Mistress of the SS Titanic

[Hussar73]

In the oh-so near future ...

Rose has seen James Cameron's Titanic too many times. Like most fans, she wishes the ship hadn't gone down. Unlike most, she's going to do something about it. As a graduate teaching assistant at University Kollege , she's got privileges in the Science Lab. As many insane fans of Titanic have done before, she decides to use UK's time machine and teleport back to the Titanic's bridge and warn the watch officer of the imminent collision.

she suspects that the earlier time travelers have been unpersuasive for some unknown reason and decides that she will take a different approach and make her case by seducing the bridge officers and reducing their reluctance to take their visitor seriously to nothing. Once in the lab, after hours with no one but a bored student operator, she changes into Second Class Passenger attire, with bare legs dangerously showing below her knees and a barely buttoned smock bursting with her femininity.

What Rose doesn't know is that the all too-numerous time travelers have proved such an annoyance and distraction to the ice-watch that the officer in command has ordered that all new ones be shot and pitched overboard.

with a bright green flash, Rose appears on the bridge of Titanic, on her knees, about to plead for her life in the best way she knows how.

 

[Hypoxia]

This seems a variant of the old SF trope of numerous moderns trying to go back to assassinate young Hitler or Stalin or Mao or whomever. They always fail because history is immutable in this universe. Weird stuff happens to them to prevent the paradox. Folks teleporting back to the TITANIC's bridge always end up a few fathoms out and down. For fun, they all transport into a sub-iceberg bubble at the same time. The futurian do-gooders find themselves nude, jammed together in a cold dark space. Better snuggle up!

 

[Jay321]

The flaw in time travel is not creating the paradox that everyone fears. The real problem is that you would pop back into the timeline in space. not only does the earth travel around the sun at approx. 27.8 miles per second, the sun travels at 370 miles per second relative to the background of space. That is 11.68 billion miles per year. (11.68 x 10*9).

The Titanic sunk over 100 years ago. so now we are over 11.68 x 10*11 miles from the location the earth was when it sunk, not allowing for additions for the earth orbiting the sun. That is approx 1/5 of a lightyear. [/science]

Keeping all this in mind, don't let science get in the way off good fiction.

 

[Hussar73]

The flaw in time travel is not creating the paradox that everyone fears. The real problem is that you would pop back into the timeline in space. not only does the earth travel around the sun at approx. 27.8 miles per second, the sun travels at 370 miles per second relative to the background of space. That is 11.68 billion miles per year. (11.68 x 10*9).

The Titanic sunk over 100 years ago. so now we are over 11.68 x 10*11 miles from the location the earth was when it sunk, not allowing for additions for the earth orbiting the sun. That is approx 1/5 of a lightyear. [/science]

Keeping all this in mind, don't let science get in the way off good fiction.

I'm invoking the author's handwave privilege.

 

[Jay321]

Keeping all this in mind, don't let science get in the way off good fiction.

I hate finding a typo after I have something posted.

I'm invoking the author's handwave privilege.

I assume that means that you aren't letting science get in the way of good fiction?

 

[Hussar73]

I hate finding a typo after I have something posted.

I assume that means that you aren't letting science get in the way of good fiction?

I'm not letting anything get in the way of bad fiction either.

 

[Hypoxia]

The flaw in time travel is not creating the paradox that everyone fears. The real problem is that you would pop back into the timeline in space. not only does the earth travel around the sun at approx. 27.8 miles per second, the sun travels at 370 miles per second relative to the background of space. That is 11.68 billion miles per year. (11.68 x 10*9).

I solved that in A Matter of Time (stay tuned for sequels) by making the Dimensional Dilator DD-214 a time-space manipulator that automagically adjusts for planetary and galactic motion. It's not always calibrated correctly, which leads to problems -- like the mad scientist goes looking for Eve but finds (and is raped by) Lucy. Anyway, minimal handwaving solves the orbital thang. No unobtainium required.

 

[Carnevil9]

So her plan is to go down on the Titanic to prevent the Titanic from going down?

(PS - yes, I know it's not supposed to be "the Titanic," just "Titanic," but that is so entrenched that it would be distracting to correct it.

 

[Hussar73]

So her plan is to go down on the Titanic to prevent the Titanic from going down

cur yes cur. it would be a jolly roger.

 

[Hypoxia]

Alas for us, Time is inelastic; the past is preserved, immutable, within any bubble universe; paradoxes cannot be paradoctored.

If Rose does manage to reach the Titanic, blow the bridge officers, and prevent the iceberg collision, the ship will either be 1) sucked-down into a maelstrom or 2) will survive in a different universe, one where New York is ravaged by King Kong.

With (1), Rose in *that* universe uses the same tactic to persuade bridge officers to avoid the maelstrom... but her success drives the ship into *this* universe. Cue the iceberg. This scenario has infinite loops of Rose repeatedly trying and failing to prevent disaster, with lots of slurping etc. The Titanic is always doomed, whether by iceberg, maelstrom, kraken, Moby Dick, meteorite, nor'easter, whatever. Rose always survives to try again in whichever universe she lands in. (Yes, she has a handheld time machine.)

You may object to (2) because of the two-decade offset -- TITANIC is 1912 and KONG is 1932. Feh, that's no big deal. It's another universe, remember? Kong comes to town early here. This scenario has Kong infatuated with Rose, carrying her to the top of the 57-storey Woolworth Building (which was built a year early in this universe) before intrepid autogyro pilots with crossbows shoot him down. Meanwhile, the Titanic sails back to England... but hits an iceberg. Oh bugger...

 

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

Alas for us, Time is inelastic; the past is preserved, immutable, within any bubble universe; paradoxes cannot be paradoctored.

If Rose does manage to reach the Titanic, blow the bridge officers, and prevent the iceberg collision, the ship will either be 1) sucked-down into a maelstrom or 2) will survive in a different universe, one where New York is ravaged by King Kong.

With (1), Rose in *that* universe uses the same tactic to persuade bridge officers to avoid the maelstrom... but her success drives the ship into *this* universe. Cue the iceberg. This scenario has infinite loops of Rose repeatedly trying and failing to prevent disaster, with lots of slurping etc. The Titanic is always doomed, whether by iceberg, maelstrom, kraken, Moby Dick, meteorite, nor'easter, whatever. Rose always survives to try again in whichever universe she lands in. (Yes, she has a handheld time machine.)

You may object to (2) because of the two-decade offset -- TITANIC is 1912 and KONG is 1932. Feh, that's no big deal. It's another universe, remember? Kong comes to town early here. This scenario has Kong infatuated with Rose, carrying her to the top of the 57-storey Woolworth Building (which was built a year early in this universe) before intrepid autogyro pilots with crossbows shoot him down. Meanwhile, the Titanic sails back to England... but hits an iceberg. Oh bugger...

I'm a big fan of the first idea. It's one of the interpretations that certain things are destined to happen and when they are prevented by some unnatural way (i.e. a time traveler) the universe would find another way to make the destined event happen. You can change the cause but you can not change the effect of the event (the sinking Titanic in this case).

You could start this with her not having sex in mind at all the first time, just wanting to prevent the Titanic from sinking. Then when she fails and tries again repeatedly she tries different things to get the crew to listen to her. She could get more and more sexual with every round, try to have sex with different members of the crew at different times, etc.

 

[Hypoxia]

I'm a big fan of the first idea. It's one of the interpretations that certain things are destined to happen and when they are prevented by some unnatural way (i.e. a time traveler) the universe would find another way to make the destined event happen. You can change the cause but you can not change the effect of the event (the sinking Titanic in this case).

Not fate, not destiny, only that what has happened cannot be un-happened. Call it preservation of temporal consistency. The multiverse hates inconsistency. Attempted kludges spin into matching bubbles of the quantum froth.

You could start this with her not having sex in mind at all the first time, just wanting to prevent the Titanic from sinking. Then when she fails and tries again repeatedly she tries different things to get the crew to listen to her. She could get more and more sexual with every round, try to have sex with different members of the crew at different times, etc.

The bridge-officer characters are similar in parallel universe bubbles; she'll get to know their kinks quite well after a dozen or so iterations. This assumes that only one Rose exists, bouncing around between multiverse bubbles. Could be fun if several Roses land on one Titanic at once. Do they gang-up or split off? And on the next iteration, yet another Rose appears. And another on the next, ad infinitum. Eventually so many Roses are aboard that the ship sinks under their weight. Yes, they survive, filling all the lifeboats. All other crew and passengers are lost. What now?

 

[ThisNameIsntTakenYet]

Not fate, not destiny, only that what has happened cannot be un-happened. Call it preservation of temporal consistency. The multiverse hates inconsistency. Attempted kludges spin into matching bubbles of the quantum froth.

I was talking about a linear single-universe time-travel interpretation. And it's but one idea, but since you're talking about a multiverse that's a complete different story. Multiple parallel universes have small differences so the way the Titanic sinks could even be already decided when she arrives in that particular universe. In fact the main cause of why it sinks could be because of her interference. That would be a fun twist, that in those universes (or at least some of them) the Titanic would have been fine but it's her presence that causes the boat to sink in one way or another.

The bridge-officer characters are similar in parallel universe bubbles; she'll get to know their kinks quite well after a dozen or so iterations. This assumes that only one Rose exists, bouncing around between multiverse bubbles. Could be fun if several Roses land on one Titanic at once. Do they gang-up or split off? And on the next iteration, yet another Rose appears. And another on the next, ad infinitum. Eventually so many Roses are aboard that the ship sinks under their weight. Yes, they survive, filling all the lifeboats. All other crew and passengers are lost. What now?

That could be interesting. That might be the final universe, where the boat sinks due to the added weight of a few thousand Rose's.

 

[Jay321]

Dammit Hypoxia, I was trying to sound deep. You come along with your "Call it preservation of temporal consistency" and your "quantum froth" making me sound shallow and pedantic.

 

[Hypoxia]

Dammit Hypoxia, I was trying to sound deep. You come along with your "Call it preservation of temporal consistency" and your "quantum froth" making me sound shallow and pedantic.

Throw in 'unobtainium' and you're almost au courant. Well, maybe that was awhile back. Invoke space worms. They're almost as good as tentacles.

 

[Jay321]

Throw in 'unobtainium' and you're almost au courant. Well, maybe that was awhile back. Invoke space worms. They're almost as good as tentacles.

keep throwing in unobtainium. Makes me feel better.

I hated that movie