Most Likely A Refuge

[whatamithinking]

It was probably safe.

The bar was...unusually reticent, in the lower layers of her mind (and she hadn't pried further; she wasn't sure if she'd be noticed; she wasn't sure if offending would get her kicked out, and regardless of whether it was actually safe it was safer than anywhere else she'd been for the past...three years?) so she couldn't be sure this place wasn't really a trap of some kind, but the higher layers gave a plausible explanation that didn't involve being a trap, and whatever else it was warm and dry and had food. Her guard was probably a full 25% down. Positively trusting, these days.

Comments

[alicornucopia]

Speculation merely. It is fairly common, and people from 'parallel' worlds seem more likely to meet, but it's by no means universal; some worlds seem to 'diverge' more sharply or earlier than others even if they seem to contain some parallelism in their histories.

[mindovermagic]

"...I mean, in an infinite multiverse I guess it would make sense that some worlds would happen to turn out basically the same way despite fantastic odds against, and given the premise of Milliways in the first place being attracted to superficially similar worlds makes sense."

[onceandforall]

"Yeah, I guess. But this suggests a really - really staggering array of worlds, beyond just 'way, way many'. If it has to get this way at random instead of by some sort of pull."

[mindovermagic]

"I mean, is there any reason for the multiverse not to be literally infinite? Lots of things are infinite."

[onceandforall]

"Are lots of things really? Like... numbers. What else."

[mindovermagic]

"Time? Space within any given universe?"

[onceandforall]

"You could represent that in numbers. You could assign universes numbers but maybe not represent them that way."

[mindovermagic]

"Okay, maybe I just don't get the difference."

[onceandforall]

"Like - with time, you have a system where it's now and now it's some amount later, with space you have a system where there's here and there's a ways off to the left, etcetera, but you couldn't be like 'Bella's world is yea earlier and this much off to the left of Edie's world' in any numerical sense where you could define all the intermediate points along that line."

[mindovermagic]

"Well, no, not like that, but do we really know that there isn't some kind of--order of universes smushed against each other like planes in a three-dimensional space?"

[onceandforall]

"It's not necessarily impossible but it's at least not straightforward."

[mindovermagic]

"I think mostly it seems nonstraightforward because it's impossible to really visualize a tesseract, but I'm not a scientist or a mathematician or anything."

[onceandforall]

"I don't think four dimensions would cut it. You'd need a lot."

[mindovermagic]

"Can't even visualize a tesseract, I should have said."

[onceandforall]

"Yeah."

[mindovermagic]

"It doesn't really matter, for most practical purposes. I'll leave it to the theoretical physicists."

[onceandforall]

"Do they know about Milliways?"

[mindovermagic]

"Well, not yet, but I bet people are going to sit up and take notice when all of a sudden a family of assorted magicians turns up with the Lost Knowledge of the Ancients."

[onceandforall]

"I'm not sure yet how much I'll publicize once everything has gone down. I'm not sure how much will be necessarily public and how much I'll even have the option about."

[mindovermagic]

"I don't think we're probably going to go public with this stuff all at once immediately but stuff's going to get out over time, if we want to get any use out of it."

[onceandforall]

"Makes sense."

[mindovermagic]

"I wonder what-all we're going to get out of this. Well, you'll know at least as well as I will."

[onceandforall]

"What do you mean?"

[mindovermagic]

"Because you're going to get sent home with a tablet of the stuff and you're an actual sorcerer?"

[onceandforall]

"Oh, you mean like - what is the content, not, how will it sociologically affect all the everything."