Fermi Paradox: Simulations

[Cognisant]

I was worldbuilding for a story where advanced humans go to an alien world and being bored and far from oversight they establish themselves as a pantheon of deities, ostensibly to oversee the world's development but really just to play at being feudal god-kings/queens, which leads to them inexorably being drawn into the local politics until they end up going to war with each other.

A problem I ran into is that I couldn't figure out how to get them off the ship, I figure in the future full immersion VR must be possible and much of the ship's "crew quarters" would actually be a virtual environment, but if you can do that and you can slow your own mental clock down to give the computer more processing time to create a more detailed simulation then you wouldn't need to go to the planet, people could just rule over their own virtual kingdoms.

It's not an insurmountable problem for the story but it's an interesting thing to ponder regarding the Fermi paradox, I mean when was the last time you went to Africa to check out the wildlife? Would it be worth the time and expense for aliens to come here to check us out when they could use a fraction of those resources to simulate dozens of far more interesting worlds to explore?

 

[Deleted member 1424]

Try some sort of malfunction that inhibits them in a narratively desirable fashion. You could have the ship crash and have them stranded with amazing technology bio-locked to them. Different humans would have different tools available to them; thus becoming gods of laser guns/war, medicine/life, or food replicators/harvest.

 

[Niclmaki]

You could have them get caught in their own hubris and have it start as an experiment.

Like the scientist who ran as a superintendent in a “mock” prison, but started taking it super seriously.

 

[Cognisant]

Try some sort of malfunction that inhibits them in a narratively desirable fashion. You could have the ship crash and have them stranded with amazing technology bio-locked to them.

That's a bit Star Trekie for me.
Sorry "humans" was misleading, I don't imagine these being baseline humans more like cyberbrains from "Ghost in the Shell" since if you're traveling interstellar distances you really want as small a payload as possible so your ship has the highest power to weight ratio possible.

Imagine the Burj Khalifa as a ship in space and about 95% of that ship is engine, once it arrives in the target system robots and an onboard foundry/factory start cannibalizing the engine to make a more traditional space ship, most of which is still very industry focused. The ship then sends out surveying and mining drones to collect whatever free floating resources are available and parks itself in orbit around a suitable planet to continue its metamorphosis into a moon sized space station. This whole process is decades of furiously paced highly automated activity during which the "humans" are plugged into the onboard server enjoying a simulated existence running at maybe a tenth of real time, as they've been doing since they left the Sol system.

The interstellar trip took centuries, after being launched "backwards" from a mass driver in orbit around the Sun it drifted for a few hundred years before it began its deceleration burn, that massive engine had only one job, to bring the ship down from something like 0.5c

As the moon sized space station is nearing completion bodies are constructed for the crew, those low ranking enough to be forced to leave the virtual paradise and do some actual work. These bodies are initially default androgynous droids but once the bare minimum of their obligations are met the crew set about using the station's various facilities to customize these bodies to something closer resembling their virtual avatars.

The passengers are happy to stay hooked up to the now massive and extremely powerful server, they've living in their own virtual paradises at an accelerated rate so for every hour that passes in real space a week passes in virtual space. They still check on what's going on outside but as time passes in real space their check-ins become increasingly infrequent, as far as they're concerned the real universe is slow and terribly boring.

The crew could return to virtual reality and maybe some of them do but a few band together to sell their stake in the station and the system for exclusive rights to one of the planets which they've noticed is life bearing and inhabited. At first the people in charge refuse (since they'd be selling at a loss) but the group's spokesperson explains that since the planet is inhabited (albeit by primitives) technically the entire system is under Sol jurisdiction as a matter of diplomatic concern. However if the group buys exclusive rights to the planet then it being life bearing is exclusively their problem and if they happen to wipe out said primitives then the rest of the expedition has plausible deniability...

Different humans would have different tools available to them; thus becoming gods of laser guns/war, medicine/life, or food replicators/harvest.

The embodied humans are all superhumanly fast, strong and durable, they have heightened reflexes and kinesthetic senses.

I don't think their abilities would vary too much at least not in terms of technology but their different personalities/temperaments would give them different sets of skills and methodologies for problem solving. Or to put it another way they don't have different specialties so much as they have different ways of having fun, one of them might do a lot of shape changing and impersonation whereas another might wander the world getting into fights, whereas yet another might doing genetic engineering as a hobby.

I want them to be different but I don't want it to be clear which would actually win in a fight so when they do fight each other its actually the natives that are the deciding factor. Imagine two of them are having a heated discussion in a castle when one threatens to harm the other to which he replies "yeah you and what army?" to which the guards in the room draw maces and crossbows.

 

[CatGoddess]

But why did they decide to visit the other planet in the first place? Why did they decide it was important for certain low-ranking officers to exit the simulation. I mean, they all could've just stayed on Earth and simulated whatever they wanted; once you have the ability to control your own simulation, you're basically the god of your world. (because you manipulate your experience of reality as you wish)

I think that's why the cryonic sleep for long-distance space travel is more popular in fiction. That makes it kind of cliched, though, so I can see why you'd be driven away from that trope.

As for the Fermi paradox: I agree, but if it is possible for a civilization to achieve interstellar travel and some method of ensuring there are still crew members at the end of the journey (FTL, cryonics, multi-generational mission, etc.) prior to figuring out simulations, they could still be spurred to explore/colonize other worlds. Or they could be opposed to entering a simulation for religious/philosophical reason. So I'd still say it's possible to contact a non-human society.

But, yeah, aliens-in-simulations could explain the lack of advanced spacefaring civilizations that we've thus far encountered.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

I think you need to figure out what themes and motifs you want to convey before you start hashing out the plot. What are you trying to say with this story? What's the context of this story in a larger universe.

I don't see the point of trying to explore the fallibility of infallible wish-fulfillment humans. That's not the point of such characters. The only thing you're going to convey that way is that godhood/transhumanity is so boring that they occupy themselves playing with lesser civilizations. Makes for incredibly unlikable protagonists/antagonists as well.

 

[Cognisant]

One theme I'd like to explore is that these practically immortal transhumans are like the baby boomers but on a galactic scale. Before they even set out for another solar system they're staking claims on it and dividing up the entirity of its resources among their shareholders. Then when they arrive they immediately begin strip mining everything because as far as they're concerned none of it has inherent value. It's just resources to be turned into ever larger servers to run ever more complex and realistic paradise simulations.

For the younger transhumans there's a profound feeling of entrapment, the universe around them is completely owned and allocated and most of it is allocated to the already obscenely rich. Maybe there's a relatively young couple who want to start a family or they already have a child but they have to pay a fortune for that child to be granted citizenship. Anyone can create life, human or artificial, but such creations are only property until their benefactors pay for their citizenship, maybe there's an entire underclass of people without citizenship who are practically slaves.

 

[Cognisant]

I'm mainly worldbuilding and geeking out about the tech, I haven't really got a story in mind yet.

That being said I started worldbuilding after rewatching the ending to Shin Sekai Yori on youtube, the part where Squealer is put on trial. I like the idea of there being layers of oppression so just when the natives get the upperhand on the their would-be gods they find out there's still three layers of oppression above them.

 

[Cognisant]

 

[CatGoddess]

I watched the youtube series; the premise was good but the animations/script themselves were kind of awkward.