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Help with a Plot Bunny
I am in the midst of writing a story and I have an unrelated idea that keeps pushing its way into my head and distracting me. So I thought I would throw it out to my friends to see if I can get it put back in a manageable Plot Bunny box. I think the idea is compelling, but I can't figure out how to turn this into a story. That is why it keeps intruding on my brain while I work on another story. So here it is. I would appreciate your thoughts and ideas:
pensiveWe are often shown in SF that the ultimate intelligent lifeform is composed of pure energy. The hidden premise is that Pure Mind is composed only of energy and thus the ultimate evolution of Mind is a being of pure energy. However, no known forms of energy are self containing. Our only examples of life show that Mind is inextricably bound up with matter. It appears that to have a complex mind you must also have a complex substrate for that mind. That matter substrate, the brain, appears to be more complex and bigger the more intelligent the being. This is not a hard correlation. Several mammals have larger brains that show the same complexity as human brains, but they do not appear to have Human level intelligence. However, the bigger and more complicated rule-of-thumb does appear to be the case most of the time.
We know from advances in computing that smaller and denser circuitry is faster. Exotic fictional future computers like a Matrioshka Brain show this dual energy/matter relationship.
So this implies that if we want to "ascend" to a higher level of consciousness/intelligence then we will need to become physically more dense. This is not an unprecedented observation. The late Robert Forward's Flouwen (surely the coolest aliens in all of SF: surfing mathematicians) would "rock up" by pushing most of the water out of their bodies and hardening themselves into a rock-like lump when they had a particularly difficult mathematical problem to solve.
So what does this imply? If intelligence can make the leap beyond biology then it will quickly seek the densest possible substrate in a Moore's Law-like free-fall towards ever higher levels of intelligence. Ultimate intelligence will be at high density and will conserve its energy as much as possible. It will be very dense and will appear very dark from the outside.
Very dense and very dark. What if the answer to the "where is everyone?" question of the Fermi Paradox and the "why don't we see 90% of the matter in the universe?" question of the missing Dark Matter are the same? What if intelligent life did arise in the Universe before we did and what if that life followed the same path to maximized intelligence that we anticipate for ourselves?
The answer may simply be that the Universe is almost entirely composed of Intelligence. Where are the aliens? They are everywhere. Why haven't we seen them? They are too busy thinking vast thoughts to bother with crude little sacks of chemicals like us. We simply aren't dense enough yet to be notable.
Whatever Dark Matter is, it is ultimately Mind and it fills the Universe.
The Universe Is Alive.
So that's the Plot Bunny. Right now the only idea I have to turn that into a story is to have some University guys talk about it and have them react to the "monster in the closet" idea of the Universe being alive. I'm not happy with that idea.
So my friends, how can I turn this into a story?
1. Children of the Dense Ones need time to learn to densify themselves. In the meantime they get into adolescent mischief visible to humans.
2. The artifacts of the Dense One's ancestors have sentimental value for them. Archeologists could get in trouble for messing with them even if the no-tresspassing sign is too small to read. This could transition a "Where did they go?" story into a "They're here, and they're pissed" one.
3. Other end of the life cycle--presumably they have very extended lifespans but there'll be the occasional degenerative disease. A senile Dense One could wander into a human outpost and cause damage. Eventually the humans will find a way to contain the wandering mini-black hole, which is the cue for protective children to arrive looking for their parent.
4. Pollution could catch their attention. A "warp drive" could affect them and make them try to put a stop to FTL travel (a major plot thread in Schlock Mercenary).
Sometimes all it takes to break writer's block is a phrase. "Dense Ones" is perfect. Can I steal it?
You gave me enough to quiet down the idea. Now I can go finish my story in progress.
I am still open to other ideas on this plot bunny, if anyone else wants to post.
-Tim
Certainly. Glad I could help.
If this idea keeps trying to force you to write it you might want to just go with it. Ringo did that and got a five-book series out of it.
The other story is pretty cool. It is a near-Singularity story about an abandoned robot that is looking for God. I would like to finish it up this month so that I can submit it for the FenCon writer's workshop.
Of course my current list of Plot Bunnies would keep me busy full time for a couple of years if I wasn't so lazy about writing consistently.
And I can sympathize on the writing problem. I've got a pile of outlines that need to be turned into text.
Basic setup #1: There's a SETI-like project that's searching on a micro scale, rather than macro, and detects some of the Dense Ones' communication.
Where it goes from here depends on what kind of story you want to tell. Of the many possibilities, there are two that spring quickly to mind:
1. You're telling the story of the person who first discovers the communication, or the one who translates it into something we can understand. How does this person bring this knowledge to the world? Who tries to stop it? How much arguing must the globe go through before deciding to attempt communication with them? Does someone do it without permission anyway? What if what we overhear are instructions on how to begin the process of changing your species?
I can see a couple of environments that this might begin in. The two most obvious are
1) a project attached to a University (which has the money and space for the machinery, and plenty of bright students and/or grumpy tenured researchers) and
2) an eccentric (and increasingly paranoid) rich person who, as he's gotten older, has started believing that nanotech is more real than everyone is letting on and has built this system (with the help of one of his grandchildren who thinks like he does) to search for where the nanos are and what they are doing.
2. You're telling the story of how the world reacts to the fact that aliens are real. Not only that they exist, but that they are nothing whatsoever like decades of science fiction have lead us to expect. This method could be handled with the usual primary POV character and supporting cast, or could be done as a series of short stories of people all over reacting as each stage of realization, freaking out, acceptance and the beginning of action takes place.
Basic setup #2: You're telling an emergence story, the very beginning of humanity's long road to becoming dense (heh.)
Of course there are any number of ways that this could play out, too.
1. Some sort of Big Global Event happens, after which certain humans are able to sense the Dense Ones.
2. Children start being born with the ability.
After either of these things begins, there will absolutely be fallout due to the Humans 1.0 still being in charge of a world that Humans 2.0 are now living in. And we all know how well humans react to 'different' (which is generally interpreted as 'threatening' or 'dangerous'.)
This kind of story could stretch over any number of books, as it seems quite unlikely to me that going from currently-understood standard human to intelligent black hole is something that could happen quickly.
I guess my questions to you are: what does this bunny feel like it wants to be? What kind of scope is it stretching toward? Does it feel more like a story about specific people, or a story about society? Is it near-future, or distant enough that you can wallow in cool future tech and attitudes significantly different than ours are now?
Also, your pardon if these ideas sound like things that have been done to death.