Traveling upstream - plot hole or loophole?

[Kranse]

The FAQ unambiguously claims that it is impossible to bring things from a lower dimension to a higher one: "not even electrons or photons can make the trip." But that led me to wonder:

• What happens to someone who gains 20 pounds before returning home?
• What happens to someone who enters as a child and returns as an adult?
• What happens to someone who survived a traumatic event that resulted in a lot of blood & nanite loss?
• What happens to all of the water and oxygen in a person's body?

Do all of these people have their non-native atoms spontaneously ripped from their body when they go through the portal? That sounds pretty dangerous, and something that would have been addressed if it were a problem. So we have to assume that it doesn't happen - the rule has a loophole that ensures a person will make the journey upstream intact, even if their body contains foreign atoms. The implications raise more questions, like could someone bring a disease with them? What about a parasite?

I think this is why Logna was so keen about keeping John alive, she wants to use this loophole to travel upstream herself. Maybe she can find a way to hitch a ride with him. Or maybe, if he fathers a child, that child wouldn't be poisonous to Logna but might have enough "substance" to travel upstream (seems like a stretch, but something worth considering).

[Ironeyes]

I think the book is lying. The implications for the economy if people could go to other dimensions, strip mine for rare materials, and then bring them back are catastrophic. The government probably started a massive propaganda push when dimensional travel became available to the public. They want dimensions to be seen as tourist destinations only, never as potential real estate. As evidence, Logna and her siblings were able to travel "upstream" until they reached a branch point where the next reality up doesn't contain their form of magic/probability/plot_device.exe and had to stop there.

[Bremen]

9 hours ago, Ironeyes said:

The government probably started a massive propaganda push

Perhaps, but it seems unlikely that nobody would actually test this themselves. In order to be viable the government would have to be keeping watch on every dimensional traveler to make sure they don't get out of line. This wouldn't be that unreasonable in a futuristic society, except we see underworld figures have access to the technology, and we can assume the government doesn't have that sort of control over them.

Edited April 12, 2023 by Bremen

[NameIess]

Given that the book recommends keeping an old set of clothes, it’s unlikely that no one would ever forget to do so and then notice that their clothes didn’t come along with them. It’s probably got something to do with souls and magic stuff that they don’t understand.

[+Oltux72 he/him]

On 11.4.2023 at 8:00 PM, Ironeyes said:

I think the book is lying. The implications for the economy if people could go to other dimensions, strip mine for rare materials, and then bring them back are catastrophic. The government probably started a massive propaganda push when dimensional travel became available to the public. They want dimensions to be seen as tourist destinations only, never as potential real estate. As evidence, Logna and her siblings were able to travel "upstream" until they reached a branch point where the next reality up doesn't contain their form of magic/probability/plot_device.exe and had to stop there.

How would you make that work? For sure people would try to bring back memorabila.

[cometaryorbit]

I think it has to do with the effects of "more real" dimension things on "less real" dimension things- higher reality is "contagious", which is why people and devices from John/Jen/Ryan's world are bad for wights and gods.

So if you eat food from a lower dimension, once it gets metabolized into your body it "catches" higher reality from your existing cells/molecules.

Clothes and equipment aren't inside the body & actually involved in chemical bonds with its existing components (even water you drink is going to have hydrogen bonding, etc), and clothes are changed / equipment put down regularly.

It seems totally possible that undigested/not yet metabolized food in the stomach might disappear when traveling upstream, or that if hypothetically someone wore the same clothes for a month (including sleeping in them) they might travel with them.

-

Either that, or it's a feature of the portals themselves. The 'gods' traveled upstream somehow, before hitting a "wall of pain" above Sefawynn/Ealstan's dimension. I think the epilogue with Logna reading about the portal implies they used a fundamentally different method. So not all possible methods of dimensional travel have this limit.

So it might be more "portals only take something upstream if it's already gone downstream" and the way the portals recognize "something" isn't atom-by-atom but at a higher level of organization. If a portal 'tags' or simply records people and objects that go through it downstream, and only allows things upstream that are already tagged/recorded, you'd get the described effect.

So it could be intentional, but not by simply lying about it (which, yeah, would be figured out very quickly) -- by actually designing the portal technology to create the limitation.

--

But since we know higher reality *is* contagious and messes up lower reality dimensions, I think it's the first one.

--

I think diseases and parasites could theoretically travel upstream in a traveler's body, but in practice their nanites would make it not a real issue.

 

Edited April 18, 2023 by cometaryorbit

[king of nowhere]

On 11/4/2023 at 8:00 PM, Ironeyes said:

I think the book is lying. The implications for the economy if people could go to other dimensions, strip mine for rare materials, and then bring them back are catastrophic. The government probably started a massive propaganda push when dimensional travel became available to the public. They want dimensions to be seen as tourist destinations only, never as potential real estate. As evidence, Logna and her siblings were able to travel "upstream" until they reached a branch point where the next reality up doesn't contain their form of magic/probability/plot_device.exe and had to stop there.

nah.

first of all, the villains mention that they have a fusion reactor that also makes gold. so, there is no "rare materials" anymore - at least not raw resources. there hasn't been for a while.

second, the government can't lie about something so big. people will find out. unless you have an orwellian dictatorship, which really does not seem the case.

third, dimensional travel has much more than tourism applications. if dimensions are virtually infinite, and there are a lot of them technologically backwards, there must be some technologically advanced dimension too, where technology progressed faster than here. and while we can't bring it back to our dimension, we certainly can look, disassemble, take schematics, whatever. it's got enormous applications. people will tamper with dimensions.

[cometaryorbit]

On 4/29/2023 at 6:01 PM, king of nowhere said:

third, dimensional travel has much more than tourism applications. if dimensions are virtually infinite, and there are a lot of them technologically backwards, there must be some technologically advanced dimension too, where technology progressed faster than here. and while we can't bring it back to our dimension, we certainly can look, disassemble, take schematics, whatever. it's got enormous applications. people will tamper with dimensions.

I agree it's not a lie, but I'm not sure the third reason holds.

The branching tree model of dimensions, and the way more-real is "contagious" to less-real, isn't compatible with these being pure point-of-divergence parallel universes. The dimensions aren't on an equal footing, so I don't think it can just be assumed there'd be more advanced ones. The fuzzier physics of less-real dimensions might not let you create advanced tech. More-real stuff from John/Jen/Ryan's homeworld works, but it's imposing its own reality against the local constraints. I don't know if you could make complex electronics out of local matter in a world like Sefawynn/Ealstan's homeworld - the electrons might not stay in the right places.

That doesn't necessarily mean John/Jen/Ryan's homeworld is actually unique, at the absolute head of the branching tree. But if there are other worlds higher up, they're inaccessible (whether that's due to the nature of lower vs higher reality or a limitation of the portals themselves). You can't go "across" to equally real worlds, and you can't go "upstream" above to your starting point (except the way the 'gods' did it, but that wasn't portal tech).

Edited May 18, 2023 by cometaryorbit