Fic: The Case of the Time-Travelling Rebels

[vilakins]

And here's my intoabar story, which means I've met all my deadlines and can relax and do other things like posting Ashley photos because it was her birthday this week.

Title: The Case of the Time-Travelling Rebels
Prompt: Vila Restal goes into a bar and meets... Sally Donovan!
Fandoms: Blake's 7 / Sherlock (TV)
Word count: 1,799
Rating/Contents: G-rated. No warnings needed.

The Case of the Time-Travelling Rebels

Comments

[judo100]

Cute story, addressing all the fascinating questions that come to mind when one begins contemplating time travel. I like the idea of simply popping in and out, no big fuss, not hulking machines to carry around. Aside from the difficulty of DOING the time travel, I've always thought the biggest problem with any sort of teleporting into an inhabited space would be how to avoid being stabbed by furniture, walls, and such. I think each teleported person or object should have a personal force field around him or it, that would push away all air, furniture, other people and anything else in the way.

[vilakins]

Thank you!

The ship travelled through time, maybe via a wormhole or something else hand-wavey. :-) The crew just teleported from their ship.

Pushing matter out of the way would create an explosion though, moving all those molecules instantaneously, or at close to the speed of light. I think the just-swap idea is simpler and much safer. I used it in this very short story, where they do end up in something solid. [evil grin] Mind you, if you did teleport into a table or something, you'd leave holes to show where you'd been.

Of course I've never addressed things like rotational speed on a planet or different levels of terrain/floor, but then hardly anyone does. After all they have people walking through walls when in some sort of trans-dimensional shift (Tar Trek TNG, I'm looking at you) but not falling through floors - and still being able to breathe. /geek

Why yes, I do tend to nitpick things like Trek from a physics POV, but I still love it dearly. More SF is always a good thing.

[judo100]

When you really get into the problems with teleportation or time travel, there are plenty to choose from. One of my favorites is that ground level changes rather frequently, especially in cities. Therefore you could be standing on the ground in one time and find yourself 4 - 5 feet in the air in another time. Probably not lethal, but definitely a bad start to your visit in another time. I was reading a book in which a character could teleport herself far away. Even if she could see where she was going, she deliberately "landed" a foot off the ground, just to avoid embedding a tall blade of grass in her foot. (At one point she embeds a fly in a foot and almost cripples herself, which I thought added some good detail to the tale.) When she couldn't see the place she was going, she tried to get photos and then hoped that nobody had moved the furniture around before she landed.

I would think a swap of mass would cause just as much of an explosion as simply pushing mass away upon landing, no?

[vilakins]

Yep, ground/floor level is a huge thing, and the B7 crew's computer would have to calculate it from orbit.

I like that that writer thought about some of the problems of teleporting (ugh, ouch!) but they ignored the air! She'd always appear where there's air and that would be as much of a problem - people forget air because they can't see it, but it's pretty dense. Also there's the rotation of the earth, so she could land with considerable tangential motion. However addressing all of that would be a right pain, and I'd rather hand-wave it all away and enjoy the story as science fantasy. Internal consistency matters more, so if the writer has rules and limitations for their science or magic, they need to obey them; that lends a lot of depth to a story.

Larry Niven, in his early days before he went gaga and weird, did it well with teleport booths which swapped their contents. He addressed potential energy (people felt heat or cold if they changed height by a fair amount) but not the earth's rotation IIRC. But then I think he did the potential energy thing because it was a plot point for a murder mystery.

Incidentally, what was the name of the book, do you recall? It sounds really interesting.

[Edit] Given a working teleport, I don't think the swap would cause an explosion as matter isn't in the same place at the same time. Unless you mean when it crosses in some sort of energy beam, but if it's in wave form, maybe it won't be a problem.

Interesting discussion!

[judo100]

Sounds like you've done a lot of work on your teleport system! Come visit when you have a working model...

The book I mentioned was actually a series by Larry Correia. The first book was called "Hard Magic." You might enjoy it and the whole series.

[vilakins]

Thanks; I'll look him up!

I just started a book this morning about time travel (or teleport) called Yesterday's Thief by Al Macy. A girl has suddenly appeared on the field at a baseball game and her little finger intersected with a guy's head - but they were merged at the molecular level - which answers my usual question "But what about the air?" I assume she weighs a little more now with the air mixed in with her molecules. :-P Also she arrived naked and without her fillings so it seems only her body was transported. It looks intriguing so far. Plus the narrator has telepathy which adds to the SF-ness.

[judo100]

I'll try to find this book, thanks.

I don't think I'd teleport often if I arrived without my fillings. All new dental work after each trip would be enough to discourage me! And what about people like my husband who have wire in an elbow from an early operation -- would that be gone too? Suddenly your elbow what was fixed 50 years ago doesn't work? Would the new lens from my cataract surgery still be intact? This opens up a LOT of medical issues!

[vilakins]

Ah, that was a major plot point! The girl was OK without her fillings, the time machine designer wasn't.