Notes on the Many Worlds Project

The Many Worlds Project, a larger piece I have been trying to put together, will probably occupy the majority of my posts here. So I figured I should give a little overview of what I plan for this piece.

The idea of the Many Worlds came to me when I was thinking about the idea of a Dyson sphere, a sphere that completely surrounds the sun at a distance roughly the orbit of the earth. I did some research and found out this is not actually what a Dyson Sphere was, but the idea persisted. But I thought why settle for a world contained in a ball when you could have a solar system within a sphere. A structure so large it contains the entirety of out solar system. These worlds all orbit a sun within this gigantic structure, and there are many many worlds contained within it.

Also I imagined that within this sphere there would be atmosphere. One could travel between planets in an F-16 or a hot air balloon, or if a man was daring and crazy enough, be flung from the surface to escape velocity and float to the next world.

This is all of course impossible. I have had a number of conversations with friends of mine who are physics majors and they have explained the reasons why all of this is impossible. However the impossible has never gotten in the way of a good story.

Onus is the name of the structure which holds all these planets, and the worlds inside are called the Many Worlds of Onus.

I have a crude diagram of all the planets held within:

I'll give more indepth descriptions of each world later but for now the basics are this:

Xirus: This planet is very close to the sun and therefore is nearly inhospitable to life. It's coldest days are some of the hottest on earth, and only those adapted to heat can survive there for very long. During its orbit cycle where it is even closer flares lick the surface of the planet.

Garren and Sikasta: Both more hospitable than Xirus but still harsh places to live. Garren is a world of deserts while Sikasta is full of hot savannahs and jungle.

Maedus, Fortyne, Elayne: These three worlds are the most temperature seeing weather much like the Earth, but lacking much of the extremes. These worlds are envied by the others.

Icene and Harantos: Cold worlds inhabited by people used to such hardships. On Harantos the people have become more beastlike, with thick hair and thicker skin. While on Icene the people living there quickly went underground developing into Albinos.

Roamus: So far away from the sun that it's warmth barely touches it. It orbits close to the edge of Onus. There is nothing here except ice and forgotten things.

Beyond the shell of Onus there is void, or so the people living within Onus believe. The old Legend goes that Onus is a living being, and it formed this shell so that there would be something from nothing. Onus felt a need to create and used his body to shield his creation from the void.

The worlds live at a technology level approximating the renaissance, however there are ancient technologies around all of the many worlds. Most of this technology has to do with manipulating a crystal found throughout the worlds. It is harder than any other material and some devices can make it as malleable of clay. No one knows where these devices came from.

There is also an easier method of travel between the worlds, another relic left behind that the people of the many worlds use. Gigantic portals held in crystal frames that connect the worlds in a strange gate network.

By the way the gates are set up you can see where certain planets may come into conflict and how Fortyne has become the center of the many worlds.

In general my project is to write a number of short stories set in the Many Worlds which may in time become a novel in itself. More though it is just a place to play with this world I have created in my head. More stories and information to come.

Prelude

This is a piece from a larger work I am messing around with. I am taking a tip from Indiana Jones in this piece.

The Sun shone distant and cold, little more than a star in the sky. Four men trudged slowly across the gray and lifeless dirt that stretched on as far as one could see. Three of the men were wrapped up in wool from head to toe, the fourth stood with his bare face exposed to the blasts of icy wind

The bare faced man gazed over the monotonous terrain and somehow picked a course, pointing and shouting orders. The men spread out lying down in the dirt. The fourth stood in the middle of them and activating a device on his wrists, he put his palms together. He slid his hands in opposite directions and a sheet of liquid poured from palm to palm slowly hardening into crystal. He spread his hands about four feet apart then stopped. He flicked the excess from the now formed crystal blade.

Another gust of wind rushed over the men, shards of ice cut the bare faced man’s face. He didn’t move up to cover it, though warmth was rushing out as steam from the small cut.
Before him out of nothingness rose a formless black shadow, towering as tall as three men.
“Voidshaped!” yelled one of the men lying in the dirt.

The formless shadow slowly grew fluctuating arms and legs. The edges of its form ebbed back and force like the tides. It turned to the man who had shouted. The bare faced man stepped forward and sliced at the creature’s new formed leg. The thing let out a wordless cry and near soundless cry, little more than the hissing of air, and swung one of its malformed limbs at the bare-faced man. He rolled backwards to avoid the blow.

“Now!”

The other three leaped up from the ground throwing nets, the cross sections of -which were coated with the same crystal of the bare-faced man’s sword. They landed on their mark and the creature shrank as it looked as though it was curling up under the nets.

The bare-faced man rushed forward stabbing again. The three others pulled ropes to tighten the nets against the creature’s thrashing. A few more stabs and the creature’s thrashing weakened. The battle was nearly won.

One of the three lines that held the ropes went limp. The three men looked to the man who should have been holding the third line. They saw a smaller shadowy shape. The shape rushed the bare-faced man. The bare-faced man raised his sword and sliced at the onrushing shadow, but it warped away from the blade and struck the bare-faced man off his feet. He landed on his back hard.

The two other men strained against the larger creatures renewed thrashing. The ropes ripped out of their hands and the creature tossed the nets aside. One of the two acted quickly pulling a knife of alloyed crystal and leaped into the shadowy mass, stabbing. The shadow enveloped him as he entered.

The bare-faced man held his blade point up as the smaller creature pummeled down on top of him. He caught its side and shoved it off. He stabbed downward as he rolled on top of it, pinning it to the ground. It thrashed and vanished. He stood up pulling his blade from the dirt and looked towards the thrashing mass. The man who had entered cut his way through. The gap the man created slowly closed behind him and he fell to the ground. The creature writhed, its created limbs twisting and entangling. After moments of agony it lost its form, a shadow again it flitted away. The bare faced man and the only other man left standing converged on the man who had clawed his way through the creature. He lay face down in the dirt his clothing torn from head to toe. Where it not for the collection of cuts and gouges covering his body he would still soon freeze. There was no sign of the fourth.

“Daniel, give him your cloak,” said the bare faced man.

Daniel still shaking from the fight stammered, “but… I’ll freeze.”

The bare faced man scowled and “Without your cloak you might freeze. Without your cloak Isaac will freeze. Do as I say we aren’t leaving him behind.”

Daniel removed the outer most covering of his body and wrapped wounded Isaac in it. He looked up to the bare faced man and said, “But where are we taking him, back to the Gate?”

The bare faced man shook his head. “You will, I can’t, I have to go after that thing.”

“But, you can’t take it alone…” Daniel began, but the bare faced man cut him off.

“You were no help this time, what makes you think you can help me now.” The bare faced man brushed some of the frozen blood from his face. “No the only use you are is to ferry brave Isaac back to the gate, maybe he will fight again if you move quickly.”

Daniel bowed his head, and lifted Isaac up. Isaac feebly held onto Daniel. “Can you walk Isaac?”

Isaac nodded slowly.

“I’ll get him to safety Solomon.” Daniel said to the bare faced man.

Solomon pointed to Isaac’s knife. “Take it. We don’t know if the Voidshaped is headed for the gate. Onus help us if it is.”

“I won’t fail you again Solomon,” said Daniel.

Train musings

This was a bit I wrote on the train going to work. Enjoy my train musings.

I am sitting on the train. There is a strange liquid covering the upper seating area's floor. It has no apparent smell.

The train is a microcosm of our world. We sit minding our own business stuffed in with people we don't know. Right now I see around the train a few business men working on their computers, two women of asian descent talking and drinking coffee. A young man sits in front of me doing homework. I say young man but looking at him I'd guess late high school early college. The size of the textbook suggests math or science, since as an english major I never had to heft tomes of that size.

A pair of middle aged couples sit on the lower level of the train. One couple looking possibly older than the other. Possible relation? Two generations on a train to chicago to see the city. Often families do that go to distant places in order to feel as though they are together. The idea of the family road trip for example. Or rather it is a chance to experience new things as a family.

Young and old, you see the pairing often and it invokes a warm feeling. The feeling that perhaps those two people are related and the older is sharing her experience while the younger shares her energy. Perhaps the two are simply different in age, no relation of blood but they share the same exchange, wisdom for energy.

The two men at the end of the train sit next to their backpacks. I myself have placed my messenger bag in the seat facing me on the train. We have marked out our territories made it clear that strangers should not sit near us. Lord knows what could happen if someone new sat next to us. Change is a terrifying thing, it takes us out of our comfort zones. Solitude is often a very comfortable thing.

I have taken the train two times a day for the past four and a half months, only two occasions have I noticed two complete strangers talking to each other.

One was these two college students who had been forced to sit next to each other, due to the heavy traffic on the train that day. One was a young man in his late teens early 20s the other a girl of the same age. She was from abroad, or recently moved to the US, since she had a very thick Japanese accent. The two seemed to have no problem communicating. I sat across the aisle from them and saw a lady in her mid 30s turn to them and ask if they had known each other, they said no. She commented on how nice it was that they have kicked up such a conversation.

The second was between two men, one a young man probably a junior in high school, the other a young man who had just graduated and was currently working in the banking industry. This was about the time of discussion of the fannie mae bailout. He was talking to the younger man about banking and currency. He came to the idea that since currency only equals buying power that eventually currency will be gone. We will see the emergence of the Amero to combat the Euro and then maybe an asian currency and an african currency as the world economies become more and more entwined. Eventually all we have is a credit score.

The other young man was going to see his grandmother for the weekend. He stated he had to go see them every couple of months to keep the birthday money coming in. But he was very interested in economics.

This was a conversation I jumped into from time to time. However only after I made a chuckle at a comment and the older man, about my age, turned to me and said I could chime in at any time.

I corrected him about a minor historical note he was making about germany inbetween the World Wars.

This is of course only the positive I am noting. There was an instance of negative interaction between people on the train. I remember a very distinct situation in which a man was extremely agitated and yelling at everyone in the train car.

He was an older man, with a long grey beard and long grey hair, all of it sitcking out in wild directions. He wore a hat indicated that he was a veteran. He had a walker, and this was what began his agitation. His walker was in the middle of the aisle during the afternoon rush. I was walking up the aisle looking for a place to sit. Now I saw just beyond the walker a row of seats perpendicular to the old veteran.

The man in front of me pushed the walker aside, he was in a hurry it seemed. I began walking past the man and saw the walker swing back at me. The handle of the walker hit at crotch level. Nothing more than a light tap but I felt my progeny wince for a second. The man began yelling. Saying how could you fuckers kick my walker. I slipped by the walker since I am a skinny guy and sat in one of the free seats. Sure he was agitated but I figured he'd be over it after that outburst.

I sat down. There was a bald middle aged man to my left. He wore large circular rimmed glasses and had a distinct look of apprehension. I soon understood why.

The old vet started yelling about how everyone in the train car were a bunch of pussies. How he was a special ops and he could fight anyone in the train and kill them with his bare hands. He challenged anyone to fight him.

At this point there was a line of people stopped behind the walker which no one was willing to move now. A man thin man in a grey pinstripe suit, with gray hair and a worried smile, asked the man if he could walk by. The vet said, sure you can squeeze by if you got no balls. The man squeezed by pushing the walker only slightly. The old vet said yeah you got no balls there do ya.

People quietly moved past as the man kept yelling. He made a comment about how all his friends had died defending us pussies and not one of us had the courage to fight him.

At this point I heard a message over the intercom telling all the conductors to come to the car I was sitting in.

Three of them came in, and the first moved the man's walker aside and told him he was getting off. The old man asked what stop it was and the conductor replied it didn't matter it was his. He asked for his walker, said he couldn't walk without it. The conductors gave it to him and as the old man walked out he flicked off the whole car. The conductor behind him swatted the hand out of the air. That was that, he was left at the Clybourn stop some ten miles out of the city.

I guess this is why we defend our space so fervently. We know that if we claim a spot people will be less likely to sit there and it reduces the chance of having someone sit next to us who will disturb our solitude.

Ogilvie Transportation Center is the next stop, time to go to work.

Identity

I should probably start by informing you, my (many/few) readers that this is actually my third attempt at making a blog. I have written two other openings to it at different times in my life. The first I was an idealistic high schooler; the second I was a calmer college student; and these days I am simply a post-grad trying to figure out my place in the world.

So before I tell you what I think now let me show you what I thought then. Process is, after all, a major part of the creative process.

Quick note, I am posting these older versions somewhat unedited as to get the true feel of previous pieces, warts and all.

Last Modified November 18, 2003

Daedalus is what I choose to call myself today. I choose that name because I can think of no better man in any of literature who knew better how to stay the course. He had to fly to escape and knew that the wings he had made would not be able to stay together if he flew too high and the water would way them down if he flew too low. He and his son had to stay the course on a thin line between high and low. In the Greek Myths this was an example of Arete, or balance, something I seek now.

I have recently spoken to a few people about my beliefs on various topics such as Religion and Politics, and I decided I should write my ideas down, because, and don’t think me vain about it, I had some pretty good ideas. I know that I am far from unbiased as I have been raised a Roman Catholic and have grown up in an upper middle class house, but I have sought a balance without bias or any pre-conceived notions. I strive for this because I believe that as a species man has to become better than what it is, otherwise we are doomed. We live in a Democracy however this Democracy cannot function effectively unless we have a public who is enlightened enough to see past our own selves.

It is my hope that some will read my words, and pass them on. That by somehow opening peoples minds to new ideas that I can spread those same ideas then. Too often have I spoken about my beliefs and had someone else say, “That’s a nice idea, but it will never work,” and my thought is if it is a good idea why shouldn’t it work. The answer to that is that the world we live in does not like change, and will blindly follow the masses to whatever end they may be stumbling towards. I don’t like the end I see approaching. Left as we are in another thirty or forty years we will destroy ourselves. There are too little resources and our weapons have become far too powerful. Sooner or later there will be a war over the last remaining bits of resources and that will be the last one. We already see wars motivated by resources. How long till it becomes global? How long before we turn to our most powerful weapon? I know that nobody wants that, but at the same time no one is willing to think about it. However, we need to think about it. We need to take control, and the only way to do that is to have an enlightened public, to have a people that can truly work for a better way. We as a species are capable of so much more than we are, and it is my hope that we can figure this out before it’s too late.

Last Modified April 13, 2005

I have the odd responsibility to welcome you to my little corner of the web and introduce you to my modest addition to the massive world of writing that exists in this grand world. I can’t say to you that my writing is greater than anyone else’s because I can never know what the reader will bring to the table. I can do my best to present what I think in the form of fiction, poetry, non-fiction, or creative non-fiction but in the end you will take my words and make your own story.
So in the end if you didn’t like the story the fault may be yours. I jest of course, but not entirely.

The second responsibility I have is to provide some kind of introduction to my works, which is tricky. Once again I deal with the problem of your thoughts changing the idea and if I say anything to preface I can ruin the story you have in your mind about my work and who am I to say my interpretation is any more valid than yours. So as the writer I get to sit back and watch you speculate as to what I was really getting at anyway. That’s the odd thing about writing. You go into a piece thinking one thing and the actual process of writing changes the meaning it has to the point when I am not really sure what I am getting at and I become just another speculator.

What I can say is that I write about a lot of things. I tend to enjoy the escapism of fantasy genre writing as well as writing flash fiction of a moment in real life, often though I have found that there is a bit of fantasy in my realism and some realism in my fantasy. So don’t confine me to a category, just read. Don’t judge until you finish. If perchance you stumble upon a typo or grammatical error I do apologize but in the end I am just as lazy as you and I make mistakes. If I notice, I’ll fix it.

So in conclusion of my long winded explication of nothing I give you my words, just as they are, words. I entreat you to bring them to life. I entreat you to interact with the characters and see what they see. I entreat you to like or dislike the characters. I entreat you to live their lives and try for a moment to see something new that you may have never seen before even if it is something ever so minor. Just imagine with me and if I so happen to drop a political or moral idea in there that you may not agree with or like then forgive me because I am only human and have my vices, opinions, and virtues.

With that I welcome you to my words.

Today

So you’ve seen where I was five and three years ago, and now I have to try and tell you where I am today, who I am today.

When I was in high school I felt my words were full of resolute truths, in college I accepted that readers brought their meaning, but what do I think now?

I think words are tools. Words enter through your eyes circulate in your brain and are spoken out eventually, though often not in the same order. Words are fluid, often changing meaning as time goes by, just as I have changed and how my use of the words has changed.

Our world is fluid, ever-changing, and we try to find patterns to it. I saw that this is a rock, and then I turn around throw up the horns and saw “you rock.” Am I calling my friend a rock? Perhaps, my friends often are rocks, dumb as a rock, steady as a rock, sleeping like a rock.

So if all things change, if the world is fluid then who am I? Can I say I am something without calling myself a liar five minutes from now? Am I very different from the person who wrote in 2003 and am I somewhat different from the person who wrote in 2005? Now in 2008 I look back at those words and see elements of myself. At the young idealist, I see fire and passion which I have always respected, and in the slightly older college kid, I see the openness to others which I have incorporated into myself.

I have grown and I have changed. If changing is growing than is the world growing? Are we turning into something better or are we simply changing without purpose.

I can say one thing about myself. I am an optimist. I believe we aren’t hurtling through space ever changing with no purpose. I believe we continue to grow and change so that we can grow and change. We experience the new everyday, and we continue to change so that we can continue to change. The man I will be five years from now will be different from the man I am today, but I will be the stepping stone for that man. I will be an ever-growing, ever-changing being. Everyday will be new and an adventure, every problem simply a chance to improve.

Words have a type of immortality and stasis that I never will. A word written in the sand will change when the tide rolls in, but the word will remain in the mind. A word written on paper will survive as long as the paper. A word written in a book will survive as long as people wish to reprint it. This can be a very long time as some words have made it through many generations and many languages. But since we are always changing, our view of words is always changing.

Take interpretations of any classic work and see how it has changed over the years.

Since I am always changing, and words remain the same, I change how I arrange them; I change how I think of them. One day I will look back and see the words I wrote in the past and see their arrangement as a footprint of the ever-growing foot of my language. What is in the past is not false and who I am now is not true.

This is who I am, at least today, and these are my words.

Salutations!

So I have meant to do this for awhile now. I have wanted to have a place to self-publish my own musings. Musings I believe is the best way to put it since I rarely ever produce anything of sufficient length to be considered essays, stories, novels etc. Hopefully over time these musings will grow into something more than mere brain farts and words that I have to get out of my head. Maybe at some point they will start glombing together and make some sort of cohesion. Until then, however, I am content merely to put out my words and see if they make any sense.

So I welcome you to the strange and labyrinthine structures of my mind. Here you can hope to see samples of my writing, my philosophy, and -probably whether you like it or not- my politics.

So enter the maze of my own design. Luckily for you, unlike my namesake, I am a more benevolent designer.