Did you think I had died? Well not quite. I disappeared there for a while, but I’m still here. It’s been a long summer, one that I didn’t have much control over. There’s a lot that I wanted to get done this summer, but then fate intervened.
What would you do if all of the sudden, you had 3 family members come down with crippling health problems that have them in and out of the hospital for months? You’d give your time and your energy to them, wouldn’t you? I’d like to think that is what a good person would do, and that’s exactly where my summer went. I don’t regret a thing though, because all three of them are back on the mend, and doing quite well I should add, and it makes me happier knowing that my involvement helped to speed up that process.
All this recently has left me with a lot of time to do a fair amount of thinking. And I hate thinking about my family’s health problems…it’s such a morose subject. I most of the time would just clear my head, and try and let my mind wander on its own.
I want to ask the question, “What do non-nerds think about, when they clear their heads?” I don’t know if it’s the same for everyone else, but I found myself going into some very meta-physical stuff. Actually…I’m willing to bet it’s not the same for most people. I feel like we nerds daydream about much different things than do the rest of the general population.
Some of you may know that I’ve been working on a Sci-Fi script that is based about 170 years in the future. A time when we have a much firmer grasp on celestial technology and interstellar travel than we do currently. Now, I don’t have to come up with the technology that will power our future, but I do have to come up with ways to explain how it works. Most other genres of film, like fantasy or horror will chalk up anything hard to explain up to magic, or the supernatural. Sci-Fi (science fiction) films always seek to explain these things in the language of science. The script that I am working on, based in the Mass Effect universe, is no different. Most, if not all of the new tech stuff in this universe can be explained using the “Mass Effect Phenomenon”, hence the name of the game. The phenomenon is the result of the discovery of a new element, not present on Earth. This element, called Element Zero or Eezo(atomic number 0, chemical symbol Ez), when subjected to an electrical current, releases dark energy which effects the mass of time and space around it depending on the type of electrical current it is subjected to. For instance, if Eezo is subjected to a positive current, it increases the mass of objects. This can be exploited to create stronger building materials, creating kinetic barriers(think of them like typical force fields), and creating artificial gravity in starships. If Eezo is subjected to a negative current, it lowers the mass of objects. This is useful in lowering the mass of starships to the point of making Faster Than Light travel possible.
Now, this is all a load of bull, right? Element Zero doesn’t really exist. At least not as we know it. But it’s within that unknown of the future that we reason that a discovery of this nature COULD be possible. And through a little elaboration and extrapolation with a lot of science jargon, I made you believe for a split second that some of that nonsense was feasibly possible. I can see this stuff in my head, I daydream about this astrophysical type stuff all the time. I Google this stuff constantly; if you look in my Google search history, you’ll find stuff like Dark Energy, Black Holes, Event Horizon, Antimatter, Time Travel, String Theory, and other somewhat related items.
I fantasize all the time about time travel and string theory. About how we as 3-dimensional beings can’t interact with time as if it were a tangible manipulatable object. The thing about seeing time would be the ability to act on it and be able to change the future or the past. We don’t possess the biological ability to manipulate time, but we’ve all heard theories about how it may be possible through technology. But what if we did have the biological ability to interact with time? What would it look like? I think it would be a lot like Donnie Darko, where you could see a snake-like trail emitting out in front of and behind yourself, showing your path through time. Like if you’re sitting down, and get the urge to grab a drink for yourself, you could see a trail from your position on the couch leading to the fridge.
It’s hard to think about, right? Perceiving time? I bet I can simplify it for you. Break it down into terms that we are all familiar with…3-dimensional space, where we exist quite comfortably in. Why don’t we think of a single point in time as a dot. Let’s call it 3PM.
Let’s also establish 4PM as another point. What’s the shortest distance between two points, conventionally? A line, so…
That’s a line…a visible line bridging two points in time, like you sitting on the couch to you searching through the fridge. If we could see that line though, see what our future has in store for us, even if it is the immediate future, would there be the urge to interact with it? It’s like someone telling you what you are supposed to do, it’s an order. “Go to the fridge, and get a drink.” Once we’re aware of that defined path, wouldn’t there be the urge to deviate from that path? “Go to the fridge, and get a drink.” “No, I’d rather go to the bathroom, and take a pee.” To just see that timeline, in my mind, is to introduce the choice that elevates you beyond the perception of time in the 4th dimension, to the interaction with it in the 5th dimension. Stay with me now…if we think of that choice, that interaction with your line as existence in the 5th dimension, it can be illustrated like this…
At a micro level, we have decided to change our fate of getting a drink, to a fate of going to the bathroom. That could also be extrapolated out at a more macro level to show you in high school, and your fate of being…let’s say a lawyer, to changing your fate and being…an actor instead. Same thing, larger scale, right? Right. As I said before, it’s just an exercise of choice and free will. But…we do this all the time, we have free will. I’ve personally changed my mind on my career choice several times. We are already interacting on the 5th dimension. The thing is that we can’t see time, as I described, and because of that, we can’t see our movements in higher dimensions. I was at one point in high school, and back then, I saw the other point in the future with me as a storm chaser. I have since deviated from that point to being on my way to being a film maker, or a musician, or an editor. It is a deviation on the line of time that we perceive as just an everyday choice. Just because we can’t see it doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
Now I could go on for hours, leveling up to the 6th, 7th, even up to the 10th dimension, talking about alternate selves, other peoples alternate selves, alternate realities and even alternate universes…in laymen’s terms! How can I do that? Because I think about this crazy stuff all the time, and I’ve needed to make sense out of the technical mumbo jumbo so that I can understand it for myself.
But, I’m constantly plagued with an undiagnosed case of A.D.D. I mean, aren’t we all? I can’t think about one thing for very long without the urge to branch out and think about something completely different, or merely just tangent away and think about something subtly different.
For instance, when thinking about a 10th dimensional state of existence, and how we have a hard time perceiving dimensions higher than ours…don’t we think of God the same way? (For those of you that do, I mean.) Don’t we all think of God as this all knowing, all powerful being that is far beyond our understanding or comprehension? Could God be a 10th dimensional being, or The 10th dimensional being…interacting with us in ways that can’t fathom as our 3 dimensional selves. Think of a being capable of managing and guiding you, through all points of time, through all versions of your time…everyone in every version of their time in this universe, in all universes, through all different physical properties and initial conditions, through infinity. It’s unfathomable, right? Well, I’ve got a lot of time to think.
Did I just tie God and science together in a way in which the two of them agree, and possibly even make sense? Yep.
What about antimatter? Supposedly created alongside matter at the starting point of the universe. (Big Bang/Let there be light, same difference to me.) Antimatter and matter can’t coexist together unless they are separated by…well…vacuum. That’s why it doesn’t exist on Earth, because we have all this air that it can annihilate with(and I do believe that is the scientifically accurate term.) Why isn’t there more antimatter out there, or why isn’t there a lack of anything at all? Well, the world ain’t perfect, so why should the universe be? I figure that upon creation, there was simply more matter than antimatter, and the matter that didn’t annihilate is simply what we’re left with.
I could go on, and on, and on…but at some point, this post must stop. So I shall leave you with a question. After hearing all of this…am I a genius? Am I a wizard? If you said yes, I think you give me way too much credit, but thank you all the same. No, I feel the reality is that I’m just a nerd, with an active imagination and thirst for strange knowledge. I like to think outside the box…the box that is itself a single frame of time in this movie of life.
So…what do you daydream about?
Keep your heads up, your minds sharp, and your hearts open.
– The Outlaw
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