s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

Normally I am not a big fan of posting dreams on lj/blogs as usually the internal dream-logic does not translate well, but last night I had a fun idea. If I were a better writer, I would try to turn it into a book that fans of Greg Egan would really enjoy.

The backstory works something like this. Classic indeterminancy (the inability to determine both the precise location and vector of a particle simultaneously) only functions if that particle is moving at a velocity of greater that 0.93c relative to your reference frame. What this means is that at lower velocities everything can be measured and predicted, motion and action are not chaotic.

This had been discovered (within the dream) when space traveling humans first started to approach light speed. When they hit 0.94c the universe started acting in strange and unexpected ways. They discovered that ancient aliens who knew about this property were controlling the universe, as they could predict the actions of other species and prevent them from becoming threats (a Killing Star scenario, for anyone familiar with the book by Pelligrino and Zebrowski). So the characters in this dream were traveling at near light speed, fast enough to “outrun their fate”, where they were waging war on these aliens to try and free humanity. A really fun idea.

(I won’t mention the weird metaphysical parts of the dream that came from finishing Haibane Renmei last night that involved ascention and “taking flight” after ramming an opponent at near light speed since that is pure incomprehensible dream-logic.)

Well, in our case it would be Alpaca and Housecats, but anyway…

Yesterday I was feeding out some supplements to our alpaca, as Pointer has gotten a bit thin from the poor winter grass and the cold conditions of the last 2 months. We want our alpaca fat and happy! During this feeding they had a very interesting encounter with Rasputin.

Now, most books on alpaca talk about how they are fascinated by cats. How they “love” them. At which point we would insert “yes they love them… on toast for breakfast!” Oak had decided that the little mini-pumas were threats, to be chased out of the paddock (and probably trampled if caught). This has made the cats rightly nervous around the big furry paddock-demons. But Oak spent 3 weeks with another little herd while we were in the US, in a place whre he was not boss and there were lots of other animals about (chickens, pigs, cats and dogs), and this seems to have changed him.

The first evidence of this change was when they were greedily eating their “yums” and Rasputin slunk by. They looked up at him (about 10 m away), then went back to their feed. Interesting. Later Rasputin came over and lay on the bank behind me, demanding love (rolling on his back and presenting belly). Oak came over to check it out. So long as I was between the two, Rasputin remained quite calm, and Oak seemed merely curious, not agressive. Very interesting.

We hope this a sign of things calming down. Now we just have to hope that the new animals coming in “get the memo” that cats are not evil. We shall see.