Time Colonists

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Acatalepsy
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Time Colonists

Post by Acatalepsy »

Time Colonists


Meta Rating
: 1.6 to 2.2

A time colony is an independent entity in time and space that, while capable of tracing its own origins to a particular flat civilization, is not dependent on that civilization.

Structure and Classification:

Time travel colonies are much closer to full civilizations in their own right; exact details will evolve in a manner much similar to flat civilizations. They do tend to be a bit more regular, as the introduction of time travel allows them to remove the element of surprise from future events, but the growth of ideas, cultures, and technology follows more or less normal curves.

What distinguishes time travel colonies are their origins and how they interact with the rest of the timeline. An Alliance is a group of time travel agencies spread across multiple timelines whose agents interact, and agree to work together, usually for some sort of flat goal. Because most of the personnel in this sort of organization are in fact time travelers themselves, this type of group is classified as Time Colonists, but in fact they are still very close to their Agency Roots. This sort of group only progresses if it manages to extricate itself from flat concerns, and focus on its own survival; possibly policing or guiding Agencies to help ensure its own retroactive growth. If it does not do so, then it runs the risk of being annihilated when a significant number of its founding timelines are rendered improbable.

More conventional evolutions from Agency to Colonist come through the Outpost route. An outpost is an extension of an agency; either all, or more commonly, in part. An outpost is an autonomous agent of a time travel Agency; examples include literal outposts, time ships, expeditions with their own time travel gear, among other things. The most common are based on military and police agencies. Ironically, those Outposts whose factions are going to lose a war do far better than those whose factions are going to avoid war or win a war. This is generally because such “victorious” agencies tend to remain focused on editing the flat timeline, while the losers of the last war turn to their own survival. No longer concerned that their actions will cause their own defeat, the defeated get the last laugh by erasing their opponents, often inadvertently.

The least common form of a Time Colonist is an Ascension or Uplift, two slight variations on a similar concept. This is a flat civilization or time travel agency that has chosen, for whatever reason, to relocate in space in time to somewhere else. The technology and resources necessary to do so are, to say the least, extreme. It is most common for a lesser civilization to make this leap with the aid of a greater civilization; hence the term 'uplift'. Even less common are civilizations that decided to to simply go meta, realizing the physical truth that they could be erased and taking action. This is most common among machine civilizations; who are on the whole less prone to the rationalization biologicals tend to exhibit that prevents them from allocating the necessary resources to go meta.

Technology and Assets:

Time Colonists agents are often equipped with shifter devices or vehicles. This enables them to ensure a more flexible response to temporal threats, but Time Colonists tend to make use of large-scale projectors to move bulk cargo or launch disposable attack drones.
In general, time travel technology gets used more frequently and more flippantly. Major surprises – terrorists, scandals, etc, are almost unheard of, because time travel can be used to stop them, and because everyone knows time travel can be used to stop them. Internal conflict tends to either be subtle and quiet, so completely that it resembles a game of Settlers of Catan more than a game of chess, and long term developments are far more important than short term gains. Or it goes so completely noisy and violent no one is capable of putting together enough information and political will to change things.

The mundane assets of a Time Colony vary, from the resources of an entire advanced civilization, to the resources of a single time ship. There is really no resource requirement on a time Colony; simply that they have the technology sustain time travel without access to the resources of a “flat” civilization.

Role in Meta-History:

Time Colonists are the 'Average Joe' players of meta-history. They are meta enough that they must be paid at least some attention to by higher level metas, who otherwise would simply ignore a similar entity on the grounds that it wasn't going to be there when it go around to paying attention to it. They have a diverse level of technology, more than enough to challenge higher meta individuals and are often embedded in the local time-space deeply enough to be able to significantly annoy higher-meta civilizations.

Time Colonists are the first stable entities on the scale, and as such can continue to have existed for quite some time, either by keeping their heads down, or striking some sort of deal with a higher meta, often to act as a sort of local eyes-and-ears, or some other such arrangement.
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Siege
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Re: Time Colonists

Post by Siege »

It's interesting that these time colonists, who by themselves already possess fantastically potent tools, are still considered mostly average. I can understand why, but it makes one wonder what else is out there.

Thinking about how meta civilizations from various time-lines interact with one another (or with themselves at a prior or later date) still gives me headaches though...
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Shroom Man 777
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Re: Time Colonists

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Ditto, but I like the detail Acatalepsy is giving this setting and how logical his classification of time travel factions are. I like that he's using generalized terms for a more broad encyclopedic classifications system rather than something specific, because due to the TIME PARADOXICAL nature of the verse, specific details totally won't work at all. Seriously, the interplay of all these factions is a glorious mess - it's going to be pretty diverse.

Hey, Acatalepsy, these Time Colonists are basically constantly "on the move", right? They become meta, or something, because they don't stay in one time and instead become temporal nomads. But what about NOT being nomadic? What if a Time Faction instead chooses to stay stationary, but does some weirdo shtick to make sure that their location is temporally-stabilized or that their own planet/solar system/galaxy/universe is detached from the space time continuum so that their locale itself is meta?

Like, I dunno, Gallifrey? Is that what higher meta powers above Time Colonists do?
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Acatalepsy
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Re: Time Colonists

Post by Acatalepsy »

I think I can get some examples; my intention was to have the snapshots show a sort of "ascending the tiers", but I might make some articles as examples.

But the sorts of tricks that are used vary widely. The Best Possible History Project, the guys from Snapshot 2, use a cell-based architecture, where each cell is responsible for creating a series of new cells scattered across time. Each cell is too embedded in its local space to survive any major changes, but the organization as a whole is fairly robust. They use strict screening protocols and various fail safes to ensure cells don't go too far "off reservation". As the name implies, they want to create the "best possible history" and recruit from various time travel agencies to do that. They are heavily focused on dealing with flats, and as such aren't going to have ascended any further, although the far that they are embedded so heavily in certain times and places makes them useful to others.

Another possible model is the nomad approach. This is easier for spaceborne Time Colonists, who can simply shift their habitats and ships anywhen they want, and be reasonably sure that there isn't anyone there. It's generally safer, but has the unforunate problem that you run the risk of running into portions of space-time that are "claimed" and getting either insta-erased (if the claimer is higher meta) or insta-vaporized (if not); without much redundancy, a lot of the same things that will get rid of flat targets will get rid of nomads, although you do generally have to be quick about it - and thorough, if you don't want their potential grandchildren to show up and save them.
Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being. And we can do most anything to rats. This is a hard thing to think about, but it's the truth. It won't go away because we cover our eyes.

- Bruce Sterling
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