From: rck1@ellis.uchicago.edu (roberta chi-woon kwong)
Subject: Re: QL:Time travel Question
Reply-To: rck1@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 22:36:19 GMT

In article <10APR199212392609@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov> afmartp@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov (PETE MARTIN) writes:
>In article <10APR199212334928@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov>, afmartp@lims01.lerc.nasa.gov (PETE MARTIN) writes...
>>Also, since Al is a hologram, we always see the neat effects of cars 
>>driving right through him, etc,  but why can the car drive through him, 
>>but he can sit in the car and travel within it too??  These two actions 
>>seem to me to be mutually EXclusive.  
>> 
>>Any help out there?

Well, when Al appears to be riding in the car, what's actually
happening is that he's merely placed his image within the car and
set it (his image) to track along with Sam's traveling. This same
technique also allows him to track alongside the outside of moving
vehicles as well. I'd assume that he's standing the entire time
he's "riding," which also accounts for why he often seems to be
facing a different direction than one normally would while riding
in a vehicle (i.e. straight ahead).

Next question's a LITTLE trickier :-) but hey, I'll give it a
shot.

>I read the QL primer and I understand the concept 
>of time strings with the parts of the string touching other times, and how
>the rule is that Sam can only leap to times that occur during his own life-
>time.  My question is, why can't Sam leap into the future?  By the future, 
>I mean that period of time between the first leap, and Sam's death.  That 
>would satisfy the "within his own lifetime" rule.  Has this been asked/
>discussed before?  Again, any help out there?

Sam's leaping into post-'90s time would seem to fit within the
definition of "his own lifetime," since one's birth as well as death
would consititute one's entire lifetime. This was stated as much in
"Genesis" ("One end of this string represents your birth; the other
end, your death. You tie the ends together, and your life is a
loop. Ball the loop...and the days of your life touch each other out
of sequence. Therefore, leaping from one point in the string to
another --" "Would move you back and forth within your own
lifetime."). 

With this in mind, then, "future" leaps would seem to be possible.
However, since now the m.o. of the Project has changed slightly due
to the interference of GTFWhoever, it just might not be practical.
That is, Sam leaps in order to right some wrong, often using his
knowledge of the future to solve the problem -- or at the very
least, the fact that he's from the future enables him to recognize
the fact that there *exists* a problem at all (preventing something
from happening that the original host didn't see coming up the
first time around). In a "future" leap, Ziggy would be useless in
terms of obtaining data, Al would be reduced to being only able to
offer moral support or an extra pair of eyes, and Sam would be just
as clueless about the situation as the original leapee was (and
probably even more so). The sheer impracticality of these
conditions would then cut down quite a bit the probability of a
"future" leap.

Then again, if Sam does do a "future" leap, would that give away
the fact that he's not going to die in any other leap before the
Project's "real time" reaches that date?

Just my $(2/100) worth...


Robin C. Kwong ("er)
			Leapers always reflect before
				deciding what to do next!