A number of years ago, I started a story (that’s still in progress). It takes place in the far future, but a number of significant events in the backstory take place later in this century.

In one part of the backstory, people got fed up with government officials, and started killing them off. Like this.

And, there are other things, that I don’t want to mention because it may spoil the plot.

Am I a prognosticator?

Or, maybe what I visualize comes true, in some way? In that case, what do you want me to visualize for you? Maybe this should be a paid service. Send me $25 and I’ll visualize something for you, just about whatever you’d like. I cannot guarantee that it will come true, but I will visualize it for you. Money is non-refundable; this is for entertainment purposes only; and, all that sort of thing.

Plus, I’ll write up a little story about it and post it. Okay, the price is going to $50 now. These are value-added services.

Let’s break it down:

• Basic Visualization Service: $25
  You tell me what you want and I’ll imagine it happening. And, as I mentioned, no guarantees. No physical action will be taken on my part. This is just visualization, not actualization.
• Literary Visualization Service: $50
  You tell me what you want, and I’ll imagine it happening plus write a short story about it. About 500 words worth. Give or take. Same disclaimers apply as with the Basic Visualization Service. I retain the copyright to the story too. But, you’ll get a linkback when I post it on my blog.
• Decorative Literary Visualization Service: $250
  Same as the Literary Visualization Service, except that I’ll print out the story on some nice paper and frame it. And mail it to you. Offer limited to customers within the United States.

As I mentioned, no guarantees. So, the $25 Basic Visualization Service is probably pretty much useless. You might as well go to the $50 Literary Visualization Service instead. At least you get something out of it.

Offer expires February 28, 2008. Yes, I know there are 29 days in February this year, but I’m taking the day off.

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How about I call it by its name?

And, how about I post a bit of a teaser?

And, how about, despite these revelations, you’re still a bit in the dark, eh?

Only a handful of people, including Mike who’s sworn to secrecy, know more details about this project. And none of them know the full details. Muhahahahaha! Oh, and Doug knows a bit about it too, but he’s probably forgotten by now.

But, this thing will really rock. Right Mike? I’ll allow him to answer that question, so long as he does so without specifics.

And, yes, it really has been since 2005 that I started working on this project.

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Or, if you’re not “old school,” I guess you might call it SpecFic Saturday.

Anyway, here is a selection of links that will help inspire some creative thinking of your own.

Or cause your brain to explode.

Either way, proceed with caution and note that I am not responsible for the content of these links.

1. Creative Inspiration from Einstein et Alia. Did you know that Albert Einstein authored 75 books of poetry? Wait, maybe that was the Einstein of a parallel universe. I’m so confused.
2. 75 Words Every SciFi Fan Should Know. And each of them was a title of one of Einstein’s books!
3. How to Find the Weirdest Stuff on the Internet. Or eBay.
4. Time May Not Exist. It’s just a figment of your imagination.
5. Time is But a Figment of Our Imagination. See!?
6. Parallel Universes Confound Us All. Not Einstein!
7. Our Violent Universe. And you thought our world was violent!
8. How to Live Forever. Sign me up!
9. Five “Bizarre” and Discredited Theories. But, one day, California probably will be an island. What’s left of it, anyway, after “The Big One.”

Have a Happy Saturday! And, whatever you do, please do try not to blow up the universe. Thanks.

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We often wonder what an alien civilization, were we ever to encounter one, might look like. Perhaps we might glean some idea from other “civilized” species on Earth.

Take ants, for example.

Take a look at this video, which shows the excavation of an ant colony. You can’t help but notice it almost looks like something from an extraterrestrial science-fiction movie, yet it’s found right here on Earth!

Next, at the end of the same video, you can compare that with a smaller ant colony that lives inside an acorn seed!

All in all, some pretty interesting stuff. And, if you’re a science fiction (or even fantasy) author, there is no doubt something you might find useful in developing your alien cities.

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Here is a further refinement of the teaser image for my “secret project.” The new panel you see is not in position. It will replace the “old” panels. More on this in a moment. I placed it where it is simply for comparison.

As I mentioned previously, I was having some problems between exporting from Silo and importing in Carrara. I got some help from the Silo forums, and, well, I was more or less modeling the thing wrong. Not so much wrong, but rather not the best way to do it!

So, I will need to remodel the objects. I started with the panel. While redoing it, I took the liberty of refining it, which I wanted to do anyway! As you can see, the frames are thinner than the previous version. This is more like what I had originally envisioned. Of course, this too is subject to change!

The colors, too, are now closer. The frame is more of a solid black. The old frame was rendered using an iron texture, but that had too much reflection, I think, and resulted in the mottled look. The newer version is better and more along the lines of my target.

The bottom panel is closer in color too, with the light brown color. The upper panels are closer, but still not quite what I am aiming for there. Too much reflection, and not enough transparency. The trick is for it to be white with some transparency and no reflection. But, I haven’t dabbled too deeply into achieving that quite yet.

I have not yet redone the support beams.

Thanks to Mike, Mike, Pete and Mike for your comments on the previous image.

I welcome any comments on this new one, especially any ideas of what style this reminds you of, if any, and so forth.

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On Friday, I posted a very preliminary teaser for my “secret project.” Above is a new, extended version, this time rendered larger for Pete’s sake. (Like he’s never heard that before.)

On Saturday, after knocking out some client work, I did a little more modeling work for this. I modified the original panels to add a bottom section. I also added some additional structures and flooring. Colors subject to change, of course, but this is closer to the intended target.

On second thought, not just the colors are subject to change!

As I’ve mentioned previously, I am modeling in Silo 2 and rendering in Carrara Pro 5. Carrara doesn’t support the Silo format, so I have to export from Silo into a different format. For some reason, some portions don’t import properly into Carrara. Not sure where the problem is yet; I will have to do some research to find out.

Comments welcome.

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Here’s just a little teaser for my secret project. The only thing of consequence is the set of panels in the middle. Everything else is just a room scene that I used to quickly put the panels in place and see how they look.

I modeled the panels completely myself. They need some tweaking, but overall they seem to be pretty good. Colors may change. Of course, the whole thing may be subject to change, as this is just some preliminary work. I’ll have to see how things will all fit together as I build them. I have a rough model in mind, but I don’t have Tesla’s capacity to really build them in my head, so things are subject to change as they are brought forth from the mind into some tangible (even if electronic) form.

Feedback and thoughts are welcome, since they will help me determine if I’m meeting my design objectives.

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Does anyone know of any examples of dimensional transcendence, where things are bigger on the inside than on the outside?

The most notable example is the TARDIS in Doctor Who. An episode of Star Trek: Enterprise also featured a timeship that was larger on the inside, but one of the producers of Enterprise was also, reportedly, a Doctor Who fan.

Can anyone think of any other examples? It can be from science fiction or fantasy. Of course, if you know of a real life example, I’ll take that too.

Thanks!

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While there are certainly benefits to getting things done in an expedient manner, especially since time is literally running out, there are also benefits to waiting.

For example, my secret project (last mentioned here) has been made better (hopefully!) by the passage of time. For example, there was a particular story that I came up with that was a pretty good concept, I think. The story came out of current events and then I gave it a SciFi twist with a bit of a moral dilemma.

Originally, that was going to be a standalone story. It would contribute to character growth and, I had hoped, be a thought-provoking tale. Had I completed this whole project back in 2005, that’s all it would have been.

But now, with the passage of time, I think I have figured a way to work it into the overall storyline such that it is not a completely standalone story. The added benefit is that it will add to character growth, because once they learn how that one adventure fits in, it will have an effect on them. So, there will be the initial dilemma from their first experience, and then a follow-up impact later on. A nice, time-delayed double whammy!

And I think that’s a good thing. It brings the whole storyline into a tighter plot. Not that standalones are bad or anything, but it’s nice to have something that will payoff later.

Do you have any projects that have benefited from delays? Feel free to share them in the comments.

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Perhaps our universe is nothing more than a tiny speck of dust in the multiverse.

Or, what if there is just a binary universe, where one expands as the other contracts in a never-ending cycle? One universe’s Big Bang would be the result of the other universe beginning its Cosmic Crunch. Would we be able to jump universes when the two reached equilibrium, thus allowing civilization to endure perpetually?

It could also be that there are many parallel universes. Imagine that at every point where you were faced with making a multiple choice decision, one of you made each choice. At that point, the universe splits into two or more parallel universes. Now, combine that with the decisions made by the billions of other people on the planet, as well as animals. Maybe even plants. And, if there is life on other worlds in our universe…

Many bloggers too are probably familiar with the basic concept of “The Secret” or The Science of Getting Rich, that is, that the mind influences the universe to make manifest our thoughts. Note I wrote thoughts rather than desires, as we may desire riches but if our thoughts remain focused on our lack thereof, then our thoughts are made manifest and not our desires, at least according to these sources.

Perhaps it is a matter of simply choosing which universe in the multiverse that we live in. Perhaps it is with our thoughts that we can choose to experience the universe in which we are happy rather than that in which we are not. Perhaps people that we deem crazy because they see or experience things that we do not are actually seeing things going on in parallel worlds?

Could it be possible too that the power of our thoughts extend to ourselves in multiple universes? If we choose to think a certain way here, does that provide the encouragement for ourselves to think the same way elsewhere? If, when faced with a decision, our thoughts are so focused, will we then only make one choice among a multitude of options and, thus, prevent the universe from splitting further?

And, with less focus, does that increase our indecisiveness, which in turn causes us to make all the decisions and, thus, fracture the universe into one or more universes?

Imagine a stream of water. Each time that stream is split off, it weakens. Keep splitting it more and more, and the stream eventually becomes nothing more than a dribble. The same with a video signal. The more you split it, the weaker it becomes. Does the universe work the same way?

Will the continual fracturing of the universe eventually lead to its dissolution? If the universe splits into two or more parallel universes, does that mean that the matter and energy are also divided? Perhaps we are unable to notice it, as it happens all the time and at such a level that it is not something we can perceive.

If that is the case, then certainly, eventually, the universe will have divided to the point where it is nothing more than a mere whisp of what it originally was. Perhaps then we can only hope that there is a binary multiverse, such that all those whisps become contracted back into one as the other multiverse begins its Big Bang. (In other words, we could be living in a binary multiverse with two universes each of which would divide into multiple parallel universes, but be equal and opposite to each other such that one multiverse is expanding while the other is contracting, similar to the binary universe system I described earlier.)

Then, if our thoughts can shape the universe in any form, whether by direct manipulation in the form of manifesting our thoughts or by focusing our thoughts such that we make consistent decisions and prevent the further division of our universe into parallel universes, then can our thoughts also cause the universe/multiverse to reach equilibrium? Can we prevent the Cosmic Crunch?

Or, look at it another way. What if there isn’t a binary multiverse? What if this is the only one there is? What if there is no repeating Big Bang-Cosmic Crunch cycle? What if the universe/multiverse just continues to expand and divide forever, until it has expanded and divided to the point of relative nothingness? If that is the case, it is certainly more important that we reach some level of equilibrium so that we, or at least civilization in general, can go on forever.

Can our thoughts reign in an already divided multiverse? Can we focus our thoughts and beginning making consistent decisions in a way that would hold all the universes together in their current form, without further divisions?

What if civilization discovered this to be true? What if we were certain the universe was going to end if we did not change our thoughts, and the thoughts of all those yet to come and all those in the multiverse? What if we could travel through parallel universes and try to correct things that went wrong, if not necessarily reversing them, but bringing them in line so that the futures would merge?

Imagine that you could take two separate histories and merge them into a common future. Imagine you had a history where the Union won the U.S. Civil War and another where the Confederacy won, yet you could manipulate the two worlds such that in both of them, the United States was one nation again to fight in World War I and World War II. Would the two parallel universes eventually merge back together? Which history would the people remember? Or would they simply forget and decide it doesn’t matter anymore, and leave the debate to the historians?

What if you were that civilization that went about and did that? You went around to different worlds and tried to set the course straight. You did everything you could to help ensure the ultimate survival of the universe, to reach and maintain a sustainable state of equilibrium.

You would have to go to the turning points in history, the points at which many people were faced with many decisions, and you would need to try to steer them in a common direction, while minimizing their own indecisiveness brought about by meeting you.

Now imagine that such a people had visited your world, and motivated you to not just make consistent decisions in your own life but to also join in their cause to save the multiverse?

But then they vanished without a trace and no one ever heard from them again. So, you spend your life searching for them, only to wind up old and dying on a parallel world without ever having found them.

Such is the tale that the dying man and his android companion told you. Now, what would you do?

And, that, my friends, is the backstory of my secret project. Below you will see a photo of my notes, artwork and other materials for the project:

That doesn’t include many files that are on the computer. I plan that this will be the year that I will finally (again) begin to get moving on this project.

Hope everyone’s year is off to a great start!

Believe. Act. Achieve!

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