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Summary: If quantum is the smallest possible bit of a thing that retains that thing’s essential qualities, how (or what) might define a quantum mirror? 780 words.
Author's Note: Written for the poor Quantum Mirror Alphabet Soup, which is still, even after this, four letters short of completion. Yes, that would be the Soup that should have ended three months ago.
I don't often write what I think some people would call "metafic," but this probably qualifies. Many thanks to Ivorygates for the beta, the suggestions, and the shamelessly stolen summary!
Also, please bear in mind that this is probably Stargate-level science competence, if that much. :)
See below for more notes.
V is for Variations
Unlike the Alterans, the Nox were scrupulous about leaving the universe as they found it. Even as their comprehension of the multigalaxies and existential planes expanded, they themselves retreated, reluctant to meddle with the workings of the Infinite. In later millennia, this reluctance translated into a strict policy of non-interference with anything outside their immediate surroundings, until the Nox lived in harmonious tranquility on a single planet, their very existence intertwined with flora, fauna, and atmosphere in a perfectly balanced symbiosis.
But long ago - long before the Alterans started abandoning half-finished projects for later beings to find to their detriment, before the Asgard turned to cloning and accelerated their own inevitable demise, before the first feral Goa'uld symbiote stumbled upon a naquadah-carrying host that could allow it to escape its birth planet, before the Furlings began the research and experimentation that would lead to what they perceived as the logical conclusion to commit species suicide - long before all that, three Nox pioneers explored the nature of quanta and decoherence and uncertainty. They fashioned a device that would be wholly isolate to allow them to observe and unobserve, to see both wave and particle and supersymmetry.
The device worked well - too well. The unexpected results, when they first activated it, so alarmed them that they ceased operations immediately. After a brief, hurried discussion, they destroyed the device, incinerated their notes, and resolved to never create the like again.
But they were too late. The smallest observed measure of time (a fraction of an instant? a nanomoment?) would have been too late. Once the uncertainty of its existence had flashed into place, the device... perpetuated itself, in all its potentia. A mirror, echoing itself into infinity, each reflection set just slightly out of what might have been true. The Nox scientists had no way of knowing that even as they carefully dismantled the delicate mechansim, alternate versions were already - in fact, had always been - winking endlessly into being. Some took advantage of existences that already occupied a place in time and space. Others twisted nothingness into realities, creating matter in which they could reside.
And through the apparent paradox of quantum states, each device took on its own perception and function, retaining the essence of its original nature even while mirroring a reality it either created, invaded, or invited.
In one universe, a white-garbed woman (or kitten, whose name was never Schroedinger) used the attributes of the device to perceive the future, even as her claim to precognition and the questions of dream and reality were never quite answered. A different dimension saw an immortal woman of immense age and power, well-versed in the nature of external influences, exercise her long-gained wisdom to use the device with delicate care, observing possible futures while never quite trusting in what she saw. Another woman in another elsewhere, who also longed for power but lacked the patience to seek it in a more natural fashion, seized the device's power to endlessly reflect her own thoughts and gaze, to probe and to manipulate, until she so obsessively followed its dictates that she ended up trapped within it, an endless circle of winking reflections, shards of falling glass (or otherness) locking her away from a sister and a city.
The device's nature shifted, rippled, twisted. Some mirrored appearances rather than exuding power. A woman, focused on such an altered version, so needed its validation that she was driven to attempted filicide to satisfy it. A man in a different reality allowed the device to absorb every narrowed gaze, every curl of the lip, until the vision it imbibed no longer matched the external it reflected.
More devices, mirroring infinity, reflecting twisting realities and functions. One did great damage, reflecting longed-for implausiblities that could theoretically occur - and can't all possibilities become reality, after all? Still others offered gateways, twisting matter and anti-matter until the slightest contact threatened mutual annihilation. Others warped time as well as space; one even achieved a form of sentience, allowing it to consciously interact with other beings, while another rippled into multiple portals, arcing from world to world with heedless risk to universal causality.
And in the Nox's own reality and plane of existence, the scrupulous scientists never knew that even as they destroyed their own, original device, something else had shimmered into existence. It sat quietly, awaiting activation, a portal to what was never real until it was encountered.
"Ours is the only reality of consequence," a Jaffa would say uncounted generations later.
He never learned that on the deepest, most quantified level, he was wholly, precisely correct... and, at the same time, completely wrong.
*
End notes: Nearly all the references here are to actual mirrors/portals/reflections of some sort in fictional literature, with two exceptions: one catchall sentence for all the alternate reality/bearded = evil plot devices so beloved of sc-fi shows, and one television reference (although that one has some great novels written about it, too.) Some are probably more obvious than others.
Nearly all the references here are to actual mirrors/portals/reflections of some sort in fictional literature, with two exceptions: one catchall sentence for all the alternate reality/bearded = evil plot devices so beloved of sc-fi shows, and one television reference (although that one has some great novels written about it, too.) Some are probably more obvious than others.
When this was first posted, I offered fic prompts to any reader who could identify the crossovers. Some were identified, but many weren't. Included in the fic are references to:
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Galadriel
Lily Weatherwax
Snow White
Dorian Grey
The Mirror of Erised
The Guardian of Forever
The Morgaine Cycle
Author's Note: Written for the poor Quantum Mirror Alphabet Soup, which is still, even after this, four letters short of completion. Yes, that would be the Soup that should have ended three months ago.
I don't often write what I think some people would call "metafic," but this probably qualifies. Many thanks to Ivorygates for the beta, the suggestions, and the shamelessly stolen summary!
Also, please bear in mind that this is probably Stargate-level science competence, if that much. :)
See below for more notes.
V is for Variations
Unlike the Alterans, the Nox were scrupulous about leaving the universe as they found it. Even as their comprehension of the multigalaxies and existential planes expanded, they themselves retreated, reluctant to meddle with the workings of the Infinite. In later millennia, this reluctance translated into a strict policy of non-interference with anything outside their immediate surroundings, until the Nox lived in harmonious tranquility on a single planet, their very existence intertwined with flora, fauna, and atmosphere in a perfectly balanced symbiosis.
But long ago - long before the Alterans started abandoning half-finished projects for later beings to find to their detriment, before the Asgard turned to cloning and accelerated their own inevitable demise, before the first feral Goa'uld symbiote stumbled upon a naquadah-carrying host that could allow it to escape its birth planet, before the Furlings began the research and experimentation that would lead to what they perceived as the logical conclusion to commit species suicide - long before all that, three Nox pioneers explored the nature of quanta and decoherence and uncertainty. They fashioned a device that would be wholly isolate to allow them to observe and unobserve, to see both wave and particle and supersymmetry.
The device worked well - too well. The unexpected results, when they first activated it, so alarmed them that they ceased operations immediately. After a brief, hurried discussion, they destroyed the device, incinerated their notes, and resolved to never create the like again.
But they were too late. The smallest observed measure of time (a fraction of an instant? a nanomoment?) would have been too late. Once the uncertainty of its existence had flashed into place, the device... perpetuated itself, in all its potentia. A mirror, echoing itself into infinity, each reflection set just slightly out of what might have been true. The Nox scientists had no way of knowing that even as they carefully dismantled the delicate mechansim, alternate versions were already - in fact, had always been - winking endlessly into being. Some took advantage of existences that already occupied a place in time and space. Others twisted nothingness into realities, creating matter in which they could reside.
And through the apparent paradox of quantum states, each device took on its own perception and function, retaining the essence of its original nature even while mirroring a reality it either created, invaded, or invited.
In one universe, a white-garbed woman (or kitten, whose name was never Schroedinger) used the attributes of the device to perceive the future, even as her claim to precognition and the questions of dream and reality were never quite answered. A different dimension saw an immortal woman of immense age and power, well-versed in the nature of external influences, exercise her long-gained wisdom to use the device with delicate care, observing possible futures while never quite trusting in what she saw. Another woman in another elsewhere, who also longed for power but lacked the patience to seek it in a more natural fashion, seized the device's power to endlessly reflect her own thoughts and gaze, to probe and to manipulate, until she so obsessively followed its dictates that she ended up trapped within it, an endless circle of winking reflections, shards of falling glass (or otherness) locking her away from a sister and a city.
The device's nature shifted, rippled, twisted. Some mirrored appearances rather than exuding power. A woman, focused on such an altered version, so needed its validation that she was driven to attempted filicide to satisfy it. A man in a different reality allowed the device to absorb every narrowed gaze, every curl of the lip, until the vision it imbibed no longer matched the external it reflected.
More devices, mirroring infinity, reflecting twisting realities and functions. One did great damage, reflecting longed-for implausiblities that could theoretically occur - and can't all possibilities become reality, after all? Still others offered gateways, twisting matter and anti-matter until the slightest contact threatened mutual annihilation. Others warped time as well as space; one even achieved a form of sentience, allowing it to consciously interact with other beings, while another rippled into multiple portals, arcing from world to world with heedless risk to universal causality.
And in the Nox's own reality and plane of existence, the scrupulous scientists never knew that even as they destroyed their own, original device, something else had shimmered into existence. It sat quietly, awaiting activation, a portal to what was never real until it was encountered.
"Ours is the only reality of consequence," a Jaffa would say uncounted generations later.
He never learned that on the deepest, most quantified level, he was wholly, precisely correct... and, at the same time, completely wrong.
*
End notes: Nearly all the references here are to actual mirrors/portals/reflections of some sort in fictional literature, with two exceptions: one catchall sentence for all the alternate reality/bearded = evil plot devices so beloved of sc-fi shows, and one television reference (although that one has some great novels written about it, too.) Some are probably more obvious than others.
Nearly all the references here are to actual mirrors/portals/reflections of some sort in fictional literature, with two exceptions: one catchall sentence for all the alternate reality/bearded = evil plot devices so beloved of sc-fi shows, and one television reference (although that one has some great novels written about it, too.) Some are probably more obvious than others.
When this was first posted, I offered fic prompts to any reader who could identify the crossovers. Some were identified, but many weren't. Included in the fic are references to:
Alice Through the Looking Glass
Galadriel
Lily Weatherwax
Snow White
Dorian Grey
The Mirror of Erised
The Guardian of Forever
The Morgaine Cycle
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:D :D :D
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Thanks for your help! I look forward to seeing what your prompts inspire.
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