Christian and Laurinda spend three olden twenty-four hour Earth days in an emulation where they experience:
cool sunlight
occasional showers
sparkling pastures and hedges
rides along English lanes
rambles through English towns
meetings with people
evensong in a Norman church
buildings
books
talks
silences
friendship
Their pervasive memories of oneness with nodal beings is like the transcendent afterglow of a religious vision. It is to be hoped that every node can can give all of its uploads this kind of experience.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Except I don't think Gaia gave all of IT'S uploads "experiences" as mild as these. I recall how grim were some of the experimental emulations Gaia ran.
This is as good a place as any to say I spent the past week reading/rereading much of MULTIVERSE, culminating with Stirling's Time Patrol pastiche, "A Slip in Time." Again, I believe this story to be among the best, if not best, in this collection. "Slip" struck me as true to the spirit, background, premises, etc., of Anderson's Time Patrol stories.
We see Manse Everard and his wife Wanda unexpectedly appearing in an Austria-Hungary which had not been destroyed in our WW I. Not only that, but as the dominant partner in an alliance comprising the Dual Monarchy, Germany, and Ottoman Turkey.
Manse was captured by quick witted, quick acting Austrians altho Wanda managed to escape. First, Wanda moved uptime in that version of Austria-Hungary and found it seemingly ever more advanced and powerful. And then she hit on a way to rescue Manse, despite knowing he would not approve of her trying to do that.
Stirling's story accepted the premise seen in cases like "Delenda Est" that the Patrol "deleted" aberrant timelines which would not lead to the Danellians. However, you (Paul) has convincingly argued that "deleted" timelines were not snuffed out into non-existence, they simply became inaccessible to people from the Patrol/Danellian timeline. Arguments Anderson himself seems to have tentatively accepted.
This bit from "III:" of "Slip", after Wanda escaped from the "aberrant" Austria-Hungary of an alternative 1926 seems to support the notion mentioned above:
Wanda Everard hovered ten thousand feet in the air
and two centuries future-ward. Vienna sprawled
beneath her, the neo-Baroque splendors of the Ring-
strasse familiar, but enigmatic low-slung buildings
stretching out beyond. A boomerang-shaped flying
something curved silently towards her and she
slapped the controls again.
So I don't think the alternate Austria-Hungary was necessarily snuffed out when the Sarajevo Assassination leading to out WW I was restored in our timeline. Rather, it became inaccessible to people from our timeline. Also, the "alternate" Austrians did capture and retain Manse's stunner and communicator. Patient study by Austrian scientists (such as Privatdocent Hetzfeld of these devices might well have led to those glimpses Wanda saw of the advanced technology used in the future of the "aberrant" Austria-Hungary.
Almost the only criticism I would make of "A Slip in Time" was Stirling having Manse grab and take Rudolf von Starnberg with him as he leaped out of the dirigible taking them to Transylvania (because Wanda would use the timecycle to rescute Manse). There was no need for Manse to kill von Starnberg like that if he thought the aberrant, no Sarajevo universe was going to be "deleted." Also, it would have been more artistically satisfactory, in a timeline using your arguments, for a frustrated von Starnberg to have continued living.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Gaia's grim emulations are inhabited not by uploaded human beings like Laurinda but by populations of emulated human beings. My suggestion is that the uploads could be resurrected in milieus created specially for them.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I was a bit too careless in the first paragraph of my first comment here. Uploaded HUMANS, not emulations created to be characters in Gaia's scenarios.
I mostly had Stirling's "A Slip in Time" on my mind.
Ad astra! Sean
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