Text -- Laptop

[soulsborderline]

Music theory is the dumbest class.

I only keep showing up for the hot music majors honestly.

Although "Asian dude with bleached hair" has gotten a lot less exotic-seeming since I got on this network.

Seriously is everyone on here from Japantown?

Anyway I'm bored and this network doesn't require a wifi connection.

...

*sigh*

This is so stupid. I'd rather be playing violin. Or electrocuting something for science. Physics is the best. Although with all the weird crap that's going on here I'm thinking of taking more biology classes if I can fit them in. I got my first pulse echo whatever on a bio lab trip, so maybe if I go on more that'll happen again.

...

Is anyone else on this thing this morning?

Comments

[handwritten]

[somedaytogether]

Forgive me for butting in, but I noticed your comment about science. It's not quite biology, but if you would ever like to come and look at the greenhouses - mine or the university ones - you're welcome. Since I'm on the network you wouldn't have to invent any awkward explanations for your interest.

[soulsborderline]

Plants, huh?

Did any interesting or weird flowers come with your numbers?

[somedaytogether]

They did, actually. I am currently looking after a number of unusual rosebushes. And by unusual I should clarify that they produce, among other things, blue, green and black roses. Which smell unusual.

I've been intending to do some cross-pollination and grafting experiments, to see if the trait will carry over, and to see if I can develop any of the intermediate shades, or create some interesting colour mixes. Maybe edge one colour with another.

[soulsborderline]

I know exactly enough about roses to know those should be impossible.

[somedaytogether]

They certainly are. Even leaving aside the problem of colour, I don't think any rose has ever smelled of incense and rot. Or burning paper and musk, for that matter. I don't think "possible" has much to do with these flowers.

[soulsborderline]

That sounds kind of awful.

[somedaytogether]

They're a little creepy. Awful might be too strong. I think I would be less bothered by them if they didn't obviously tie into some bizarre past life I may or may not have had.

[soulsborderline]

You're going with the past life regression theory? Makes as much sense as anything, I guess...

[somedaytogether]

It's more that I haven't heard any of the others. Though it doesn't seem hugely plausible, considering the kind of powers people are developing. Maybe alternate lives would make more sense. Like those silly flash-sideways parts of "Found".

[soulsborderline]

Ugh, I hate that pretentious mystery crap in a TV show. I dropped that after the random penguin in the jungle and internet spoilers never made me regret that decision.

[somedaytogether]

Very wise. I watched it all the way through, but by the last season it was more out of a masochistic sense of duty than any actual enjoyment. But at this point I think I would jump on a much stupider bandwagon if I thought it could explain what was happening to me.

[soulsborderline]

It just seems really new-agey to me. Do you know anything about quantum physics?

[somedaytogether]

Not much, beyond what I've picked up from popular science. I was always more focused on the practical sciences.

[soulsborderline]

Yeah because the basis of all satellite communications and GPS and the next step up in computer processors and energy generation is impractical.

Anyway I'm sure you've heard of how it allows for the possibility of parallel universes from TV at least, right?

[somedaytogether]

Oh, I didn't mean to offend you. I'm sorry. But while the applications of physics are many, varied and incredibly valuable, the theories themselves were always a little abstract for me. I prefer science I can dig my hands into.

I have. Though as I understand it, even an infinite number of parallel universes does not necessarily imply that all imagined universes are possible.

[soulsborderline]

That's true. In fiction it's usually just a convenient excuse for whatever the writers want to write.

However, what ISN'T fiction is the possibility of interference between different "possibilities". A solitary photon can be influenced by the energy of where that photon itself COULD be. It won't result in time travel like that stupid novel about the middle ages, but in theory it COULD convey information from other universes.

[somedaytogether]

That- that makes an awful lot of sense. So we were never anything other than what we are, but somehow we're synchronizing with the information from another world?

Yes, that really does seem plausible. I wonder if there's any way to test it?

[soulsborderline]

Well the major hole in it is it doesn't really account for anything larger than an electron "appearing", and some of us got stuff. It's also just about impossible to test anything at the quantum level without a particle accelerator, and even if LCU had one, I'm just a student.

[somedaytogether]

So unless we get hold of a particle physicist it's just as uncertain as any other theory?

I don't know that the objects mean we have to dismiss your theory, though. If these communications can overwrite the laws of biology then maybe we're working with a different set of physics? Or a different set of metaphysics, even.

[soulsborderline]

Now we're getting New Age-y again. There's no such thing as a different set of physics, only rules that we haven't discovered yet.

[somedaytogether]

There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.

Which is to say that different metaphysics doesn't equate to New Age-y, not necessarily. Metaphysics is a well respected branch of philosophy. I won't claim to be a philosopher - I don't think I've read any since my undergraduate electives - but one could make the argument that Hume will serve us better than Kant, under the circumstances.

[soulsborderline]

Philosophy, huh?

Metaphysics is a way of looking at the world. Physics is the facts of what is. No matter what your perspective is, we're all still looking at the same thing, and that's what interests me.

[somedaytogether]

That's some admirable certainty you've got there. I wish I had that kind of clarity about what we're facing.

[soulsborderline]

I just think if you get too lost in the abstract questions, you lose sight of the immediate problem; in this case, in order from least to most important: what are these Echoes, why do they happen, why does weird shit want to kill us, and how can we stop that?

[somedaytogether]

Haha, very succinct.

Actually, it might be worth bringing up a conversation I had earlier. An idea has been jostling around in my mind, though I'm still not perfectly sure how to execute it. I was thinking that we should create some kind of database, recording all the information people have gathered from Echoes. Place-names, names of important people, facts about how the world you remember works, abilities. It could help us to begin to put a coherent picture together.

The only problem is that we'd need some way to submit our information anonymously.