Thursday

[louiselux]

The bonfire party last night had a terrifying array of fireworks and there was much manly activity involved in setting them up and the nailing up of Catherine wheels. Eventually they were let off, and we only had to dive into the street once, so that was okay.

Me and M went to London, looked at some galleries including the Saatchi one in the old GLC building, so I am full of art and my feet ache like flaming buggery (which I've heard really stings). We walked from Paddington to the Embankment through Hyde Park and St James's, where I never knew they had pelicans on the duck pond! I chucked some bits of apple at the assorted wildlife gathered on the banks, and kept an eye peeled for likely MI5 candidates. The amazing thing was, at the end of the day we walked all the way back again.

I'm tired, yet will turn my brain to the next 2000 words, and see if I can get Crowley into a parallel universe. If any of you have any suggestions, please toss them my way and I'll be pathetically grateful.

Comments

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

my feet ache like flaming buggery (which I've heard really stings)

AHAHAHAHA. Thanks for that. You English with your buggery and hilarity. Or are you Irish I forget. In which case I apologize.

[space-angels.livejournal.com]

English, yes. *g*

We are very fond of our buggery over here in Britain. Where I'm from in Nottinghamshire, a common phrase to indicate surprise is to say 'well, bugger me!' Needless to say, this can provoke quite upsetting imagery depending on who's saying it, like if it's your mother, for example.

[mars-manliness.livejournal.com]

Ah, sure 'tis the English that do have the buggery and the flagellation, and 'tis the drink and the fecklessness that we do be having over here in the Land of Saints and Scholars, bedad.

(er. this is daegaer, in case you're wondering . . .)

[idlerat.livejournal.com]

Ahaaha. Yes I did wonder. Irish are from Mars, English are from ... I was going to say Saturn, but surely that's the Scots.

I do associate buggery with the English and NOT the Irish, but I couldn't remember about Louise personally...

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

How to get Crowley into a parallel universe...hmmm.

The obvious thing to do is to totally violate all known physics--but in a science fiction kind of way. For example, one concept that pops up in story after story is the relationship between new spacecraft and the accidental creation of wormholes.

Crowley has a brand-new spaceship. State-of-the-art, as the small dark salesperson said. It's beautiful and gleaming, a fresh new toy for Crowley to play with. Almost as good as the Bentley.

Here's the thing: I don't think he knows how to operate it that well. I rather suspect that Crowley thinks of it as a space-going car. I'd be willing to bet that he knows nothing about navigation, or, perish the thought, what to do when the engines malfunction. (I somehow doubt that he could pull over to the nearest star cluster and call the Interstellar Autovehicle Association for a tow.)

A common motif in popular science fiction is the ability of new spacecraft engines to warp the time-space around them, creating wormholes that are doorways to other worlds, solar systems, galaxies and dimensions. I can think of few occasions in which a spacecraft has escaped from a wormhole that it created, and on those few occasions, the ship was large, powerful and had a very experienced crew...none of which are guarantees of safety, where wormholes are concerned.

Crowley is operating his brand-new, one-being ship all alone. He has no experience piloting spacecraft--I doubt he's even been off planet before. The ship is new and state-of-the-art...which means it probably has all sorts of design flaws and bugs that the builders never dreamt of.

And there's one more factor that absolutely guarantees the formation of a wormhole. Speed.

Going beyond normal speed limits (like, say, warp 14 instead of the more staid warp 3) virtually guarantees the formation of a wormhole. And Crowley, bless him, loves driving fast. The faster the better. I'd bet that he'd floor the accelerator as soon as he got free of Earth's gravitational field.

New, buggy equipment. An inexperienced and untrained pilot. Unbelievable speed. It's a virtual recipe for a wormhole.

Now, I don't expect Crowley to be sitting there and tolerating the wormhole. He is a demon, and demons do try to impose their will on the world around them. He would probably try to will the wormhole into nonexistence.

Which, since wormholes naturally exist as part of Adam's universe, would not work. And Crowley wouldn't understand why.

Now, the thing about wormholes is that if the ship can't break away from the wormhole, it stands a wonderful chance of being destroyed. The pull between the wormhole and the ship's engines is simply too fierce. The only way to preserve the ship, if the ship cannot escape, is to fly through the wormhole.

Wormholes have a tendency not to deposit ships anywhere normal. The closest world will probably be an M-type planet--suitable for Terran life--but the odds are that the world will be a hotly disputed world in some intergalactic power struggle, that the civilization on it will be both similar to and different from something on Earth, that reality beyond the wormhole will be in some significant way twisted or bent, that the pilot/crew of the ship will have to play roles to which he/they is/are not accustomed, and that the wormhole has cast the pilot or crew back in time. Oh, and the wormhole has disappeared, once the ship traverses it. There is no way back to normalcy by that route, and there is no way to call for help. The pilot or crew would be strictly on his, her or their own.

The wormhole would solve two problems at once. First, it would get Crowley onto an Earthlike world in another part of the galaxy or in another dimension. Second, since reality is different on the other side of a rabbit hole--excuse me, wormhole--it would be easy to see how Crowley could be transformed into the angel he used to be, forced by circumstances to play that role, or both.

Does that help?

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Does that help?

Indeed it does! I like the idea of Crowley driving fast enough to cause a wormhole. He's really nothing more than a big kid, with all his gadgets. A super fast space ship would be the perfect toy for him.

I'm torn beween your idea of him going too fast ane causing a wormhole unintentionally, which is plausible, and having the ship specially designed to be able to create them itself, on purpose, in order for the ship to travel to parallel worlds. Why it does that it explained by more plotty stuff at the beginning of chapter 3.

I think you're right when you say Crowley would be absolutely clueless in space. Either way, he'd create the wormhole by accident.

About him not understanding why he can't alter Adam's universe. I don't know. I don't know how much I want to flag up to the reader that Crowley is puzzled by the nature of the universe because I haven't a clue how I'd resolve that puzzle satisfactorily by the end of the story. The only way I could resolve things for the reader would be for everyone to realise that Adam made the universe, not God, and then for the universe to be either winked out of existence or for things to be left as they are. C & A, and probably everyone else too, apaprt from God, don't remember Adam as he made everyone forget what had happened at the end of the book, so I don't know how they'd find out, or remember him. Oh, oh, I do! Of course, one of them goes to an earth where Adam still exists!

Hmm, better go now and ponder this a bit more. Thank you for sparking me off with your ideas. *g*