Aberrant RPG - What is hyper-time?

[Matador]

Hi: this is a question for the Fortune´s Son.

Jack: What is that hyper-time thing exactly?

Thanks.

[Fortune's Son]

Hypertime? Chance describes it as shifting the temporal values of his personal quantum field from a linear flow to a vector. Which makes it more interesting in character than out of character, unfortunately.

IC:

Time seems to slow in the world around him while he continues, by his own perceptions, to move normally and unencumbered. He doesn't seem to be affected by the inertia of clothing or the surrounding air so the field apparently affects individual molecules around him. Then again, at his level of strength he may simply not be noticing the "drag". With attunement he's able to similarly shift up to one person with him though it was some time into his career before he tried it.

The only person he's ever done it with is Jilly, who said it was;

- too weirdly freaky to describe; and

- something she would never do again voluntarily. Aside from throwing up afterwards she felt like crap for a couple of hours.

What Chance is not aware of is that with his stamina and Adaptation he's virtually immortal. Anyone not similarly gifted is going to experience varying degrees of nausea and, depending on the duration of the exposure, pain or even physical damage. This is caused by the energy demand to the accelerated body going above what it can safely provide. The fact that the world takes on a deep red tinge and feels extremely hot (the body can't vent heat to the surrounding air normally) would make the average person want to lose their lunch very quickly anyway.

Nine months after his eruption he realized that it was possible to go much deeper into the experience though he is uncertain what the limitations are. Rachel Alinsky, DeVries head research scientist, theorizes that he may someday be able to experience Plank time consciously. Nobody knows what would happen under those conditions since physical laws breakdown at that point and its generally considered a "bad thing".

OOC: Chance erupted with and has continued to hone enhancements such as Fast Tasks, Quickness, and Rapid Strike. Using these abilities is what he's referring to when he speaks of "skimming hypertime". Later he developed a level 2 quantum power based on the Temporal Manipulation Technique Accelerate Time. This is what he refers to as "diving deep into hypertime".

Does this answer your questions? I hope you enjoyed the stories at least half as much as I enjoy your artwork.

[ 07-22-2002: Message edited by: Fortune ]

[Jager]

Does Fortune accelerate himself in a 'time stream', or does he step outside of it, making his own bubble, or a "third alternative"?

[Sakurako Hino]

Actually, what this sounds like is he's able to step into one of 3 layers of time. Those three layers are called: Normal, Hyper, and Sub-time. He seems to be able to jump into Hyper-Time. Where time moves at a rate where the human mind assenses it's passing in greater attunement. In otherwords, it appears to move slower. Yet, it's at the same rate. Let me put it like this; You can watch the bullet move at you, and you can dodge it. Just imagine when you do reach plank-time. It'll seem like everyone's a statue.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to listen to some Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.

Sayonara.

[Kirby1024]

Actually, If you were perceiving at Planck Time, you wouldn't be seeing anything.

Well, how could you? At Planck Time, physical laws break down, and that includes the physical laws which tell the photons to act the way they do to create the light that hits the photo-receptors that let us see.

At that point, we seriously have no idea what's going on. Without the physical laws that guide how we perceive reality (and there are a lot of them), we not only cannot imagine what it's like, but we probably couldn't really comprehend it, or tell people what it's like. There may be no sensory analogue for what a person experiences at Planck time, although if someone is perceiving time at that speed, we've already broken a goodly amount of physical laws to start with there...

It could be that at that level of perceptive speed, Jack may be beginning to see Quantum universes dividing a la the multiverse theory, which I bet would be either a fantastically beautiful sight, or incredibly disconcerting to the viewer. Either way, I like the idea of the so-called logical extension of his capabilities.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

The rules governing "extra" senses are not intuative. I saw a science demo with a IR video camera and my breath wasn't visible, although if I blew on a piece of paper it "glowed". I talked to the operator and he said that flame wasn't very visible either. "Sight" exists the way we think of it more because of the way our brains interpret the data than the data itself.

Do whales "see" with sonar? I don't know, but there is evidence that dolfins do.

[Fortune's Son]

Sorry to take so long in getting back to everyone. I've been a little busy of late.

Jager;

Privately, Fortune believes the human sense of time, the division between past and future divided by a steadily advancing 'present', is an artificial construct of the mind. A mental convention rather than a physical law of the universe and one that he can consciously manipulate.

His belief is reinforced by his memories of eruption. As you know, the moment of eruption itself is thought to take place in plank time, a period of time too short for the conscious mind to retain more than a vague awareness of what's happened. Fortune however distinctly remembers the experience lasting for several subjective days. He also remembers talking with someone that isn't thought to exist either so take it with a grain of salt.

In any case; as he was alone in the middle of the Arizona desert objective analysis isn't impossible.

Endeavor;

Your three states is an interesting idea although Fortune would disagree with you if only because he doesn't believe in temporal states.

If... if... he ever reaches conscious awareness of plank time there really is no telling what would happen. At that point, and in a very literal sense, he'd be existing between ticks of the clock. At that moment statistical reality still hasn't emerged from the chaos of probability. Would he see the world as frozen? Or would he fail to see the world at all as it does not yet exist? Would his awareness alter the probabilities emerging from that chaos?

No knows what would happen or even knowledgeably theorize why it would happen. For one possibility of exploiting the concept take a look at the APG under a power called Plank Scaling.

Kirby

And as David Smith notes, what we call "seeing" is only partly a function of photon interactions. And of course all novas possess a unique sensing organ; the MR Node.

The question is really whether there is something to sense beyond the plank barrier and does it differ from what we define as "reality"? I like your image of the constantly expanding multiverse but here's another one for you. Imagine such a sight but being unable to distinguish the individual structures as they are all equally probable and not yet seperated.

And From The Chaos,

God Drew Inspiration,

In A Voice Unto Thunder,

God said Let There Be Sound!

Why Did He Not Create Light?

God Said Unto His Wise Ones;

Light Has Been Done Before,

And I Needed The Tuneage,

Tuneage is Good.

David Smith

I agree with you. "Sight" is whatever we think it is based on the sensory data available and the manner in which our mind process the information.

[Kirby1024]

Quote:

Originally posted by Fortune:
Kirby
And as David Smith notes, what we call "seeing" is only partly a function of photon interactions. And of course all novas possess a unique sensing organ; the MR Node.

OK, let me redefine that then.

Humans have seven basic senses. They are Hearing, Sight, Smell, Taste, Touch and the two Haptic senses (Cutaneous and Kinaesthetic (ie the sense that allows us to determine the relative positions of one part of our body to the rest of the body)).

Now, I'm not saying it's impossible to "see", what I'm saying is that it may not be possible to see using our basic "Sight". More importantly, as I pointed out, the experience that Jack would get when viewing in Planck Time may quite possibly have no sensory analogue in our basic 7 senses. As such, Even if Jack did experience something, it may be exceedingly difficult for him to describe it to someone without his extra quantum senses.
Alternately, it may be that Jack himself may translate it into human senses due to the fact that he cannot comprehend it any other way. What do I know? We're talking about a point devoid of phsysical laws. Both answers could be right simultaneously! Cause and Effect isn't in effect there!

Quote:

The question is really whether there is something to sense beyond the plank barrier and does it differ from what we define as "reality"? I like your image of the constantly expanding multiverse but here's another one for you. Imagine such a sight but being unable to distinguish the individual structures as they are all equally probable and not yet seperated.

That's a nice vision. In my mind, incredibly blurry, and really nauseating, but a nice vision

If Jack ever actually got to this point, You could tell us anything, and frankly we couldn't tell you off. Hell, two people could experience completely contradictory visions of Planck Experience, and both be correct, as pointed to above.

Ooooh. That's going to be fun if someone comes with him (or he films it. That's got to be a video worth watching...).

[ EDIT: Forgot a sense. Yes, Humans have not five, but seven senses. Cool, huh? ]

[ 07-25-2002: Message edited by: Kirby1024 ]

[Centipede]

Do whales "see" with sonar? I don't know, but there is evidence that dolfins do.

Rattlesnakes have a heat-sensitive organ in their noses. Input from this organ is interprated in the same part of the brain as sight which makes the rattlesnake 'see' with the nose (and eyes simultaneously).

Before your world breaks down, let me declare that I can't confirm this, I don't remember where I read it and I am not a rattlesnake. I'm pretty sure it true though, but perhaps this is an old theory, now replaced by another...

Anyway, I've used this as a basis for extra senses many times, especially those concerning infrared and ultraviolet, electric and magnetic sense and some less realistic senses.

Many years ago I watched a show on television (in Sweden) that dealt with animal senses. Many animals have senses that we lack, sharks have electrical senses, bats and whales sonar, many birds are thought to have magnetic senses and insects see in UV.

For more info on this please referr to the animal kingdom! (Although good issues of Daredevil can inspire alot too!)

[Matador]

Thanks for the answer, and everyone for the debate. Now, the way I "see" it, Jack´s node may allow him to percieve plank time sending his senses into some kind of extra layer of time/space/reality that I will call "meta-time". This way, Jack´s in the depths of chaos, where probability springs, like in in a cave, and sees the light at the end of it. Of course, in this very peculiar setting, Jack may never be able to "reach" for the light at the end of the tunnel, as it just goes along with him. anyway, It would be a very interesting view. Also, have anyone here ever heard the theory that says that "information/probability" travels faster than light?

[Matador]

I just posted a reply but didnt showed up. This is the short version:

Thanks for answering my question, and everyone for the debate. It´s thrilling!

Also, has anyone ever heard a theory that says "probability/information" travels faster than light?

[Fortune's Son]

Matador

Hey, no problem on my end folks. A player always likes to talk about their characters and how the world looks from that perspective.

And yes. I've heard the theory you mentioned before. I think its actually very compatible with Fortune's hyper-time observations. One of the funky things about MR Nodes and how they work is when you get to the question of whether the universe works the way the nova believes it does, based on their personal observations, or are they forcing the universe to behave in a certain way based on their expectations. Where MR Nodes and consciousness are concerned, is there a way to prove what is "real" as opposed to what appears to be real?

On the posting problems; it's probably a browser setting. I've noticed some people comment about it before and the easiest fix is to simply hit the <refresh> button when you're back on the page you're posting to. Usually the post has gone through but you're not seeing it 'cuz the browser is saving reload time by showing you the same version of the page you were originally looking at.

The permanent fix is to set your browser to always check the web page rather than displaying from memory. How you do that varies with the particular browser you're using and its version. In any case the refresh button will accomplish the same thing.

[Jager]

...and then we have the particles/energy/whatever that goes 'backward' through time.

Also, even if a nova could sense Plank time, how could they relate it to others?

It probably all boils down to each nova seeing the universe, and their place in it, in differing ways...and that's why every individual is so important. Every time a nova is lost, their potential is lost as well.

[Fortune's Son]

... amen ....

Interesting that you should put it that way. That's one of the themes for a J&J vignette I'm working on.