[ASH] Info File: Supertech Taxonomy

[Saxon Brenton]

On Friday 13 October 2006 Dvandom wrote:

[...]

A query:

Over the years I~Rve occasionally wondered how an Anchor would do in
other universes with other laws of physics.

My defalt assumption is that when an Anchor causes someone else~Rs
Physics Violations to cease to operate the Anchor is affecting the
superhuman only indirectly.  The Anchor applies his or her own
abilities to the fabric of space-time to cause it to loose the
elasticity that allows Physics Violations to occur in the first place.
Thus, the superhuman is denied the opportunity to create Physics
Violations because the material he or she is working with is no longer
responding, not because the superhuman no longer has the power.

This is a nitpicky but nevertheless important detail, since the only
other alternative that I can think of is that when an Anchor shuts
down a Physics Violation the Anchor must be using some type of
suppression against the superhuman and/or the Physics Violation
directly.  This seems unlikely to me, since in such a case the Anchor
would be effectively saying ~Qstop that now~R, but without knowing *how*
the superhuman was creating would be limited to the Anchor~Rs own
knowledge of physics to try and reassert normalcy.  In practical terms,
they would be creating a variation of the Level 5 Mad Science effect,
only they would be running the risk of selectively distorting physics
to disable rather than enable Physics Violations.  Since there has, to
the best of my knowledge, been pretty much uniformity of effect from
Anchors against superpowers and supertech if not necessarily uniformity
of area of effect an intensity of effect, I presume that this latter
option is not the case.

Things get murkier when dealing with other universes.  Perhaps the best
example is Kid Kirby~Rs ability to draw nigh-incomprehensible looking
technical doodads from the Kirby Zone.  Barring a contradiction from
Jameel I presume that an ASH universe Anchor standing in the Kirby Zone
would be unable to switch of a Kirby artefact for the simple reason
that the artefact does not constitute a Violation while in the Zone.
Of course, this assumption falls flat on its face if the Anchor is
projecting a suppression directly at the artefact, since the Anchor
would thereby be imposing ASH universe laws and creating an area where
Kirby Zone physics do not apply.  The inverse of the situation, a Kirby
artefact in the ASH universe, would constitute a Level 4 example of
supertech and be dampenable as normal.  (That said, I do wonder if
someone knowledgable in Violation Physics has ever thought to try and
protect a piece of supertech by surrounding it in a self-sustaining/
self-bootstrapping bubble of slightly alien reality ~V something very
close to ASH universe reality but with a natural tendency to not be so
harsh against Violations.  It may not work, but there might be story
potential in someone trying...)

An even more murky situation would be a Anchor, in the Looniverse,
trying to dampen a Kirby artefact.  I~Rm not sure what would happen.
The Looniverse, of course, is notorious for its lax and often mutually
contradictory laws of physics.  In fact, going by the various
descriptions over the years of how Drama can be used to override both
physics and common sense (I refer he reader to some of Dvandom~Rs own
_Stomper Files_ posts) I postulate that the Looniverse operates on the
meta-rule: ~SThis is a superhero class fictional universe and all other
laws shall be subordinate to the Dramatic telling of stories dealing
with the dynamic antagonism between good and evil by superhuman champions
and villains.  Everything else is negotiable.~T  Under such a circumstance
it may be possible that Kirby artefacts (and a lot of other things) are
Violations of Looniversal law, but the Looniverse doesn~Rt care.


-----
Saxon Brenton   Uni of Technology, city library, Sydney Australia

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