How do you deal with multiverse shifts?

fatherofcaitlyn

fatherofcaitlyn

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This is going to be one of those weird posts. If you want to bail, do so now.

On with the show ...

I have come to the conclusion that I no longer reside in the same universe I was born in.

If I XOR a certain set of facts I know with the same set of facts of public knowledge, I get a few 1s instead of all 0s.

For the most part, it isn't a big deal. A different lead in a movie or a different score of a football game doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Rather than go into specifics, let's try some examples.

Example 1: Bruce Wayne wakes up. His parents were never killed. There has been no Batman. Superman gets mighty peeved that somebody knows his secret identity. There is no cave under Wayne Estate. The Mad Hatter isn't pulling the strings. There is no Black Mercy. Bruce Wayne still feels compelled to fight evil. Should he risk everything to be Batman in a world getting along just fine without it?

Example 2: A woman was raped six years ago. She put the man away who did it, but the rape was too brutal, the five year prison sentence was too light or the trial was too traumatic and she has decided to murder the man after he is released from prison. The woman goes for her annual pap smear and the doctor mentions how the woman lost her virginity within the last year. The woman reviews her records with the doctor and it turns out there were no physical changes in that area in the last ten years. Furthermore, the rapist has never been in prison and is living a normal life. Does the woman exact her vengeance against an innocent man?

Example 3: Bullseye, Daredevil's nemesis, wakes up sane. He finds himself a pitching coach for a high school team with a standard American family. There isn't a blind man in red pajamas kicking his ass. There isn't a fat mobster offering him insane amounts of money. He has no criminal record, but retains his skills. He liked the life Kingpin's money bought him. Does he abandon his wife and kids to go kill random people with paper clips or accept his stay in mediocre hell.
 
While I am for these kinds of hypothetical situations, what exactly is the purpose of the thread? How exactly did you expect people to respond to this?
 
Hoping each time that the next leap....will be the leap home?

Also, question: You a Vonnegut fan? I'd like to think I know the answer already.
 
[quote name='Strell']Hoping each time that the next leap....will be the leap home?[/QUOTE]

No, you're still the same person. People recognize you as the same person.

[quote name='Strell'] Also, question: You a Vonnegut fan? I'd like to think I know the answer already.[/QUOTE]

I've never heard of him. Google didn't inspire me to learn more about him.
 
You've never heard of Kurt Vonnegut before? I thought everybody know who he was.

----

I think that ultimately you have to live in the universe you are currently in, not in the one you started in. For example in example #2, you may want to get revenge on the rapist but in this universe the rapist could actually be a very outstanding citizen, have a family and being other important things. You can't take revenge out on someone who's only connection to the other universes is their physical appearance.
 
[quote name='fatherofcaitlyn']
I've never heard of him. Google didn't inspire me to learn more about him.[/QUOTE]

Everyone will tell you to read Slaughterhouse 5, but those people can go to hell. Skip on up to the big leagues and check out Breakfast of Champions. [Note to people I invited to go to hell: I don't care what you think about S5.]

I'd be shocked if you didn't at least sort of like it.

Will think about theological constructs a bit later when mind is clearer.
 
[quote name='Strell']Everyone will tell you to read Slaughterhouse 5, but those people can go to hell. Skip on up to the big leagues and check out Breakfast of Champions. [Note to people I invited to go to hell: I don't care what you think about S5.]

I'd be shocked if you didn't at least sort of like it.

Will think about theological constructs a bit later when mind is clearer.[/QUOTE]
Sirens of Titan is better.
 
[quote name='darthbudge']While I am for these kinds of hypothetical situations, what exactly is the purpose of the thread?[/QUOTE]

Everybody engages in certain behaviors because of certain events in his or her life. The behaviors eventually become who you are. They make up your identity for better or worse. If you later determine those events didn't occur, would you still engage in those behaviors.

For example, let's say you have a limp. Why? You were in a car accident. You later determine the accident wasn't severe or didn't happen. Do you still limp? Nobody cares whether or not you limp, but you're not required to limp.

[quote name='darthbudge']How exactly did you expect people to respond to this?[/QUOTE]

Honestly since there is no advantage to lying.
 
[quote name='Strell']Everyone will tell you to read Slaughterhouse 5, but those people can go to hell. Skip on up to the big leagues and check out Breakfast of Champions. [Note to people I invited to go to hell: I don't care what you think about S5.]

I'd be shocked if you didn't at least sort of like it.

Will think about theological constructs a bit later when mind is clearer.[/QUOTE]

Oh, that guy. I've heard of him, but I haven't read his work.

EDIT: Since I haven't read anything of his, the name didn't click.
 
[quote name='adriley313']okayyyy
backing out slowly[/QUOTE]

That is usually for the best.

There was a Twilight Episode akin to this. The guy ended jumping out of a window because he woke up with a hotter wife.
 
[quote name='fatherofcaitlyn']This is going to be one of those weird posts. If you want to bail, do so now.

On with the show ...

I have come to the conclusion that I no longer reside in the same universe I was born in.

If I XOR a certain set of facts I know with the same set of facts of public knowledge, I get a few 1s instead of all 0s.

For the most part, it isn't a big deal. A different lead in a movie or a different score of a football game doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Rather than go into specifics, let's try some examples.

Example 1: Bruce Wayne wakes up. His parents were never killed. There has been no Batman. Superman gets mighty peeved that somebody knows his secret identity. There is no cave under Wayne Estate. The Mad Hatter isn't pulling the strings. There is no Black Mercy. Bruce Wayne still feels compelled to fight evil. Should he risk everything to be Batman in a world getting along just fine without it?

Example 2: A woman was raped six years ago. She put the man away who did it, but the rape was too brutal, the five year prison sentence was too light or the trial was too traumatic and she has decided to murder the man after he is released from prison. The woman goes for her annual pap smear and the doctor mentions how the woman lost her virginity within the last year. The woman reviews her records with the doctor and it turns out there were no physical changes in that area in the last ten years. Furthermore, the rapist has never been in prison and is living a normal life. Does the woman exact her vengeance against an innocent man?

Example 3: Bullseye, Daredevil's nemesis, wakes up sane. He finds himself a pitching coach for a high school team with a standard American family. There isn't a blind man in red pajamas kicking his ass. There isn't a fat mobster offering him insane amounts of money. He has no criminal record, but retains his skills. He liked the life Kingpin's money bought him. Does he abandon his wife and kids to go kill random people with paper clips or accept his stay in mediocre hell.[/QUOTE]

In all instances....I go see a psychiatrist. There is obviously something wrong with me.
 
Mother Night is the correct answer. Hell the movie had nick nolte and John Goodman...Breakfast of Champions only had some guy named bruce willis.
 
[quote name='homeland']Breakfast of Champions only had some guy named bruce willis.[/QUOTE]

That's why you read the book, sport.
 
What has been made in the person, can't be undone. Wayne still has an urge to fight for justice, Woman will have mental issues, and Bullseye really wants to be rich.

Memory wipe would be needed to 'change'.
 
I confront this world's existing batman, and find out that he's really the mad hatter and wake up from the crazy induced dream the Mad Hatter put me in to keep me out of his hair. (btw, that's a real episode of the animated series)
 
The last three posts have been terrible ideas.

1. In a multiverse shift, there is no machine with you living a dream. So, committing suicide to escape one version of the universe may very simply push the person committing suicide into a worse universe or just kill him or her.

2. Do we dare unleash the_grimace to theorize about the multiverse?

3. My strength level is probably around Snapper Carr. It is definitely closer to Snapper Carr than Superboy Prime. Even if I could find the walls of the multiverse, I would die from old age a thousand times over before I could achieve the same effect as Superboy Prime.
 
So... Do you want us to answer the examples? Or the topic title question? The examples are all silly.

Topic title answer: I deal with the multiverse shift as best I can, because I can't change which world I'm living in, I adapt to it.
 
[quote name='Quillion']So... Do you want us to answer the examples? Or the topic title question? The examples are all silly.

Topic title answer: I deal with the multiverse shift as best I can, because I can't change which world I'm living in, I adapt to it.[/QUOTE]

Either or, but try to take into consideration the limitations of a normal person.
 
[quote name='fatherofcaitlyn']Either or, but try to take into consideration the limitations of a normal person.[/QUOTE]

If you want to limit this to real world answers, don't use superhero examples.

Barack Obama if he never moved to Chicago - successful attorney, but no politics.

Capt. Sullenberger if he had never become a pilot - the "miracle on the hudson" didn't happen, and those people died.

Rush Limbaugh wasn't brutally raped by a group of femininst-witch-communist-lesbian-gay men-America haters in his youth, and is actually a well adjusted meteorologist.
 
Capt. Sullenberger if he had never become a pilot - the "miracle on the hudson" didn't happen, and those people died.
Click to expand...

Those people die? Why? No one else could have pulled the same thing off, or what if whoever the pilot would have been that day was 30 seconds later than Sullenberger and thus the near-tragedy was avoided all together because the birds were out of the way already.
 
TV show Fringe is tackling this topic in a pretty interesting way.
One of the main characters, literally a mad scientist, kidnaps his own son from a parallel universe because he loses the son early in life. A scene where he's crying at a gravesite and then moments later speaks to his son is poignant
Maybe you could find out where all the physicists from your local university hang out and buy a round. Become friends, and see if they can build you a portal to go back to your original 'verse.

I'm curious to hear your own personal examples, not the hypothetical ones, of things that have changed.
 
Maybe it's not multiverse shifts, maybe you were a baby time traveler and like Back to the Future and Bishop of the X-Men someone else in fucking about in the past and changing things. You are the contant, you wouldn't change. Everything else is.
 
Haven't read it yet. S5 completely turned me off to 'ole Kurt. Breakfast of Champions was a happy accident.

I'll track it and the other one mentioned in this thread down and give 'em a shot.
 
[quote name='chakan']I'm curious to hear your own personal examples, not the hypothetical ones, of things that have changed.[/QUOTE]

I can think of three minor things off of the top of my head.

First, I watched most of the second series of The Outer Limits when I attended Washington University in St. Louis from 1993 to 1997. No big deal, but I didn't have Showtime. I only had access to CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and KPLR11. I suppose Viacom may have aired the show on broadcast TV at 1AM, but I remember watching several episodes a year before their original premieres. Oddly enough, Poltergeist: The Legacy aired after The Outer Limits, but I didn't care to watch it.

Second, one of my cousins didn't appear until she was 14. The year she appeared I asked one of my uncles who the jailbait was. He told me she was my cousin. After a couple of exchanges, my aunt with two children actually had three children. For some reason, nobody in the family had uttered this girl's name and she never appeared at any Christmas, Easter, Memorial Day, 4th of July or my maternal grandmother's funeral. That or I didn't notice one of my aunts and uncles tending to a third child at nearly 50 events.

Third, an incident involving weaponized smallpox occurred in Vladivostok. About 700 people died from a strain of smallpox with a 70% mortality rate. Here, the incident at Vladivostok was 8 children infecting themselves with some discarded vaccines and another incident at Vozrozhdeniya Island with a strain of smallpox with a 100% mortality rate. I even watched a documentary about the last universe's version of the Vladivostok incident on the History Channel.

...

None of these incidents particularly mean anything to me, but they are reminders that something changed.

The bigger problem is wanting to know if the events that have made me what I am ever occurred. Sadly, the people who might know exactly what happened are the ones most likely to lie.
 
Thanks for the examples. The first one is pretty strange, but possibly explainable. The second, a mysterious relative appearing...maybe the result of a shameful tryst (maybe).

But your third example was chilling. Imagining you watching a documentary about a huge foreign disaster that later somehow changed to only 8 children dying has hairs on the back of my neck prickling.
 
[quote name='fatherofcaitlyn']Nice.[/QUOTE]By the way, I need to make sure I'm on the right Earth. Justice Society or Justice League?
 
[quote name='Gentlegamer']By the way, I need to make sure I'm on the right Earth. Justice Society or Justice League?[/QUOTE]

Neither in this universe. There is a surprising lack of heroes and a glut of minor league villains here.
 
[quote name='fatherofcaitlyn']Universe stuff...[/QUOTE]

Isn't it entirely more likely that your memory is faulty? Researchers have been able to plant false memories under suggestion, and people sometimes remember works of fiction as former lives. It's not much of a stretch to believe that since you enjoy the "Outer Limits" and superhero fiction, both of which are rife with multi-verse and altered perception plot lines, your brain may have misunderstood some of this fiction as stuff that actually happened.

Reality is real and our memories are not.
 
[quote name='Quillion']Isn't it entirely more likely that your memory is faulty? Researchers have been able to plant false memories under suggestion, and people sometimes remember works of fiction as former lives. It's not much of a stretch to believe that since you enjoy the "Outer Limits" and superhero fiction, both of which are rife with multi-verse and altered perception plot lines, your brain may have misunderstood some of this fiction as stuff that actually happened.

Reality is real and our memories are not.[/QUOTE]

Boo! Hiss! You are no fun.

...

If I began a conversation with one of my few friends from college about watching The Outer Limits on Saturday nights while we were in college and he remembered certain episodes, then what?

He hasn't read this thread.

Neither of us had the money to buy Showtime, the ability to steal Showtime or the opportunity to watch Showtime off campus.

...

Let's say you interviewed a dozen avid watchers of second series of The Outer Limits separately. All of them have a reasonably recollection of the episodes. All of them watched the show when it first aired and never afterwards. Review of their cable bills showed 4 of them didn't subscribe to Showtime and they didn't have access to it. Then what?
 
[quote name='fatherofcaitlyn']Boo! Hiss! You are no fun.

...

If I began a conversation with one of my few friends from college about watching The Outer Limits on Saturday nights while we were in college and he remembered certain episodes, then what?

He hasn't read this thread.

Neither of us had the money to buy Showtime, the ability to steal Showtime or the opportunity to watch Showtime off campus.

...

Let's say you interviewed a dozen avid watchers of second series of The Outer Limits separately. All of them have a reasonably recollection of the episodes. All of them watched the show when it first aired and never afterwards. Review of their cable bills showed 4 of them didn't subscribe to Showtime and they didn't have access to it. Then what?[/QUOTE]

I watched it. I didn't have Showtime.

[quote name='Wikipedia']After an attempt to bring back The Outer Limits during the early eighties, it was finally relaunched in 1995. ... the show would run on the pay-tv channel Showtime. The episodes appeared in syndication the following season. [/QUOTE]

How's that?

Perhaps Wikipedia is wrong, and it never aired in syndication. Perhaps we switched universes, and this Wikipedia shifted universes as well.

If there are inconsistencies between reality and your memory, it's more likely that you have a fuzzy memory than reality itself is wrong.
 
[quote name='Quillion']How's that?[/QUOTE]

Pretty good. I could counter with a long response claiming my knowledge of the series is out of synch by three years. Then, you'll counter with something intelligent. Then, BLAH BLAH BLAH and we'll have a Vs. thread and nobody likes those or changes anybody's mind in them.

So, let's assume the multiverse shift is a given.

With that given, does a person affected by a multiverse shift dig deeper to find more differences? With more plot points, a pattern might emerge. Does it happen every X number of days? Does it happen every time a certain three dimensional point is passed Y number of times? Does it happen when interacting with Z object or person?

EDIT: Once the effect can be generated or forecasted, is there value in an attempt to control it?
 
[quote name='fatherofcaitlyn']

Second, one of my cousins didn't appear until she was 14. The year she appeared I asked one of my uncles who the jailbait was. He told me she was my cousin. After a couple of exchanges, my aunt with two children actually had three children. For some reason, nobody in the family had uttered this girl's name and she never appeared at any Christmas, Easter, Memorial Day, 4th of July or my maternal grandmother's funeral. That or I didn't notice one of my aunts and uncles tending to a third child at nearly 50 events.

[/QUOTE]

Sounds like someone had an affair. Hell my own Uncle pulled something similar with one of my cousins , married my now Aunt who already had a young girl but didn't introduce her to the family for years even though they were all in the same house, she just showed up one day.
 
Still doesn't explain the smallpox thing. How often do you notice these shifts, f.o.c.? Does the fact that you've noticed these changes affect your...for lack of a better term..daily equilibrium? Have you ever noticed a static point in time when a shift happened?
 
[quote name='chakan']Still doesn't explain the smallpox thing. How often do you notice these shifts, f.o.c.? Does the fact that you've noticed these changes affect your...for lack of a better term..daily equilibrium? Have you ever noticed a static point in time when a shift happened?[/QUOTE]

The smallpox thing can be defective memory or government coverup. Lots of things are reclassified in the last decade.

I don't notice the shifts at all.

I work in tech support. Remembering something obscure differently than the most other people who don't remember that obscure event at all bothers me less than dealing with my juvenile and mentally-deficient customers.
 
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