Macronomicon
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Chapter 244: 4-D Landmarks
🕑 Added 2024-01-22 18:58:36 +0000 UTCBy the time Gareth had bounced back, Sera was finished being thrown in the air, and Perry guided both of them around the party, generally steering them towards people he knew would behave themselves.
All the while, Perry was digesting what he’d just seen:
Solaris acting weird as hell. The look he’d gotten from the powerful super for witnessing the slip had been so ominous that he’d bailed from that particular possibility.
Perry narrowed it down to a handful of causes.
Some outside force was influencing Solaris.
A Minder capable of getting inside the man’s brain? Solaris was able to literally turn his brain into light, so it was almost impossible.
Almost being the operative word.
Even if someone could get a hold on the photon-brain, could they keep up with it while he was moving at light speed?
Again, almost impossible.
Stress?Unlikely, Solaris seemed to thrive on high-stakes situations, given his former life as a successful drug kingpin.
Perry cocked his head to the side.
Sudden onset dementia? It would fit with the loss of memory and the tremors. But…
Solaris’s body hadn’t physically aged since he’d first gotten his powers, as a hale and hearty man just north of fifty for the last…nearly sixty years. If anything, he’d gotten healthier, seeming to have complete control over his body.
At least enough to fill out that hyperweave.
So it seems like something is causing memory loss and loss of motor control…and it shouldn’t be. Solaris is practically immune to…pretty much anything that could affect him.
A particularly strong curse might be able to do it if they got a piece of him to bind it to, but Solaris was, again, made of light. He didn’t even bleed anymore. Cut a lock of hair and it would explode into light, no longer bound into physical form by his will. Same with blood or…pretty much anything else.
How does he shave? Perry wondered.
Cutting Solaris’s hair would be a dangerous proposition. So did Solaris go off-planet to cut his hair, where the conversion of matter to energy wouldn’t cause devastation in his local area?
Off-topic, but interesting.
Perry cut out what he believed could or couldn’t happen and narrowed it down to only what he saw.
It lookedlike Solaris –the man singlehandedly safeguarding the human race– was suffering from brain damage as a result of an extremely potent curse of some kind.
That was…no bueno.
We need to dig deeper on this. Perry thought, glancing to the side as he saw Gerome and company approach the party from the outer dimensions.
Ah, crap.
The four of them landed in the bodies of their Character Sheets, and Perry tracked them down before they could play any more D&D…or rewrite the world as humans knew it. Six of one, half dozen of the other.
“Hey this isn’t the same city, is it?” Mars asked, the living pile of tentacles glancing around at Chicago laid out around them. “They’re constantly shifting around, and all the cities from this era look the same, so I have a hard time.”
“Nah, this is a bit further west.” Clank said, downing a drink. “The android one.”
“Oh yeah, they arerobots, aren’t they? Neat.” Mars said.
“Oh, Hi Reggie!” Jocelyn said, the ‘sorceress’ inhabited by an unspeakable eldritch being said, seemingly noticing the super whose arm she clung to.
“…Hi?” Reggie said, frowning at Jocelyn’s sudden change in track, not noticing the absolutely mind-boggling size of the creatures moving through the dimensional fabric around him.
It evoked the image of a gerbil in the middle of a nest of oversized boa-constrictors. The creatures were so big the gerbil mistook them for the scenery.
Of course, Reggie couldn’t see that, but Perry could.
“Hey guys,” Perry said, approaching, making sure to keep Sera and Gareth close at hand. “You…doing something here today?”
“You sent them an invite?” Reggie asked, still not quite understanding what was going on.
“If you must know, we’re headed in a ----- direction,” Gerome said, pointing in a direction that hurt to look at.
“This party is a landmark of sorts.” Jocelyn said, nodding. “If you think of causality as an endless oceans of knots of cause and effect, this party is a bigger, more tangled one. So many powerful people meeting tends to spark a lot of different outcomes based on what happened, so we meet up at this knot to all gather at the same place, then we figure out where and when to go from there.
“We’re going surfing in Hawaii in the early sixties,” Mars said, seemingly excited. “I’m even gonna be a human this time ‘round. I’ll be born and grow up and everything. I saw myself on the way by and it looked like a blast.”
“You might wanna steer clear of Pearl Harbor. Perry said. “But, if you want to avoid the war, and being drafted for Vietnam, try being born about…twelve years before America joins World War Two, say…nineteen twenty-nine…”
That’s the beginning of the great depression…shit.
“You know what, Mars? Just make sure that at least one of your parents is a high-paid professional, they’re both kind, and that you’re born a man, and you’ll have an easy ride your first time as a human, alright?”
“Okay!” Mars gave him a thumb’s up.
“If you wanna try hard mode, be born as a girl,” Heather said, butting into Perry’s conversation with the near-omnipotent individuals capable of making life very difficult for everyone.
“Why’s being a girl hard mode?” the walking pile of tentacles asked.
“Too much to go into right now,” Perry said, stifling a sigh. “Just make sure your dad’s a high-paid professional, okay?”
“Why his dad?” Heather demanded. “Why not his mom?”
“Because they’re going to the freakin’ early thirties!” Perry said, shaking his fist at Heather, who danced away with a laugh. “One of these days, Heather! Pow! Right across the kisser!”
“Not in a million years!” she teased as she retreated.
“You two have fun,” Jocelyn commented, snuggling closer to Barrel of Monkeys. the fedora-wearing super looked like he’d just realized there was a radioactive tarantula on his arm and was trying to stay calm. “Why can’t we have fun like that?” she glanced up at him.
“Because you’re an eldritch being of wisdom and power that outclasses me in every conceivable way?” Reggie said, his posture stiff.
“But also,your seventeen-year-old girlfriend.” Jocelyn pointed out.
“You’re a lot of other things too.”
“Doesn’t stop her.” Jocelyn said, nodding toward Heather, who was fading back into the party, cackling. “Please?”
Reggie, A.K.A. Barrel of Monkeys, glanced skyward and unleashed an exasperated sigh tinged with mortal dread before raising his hand.
“If you call yourself my seventeen-year-old girlfriend again, I’ll…give you such a spanking.”
“Kyaa!” Jocelyn, the fourth-dimensional being who effortlessly traveled through time and spent entire human lives to pass the time, flinched away from Reggie’s ‘spankin’ hand’ with exaggerated fear.
“So you guys aren’t staying then?” Perry said, eager to move things along.
He still had Solaris issues to worry about.
“Nah, this is just a good landmark to meet up at,” Gerome said, the dark-haired, self-proclaimed god of angry hornets snagged a drink off a tray carried by a serving robot before downing it.
“Is your grandmother around?” He asked. “I was hoping to erase her entire existence before we move on.”
“Dude, reign it in, you know if you do that, we wouldn’t be here in the first place.” Clank said, flipping through dimensions like pages in a book, his expression contemplative until he seemed to settle on one that he liked.
“Fiiiiine. You guys ready?”
“Let’s do it!”
“I’ll join you boys in a moment.” Jocelyn said.
“I did see you spending a lot of time with that mortal on the way into this timeline,” Gerome said sourly as Clank ripped dimensions open and left his body, jumping through the distortion only Perry could see.
“I’ll catch up, don’t worry,” Jocelyn said, waving dismissively. “There’s a part of me that wants to indulge in him. I guess he’s in touch with my inner seventeen year old girl.”
“Would you please. Stop doing that!? I’m thirty four! It’s not okay for me to be with seventeen-year-olds!”
“Kyaa!”
“Well, have fun, Jocelyn,” Mars said with a slimy shrug “We’ll meet you in Hawaii, umm…”
“Nineteen thirty-three,” Clank offered from the dimensional rip, offering his hand to Mars, who stepped out of his body and took it. A moment later, Gerome did the same, the three leaving Jocelyn there by herself.
Needless to say, only Perry saw this side of the exchange.
“What just happened? Gerome’s ‘character sheet’ said, glancing down at the drink in his hand. “I was just over there…and my religion forbids drinking.”
“The godlike entities that created you for fun passed through our timestream for a moment on their road trip to surfing in Hawaii during the Great Depression.” Perry offered.
“I understood about a quarter of that.” Mars’s Character Sheet, a tentacle monster Rogue said.
“You guys are fine, enjoy the party.” Perry said.
“Will do,” Clank’s Character sheet said, unflappable in the face of weird. Then again, he was a Bard.
“Jocelyn,” Perry said, turning his attention to the last remaining eldritch abomination. “How long were you planning on staying?”
“Oh, until Reggie dies, then I’ll take his soul.”
Reggie tensed.
“I’ve got this lovely place in ancient Greece picked out for us. A quiet little village that goes completely untouched by war and famine for a hundred years. I’ll reincarnate us there. As a ‘thank you’ for being such a nice boyfriend my first time as a human.”
“That…does sound nice.” Reddie admitted.
“And did you know…” Jocelyn leaned over to Reggie’s ear and whispered, Reggie’s eyes gradually widening as she continued.
“Okay. I’m in.” Reggie said. “Kill me now.”
“Oh, you kidder.” She said, lightly punching his shoulder.
“Seriously.” Reggie said.
“Please don’t kill any of my guests,” Perry said. “No matter how much they ask for it.”
“Of course. Besides, I don’t have to wait long, since everyone’s gonna die in the next six months or so anyway,” She said, idly stirring a cocktail with a straw, trying to nudge a bit of blackberry off the bottom of the glass.
“What?” Perry asked.
“What?” Jocelyn asked, glancing up with a frown.
“WHAT!?” Perry demanded.
“What!?” She asked, backing away from Perry’s intensity.
“What do you mean everyone’s gonna die in six months!?” Perry demanded.
“Well, you know…landmarks in the dimensions are usually marked by…”
“You said a lot of powerful people in one place.”
“And then dropping like flies. Yes.” Jocelyn said with a nod.
“You did notmention that part.” Perry said.
“We didn’t? Huh.”
“What is going to kill everyone in six months!?” Perry asked.
“Can’t tell you that and have it do any good.” Jocelyn said.
“Explain.”
“If I told you what the threat was and you prevented it, this would no longer be a landmark, and I wouldn’t be here explaining it to you. It’s what you would call…a Paradox?” She gave him a cheeky smile.
“Paradox is my name. I can handle it.” Perry said.
“You literally can’t. let me demonstrate. Cast the Probability Dodge.”
Perry didn’t bother asking why she knew about the spell and just cast it.
Paradox’s Probability Dodge.exe (2).
Perry’s possibilities split into four.
The four of them deliberately stepped away from each other, creating distance between them.
“Okay, four’s a bit more than we needed, but it’s fine.” Jocelyn said, splitting into four as she followed Perry’s four possibilities.
One of Jocelyn’s probabilities began speaking.
“So, for the purpose of this demonstration, this version of me went back in time and created an asteroid on a collision course with earth that will destroy all life in abou-“
That version of Jocelyn stopped existing, along with the Perry listening to it, disappearing in a flash of light and a splitting migraine.
“What happened?” Perry asked, wincing.
“That version of me never came to your party because you went on to stop the asteroid she warned you about. The headache you’re feeling is the backlash of a possible future twanging like a guitar string. It’s very rare for… the dimensionally impaired to be able to perceive those, by the way. Congratulations.”
“So is there an asteroid?” Perry asked
“Not for you,” Jocelyn shook her head. “Let me clarify. There was an asteroid heading towards Earth at the beginning of our conversation, but because I told that version of you about it, it no longer exists, and in order to maintain my presence here, I by default had to shift to a Landmark, which means that in this possible present, where we’re still talking…there is something else about to happen, and it always has been. If I were to warn you about that something, I would either remove myself from the equation or cause that somethingto wiggle around and become something else that was always going to happen. Again. Time is weird like that.
She thought for a moment. “Or, if nothing at all happened after I told you about it, that would mean there was absolutely nothing you could do and you were doomed to fail and die. Which…wouldn’t really be something you’d like to know anyway.”
Jocelyn shuddered. “That’s never fun.”
“We really are like insects to you, aren’t we?” Perry said, digesting the sheer scope of her perspective. She was literally seeing (and experiencing) all possibilities at once and mix-and-matching dimensions on the fly, causing everything that had happened up until this point to change retroactively as a demonstration of a concept.
It was like the Probability Dodge raised to the infinite power…and including time travel.
“Eh,” Jocelyn shrugged and took a drink. “You’re getting there, Paradox. Your eyes are open. Still clouded like a baby’s but maybe…one day.”
“You would know, wouldn’t you?” Perry asked.
“Not really. Infinite means infinite. I see everyone joining our ranks…and no one. The actions of those of us who ascend…are difficult to perceive. Although surviving the next something would probably be a good first step in your case.
“I’ll bet,” Perry said drily. “Well, thanks for the heads-up, in exchange I’ll give you some relationship advice, on the down low.”
“Oh?”
“Tone it down a bit with Reggie, alright? You’re stressing him out.”
“I am!?” Jocelyn asked, eyes widening.
“He’s been dating your character sheet for a couple years now, so you’re kind of stealing her spot, and weirding him out even more in the process.”
“Oh.” Jocelyn glanced down in thought. “Huh.”
“Missed the forest for the trees, huh?” Perry asked.
“Have you ever been jealous of yourself?” Jocelyn asked. “It’s a strange feeling.”
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Try just talking about it with them in private before doing anything drastic.” Perry said, as he began collapsing the Probability Dodge. “You may know time, but I know humans.”
Perry returned to his primary probability. The one that hadn’t done anything but watch the conversation unfold.
“What was that all about?” Reggie asked. “You guys just stared at each other for a moment.”
“We just had had an enlightening potential conversation that didn’t actually happen,” Perry said, tapping his nose.
Jocelyn nodded sagely. “Indeed.”
Comments
Nicholas Grey
This is causal chain cherry-picking. You see it a lot in arguments between spouses, and historians. You decide beforehand who you want to be responsible, then go up the causal chain until you find a link that blames them, and you declare that THIS was the critical initiating event, and thus the person you selected is magically responsible for everything.
Bladehawk256
That's the thing, they exist in a reality where they both saved everyone and not just to have this chapter. There is an infinite amount of landmarks both being created and stopping to exist at the same time from their point of view.
Nathan Quitugua
So they COULD save everyone if they REALLY wanted to, but they want the GPS point more
雨宿りAma yadori
As I understand it, the sound is unimportant. What is important is the knowledge it conveys, intent to act, and the capability to follow through. Jocelyn knows what is going to happen, but has no intention of stopping it because the way she got there was "something big" is going to happen. After she mentioned the asteroid's death toll Perry decided to stop the "something big" which became "something else big" that Jocelyn followed so that there was no paradox from removing Jocelyn's entire method of arriving.
Hayden Leech
Straight mass right to energy.
Carl Mason
Is that conversion accounting for fusibility of materials? Or is that just straight mass?
Carl Mason
The bird was not composed of light. It didn't release an antimatter explosion as it died. The circumstances are quite different. Maybe he could reuse some of it and alter the rest. It probably can be done, whether he is able to do it without being caught or destroying himself in the act is unlikely.
Mundane
Obviously story comes first always <3 I am very excited for the wild ride ahead of us.
Macronomicon
mostly because we've still gotta keep things 3-D for the audience, and at a certain level of technical accuracy, things are no longer narratively satisfying in any way. ....And because I'm not that smart.
Hayden Leech
If you convert a persons mass into energy via e=mc2 it’s definitely not a large enough explosion to make lightyears of annihilation. Make earth uninhabitable? Yeah. Shatter it into debris? Eh, maybe. A straight matter to energy conversion wouldn’t be THAT devastating. Still bad tho. Now if he just flew through the planet at top speed. Well… that’s the planet.
Mundane
Why are vibrations in the air the start of the casual chain that collapses a timeline? To be close enough for the sound to reach our protagonist's ears the speaker had to move close enough. So the moment they decided to move close to him should be the start of the casual chain. Except you can just keep going back in time endlessly to find the start of the casual chain. Really how does a multi dimensional multi time stream entity even "decide" on anything. If they exist everywhere and everywhen there is no causality. The only way I can resolve this is the speech does not matter, what matters is the dimensional being choosing, outside of our dimensions and timeline, to collapse a specific probability wave in this dimension that just so happens to coincide with the speech to make things nice on the single dimensional beings. I look forward to seeing how our hero lives while still enabling the epic surf trip.
STORRM
it sounds like Solaris whole body is pure energy, would probably destroy the world even if he spent the next 6 months doing nothing before having brain death, really depending on how much energy were talking about if hes packing a supernova even if he fly's away from earth the AOE would still wipe life for lightyears
Charlie
Maybe I'm just as confused as everyone else, but I think it could help to elaborate on exactly how it's possible Perry has agency to stop everyone dying, if Perry knowing how to stop it causes a paradox for the travellers. How does Perry have any hope at all without using some outright manipulation of time? Is it just a 'strong possibility' of their deaths that makes it a landmark?
DerpNugget
Everyone dieing in 6 months? Solaris becoming more unstable by the min… That must be a red herring… surely right? Our favourite Sun wouldn’t just up and decide to kill everyone, would he?
nugitoBambino
i do find it humorous that for this arc Perry will need a literal Paradox. *taps nose while winking*
nugitoBambino
and the same person totally capable of fixing him or giving him the tools to do so
Findell
Naw he has all that equipment he made for the ascendet bird thing that should work on solaris.
RainbowCatTopHat
Honestly that's one of my favorite parts of your stories, the willingness to write something so completely insane, but then have it make complete sense in context. I quite enjoy how utterly confusing out of context quotes from this story are to people who haven't read it.
Hayden Leech
I guess it goes back further. Dave never would’ve given Perry the van if he didn’t feel bad for tearing into Perry about losing his virginity. So when you get to the heart of it. ALL of this happened because Perry couldn’t keep it in his pants. Hope it was worth it NATALIE!
TS
Ooooh. Oooooooh!!! Thank you ...
TS
Man, that was as confusing as hell and hellishly well written. Nice work!
Doodlyboy15
Wait do I enjoy that part of the chapter?
Doodlyboy15
Fun stuff, I like how you basically set the rules for time travel here and stuff while still giving yourself wiggle room. Love it, thanks!
Wolven
That and more emotional. He has acted pretty rashly in the past couple appearances like when he killed the person who did it
Carl Mason
Except he couldn't, well, probably couldn't, magic is weird. It was covered in this chapter that his bio-material is unstable and likely to explosively decompress from matter to photons if removed from his person. The DNA hack that started this mess was from non-Solaris DNA found in his old van. That is the only reason it still existed to be used like this in the first place.
mhaj58
Why didn’t Solaris confide in Perry? Is he insecure or mistrusting? After Perry defeated Replica and rallied himself back from the brink he should have been Solaris first choice for fixing or killing himself. Is the disease making him more paranoid?
Paratus
My side bet is that Perry going exponential is the cause of the tide in the first place once he starts breaking into 4D land and that'll be how Macro ends it. Epilogue: "Suddenly Perry realized he was thinking too hard and stopped, and the tide went away". =P
Andrew
Thank you!
axel jensen
so solaris is degenerating really quickly, that's not good
Hayden Leech
Sad thing is this goes back to Perry. Perry crippled Scrape who stole the van that Dave the Unicorn gave Perry who didn’t know it once belonged to Solaris and found his blood while looking for Perry’s. If Perry didn’t go to the gym after killing Neuron this would never have happened. Oof.
Phnglui mglw'nafh R'lyeh
So bets on Perry going exponential to stop the calamity and in doing so destroys the world unwillingly? Jocelyn being the one to set this in motion as she wants Perry to become an Eldritch being instead of "just" an unspeakably powerful but human archmage.
EDMANGO
I mean Perry *CAN* capture hard-light adjacent things, like the monster affecting Manita, so maybe he can grab a photon from Solaris and use that... somehow...
TimeDrawsNigh
My brain feels like it just got mushed then stretched and put back together.
Macronomicon
the concept of time travel and four dimensional movement just tickles my fancy so i forced you guys along for the ride.
Ungrave
I feel like that's a surprisingly relatable thing to do, that enlightening potential conversation that didn't happen thing.
Findell
I wonder if perry will steal something like a hair or some skin cells from solaris and figure out and cure his problem without him knowing.
Paratus
"Besides, I don’t have to wait long, since everyone’s gonna die in the next six months or so anyway,” lol
