Portal Properties

Portals are weird artifacts of some prior existence - probably humanoids since the size, shape, and places they go are the kinds of places that humanoids would like to go. But, they defy current systems of logic and reasoning, mathematics, magic, and faith to explain their apparent lack of a pattern, characteristics, or consistency.

Part of this is explained because ports are both artificial and natural. Artificial portals require a 'key' (a THz frequency oscillator at JUST the right value - to 18 decimal places!). 'Natural' and artificial portals can be triggered by individuals having some innate extrasensory characteristic (maybe some ESP variant of the 'THz' key - they can 'send' at just the right frequency to trigger a portal.

Zinn is able to pass thru a portal because she is a 'natural' and can speak to the Sentinels.
Other 'non-ESP' or not carrying a 'key' can walk right thru the portal and not trigger anything - nor is the portal detectable by any human known technology in the Nexus timeline without one of the other capabilities.

The creation of the natural portals is a mechanism unknown. Maybe an ancient race. Maybe cracks in the creation of the universe (doubtful because they aren't random - they go to planets). The artificial portals are 'Mark 2.0' or some other races creation that happens (maybe?) to overlap on the Nexus. Maybe the '2010 Probe Exchange' met the 'Stargate commons' met the 'Contact exchange' met the 'B5 Hyperspace'.

Portals deactivate certain levels of technology going thru them. A hammer will go thru. A wholly mechanical 9mm goes thru. A blaster doesn't work on the other side. Data storage devices that work on charge coupling, electron spin, magnetic domains, stored electron voltages, delay lines, or capacitance all fail. Devices that work with reflective 'pits' are good down to 500 nm (about 15% smaller hole size than current generation Blue-Ray DVD's). The faint deep blue aura around someone coming thru a portal may be due to the fact that electronic device semiconductors show many many 50 nm holes when examined closely after going thru a portal. A guess, never proven using any instruments since they fail to show what people 'perceive', is that the 350nm color is due to some radiation/static effect in a portal that makes junk out of so much electronic gadgetry. Thus a gadget using Super Blue Ray type technology, with huge amounts of additional coding, may carry about 1TB (user data) thru a portal. Denser than that simply fails due to some unexplained value changes inside the portal. For like reasons, cybernetic intelligences, AI's, and Hithiker's Guides to the Galaxy simply don't transport thru a portal. Maybe gods made them that way. The problem is, of course, that you may end in a place with nothing to 'read' your user data storage device (that is roughly the size and shape of a very thick DVD).

Portals can end up in space (floating unattached to a planet), but most of the time they materialize in some fixed relationship to their planet. Unfortunately, the planet may move/tectonically migrate such that after some eons of time the portal might be inside rocks, above or below the ocean, next to a building, or be blocked by debris.

Powered armour, protective suits, and special gear don't really protect you in a portal. There is no 'time interval' subjectively going into a portal, nor is there any 'partway thru' experience/possibility. Once a 'qualified object' breaks the plane of a portal it is instantaneously (subjective to the person being transported) pushed out the other side of the destination portal. A "shwoup' sound may be heard as the air rushes into where the person used to be. The actual time (objective to the starting end) measured by going thru and coming back (an immediate turn) may be up to 1500 minutes each way. People going thru a portal, even though not experiencing any time, need to 'cover up' or they come out with faint skin hemorrhages like they had been exposed for some moments to a very high vacuum. These behave on people like slight burns (or in the case of eyes, loss of vision for a short period due to blurring and tearing in the eyes).

People didn't create the portals - they stumbled upon them and still don't really know how to work things. If the Time Patrol agents from the advanced timeline really know - they are talking about it.
There is a mass limit going thru a portal. Maybe the inventors/discovers were health fanatics, or very small, or didn't need to carry much, but a mass limit of about 250 kg (550 lbs) limits 'shipping' thru a portal. Anything bigger than that just goes along - ignored by the portal. Anything small (like the atmosphere or snow or blowing dust/germs) doesn't go thru either (too small or something). So, a portal is 'germ proof' to what's on the other side. A portal is temperature, heat, light, vibration, chemically, and penetration ignorant of its two sides. Nobody knows why. If you don't have a key or the right brain, then you just pass right thru a portal interface plane like it wasn't there. So there's no visual sign or physical sign that a portal is there until the right key or right brain happen to break the plane of the portal. Only the feet of a sentient can go thru - so rolling wheelbarrows of stuff thru is out. You can also go thru in mid-air or falling. For unknown reasons most portals are aligned with their 'faces' 90 degrees perpendicular to the planetary face ('doorway alignment') But not every one. Most portals are parallel with gravity on their planet (no falling out at 30000 feet to fall) at or near a surface (or what was a surface probably). Portals keep their alignment with a planet (but the 'doorway' edges may go into any colinear directions - no curved portals).

Oh, and something does happen to 'biologicals' clinging to a person going thru the portal. Sentient beings hand-in-hand will go thru, but dumb animals (like a wolf hanging on a person) comes out dead on the other end. Bacteria on the skin surface sometimes die, and sometimes not (due to the length of objective time in a portal maybe?). Leeches, ticks, flies, mosquitos, and all the sorts of skin parasites die - but tapeworms might not. If you stumble out unplanned onto the Nexus the sentinels make sure you get 'cleaned out' so that you aren't a hazard to the health of the Nexus. Nobody living knows how this works - more of the Time Patrol's Timeline 'magic'. The portals can somehow differentiate between a domestic cat, a tiger, and a Sentinel. The portals don't let chimps, baboons, Neanderthals, or Cro-magnan thru. The portals can't send biological specimens back very easily thru the portal. The tissue samples from a microtome show up as degraded. The biological fluids come out in a soupy state of proteins and aminos without form. A baboon with a 'key' in its paws just bounces off a portal - not enough something, maybe brainpower. A child with a key might, or might not, go thru. An alzheimers patient won't go thru. A psychotic might or might not go thru.

Portals aren't physically large either - about two meters tall and one meter wide (about) with some kind of 'edge' that you can 'richochet off the edge into the portal'. On he other hand - if you collide with them 'edge on' there is no thickness - even a key holder or esper will talk straight thru without being affected. This leads to an interesting conundrum with portals - they can be 'right next to something' or even co-planar and no-one knows they are there. Some portals are smaller and rounder - you can crawl thru, but not run.

Portals are not 'time synchronous' as in you can leave a planet at high noon and end up at deep midnight on the other end. This also extends to changes in temperature, oxygen (up a mountain), pressure (down in an ocean), atmospheric content (destination planet is only 5% oxygen now). Time rolls on at each of the portal at the same rate (entropy is maintained), but the travel time of up to more than one day can be used as a 'person delay line' storage device for your consciousness.

Portals aren't distributed around the nexus in any pattern anyone can perceive. You might have one in the middle of hundreds of miles of no others, or in a tight geographic cluster of 20-30. Portals are thought to exist around the space of the nexus planet, but no one has ever bothered to try and check. Portals may be inside mountains, hidden in jungles, or under water on the nexus. Nobody knows. Portals can be closed by Sentinels and cannot be used (locked out somehow?) Nobody knows how they do it. Some portals are locked 'from the other side' and you can't go in them even with a key or esper.

Portals are 'full duplex' (you can go instantaneously thru from each side at a time). Portals may physically move, but never change destinations. They are linked to two, and only two, places in spaces. Although, some portals may become 'unstuck' and end up at a different point in the same destination space and time. With no pattern to the variance and no warning that this could happen. One theory is that portals in space became unstuck somehow

quote Churchill mystery enigma

"a riddle wrapped in mystery inside an enigma"

-- Winston Churchill, commenting on Russia

Nexus Timeline

-40 Trusci world threatened (1.3 billion years ago)

-30 Nexus founded/created (1.3 billion years ago)

-20 Nexus abandoned (1 billion years ago)

-10 Trusci transform

0 Nexus Rediscovered (200 years from now?)

10 Black diamonds found (0+ 10)

20 Silicon DNA infection (0+ 12)

20

40

50 Sydney arrives /E2 (0+14)

60

70 Normal human life extended (0+16)

80

90

100

110 Hadrian becomes Emperor (0+150)

120

130 Hypatia arrives (0+250)

140

150 Hadrian abdicates / Hypatia is Empress (0+275)

160 The Trouble with Trusci (0+275)

The Bible, Genesis: 1

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And God said, Let there be light ...
-- The Bible, Genesis: 1

Clark, Arthur C.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is his total from Magic

Jaynes, Julian

The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

by Julian Jaynes

http://deoxy.org/alephnull/jaynes.htm

Socrates

Before you asked me, I understood just what time was. Now I'm not so sure.—Socrates

Trusci

The Trusci are ancient, predating humanity, as we know it, by eons.

Now, the Trusci are incorporeal beings existing in a matrix of pure energy. But that was not always the case.

When the primary star of the Trusci home-world was about two reach the end of its natural life in cataclysmic style, they began the search for an alternative.

The Trusci tinkered with biological specimens on hundreds, perhaps thousands of planets.

Key Trusci discovery: A key finding of the Trusci was that Mind and Brain are not the same thing. They are both physically and conceptually different.

• Brain is physical, biological, chemical or bio-mechanical.

• Mind is non-physical consciousness, data and programs (which are really just more data) operating on a bio-mechanical processor.

• Note: The Brain is a multi-threaded parallel processing machine suited to approximation and solution of highly complex, multidimensional problems. Silicon-based computers, on the contrary, handle relatively simplistic problems with mind numbing speed.

while looking for a new home world.

sources of dynamic conflict

1. Quest.

2. invaders.

3. Power grab.

4. mystery.

http://www.floridawriters.net

http://ask.yahoo.com/20070305.html Dear Yahoo!:

I've heard there are only seven basic story plots. What are they?

Alena Geneva, Switzerland

Dear Alena:

For all you writers struggling to come up with something original -- it's not your fault. There are only so many ways to construct a story. Writers who believe there's only one plot argue all stories "stem from conflict." True enough, but we're more inclined to back the theory you mention about seven plot lines. According to the Internet Public Library, they are: [wo]man vs. nature [wo]man vs. man [wo]man vs. the environment [wo]man vs. machines/technology [wo]man vs. the supernatural [wo]man vs. self [wo]man vs. god/religion Ronald Tobias, author of "Twenty Basic Plots" believes the following make for good stories: quest, adventure, pursuit, rescue, escape, revenge, riddle, rivalry, underdog, temptation, metamorphosis, transformation, maturation, love, forbidden love, sacrifice, discovery, wretched excess, ascension, and decision. Overlap must be common under this theory. For example, "Rocky" is a story of the "underdog," who goes through a "transformation" and falls in "love" while on a "quest." We're not sure, but we think "Dude, Where's My Car?" touches on at least 16. So are there really a limited number of stories? Maybe, maybe not. One thing is for sure, though -- writers will always find new ways to make 'em interesting.

http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art37977.asp

Plot Lines

Plot Lines

You’ve probably heard someone say, “That movie had a good plot,” or “I loved the plot of that book.” Short stories, novels, musicals, and oral stories all have plot lines.

What is a plot line? Plot line is a literary term referring to the sequence of events in a story. It is the structure of the story. Most stories have five elements:

1. The exposition. The exposition gives the reader background information about the story, such as the setting and the main characters. It sets the tone, and lets the reader know what type of story to expect. While reading the exposition, the reader can generally tell whether this is going to be a funny story, a historical story, a Western, a fantasy story, or another type.

2. The rising action. This part of the story often shows the main character involved in a struggle of some sort. He or she experiences problems and complications.

3. The climax. The climax (or crisis) is often short, but it is the most exciting part. The main character’s struggles come to a head.

4. The falling action. The falling action occurs as a result of the climax or crisis.

5. The resolution. The resolution (or denouement) is the conclusion of the story.

It is most simple to learn about plot lines right after reading an exciting short story. A story that can be read in one sitting is ideal because the five elements can be identified right after reading the story. Practice makes identifying the elements easier.

If you as a teacher or parent need some guidance in teaching about plot lines, may I suggest the Lightning Literature series. This is a wonderful set of lesson plans published by Hewitt Homeschooling Resources, and they walk you through every step of teaching the elements of literature. Their 7th grade guide, in particular, has interesting lessons on identifying the plot line. Using the short story “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” by Rudyard Kipling, students are guided in finding the five elements. “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi” is a good choice for this exercise because it has a strong structure with each of the five elements fully developed. The plot line is fast moving and interesting, keeping even reluctant students intrigued.

http://www.meetup.com/Finish-Writing-Your-Book/

Writer's Meeting

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 at 6:00 PM

San Marco Library - 1513 Lasalle St, Jacksonville, FL

1 Members are called, "Writers." going

KC is hosting this Meetup

This is a meeting to get acquainted, discuss our writing goals, talk about our writing challenges, and determine our writing needs. Bring 1, but no more than 3, 12pt, double spaced page(s). Please have enough copies for 3 - 5 people.

Talk about this Meetup - Post a comment