Preferred Means of Supernatural Rapid Transit


zil
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I actually worked on something like this while sitting in a college physics class, but it was years ago and I don't remember how I fit all the pieces together, if I did so.

Everything is both a particle and a wave, or has properties of both a particle and a wave. So the particle properties of your matter have you in one definite location, but you also have a wave-you extending out across the world. Somehow the magicians figure out how to move themselves along their waves.

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33 minutes ago, unixknight said:

Many years ago I read a book called The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (yes, the Babylon 5 character was named for him)which featured the ability to transport one's self by "jaunting."  It's sort of like a power that humans just discover.

 

I read that, too. But it seems more like Harry Potter's apparation and disapparation, magic, not alternative physics.

Lehi

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23 hours ago, rpframe said:

oh so.. I just read the *horses and swords* comment.

So... if we are talking with magic/supernatural powers as the basis for instantaneous movement... needs to have a few restrictions.

Like... don't want to make it so effortless that at dinnertime your character would find it easier to instantly teleport from the couch to the table, pick it up, and then teleport back to the couch. (or in other words, probably don't want an ability to become a defining characteristic).

I think the sorts of restrictions you want to work with will help define the medium.

Like...

How often would you like the character(s) to be able to teleport (every few seconds/minutes/days/harvest-moons/lifetimes)?

How costly should it be (effortless/slightly-draining/half-of-my-strength/sacrifice-a-virgin/sacrifice-myself)? 

What kinds of conditional restrictions should it have? This may come naturally from a need to control the power.. since... being anywhere you want whenever you want can be an obstacle to putting your character in danger. So like

  • How do I activate the power?
    • snap fingers
      • possible weakness: encasing hands in stone/ice
    • complex ritual
      • possible weakness: time constraints/space
    • just by thinking
      • possible weakness: lack-of-consciousness
    • be in certain location(s)
    • catalyst required
      • e.g. must be in possession of magical artifact/person

Anyway.. you can only a few restrictions to make it mostly available (but try not to make it hokey... like... superman being vulnerable to only cryptonite, magic, and red suns)

Or have lots of restrictions to make it so that you can only do it once ever.. or.. once in a while... or.. only a couple times in a row...or only when absolutely necessary...

These are excellent questions.  I've been toying with various ideas, and the comments on this thread have helped me understand the difficulties - that this moving stuff really is on a much larger scale than, say, healing would be - healing involves the healer and the healed and the magic.  This would involve something much more demanding - to shift into another dimension, move the appropriate distance, and return; fold space; alter time; or whatever - even if we're only going 100 miles, we're altering something fundamental to physical existence - that has to be demanding.  I shall ponder your questions until the answers reveal themselves to me (that's how it always works - the correct answer one day appears in my brain and everything thereafter makes perfect sense).

Who can do it is already established, and limited.  How the magic works is established (just not the mechanics of moving yourself* / people).  Variable strengths is already established (so that one person could move only themselves, others could move many people).  But I need to figure out comparative effort (how much more energy does this require as compared to healing, for example) - and that could be very useful: for example, arriving in time to fight the enemy isn't going to do you much good if you're exhausted on arrival.

*That might be a clue - demolecularization might be less believable when it's yourself your breaking down into energy...

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22 hours ago, Carborendum said:

You make the dimension zero by finding a significant commonality unique between the two locations and making them one location.  Then you must move a zero distance and unlink the two locations again.  You could even have a description of what it is like to move a zero distance.

I like this too - it's sort of compatible with a rule I already have - which is that you must know the exact spot to which you want to travel.  Therefore, you can't move this way to a ship on the ocean because it's always in motion - its exact spot cannot be know.

PS: I appreciate the A-B simplification - that will help keep me from getting lost in the weeds, so to speak.

17 hours ago, SilentOne said:

Everything is both a particle and a wave, or has properties of both a particle and a wave. So the particle properties of your matter have you in one definite location, but you also have a wave-you extending out across the world. Somehow the magicians figure out how to move themselves along their waves.

Thanks, SilentOne - this is actually quite useful.  There's already a concept of the magical force involved here emitting detectable waves when used, so this might fit in too.

Thanks, all!  More discussion welcome, of course, and I'm going to try piecing together the ideas which seem most appropriate for the world as it already exists, and work on the answers to rpframe's questions. Hopefully nothing unexpected happens over the weekend...  :D

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1 hour ago, zil said:

I like this too - it's sort of compatible with a rule I already have - which is that you must know the exact spot to which you want to travel.  Therefore, you can't move this way to a ship on the ocean because it's always in motion - its exact spot cannot be know.

The way you describe it reminds me of the movie "Jumper" with Hayden Christensen.  It was an ok movie.  Any uhm movie with uhm Samuel L. uhm Jackson can't be uhm all that uhm bad.:D

It required them to have seen a place or been to a place to return to a place.

Another thing that kind of goes along with @SilentOne's suggestion is that of ley-line floating per Palladium Books.  It's generally termed as a fairly slow movement.  But there's no reason a storyline couldn't invent something similar that is fast.

 

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16 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

The way you describe it reminds me of the movie "Jumper" with Hayden Christensen.  It was an ok movie.  Any uhm movie with uhm Samuel L. uhm Jackson can't be uhm all that uhm bad.:D

It required them to have seen a place or been to a place to return to a place.

Another thing that kind of goes along with @SilentOne's suggestion is that of ley-line floating per Palladium Books.  It's generally termed as a fairly slow movement.  But there's no reason a storyline couldn't invent something similar that is fast.

I'll have to do some research - I'm not familiar with either reference.

Wasn't it Shakespeare who said every story had already been told?

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24 minutes ago, zil said:

I'll have to do some research - I'm not familiar with either reference.

Jumper is worth watching if it's free on Netflix or Amazon Prime.  It's not worth a movie ticket, but you won't feel like you just got robbed of two hours of your life if you just watch it.

Palladium Books is producer of several role-playing games like D&D.  What it describes is that there are lines of mystic energy all around the world.  These "ley lines" are places where magicians can go to refuel their manna at accelerated rates.  But another property is that mages can also float along these lines.  It's jumping into a stream.  But in this case it is in either direction.  They can choose the direction of travel (forwards or backwards) but they can only travel along the lines which are at set locations.

Unlike a wormhole, it does not cause you to disappear from normal space.  You simply float in air as you move.

The lines meet up at intersections known as nexus points.  While much is said about nexus points in the books, there is nothing special about movement there.  But I figure, why can't we say in our own fictional world that the nexus points allow for instant teleportation from nexus point to nexus point?  Just a thought.

 

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Someone more physics-minded could correct me on this, but I think it has been demonstrated that quarks have "mates"; and that if you change a characteristic of one quark, the same characteristic of its companion will *immediately* change in a similar way (no lag at all) regardless of how far apart the two quarks are.  I think it's been hypothesized that this could for the basis for a means of instantaneous communications for locations light-years apart.

One might build on that by imagining a world where people have figured out how that link is possible, and then can send matter by the same means (or, can send information such that distant particles reassemble themselves to create a clone of the thing one wishes to send a la NT's idea)--but only to locations where the "mate quarks" already happen to be located (and figuring out what those locations are would be quite a trick).

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11 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Someone more physics-minded could correct me on this, but I think it has been demonstrated that quarks have "mates"; and that if you change a characteristic of one quark, the same characteristic of its companion will *immediately* change in a similar way (no lag at all) regardless of how far apart the two quarks are.  I think it's been hypothesized that this could for the basis for a means of instantaneous communications for locations light-years apart.

One might build on that by imagining a world where people have figured out how that link is possible, and then can send matter by the same means (or, can send information such that distant particles reassemble themselves to create a clone of the thing one wishes to send a la NT's idea)--but only to locations where the "mate quarks" already happen to be located (and figuring out what those locations are would be quite a trick).

OK, this definitely has aspects that fit the magic of my world.  (I cannot tell you more lest I reveal something we don't discover until book 5 - the last book!)  This is going on my big list of things to merge together!  Thanks! :D

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1 hour ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Ok, it's called "quantum entanglement".  Run-down (maybe a bit dated by now) at http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2008/08/13/entangled-particles-seem-to-communicate-instantly-and-befuddle-scientists/ .

It can be as dated as it wants - my brain really struggles with this stuff.  But I'm off to read.  (I'm pretty good at "reading through" stuff I don't understand and usually understand more when I'm done that if I'd just stopped at the first part I didn't get, so hopefully I'll get enough of it to figure out how I might twist the idea into fiction.) :D

OK, decided to read first and post later.  First article wasn't hard to follow at all.  Now reading about "But quantum mechanics allows for a third way to coordinate information", and then the teleportation article....  Back in a few...  Well, that was interesting.  Thank, you, JAG!  (The remainder of my comments may only make sense if you've read the articles or are familiar with what they say.)

The teleportation article is about enough to make me rule out wormholes - way too much energy required!  But teleportation seems much more feasible (which is good cuz it's already in use elsewhere in our universe) - though the whole "die in one place and be reborn in another" is disturbing and may present problems (or not, I'll ponder).

(Per the teleportation article: "Within a few decades, scientists may be able to teleport a DNA molecule or even a virus."  Grand.  How long do you suppose it'll take for someone to turn that into a weapon?)

Here's my "spooky" theory for how our entangled pair are able to instantly communicate: Maybe they're sealed - you know, like people can be, only at the particle level. :D (Don't tell the physicists - they'll laugh at me.)

PS: The "entangled" pair's ability to communicate instantly no matter the distance would easily be explained in my universe.  For more, read book 5. :lol:

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9 hours ago, unixknight said:

Either that's a joke or you've never seen the Star Wars prequels.

The "uhms" were a euphemism to do an homage to a certain movie rant he is recently famous for.  So, yes, it was s joke.

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On August 17, 2016 at 1:39 PM, zil said:

Sometimes I think that the method of supernatural travel in my universe is the same as whatever angels use in this one.  Of course, there's all kinds of presumption in there, since I have no idea how angels move in our universe. :D For all I know, their movement requires time (or duration), and they're dispatched at exactly the right time by an omniscient God to ensure they get here where and when they're needed.  Yet part of me thinks they can move (near) instantly, which makes me wonder about  @Traveler's virtual reality thread and about comments I've read (and can't go look up right now) which essentially say that we make our own reality through thought and belief - that the world is how we see it, rather than that we see it as it is.  Perhaps if I had sufficient faith that I was actually in Jerusalem right this very instant rather than where I "know" myself to be (which is not Jerusalem), I would actually be in Jerusalem, by the "simple" fact that I believe it.

You ought to take a look at the visual descriptions that aer in JS 's account of his first meeting of moroni. I find it interesting.

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7 hours ago, Blackmarch said:

You ought to take a look at the visual descriptions that aer in JS 's account of his first meeting of moroni. I find it interesting.

If you mean where the light gathers around Moroni before he leaves....  My brother had gotten new LED smart-lights for his room, and could control them with a remote and with his phone.  He had one up high, and dimmed it remotely, and it very much seemed that the light in the room had drawn back to the LEDs (it seemed very much like movement rather than like dimming - not less coming from the LEDs, but light moving back to it) and the thought which struck me was to wonder if that's how it was it seemed for Joseph - like light moving back toward Moroni, and then leaving with him...

Going to look now (not sure where to find multiple descriptions - history is another thing I stink at.)

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Ah, JS-H 1:43 - a conduit.  Interesting.  And Moroni was visible during his ascent.  Huh, perhaps more interesting is that Joseph doesn't appear to see the conduit or a descent when Moroni arrives - he only see the departure like this.  Well, that ought to tell us something.  Huh, v68 "messenger from heaven descended in a cloud of light".

Just last night, when I should have been sleeping, I was pondering the fact that there was no reason there couldn't be multiple ways to travel, and that depending on the way used, and how well the traveler understood it, the effort required could be vastly different.

Well, I'll have to try the Joseph Smith Papers Project when I get more time and see if there are more such descriptions.

Thanks, @Blackmarch, for the reminder - I had forgotten that we had a few choice details in this regard (though I have used a not entirely dissimilar idea for a particular appearance in book 3).  So much to ponder, so little time. :)

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Wow, super late to the party and I don't have a good idea since anything I could have thought of already appears to be taken. I didn't read all of the answers in detail, sorry. 

So not supernatural, but just wanted to leave the fictional, perhaps some day reality of a space elevator;) Sorry, all I've got besides a Stargate.

Space_elevator_structural_diagram--corrected_for_scale+CM+etc.svg.pngSg1stargatefront.jpg

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