Mingle: For a limited time only...

[hearsthesea]

Who: Everyone!
Where: Anywhere on the hub
When: Days 134-139
Open/Closed: Open mingle goooo!

[Copper, lizards, and vines - oh my! With the recent installation of 9S and co.'s scanning equipment and the also recent, significantly wetter rainstorms there's quite a lot to check out on the island right now. Plus, the monitor robot still needs a name. You're not going to leave them nameless forever, are you?

Too bad Genette's put out word that everyone's about to be moving location soon. That means these are the last days the coven has for a little while to get everything in order, whether it's to take things to the next destination or to leave them behind. Get your bags packed and your huts cleaned, everyone!]

Comments

[terezias]

[Oh, this is actually kind of a difficult concept to explain. She frowns.]

A paradox is . . . a kind of contradiction between how things should logically be and how they actually are. In paradox space, they usually involve time travel. For example, we were actually created by a device operated by Karkat within the game, and subsequently sent back in time to be "born." If we had decided not to play the game, this would have never happened, causing a paradox to occur.

[A pause.]

Not that most of us knew this at the time!

[rootandbranch]

So paradox space is where everything just starts out as a contradiction?

[maybe this is why everything about Dirk's home world gives him a headache to try to understand.]

[terezias]

. . . Sort of!

Paradox space is just what we call the set of universes created by the game Sgrub, or Sburb, or likely any number of other names, actually. I am not sure who named it, or why they decided to call it that, but the game is partially defined by the accumulation and resolution of paradoxes.

[She pauses, because she does realize that doesn't actually make a lot of sense, and offers,]

In a sense, you are right. Contradictions are created by the events of Sgrub, and it is the job of the alpha timeline--or players within the alpha timeline--to resolve them.

[rootandbranch]

Ummm...

I didn't understand the second thing you said at all. If you want to explain, I'd like to listen, but it's going to be forcing a trail uphill. Fair warning... I don't know if you had other things to do today.

[Geir finds how far that went over his head kind of hilarious, actually. other worlds are so different?

he should probably at least give Terezi the option to get out of the conversation, since he accosted her outside her house and all.]

[terezias]

[She appears to give this a lot of thought, tapping her chin with her finger, before finally settling down cross-legged in front of Geir's face with a cheerful grin.]

I do not, as it happens, have other things to do today. Has one of the others not explained the concept of the alpha timeline to you?

[rootandbranch]

No, but I bet you're about to.

[Geir grins broadly at her to let her know that he is in fact interested in the alpha timeline. most of the Homestuck mechanics that his various friends have alluded to in conversations with him are thoroughly perplexing, but fascinating. he doesn't at all mind learning more.]

[terezias]

[She considers how to explain this to him. Finally, she takes a coin out of her pocket and holds it up to him: it's double-headed, but one of the heads is scratched.]

Heads or scratch?

[rootandbranch]

[Geir's eyes narrow, carefully examining the coin.]

Scratch.

[terezias]

[She flips the coin. It does indeed land scratch-side up. She takes it and shows it to him.]

So you chose correctly. That is, however, not the important part. The important part is that you made a choice.

You see, every choice you make creates a branch in the timeline. There is a universe identical to this one in every respect except that you chose heads instead--or at least, there would be, if this were paradox space. I am not sure the same rules apply here!

[rootandbranch]

[Geir stretches out his huge nose to just barely touch the coin in her hand, sniffing it curiously.]

So the "alpha timeline" is...?

[terezias]

The dominant timeline. The one in which choices are made which do not create paradoxes.

Timelines which are not the alpha timeline are called "doomed timelines," because they tend to result in the deaths of the people who populate them. For example, if we had not decided to play the game, we would have shortly died in something called the Vast Glub.

[rootandbranch]

[he tilts his head.]

Who decides what makes a paradox?

[terezias]

No one in particular. Events that have already happened. Interference from other universes.

[She pauses.]

I am not a Time player. But players of Sgrub are typically embroiled in a lot of what one might call "weird time bullshit."

[rootandbranch]

That, I don't understand either. Is it because there's a lot of doomed time sloshing around?

[Geir's grasp of doomed timelines is still rather fuzzy, but he's trying.]

[terezias]

Partially! Interference from doomed timelines is part of what causes weird time bullshit. The other part is interference from other universes--in our case, from our game session and from the universe we created.

[She frowns; she's not entirely happy with that explanation.]

I can give examples, if you would like.

[rootandbranch]

I would like! Go on, please.

[all the people from Dirk's world that Geir's talked to at any length are so willing to talk. it's wonderful.]

[terezias]

[She smiles. Excitable dragon is fun??]

I said that we were actually created by Karkat within the game, and sent back to the time of our "birth" on Alternia. That is an example of Sgrub interfering with our home universe. You see, universes are not temporally joined, I don't think. Qri took us all from the same point in paradox space, more or less, but she could have reached through and taken us from earlier--or later, perhaps, although I do not think you can take someone from later than their death.

It is the same way with Sgrub. A meteor being sent from our Sgrub session to Alternia could arrive at any point in Alternian history, long before or long after the point where we started playing the game.

[rootandbranch]

"Universes are not temporally joined," huh?

[Geir sits up outright at that, tail curling in around his forefeet and lashing a little. now, that's an entirely new idea.]

You mean time can be passing one way one place, and differently in another place?! How?!

[terezias]

[She nods.]

Or rather--at any point in time in our Sgrub session, the entire history of Alternia both has and has not happened. They are separate universes--completely unmoored from one another in both space and time.

The Jade human could probably explain this better than me. She was the humans' Space player.

[rootandbranch]

Space and time... yeah, maybe I'll ask Jade too.

What's the difference between different worlds and different universes? Or different realms? We don't-- we don't have anything like this where I'm from, at all.

[all of it being a game feels strange to him, too. a war, or a pact, or a bet-- those all make sense as stakes in the fates of worlds, in a misty corner of Geir's mind. maybe it's a betting game like dice; Terezi's coin toss makes him think of that a little.]

You can't walk from one realm to another, but they're connected in time and space, as far as I know...

[terezias]

I don't know about realms. We probably don't have those, unless you count game sessions. But you can travel between worlds normally, if you have the right ship. Trolls conquered many other planets. As for universes . . .

[She leans over and draws a circle in the dirt.]

Imagine that this is a universe consisting of many planets, or worlds. If you were outside that universe, you could access any point in space and time inside that universe.

[She then draws twelve circles in a ring around it, and, after a pause, another two for Prospit and Derse.]

That is where we were with regards to the universe we created. It was a place inside our game session, with its entire history within it.

[rootandbranch]

So worlds are related to each other by time and space, since they're all inside a universe, and other universes... aren't. I wonder if realms are sort of the same, but inside a world...

[he stares at Terezi's diagram for a disconcertingly long time. at least he didn't seem to have too much trouble following her explanation once he had a picture...]

--we don't know if we're in the same universe as the ones where we came from, then. Do we.

[terezias]

[She has to think about that one, frowning.]

I would be very surprised if we were in either the universe Alternia is in or the one we created. It doesn't fit the pattern of the game at all. And we are certainly not in a session of Sgrub.

[Although they could easily still be in paradox space--she decides not to mention that for the moment, thinking it might be overloading to introduce paradox space back into the equation at this point.]

I would not, however, discount the possibility that we are in your universe. Or any of the ones belonging to people here who do not obviously come from paradox space.

[rootandbranch]

I guess there's way to know unless we find a way to talk to our own worlds again. We can at least see if time's been passing the same when we go to another world from here, though, now that we have the pods. So if Qri's moving us between universes when we go to other places, we can find out!

[having something they can definitely figure out instead of guessing at is at least reassuring...]

[terezias]

We can. It would be a bit odd if she was not, considering she can pull people from across universes . . . but maybe this universe is the only one that has the energy she needs.