable and I can trade them in for local cash if a world looks promising.
General plans:
If it's an uncivilized world, or undeveloped, first order of business is to hunker down and wait for the timer to go off. If there's a civilization that looks promising and not obviously dangerous, I go around and get some spending cash by turning in some gold or jewelery. Get a hotel room (I do intend on paying the tab, rather than skipping out on the bill by not being there when it comes, unless I'm in dire straights for some reason). If there's internet, I go directly for that, look first for any technological advances we don't have, and any research on them I can find (I also keep my eye out in travels for high technology of various sorts, anything I don't recognize). Try to acquire anything I can in that regard, prototypes or otherwise. Then, I go looking for videos or DVD sets, assuming there seems to be compatibility of digital systems. Acquire copies of really odd or offbeat stuff... actors in roles they never played on our Earth, adaptations of books. One big thing I'd do is go look for Star Trek episode lists, see if there are any episodes I don't recognize, or that sounds substantially different from what I remember. I could imagine a 'lost episode' that was never filmed would be worth an awful lot. I'd have to be very careful selling it or expose my secret (which could lead to all sorts of problems, so I'm not inclined to go that route), but it'd be really one of a kind things. Plus, for my own benefit, episodes of other shows killed before their time on my world. Also things like checking to see if any of the lost episodes of Dr. Who weren't lost in this world, for whatever reason. If I can snap them up, I'll just ship them anonymously to the place that's trying to restore them, let them wonder about where it came from. (Likewise, in reverse, I'll try and have burned copies of various movies and TV shows. These I'll sell freely on other worlds for high prices and let them wonder how they got there, since I plan to be gone before it's investigated)
Failing that, hit bookstores looking for works that authors never completed, or by completely new authors.
It'd also be worth keeping an eye out for 'fads'.. they won't necessarily translate, but they're something you can keep your eye on back home and try and invest in back home in the hopes they'll really take off.
If situations warrant it, I can also try the reverse on this... making money from stuff I have (coats, small bits of technology, etc, information), selling them to people on these other worlds who might be interested if they're lower tech, in exchange for valuables. To do this, and prevent getting screwed, I'd try and arrange for such exchanges to occur near the callback time, so I can grab the stuff and disappear. The one thing I wouldn't do is sell the alternate universe travelling technology itself. I'd also attempt to avoid selling technologies that could lead to serious abuse. Heavy weapons, nuclear energy, etc.
If I created the alternate history travelling technology or understand it enough to replicate it, I'd probably look up versions of myself, try and quickly judge whether they're good (or at least, not obviously bad), and tell them the truth and give them information on how to travel on their own. Why? Because quite simply, I'd want someone else to do it for me (in fact, I suppose at this point, that'd be the only way I'd ever get such a technology if it were at all possible). In return, I'd get their view on the world and what might be good ideas to take. And, just for my own interests and curiosity's sake, I'd probably look them up in any event, whether I could replicate it or not. If any of me got famous for something like writing or moviemaking, I'd certainly take copies of whatever it was that was my work, but I'd be generally interested in different paths my life could have taken.
Generally I'd pretend to be a tourist if that looks feasible, as that allows me to not understand the situation. I won't break out my 'tourist' story until I've established that tourists can walk around without being checked for papers. Otherwise, impersonating my double is a good tactic when I have one, assuming I'm not a scumbag on the world. I wouldn't steal from them or use it in a situation which could get them in trouble (I'd make up an alias for that), but just for casual investigative stuff.
Of course, if I have to leave early to escape some horrible fate, I will. Risk comes with the territory!
On ethics: As a matter of general policy, unless something was written by one of my own doubles, I don't feel right about publishing them under my own name. For other things, I'd try to publish only works that are written by people that, as far as I can tell, don't exist back home. I would then publish it under a pen name- that of the original author. That way I'd still, in some sense, be 'honest'. I'm not taking any credit for anyone else's work, I'm just taking the money as something of a 'finder's fee' (since nobody else appropriate can take it). For people who do exist but haven't published the work, I might try and look into some sort of agency deal, where I'd be officially their agent, try and help them get published on their own efforts (under the theory that, even if they don't publish the same work, they may still publish something just as good), in exchange for a share of their profits.
Technically speaking, using money not minted in the world I'm on would be counterfeit, but I'd do so, as long as I could detect no differences between their money and mine.
Murder is murder, even if there are billions of copies of everyone, so I'd avoid anything which would cause death of anyone, anyverse.
Other people: I'd probably start out on my own, but might
bring in someone like, say, my brother to help. If I was stuck in a 'travelling until I find home randomly' mode, I'd certainly bring along anyone who had a reason to want to leave their world permanently that I trusted and felt wouldn't be a danger. Need someone to watch my back. To a lesser extent, if someone really needed to get off a world because of horrible conditions (slavery or a genocide going on in their world) I'd help them, but if I didn't trust/like/feel like continuing travelling with them, I'd just find them a relatively decent world they're happy with and just slide there. I wouldn't move them to my Earth (except of course as a stopover), because that would more likely to get me noticed and in trouble.
With Control: If I didn't have these conditions and can choose (or at least, choose again, once I've been there once randomly) worlds I want to visit, well, the whole thing becomes a lot easier, and I can probably assemble wealth pretty quickly using some of these methods, or just finding a world that's undeveloped and has some easily obtainable natural resources. (Or, alternately, find some world where civilization is extinct and spend some time looting the banks and such). I'd also establish a
beach-head somewhere. Find a world where it's apparently uninhabited, and slowly start moving stuff over to make myself a home, including replicating Sliding technology. It'd be rustic of course, but I'd like to build a small home, maybe out of modular parts, add a few generators. Try to make it so everything I can either carry, or load onto some forklift type thing and just drive through. I'd also put it in some place with a beautiful view because, well, why not.
If I had people I trusted, I might get them to pitch in and build something more elaborate. (In this scenario, with control over destination, I'd also be a lot more open to moving people from worlds where they're persecuted, etc, since I can choose decent worlds to settle people on)
With this level of control, if I had enough people I trusted, I'd probably set up something like Stargate to scout new worlds.
I'd do all my travels from this secondary world, except when I visit Earth, so that if the worst happens and I happen across someone who can track me back to where I came from and has hostile intentions, I don't immediately compromise Earth.
Make a simple probe (with a timer and various video equipment), mount it on an ultralight aircraft thingie, and send it into a new world for a couple minutes at first to get a lay of the land. Included in that would be a radio receiver and something to record radio signals to try and get a sampling of channels along the spectrum, so I can get an idea of language, etc. Follow that up with a stationary probe on the ground in a fairly deserted area, to record a specific station for a couple hours and then report back. Once that's done I should have a lot more information and can go scouting in person if I think it's safe enough, for short jaunts at first, with longer ones as time goes on and I'm confident about the safety and value of a site. If it's undeveloped, I can look for famous valuable mineral deposit sites on our world (since they should be in roughly the same place, many of these things take millions of years to form). Not ones that are really hard to access, of course, or it'd not be worth the effort... but there should be some that are pretty easy for one reason or another.
Contingencies:
I'd need some standard operating procedures for various contingencies.
If I have control of slides, and a backup, if I ever miss my return, someone will send a new timer to the same world in either a pre-determined spot (if we can target locations finely enough that I can know where it's going to be), or a deserted spot with a radio signal I can use to track it (if it lands in a random location within a certain radius of the target).
If I get arrested with the timer, and the timer taken away, I'll try to arrange things so I'm nearby it when it goes off. Faking that it triggers a bomb may be one way to do it, although it's risky. (I'd try to use reason... "It's counting down to something. It can only be disabled in the last 10 seconds. Either *I* turn it off, or it goes off. If I trigger it before it goes off on its own, you've lost nothing and you can shoot me in the head. If I turn it off, well, you've just prevented it from going off. Unless you find out what's going to happen before the timer reaches 0, your best bet is to let me do it.")
Then of course, I fake turning it off in those last 10 seconds, and when the timer does reach 0, I disappear. The timer would hopefully be designed so that it seems to bear out my story, maybe even with a cell phone built in so I can claim it just lets me communicate with the bomb.
If my entry into a world is witnessed, I'll try to get out of the area as quickly as possible, but if I have to talk, I'll explain that what they witnessed was a top secret scientific experiment, and disclosing any of what they saw here will be considered treason so it's best that they forget all about it.
If I get into a situation where the fact that I'm an interdimensional traveller is known, I'll feign a lack of any knowledge of the specifics of how it works, and claim to be a test subject who got into this because I'm being paid. I'll tell them that I have to press in a certain code when the timer reaches 0, and if I don't, they don't retrieve me and I'm stuck here for ever, because they'll just assume it was a hostile world. But if they let me press in the code, they can watch me leave, and, because each trip is random, I'll never be back, and they can gather whatever scientific data they can grab to help them start their own research. (I'll say each trip is random even if I have control over it, safer that way). In the
meantime, I'll be more than cooperative on the state of our history and such.
Anyway, that's about all I have so far. Lots of different things could happen in such a scenario, so it's hard to plan for everything, but this makes a good plan to start out. Comments and such welcome.
(This and all other WIDWs archived in my Memories section)
