Dumping the Diadem

Week 1, How do we get rid of it?

Gene:

Why don't we take care of the worldbenders BEFORE we go to this place? Use the diadem to trash their civilization, then go to Weirdland and dispose of it in peace.

Let's not make a habit of genocide, shall we? We've already scragged two whole species. As to going to this place "while" the worldbenders are out of action, you forget we must also deal with worldbenders antedating any attack we make. However, I'd be happy to consider using the diadem to lay some kind of geas on the worldbenders to keep them off our necks in the future (OUR future).

Well, what if we make it so that the worldbenders never EVER existed? If they never existed, then they can't be waiting for us. With the diadem we can get around timelocks, correct? That's what the world- benders want it for themselves. Of course, then all the worlds that they created will die...

(Like Alag's and Lorelei's.)

Please, let's not use the diadem to change the Worldbenders' history. That's a losing game.

Do we have to go to this particular Weirdworld? Can't we use the diadem to create a continuum with the correct parameters, and go there? How long is this diadem manipulation going to take, anyhow? If it takes any time at all, I think rendering ourselves undetectable -- or at least undetected -- by the worldbenders is the only way to go.

Create one? You could do the throwing away in a diadem created pocket. You'd lose the pocket, though. It would take a ... BRAVE volunteer.

It's clear we will have to use the diadem against the worldbenders if we want to succeed at all, much less survive. But I do like the idea of hiding as long as we can. Captain, you said this place is easy to get lost in; is it easy to hide in? Perhaps one thing we should use the diadem for is cloaking itself. We could practice with the diadem detector on board the pantope.

Could the diadem create a decoy "diadem" that we could use to throw the worldbenders off our trail? Then we cloak the real diadem.

That sounds good, too.

Hey! Who's to say that we didn't help the Captain hide the segments in the first place? Or WILL help? (Time travel needs more verb tenses!)

Actually, your idea is similar to the way that I've thought of to get rid of it -- time loop it. I think it's, uh, too late to hide the segments, but we might put the whole diadem where the Captain found it and make sure it runs in a closed circle. I even have a few ideas on ways we might achieve that, should it be a viable plan.

So, Lee, how DID you get it? And I like the idea of making our own pocket universe and throwing it away there. We MIGHT get the "brave volunteer" out of his or her subsequent jam the way you lot got out of the null state and fell into the 19th-century Pacific.

I think that when the Captain said "brave," he meant "self- sacrificing," or "suicidal." If you create a pocket with the diadem, enter it with the diadem, then destroy the diadem, the pocket presumably ceases to be, as does the "brave volunteer." At least, this is what our experience with Turtle World suggests.

Just keeping the diadem in the pocket forever is not satisfactory, since, if we can rescue the volunteer, then the worldbenders can rescue the diadem.

Unpleasant suggestion: I could CREATE a "volunteer," out of ectoplasm. I once suggested this to Chris and Sophie. But I thought that would probably be immoral.

Immoral and unreliable. I think any such creation would have to have free will to be effective. and that would mean it was a free agent we hadn't known long.

Immoral, unreliable, and disgusting. Blasphemous, too, very likely.

(She never did like ectoplasm.)

I said it was an unpleasant suggestion.

I DID mean suicidal. What are your religious convictions? The volunteer will "cease to be." This is not necessarily the same as dying. Theologically, they may be very distinct. If so it's probably better than the worst notions of death and worse than the best.

Oh... Well, then, tell me what you think of this one. Use the diadem to build a pocket universe according to Lee's specifications, one where we would be able to throw away the diadem. Take the diadem to the pocket (creating it in the same act, I imagine), and use it to create a Safe Zone for a while. We defend that against worldbenders, should they show, and DON'T LOOK INTO IT to avoid timelocks. Then we leave, taking the diadem with us and tearing down the world as we go. Then we re-enter, in the Safe Zone while it's defended and throw away the diadem in there.

You seem to have misunderstood the notion of using a self-created pocket universe to throw away the diadem. If you prop the pocket open with ANYTHING, then clearly you can't throw the pocket away and throwing the pocket away is how you throw the diadem away. It's as if you said: "Fill a glass bulb with gas. Release the gas by smashing the bulb with a hammer. Protect the bulb by armor plating it." Either you will fail to protect the bulb or you will fail to release the gas. Either you succeed in propping the pocket open in which case you haven't thrown it away and you haven't destroyed the diadem or you have thrown the pocket away and so clearly have failed to keep it propped open.

I need stronger drugs to figure this one out...

You see, the so-called "weird world" is not A universe or continuum. It is a SET of adjacent continua, a multiverse if you will (and even if you won't). This means that you can't duplicate its characteristics in one pocket universe. You might be able to duplicate it if you were to create a pocket "multiverse", BUT the reason that "weird world" is a cohesive multiverse is due to its physical laws which are determined by (or reducible to) their hyperspatial coordinates. If you want to duplicate the multiversal behavior, you'd have to use similar laws, and what you'd end up creating is more weirdworld. It would be connected to the weirdworld that is already there. Anyway, no, you can't duplicate weirdworld in a pocket universe, your pocket will always open on you if you do. Thus you can't use the weirdworld technique to dispose of the diadem in a pocket. You can use another technique, that of throwing the pocket away with the diadem and yourself with it, but that only works if the pocket was created by the diadem, and only if you do it just right. I'm not volunteering for that, and I'm not asking anyone else to do so either.

Personally, I still prefer time-looping it. It's Artistically Correct.

It may be that, but it is also very risky. There may be a prior history in the way.