What If?

I'm not advocating the singularity idea. But as a previous post points out, the concept seems to imply a continous stream of conciousness which would not apply if Owl or Merlin were turned off for a thousand years before coming to awareness in the cave.

It might not apply to Owl since only came to full self consciousness through his interaction with Nahrman in the cave. The problems with extended conciousness in virtual reality as Merlin described them to Nahrmam seemed to be psychological rather than difficulty in sustaining the consciousness.

My assumption would be that the anecdote to that would be a commitment to interacting with reality outside the virtual and to causes larger than ones self. Presuming this, that would be congruent with wellness in flesh and blood human beings.

It could also be that for beings such as Nimue and Merlin, being turned off for more extended periods could enhance their performance and mental health.

Don

[quote="Dilandu"]

It's simply impossible. All Safehold operation took a lot of ships and resources, that must be produced and transported. There would be thousands, if not millions of peoples, that definitely knew about existence of the Ark fleet.

[quote]

There were thousands of people working on the Manhattan project during World War II - in fact, it was about 15% of the total war effort by the end. Yet the vast majority of them had no idea what they were working on. For example, many workers at Oak Ridge were simply told monitor the equipment, and keep this reading on this dial in this range. They had no idea what the equipment did or what was actually being manufactured, even though they were in the plants on a daily basis.

Remember, even Truman had no idea what was going on - and he had actually tried to investigate it at one point. It was quite a shock for him when he learned just what the weapon was expected to do after he became President.

Hildum" [quote="Dilandu wrote:
It's simply impossible. All Safehold operation took a lot of ships and resources, that must be produced and transported. There would be thousands, if not millions of peoples, that definitely knew about existence of the Ark fleet.

There were thousands of people working on the Manhattan project during World War II - in fact, it was about 15% of the total war effort by the end. Yet the vast majority of them had no idea what they were working on. For example, many workers at Oak Ridge were simply told monitor the equipment, and keep this reading on this dial in this range. They had no idea what the equipment did or what was actually being manufactured, even though they were in the plants on a daily basis.

Remember, even Truman had no idea what was going on - and he had actually tried to investigate it at one point. It was quite a shock for him when he learned just what the weapon was expected to do after he became President.

Don't forget that the towns of Oak Ridge TN and Los Alomos NM didn't exist prior to the Manhattan project.

Um, it is impossible. To find Safehold. First they are "literally thousands of light-years from the Federation", they were in hyper for ten years. The Federation has no idea where they are. They migh be able to point in the direction they went, but I really do mean point, with a finger. They don't know where the colonization fleet went except, about ten years in hyper, that way. Further they do not even know about Safehold. Literally, they don't know about the planet. The operational plan was the send the colonization fleet out and have them find the planet to colonize. So even if the Federation had won and was still alive, they have no idea where Safehold is even if they know it exists. Which they might not. There would have been a deliberate attempt to destroy all knowledge of operation Ark, in order to prevent the Gbaba from finding out about it if or rather when they conquered earth.

For a very in-depth post from RFC about Operation Ark, its security measures, and an explanation of AIs, APs, and PICAs, including "emancipated" PICAs which had no 10 day limit, check out this link: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6072&start=10

RFC also torpedoes the theory of a PICA under the temple:"There are reasons beyond those I've listed here why the command crew never contemplated a "permanent PICA presence" to keep Langhorne's master plan on track. Eventually, you guys will find out what those other reasons were. At the moment, you're just going to have to take my word for it that those reasons actually made sense given the command crew's plans, expectations, and fears."

Let's parse RFC's statement. "Gababa completely destroyed the Terran Federation" That doesn't say they destryed Earth, only the Federation. Remember from OAR, there were TWO fleets sighted after the Ark departed. Is it possible that the Scepter or the Temple contains "the complete technical readout of the (fill in the ship size)" and a method to time travel back. It would make an interesting story if Merlin and Nimue meet Nimue. They can't go back before the Ark left, but they could return just after.

Chief-CWH wrote:

MPCatchup wrote:What if Earth was able to defeat the Gbaba and is still there but was unable to let Operation Ark know because Earth didn't know the location of Safehold or no one that was cleared for the knowledge of Operation Ark survived?

Spoiler from Safehold 07

Gbaba—a star-traveling, xenophobic species whose reaction to encounters with any possibly competing species is to exterminate it. The Gbaba completely destroyed the Terran Federation and, so far as is known, all human beings in the galaxy aside from the population of Safehold.

is the MWW/RFC telling us something

colfaxstation wrote:Let's parse RFC's statement. "Gababa completely destroyed the Terran Federation" That doesn't say they destroyed Earth, only the Federation. Remember from OAR, there were TWO fleets sighted after the Ark departed. Is it possible that the Scepter or the Temple contains "the complete technical readout of the (fill in the ship size)" and a method to time travel back. It would make an interesting story if Merlin and Nimue meet Nimue. They can't go back before the Ark left, but they could return just after.

RFC is sneaky, but in this case I think we can take it as a given that the Gbaba also destroyed Earth. There are numerous references throughout the series to "as time was measured on murdered Terra" and other words to that effect, so I think we take it as fact that every world and star system of the TF was systematically attacked, searched, and all humans and their creations destroyed, including Earth. That also means we can accept at face value RFCs assertion that Safehold is the sole home of all the humans in existence.

Frankly, Operation Ark should have used its second terraforming fleet and settled a second planet somewhere, but with Langhorne in charge that was never going to happen.

Time travel would be far too much of a Deus ex machina development, and RFC doesn't do those. (Despite the objections of those who didn't realize the nature of a major character in "Out of the Dark" until the end of the book.) So no, there won't be any time travel in the Safehold series, or the TF would have used it to get the 75 years it needed to overcome the Gbaba's tech advantage so humanity could destroy them. If that had happened, then there wouldn't be a Safehold series, would there?

and a method to time travel back.

Please. If humanity have reliable means of time-travel, they would not need Ark project at all.

That also means we can accept at face value RFCs assertion that Safehold is the sole home of all the humans in existence.

Well, there is a small possibility that some other Fedeartion planet was able to launch her own Ark expedition and for the security reasons, didn't inform the Earth about that.

Dilandu wrote:

That also means we can accept at face value RFCs assertion that Safehold is the sole home of all the humans in existence.

Well, there is a small possibility that some other Federation planet was able to launch her own Ark expedition and for the security reasons, didn't inform the Earth about that.

That sneaky twist would allow for the infinitesimally small chance that humans may exist elsewhere...

However, OAR seems to make it very clear that only one other colony fleet escaped, and it was discovered and destroyed about ten years later due to its emissions. That was the reason for Safehold to "go native" for a few centuries until the Gbaba quit looking for them, as well as to grow their population to the point that there would be enough humans to fight the Gbaba once the time came to reintroduce technology.

So although I personally doubt there are any humans in existence who aren't on Safehold or in a spaceship that was part of Operation Ark, if you're one of those who thinks the Hamilcar may make a reappearance later in the series, RFC's wording is weasely enough to allow for the extremely small possibility that there are other humans elsewhere.

However, since those humans wouldn't know of Safehold's existence, nor where to look for Safehold even if they did, they'll never appear in the series.