In another universe 2018-04-10

[FreeFlier]

In Another Universe

That's either very fast thinking, or a major screwup!

Now . . . can she get back to the other universe?

--FreeFlier

[GlytchMeister]

Ok so this IS a distinct universe...

So living tissue, even living metal, is held in stasis because it’s... from another universe? But the Daylla in the beam is the one native to Dustin’s universe, isn’t it?

I’m not sure how macroscopic vibrations would do anything to a folded World Grid beam...

[jwhouk]

Remember that scene in ST:TNG where there were three Datas near the time core? I think this is something similar.

Or, it's another version of what happened to Shelly?

[Opus the Poet]

I think she just realized that if she hadn't forgotten her phone she could ask questions of the people in her universe.

[jeffepp]

Why does she need a waterfall of resin? Wouldn't that just make everything sticky?

Then again, you wouldn't really call it a waterfall, if it isn't water, would you?

I guess that's why she called it a cascade.

...

...

WHAT?

Why are you all looking at me like that?

Hm... Oh? OH!

Never Mind.

[Dave]

Ok so this IS a distinct universe...

So living tissue, even living metal, is held in stasis because it’s... from another universe? But the Daylla in the beam is the one native to Dustin’s universe, isn’t it?

She seems to be saying otherwise... so there may be three parallel universe involved! and Dustin's Daylla-2 may be somewhere else entirely...

... and that suggests that there might be N universes and N Dayllas, for a large value of N.

I'm sorta shamed to admit it, as a computer nerd and computer-game implementor from long ago, but I've never played Half-Life at all. The references she just made, and the conclusion she seems to have just come to, went swoosh right over my head.

(Edit: but a bit of Googling leads me to suspect that maybe Daylla thinks that the problem with the World Grid anchor might be due to deliberate tampering, possibly done as a prelude to invasion? Perhaps Amun or Shiva wants back in, really badly?)

Why does she need a waterfall of resin? Wouldn't that just make everything sticky

You're only seeing half of what she asked for.

She wanted a "resin ants" cascade. Resin with ants in it, fossilized, is called amber. And, as any fantasy buff would tell you, Amber is the eternal city at the center of reality, from which all other universes (including our own) are projected as shadows of alternative probability.

Obviously, she thinks that bathing in the waterfall that flows down Kolvir from the Grove of the Unicorn will wash away her problems... the various time streams would become clear.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

The Resonance Cascade was the physics version of 'we spent so much time trying to see if we could that we forgot to stop and ask if we should'. In effect, they penetrated dimensional barriers and enabled aliens to invade through it, ultimately ending in HL2 with an alien-controlled puppet/apologist government.

Then again, the world was already pretty dystopian as you can infer from the environment as Gordon Freeman goes to work on that fateful day that starts off the game. I mean, it's the same one in which Aperture Science's lead engineer took his daughter to work to perform a brain scan on her, promising her cake after their trip was over, and ended up accidentally frying her and transferring her consciousness into the computer, now known as GLaDOS. And this was seen as a triumph of science, and not a horrible tragedy that would get him fired. And in which GLaDOS was permitted to play with an arbitrary number of clones in her little test chamber, including testing most of them to destruction. And this was seen as okay.

So yea... the world was already pretty dystopian, then they added alien invasion and police state despotism to the mix.

But the resonance cascade was the singularity event which breached the boundary between dimensions and permitted the alien invasion to occur. It's at least heavily implied that *someone* on the project team was already 'compromised' and manipulated it to do just that. That same 'someone' being the apologist figurehead for the totalitarian regime that followed.

[oldmanmickey]

I knew i needed to play games other than dragons age and skyrim.

[eee]

OK. So. I have not played Half-Life either (I don't like shooters much; my reflexes weren't very fast when I was young, and now that I'm old they get me killed. In games, anyway). But Googling it, and reading through the comments here, it appears Daylla 2 was trying to use a concept from the game - vibrations setting up resonances that have cross dimensional effects - to fix the anchor. This failed, miserably. I would think Daylla 1 would consider that before trying to do something similar with Dustin's cellphone, if he has one. It might be better to try to figure out why the anchor is messed up to begin with. And why Daylla 2's effort went nowhere.

The difference between the Dayllas - that 2 came up with a theory and acted on it, while 1 was clueless about what was going on until she got pulled into the alternative universe - might come down to the simple fact that 2 was told there was an anchor in the basement. Knowing that, she could guess all the strange phenomena were tied to it malfunctioning.

[jwhouk]

This is all starting to sound like Brandi in the Machine kind of stuff.

The angle of "Prelude to an Invasion" might be correct, in that the Elder Gods previously chose not to attempt to return to earth - not because of the World Grid, but because of the wonky Calendar Machine. Now that the Antikythera (had to Google that, forgot the spelling) has been repaired (i.e., squished into oblivion and thrown into the sun), it's relatively safe for them to return to this universe.

Poking and prodding at the edges is the logical starting point for trying to find a way in to somewhere.

[ShirouZhiwu]

Dustin has a phone and his Daylla's phone number.

[Dave]

But Googling it, and reading through the comments here, it appears Daylla 2 was trying to use a concept from the game - vibrations setting up resonances that have cross dimensional effects - to fix the anchor. This failed, miserably. I would think Daylla 1 would consider that before trying to do something similar with Dustin's cellphone, if he has one. It might be better to try to figure out why the anchor is messed up to begin with. And why Daylla 2's effort went nowhere.

It could be that Daylla-2 thought that she could insert her phone into the Grid anchor field and trigger some vibrations... but didn't realize that she'd be pulled all the way in herself, and then "frozen" before she could activate the phone.

If Daylla-1's musings are correct - that the field is suspending Daylla-2 but not actually stopping time - then Daylla-2's cellphone might still be active, and maybe even reachable... and we know that Dustin has her number. So, Daylla-1 may be dashing out to try phoning "herself" using Dustin's phone, in the hope that it might still make Daylla-2's phone vibrate, and thus affect the anchor field somehow.

(And this idea brings up a further issue - is that really Daylla-2 stuck in the field, or is it a Daylla-3 from yet another parallel universe as Daylla-1's comments seem to suggest? If the latter, will the phone vibrate or not?)

As to why she's not going for help... she may believe that she can't. She was ghostly-transparent when she first met Dustin up in the hall, and became solid again only when she came into close proximity with the Grid anchor. She may believe that she'll fade out again once she gets further away from the field (maybe popping back into her own universe, maybe not).

(And, for the sake of full disclosure, it's now obvious that I was wrong in my suspicion yesterday that Daylla-1 was unaware of Daylla-2's presence in the field.)

[eee]

Dustin has a phone and his Daylla's phone number.

Ah yes, that's right, he played his Daylla's last message back on it. So Daylla 1 could appropriate his phone and try using it to accomplish what Daylla 2 attempted. On the other hand, that didn't work, so maybe she should try something else.

(One thing I'm getting from Daylla's ruminations is, neither Daylla is native to the universe in which they reside, they came from somewhere else...)

[Dave]

(One thing I'm getting from Daylla's ruminations is, neither Daylla is native to the universe in which they reside, they came from somewhere else...)

Hmmm... interesting thought... that would be a simpler explanation (in a way) than the "Are there three universes and three Dayllas" idea I was pursuing...

But then, this would imply either that there are three universes (the two we've seen, and at least one from which the Dayllas came), or they're "twins swapped at birth" and each actually belongs in the other's timeline...

[Alkarii]

There's also the possibility, if the one stuck in the fold is also from another universe, that her name isn't Daylla.

[Catawampus]

At last, one of the few video-games I've played becomes relevant to understanding things in my life! Take that, hypothetical disapproving parents and authority figures!

Anyway, from what I gather, there are now at least three different universes involved. Universe 1 (U-1) is apparently the one in which we've been following the action for most of the last seventeen years. U-2 is the one where the setting is currently, the one which Dustin is native to and where his Daylla (Daylla-2) disappeared from two months back. Then there's U-3, where yet another Daylla (Daylla-3) figured out that something was wrong with the grid anchor, got into the beam with her phone, got stuck, and is now visible in U-2. So currently we're in U-2 with Daylla-3 in the beam, Daylla-1 pondering what to do, and Daylla-2 missing.

(I did consider the idea that Paul decided to switch things around a bit, and that the Daylla whose adventures we are now following is actually Daylla-3, and that the Daylla we've gotten to know over the last few years and who got all freaked out at the ghost-hunting sleepover is the one stuck in the beam with her phone. But that doesn't really fit, since not only did we not see Daylla-1 carrying a phone when she was coming back from the restroom before disappearing, but also the Daylla who we are now watching crash through doors and puzzle things out seems to think that the Daylla suspended in the beam actually planned to be there.)

From what Daylla-1 says, it seems that the grid anchors extend through multiple universes, but that they don't affect anything that is native to the universe in which they are currently manifesting. So in U-1, Daylla-1 could run back and forth through the anchor beam and it wouldn't do anything to her. If she got into the beam in U-2, though, then she'd end up in a similar state as Daylla-3. So if she wants to get Daylla-3 out of the beam, maybe she could just use a long stick to poke at her until she falls out, or heave Dustin at Daylla-3 to knock her out of the beam, or whatever. Apparently Daylla-1 doesn't want to get her alternate self out of the beam, though, and instead is hoping to do something about the "folding" of the anchor (whatever that is). Maybe that would send Daylla-3 back to U-3, where she'd be able to just walk out of the beam with no trouble at all. Or maybe we're going to end up with a whole passel of Dayllas suddenly dumped into U-1.

I wonder whether these differing universes are similar to the other universes such as the one that contains the Library or the Demon Realm. These different universes that we're seeing now seem to be basically copies of each other, but with slight differences where events have happened differently. The alternate plane where the Library exists doesn't seem to be anything like that at all. So maybe each of these different universes has its own individual version of the Library plane, the Demon Realm, and whatever other planes of existence connect to U-1?

[Alkarii]

Kinda sounds like the library and the demon realm are peripherals to the main universe.

[GlytchMeister]

Kinda sounds like the library and the demon realm are peripherals to the main universe.

The demon realm could be just a dimension within a universe, so similar universii would have their own demon realm.

The /Library/, on the other hand, could be like that OR it could exist tangentially to the entire multiverse, collecting and aggregating information from all of the universii.

I think this because The Library is capable of circumventing the World Grid.

[jwhouk]

I think this because The Library is capable of circumventing the World Grid.

That has been posited somewhere in the strip, I think? The portals could allow the Elder Gods to visit the Library, but not Earth itself?

[GlytchMeister]

I think this because The Library is capable of circumventing the World Grid.

That has been posited somewhere in the strip, I think? The portals could allow the Elder Gods to visit the Library, but not Earth itself?

The portals are capable of letting elder gods into earth past the World Grid so long as they bear no ill will. I think devyn said so. If they don’t pass that test, they can’t get past the Library.