Heaven, hell, drugs, particle physics, aliens, etc.

[malfunkshun]

I've had this idea for a book floating around in my head for a while and am almost ready to start writing it. Here's how it goes, generally:

We start off with our universe, and all of it's flaws.
1st: There's not enough matter in the universe to account for the gravitational attraction that holds galaxies together, so it turns out that our universe has to 'steal' the gravitational energy of another one that exists in a nearby dimension. Universes should be self sufficent.
2nd: Because there is not enough matter in the universe, it is going to expand forever and ever. Not an elegant way for a universe to end. Most well designed universes eventually reach a point in their expansion where they start to contract, and eventually end up in a 'big crunch' - the opposite of a 'big bang', where they start the cycle up over again. Ours will just get thinner and thinner until it is completely dead.
3rd: Life exists only on the Earth. In other, better designed universes, it evolves everywhere.
4th: There is no connection between quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. A Grand Unified Theory is impossible. Because of this, we get weird effects like the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle and black holes.
5th: Order should be the natural state for matter and energy in the universe to occupy, not entropy.
And on and on with the flaws.

It turns out that our universe was created by an alien scientist, also known as god, in a different universe in a lab. These aliens are very much like us... in fact, if you saw one you'd think it was human (we were created in gods image after all). God happens to be the sterotypical image we have of him, an old man with a long white beard. The universe god created is far from quality, and has numerous flaws (he's gotten somewhat better at it over the past 14 billion subjective years however). Compared to other universes created by his peers, it pretty much sucks. A lot of fun is had at god expense by his scientific peers, and Satan is the worst and most mean hearted of them. He is constantly doing things to thwart gods plans, such as interfering with the formation of life (more on this later). Satan also creates universes, and hell is one of his creations. Heaven is also real; not an actual universe but a 'virtual reality' where god stores the 'souls' of people. God and satan are constantly struggling for human souls, which exist as complex energy patterns that can be moved to hell or stored in virtual heaven. Most people's souls just dissolve immediately and have to be 'caught' by either god or satan. Good souls are more easily caught by god, because of how their patterns have formed (they are just easier to 'grab'), and evil souls are more easily caught by satan for the same reason. Part of gods plan is for these energy patterns to be able exist independently after death (another flaw that he is trying to correct), thus negating a need for his virtual heaven.

Enter our heros: Shimmy and Crunch. Two worthless good for nothing druggies who actually make contact with god while tripping on shrooms (turns out all of these instances where people 'find god' while tripping has some credence). Shimmy and Crunch possess brains that have evolved the knack of actually making contact with the creator through his lab computer, which is part of gods plan, of course. They learn that satan has been thwarting all of gods attempts to set the flawed universe to right, and that they have to contact an ex-astronaut, Roger Ramjet, and somehow get to Mars. Roger is afflicted with debilitating headaches and as a result had to quit NASA. He has recurring dreams about Mars in which he sees 'smoke signals of peace' puffing out from the planet. Sometimes just thinking about Mars while in a calm state will cure his headaches. There are several other characters that they have to hook up with, including a group of scientists who are working on M-theory and particle physics. They have to scratch build what they need to get to and survive on Mars... a ship capable of taking them there, pressure suits for surviving on the surface, food, equipment, etc. They contact several small aerospace companies and eventually develop an inflatable hab, which they will launch from a 4 kilometer long ballon at 50 miles up. Their spacesuits will be based on diving suits, saran warp, duct tape, and plexiglass. God helps them acquire the resources by making them 'lucky' at certain endeavors. He's god after all, he does have some power.

One of the things satan did to fuck things up was when the solar system was forming. He switched the orbits of the Earth and Mars before they were formed, thus interfering with the formation of life. Mars was supposed to be the abode of life, and Earth was supposed to be where Mars is. Man was supposed to evolve side-by-side with a latent Martian intelligence which never fully formed, and together they were to learn how to correct the laws of physics by using clues passed down through the eons by god (this is the real purpose of religion, communication with god for the purpose of setting the universe to rights). Eventually they would have created a 'universal console', kind of a control board for the laws of physics, and after eons of tweaking, the unvierse would have been made right. Not so anymore. However, gods plans weren't completely demolished, and he tasks Shimmy, Crunch and Roger Ramjet to get to Mars to complete the control board which was almost completed by the Martian intelligence (this form of Martian life exists as complex crystalline patterns in the structure of the crust and constitutes a single mind).

Meanwhile, Dreyfuss Marlow (another evolved brain) summons satan while tripping on shrooms so that he can sell his soul in order to bring Grunge back into style, forever. He succeeds in summoning satan, and true to satans word, Grunge is king again. Dreyfuss is transformed into a Grunge Demon by satan and made immortal so that he can use him as a tool to fight Shimmy's gang. The price of the re-birth of Grunge and Dreyfuss's immortality is that he now looks like The Grinch, and he is in a permanent state of heroin withdrawals. Unlike normal withdrawals, these never end, and satan is the only one who can supply him with heroin. So, Dreyfuss, never really being a bad guy, now must work for satan ceaselessly as an agent against god, and little by little becomes evil.

Satan catches on to gods plans for Shimmy and friends and launches an extra-dimensional assault against the Earth. Nobody on Earth knows about this assault since it is occuring through another dimension, but energy potentials are building to a point where at some time in the near future, hoards of satanic drones will burst through and completely demolish the solar system. Satan wants to keep everyone on the Earth unaware of the assault, because if anyone finds out about it, the simple fact that anyone knows it is happening will weaken it. The more people who know, the weaker it becomes. A group of scientists working on particle physics in some lab, possibly even at the Hadron collider, discover the dimensional assault and try to warn people. Dreyfuss thwarts their plans on getting the warning out and very few people believe the scientists. Shimmy and company read about it in the Enquirer and know it to be the truth, so they contact the scientists and they join forces. Now they have to get to Mars so they can finish and activate the universal controller, as the scientists say the only way to stop the assault is by snap-whipping cosmic strings. Using the controller, they should be able to manipulate the laws of physics so that they can defend against the attack by using cosmic strings as multi-dimensional weapons.

Eventually Mars and Earth will have to be switched in order to set things to right. Once this happens, Mars will be closer to Earth and will possess the Earth's moon as a satellite. The increased energy plus the larger tides from the sun and moon cause the core of Mars to heat up and volcanism is started again. All of the oceans of permafrost melt and the atmosphere thickens and Mars is terraformed. Roger Ramjet is also an 'almost' evolved brain (thus his headaches), allowing him to glimpse the future of gods plan by dreaming about the 'smoke signals of peace', which are actually the gases released into the Martian atmosphere by evaporating ice and volcanism.

To sum it up: God has a plan to fix our flawed universe, and satan is constantly fucking it up. He switched the orbits of Mars and Earth early on, throwing a wrench into gods plans but not completely destroying them. Shimmy and company have to get to Mars so they can activate the controller and use cosmic strings to fight the extradimensional assault. Dreyfuss the Grunge Demon is a constant thorn in their sides. Dreyfuss, Crunch and Shimmy all three have the potential to exist independantly after death because of their evolved brains. At the end of the book, something like this happens - satan barely scrapes by with a victory and all seems lost. Crunch or Shimmy dies, one of the two (possibly Dreyfuss in a stroke of redemption), and his soul continues. Once his soul is free, he is able to encompass the pattern of the universe in his mind, since his own pattern has merged with it. He is able to see all possible states of existence at one time, all possible arrangements of atoms, all possible pasts and futures. With a single thought, he corrects the flaws in the universe and satan is defeated.

That's it in a nutshell, although there is a lot more to come up with. Any ideas?

 

[Excido]

Hahahaha I lol'ed. I would read it, two stoner's teaming up with a group of really smart scientists to save the universe, sounds interesting. I would love to see the interactions between them.

 

[malfunkshun]

thats the idea i want to write something pretty damn nutty but still based in hard science... to a certain degree, anyway. throwing polar opposites into the mix together usually seems like a good formula

 

[malfunkshun]

I couldn't decide how to start it, so I just started somewhere in the middle. Here goes:

[somewhere in the middle of the novel]

"Yeah, I was tripping on shrooms when I saw that UFO, but you just don't hallucinate realistic stuff like that when shrooming. Silent, floating hoo-jiggers bedazzled with multicolored flashing greeblies that float up from the horizon to hover over your house and shine a frikin spotlight on it ain't the kind of thing that happens everyday. And Crunch was there..."

A bubbling sound from the other room, a cough... "I was there too. I'll vouch for him..." More coughing.

"Shut up Crunch."

Roger closed his eyes and began to wearily massage his temples. What about what happened on Mars? Huh? You think that's any more weird than what this kid is describing? Roger sighed. Thinking about this was going to give him a class one migraine, just like it always did. He could feel it coming on. He tried to dismiss it from his thoughts.

"And you don't think it's just the slightest bit coincidental that you and your friend in there -" he motioned to the haze shrouded room across the hall "- saw this UFO while under the influence of a psychadelic drug?"

"That's my point, it's BECAUSE I'm tripping that weird shit like that happens!" Shimmy rolled his eyes and sighed deeply. "Hell, I thought that just maybe you'd have an open mind about the UFO thing, since you're an astronaut -" Shimmy emphasized this but refrained from mentioning you know what, "- and my frikin idol and all." He sat back and settled into a good comfortable sulk.

Shimmy watched as Roger slowly rubbed his prominent chin, his brow furrowed with skepticism. He seemed to be deep in thought, and Shimmy could guess what he was probably thinking about. Silence ensued for a while, until Shimmy finally couldn't hold it back any longer.

"You're thinking about what happened on Mars, aren't you?"

Roger jumped slightly, taken aback. "What? How'd you -" He shut up. How did this kid know about that? Nobody knew about that! He hadn't told anyone about what he'd seen, what had happened on Mars! Roger tried to recover. As nonchalantly as possible, he said, "What are you talking about kid? You've been reading too much science fiction. There's no such thing as UFO's, or anything else like that, especially on Mars." He flinched, then tried to hide it with nervous laughter. Failed. Grinned. Failed at that, too. Finally his expression sank into one of deep worry.

Shimmy drove on. "Look, I KNOW there's something different about the way my brain is wired. And don't try and tell me you haven't thought the same thing about yourself. I know what it's like to be always on the verge of thinking you've got something figured out - what that thing might be, you have no idea - but something profound, something that ought to be common knowledge, like instinct. And I know that something happened to you on Mars, that you saw something, and that just for a second, there on Mars, you had the answer. I felt it when it happened to you! I had the answer too for that brief second, and it scared me shitless. You know this too, or why else would we be here talking? You wouldn't have agreed to see me if you didn't sense it about me, just like when I finally realized that we had to hook up. And I didn't hallucinate being there with you on Mars, standing there, scared shitless for some reason, watching something indescribable, or maybe just unbelievable -"

"Ok, shut up kid. I don't want to talk about that. I get migraines when the topic of stuff that never happened before gets brought up, alright? Is that so strange? That talking about nonsense gives me a headache? You'd get a headache too if somebody was yammering nonsense at you about something that never happened on Mars that he thought he dreamed about. So just shut up and let me sit here for a while in peace." With that, Roger closed his eyes and rested his head in his hands. Another long silence ensued. After an indeterminable length of time, Roger realized that he had been staring at his drink on the coffee table for quite some time. A distant voice called to him from far, far away.

"Yo, Roger Ramjet. Can you hear me? Wake up dude!" Roger managed to break his gaze away from the ice cubes in his glass, which were for some reason becoming a lot more interesting than they had any right to be. He was starting to feel rather odd, he thought... he shook his head to clear it, instantly regretting it as sudden throbs accompanied the movement. He planted his face in his palm and muttered, "So what you're trying to tell me is that I, yourself and Crunch all have brains which represent the next step in human evolution, and that we have to team up and somehow get back to Mars so that we can figure out the meaning of the universe? And that this Dreyfuss Marlowe, this 'grunge demon' as you put it, also shares this 'brain disorder' and is hell bent on our destruction? And that you learned all of this while tripping on pscilocybin mushrooms, a known mind altering drug? And I'm supposed to take this crap seriously?"

Shimmy sat there for a few seconds, brows furrowed, eyeing Roger with interest. "Uh huh."

Roger lifted his head and blinked, trying to focus. "I don't know why I'm wasting my time here..." Why was it becoming so hard to focus all of a sudden? Roger let his gaze drift over again towards his glass on the coffee table. And why were those ice cubes so damn interesting? Ice cubes definitely should not be this fascinating! He decided right then that he wasn't imagining it, he was definitely feeling decidedly odd. Were the warped brain waves of this drug addled freak somehow rubbing off on him? Roger froze, physically and mentally. What was this? Paranoia? What the hell was going on here? Some kind of communist plot? He opened one eye just a tiny bit and saw Shimmy sitting there, staring at him, a look of intense interest on his... face? Hmmm. Shimmy had worms for a face. Weird. That's definitely not right, either. Time to go, Roger decided, because how could he ever have thought that he might have something in common with a communist who had worms for a face? Rogers hands became a sudden blur of motion as he inspected his own face for worm activity. Finding none, he relaxed and sat like that for a second, staring once again at the ice cubes as they melted in a very interesting way, index finger affixed to lower lip, pulling it down slowly, veiny gums exposed.

"That's it. Fuck those ice cubes!" Roger stood up, intent on departing. A little too fast apparantly, because his head began to pound again, causing the room to slosh around with enthusiastic viscosity. As his eyes darted frantically around the room, trying to regain a stable, non-sloshing frame of reference, his vision became obscured with bizarre afterimages of... well, everything. Roger was reminded of the bright trail left by a childs fourth of July sparkler as it was waved enthusiastically through the air, the only difference being that he wasn't watching the bright tip of a sparkler that was leaving bright trails. He was watching the contents of this bizarre, carnival sideshow freaked out distorted mirror of a room inhabited by Mr.Womrface the Communist here, and something was terribly, horribly wrong.

Roger panicked as he finally realized what had happened. That little shit Shimmy! He'd... put something in his drink, that was it. How did they say it? What did they call it... dosed! That was it, he'd been dosed! Shimmy had put drugs in his drink!

"You bastard! What did you put in my drink?" Roger lunged towards Shimmy, but the room spun around him and he tripped on the coffee table, causing ice cubes to fly gracefully through the air, leaving long, beatiful trails of quicksilver. Roger was distracted by this for a brief eternity, so he didn't notice as his body spun around in slow motion and slowly impacted the floor, bouncing a few times until coming to rest with interminable slowness. He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples in an attempt to clear his head. As he laid there with his eyes closed, massaging his temples, an image began to form in his minds eye.

In the black void, a red dot appeared.

[stuff not yet written to go here]

He began to visualize a dense fog forming in the caldera of Olympus mons. Huge smoke rings formed and puffed away from the planet, slowly drifting into space. Weird. Peaceful. His headache started to dissipate... and came roaring back as he opened his eyes and shook his head, suddenly intensely frightened and alarmed.

 

[malfunkshun]

Here is some more. This might be the opening chapter of the book. It starts with Roger Ramjet trying to land his malfunctioning shuttle after returning from Mars.



"Roger Ramjet! I need your ass up here on the control deck! Por favor, NOW muchacho!"

Ramona's banshee wail ripped through Rogers migraine festooned brain at full volume. He snatched the snoopy hat, comset and all, from his head and threw it violently across the deck. It immediately rebounded in the zero-g environent and thowcked him on his forehead, dead center. Jagged, colorful lightening patterned auras coruscated across his field of view, dancing in rhythm with the intense waves of agony. Finally, he thought, I popped a blood vessel and now I'll die. Roger, strapped into his seat on the shuttle middeck, cradled his head in his arms and assumed a fetal position, awaiting death while Ramona's shrill voice continued to eminate from the free roaming headset. After several minutes, Roger opened his eyes and was disappointed to discover that he could see again, so therefore he must not be dead yet. He could also hear Ramona's yells still issuing from the comset. It was floating within easy reach, so he grabbed it and smashed the delicate parts against the floor under his boot heel. Roger breathed a sigh of satisfaction and relief as the electronic wailing ceased immediately, but he could still hear Ramona's voice coming through the access hatch from the flight deck above him.

Dammit, it must some kind of emergency, he thought. He should probably get up there and see what all of the fuss was about. "All right, all right. Give me a second," he whispered, eyes shut tight against the pain in his head. Slowly and deliberately, Roger began to unstrap himself from the middeck chair, taking great care as every move accentuated the throbbing in his head. It took him forever to get the seat unmounted and stowed, and all the while Ramona wouldn't shut up. He picked up his damaged snoopy hat and strapped it back onto his head, effectively muffling her incessant wailing. "I'm coming," Roger muttered, as he propelled himself upward and through the hatch into the flight deck.

Ramona turned as he emerged through the hatch. Her face was a caricature of pure panic. Roger floated over to the pilots seat, his mind muddled as he tried to think through the haze of pain. Ramona was gesticulating wildly as he took his seat and strapped himself in, taking deep breaths to try to clear his mind. Mercifully, the pain started to abate a little as he settled himself into his element. Even with these damn debilitating migraines, he was still a pilot, and a damned good one. Whatever the emergency was, he would get a handle on it. Roger glanced over at the main status screen, which was flashing a code red-15. Apparently the cooling laser was offline...

Pain ripped through Roger's brain, which accompanied Ramona's shrill voice as she ripped the snoopy hat from his head. "Dammit Roger, did you hear me? Dios mio... the cooling laser is offline, and so is the reentry program!"

"I can see it on the screen for crissake! Shut up, woman, your caterwauling is killing me. KILLING ME!" Rogers eyes bugged out as he pressed his forearms against his ears, locking his hands behind his head. Ramona mercifully shut up. After a few moments, the soothing sound of the air circulation unit calmed him somewhat, and the pain begain to abate a little.

Roger turned towards her, his head still embraced in his arms, a desperate pleading look on his face. "Ramona. Please. My head... hurts. Do you understand hurts? Do I have to explain what hurts means?" Roger glanced wearily around the cabin. He spied Ramonas space helmet and removed it from it's storage niche. He held it up for her to inspect. "To make it as easy to understand as possible, we can play show and tell. You get in the airlock. I'll vent the goddamn thing and then I'll show you your space helmet through the f'ing window. Then you tell me if it hurts. Ok?"

A few seconds passed with Ramona floating there, shocked into stunned silence. She opened her mouth a fraction of an inch and almost began to inhale -

Roger planted his hand over Ramona's mouth. "What I mean is, don't speak to me in any tone above a whisper or I will kill you. Comprende?" Ramona's head bobbed up and down. Roger moved his hand away from her face, a long string of spittle connecting fingers and mouth. Ramona moved to wipe it away, and away it flew. They both watched in silence as two spit globs, connected by a spit string, drifted away gracefully, spinning around it's center of mass until it was sucked into an air vent. Roger felt calmed after witnessing the somewhat unconventional display of orbital mechanics involving bodily fluids, and his migraine actually faded to an almost tolerable level. "Ok. So what seems to be the problem here?"

In a careful whisper, Ramona said in a rush, "The cooling laser crapped out and then the RCS computer went offline at the same time so we have no automatic RCS, no approach vector, we have an OMS deorbit burn coming up with no calcuations, oh and we have no contact with ground control because when the RCS went down the main computer rebooted and it never re-loaded the communications software."

Roger blinked. "Say again?"

Ramona inhalded.

"Nevermind!" Roger took a deep breath. "Ok, lets work the problem. You say it all started when the cooling laser... crapped out? Is that how you put it?"

"Si. Everything was going fine, ground control had just uploaded an update to our reentry program, and then the code-15 red popped up on the status screen. That's when the RCS computer went down. I looked up a code-15 red in the manual and saw that it was a cooling laser failure, which normally is no problemo... we'd just upload another software revision to adjust our reentry so that we wouldn't build up so much heat. Not as efficient, takes more time, but it works, but then then like I said, the RCS computer crapped out..."

"So, the computer rebooted?"

"Uh huh... well, that's what I thought. I wasn't worried at first. I mean, it's never just rebooted itself before right before reentry, but I figured it would load back up uno momento..."

"And that's when you realized that it had... crapped out?"

"Yeah, when none of the reentry programs loaded, I realized that the goddamn thing had crapped out! And then I couldn't get hold of ground control, because THAT software didn't load either! And now we have no automatic RCS control for reentry and no software updates from ground control and no cooling laser! Aye, Dios mio..." Ramona choked back a sob.

"There there, don't cry." Ramona sniffled and looked up at Roger, grateful for his compassion. Her trembling lips formed a tentative smile. "And wipe up that snot before it floats away and sticks to something." She wiped it on Roger's sleeve. Roger eyed his sleeve with distaste and rolled his eyes.

"Ok, where is the manual?" Roger craned his head, looking around the cabin. He glanced at Ramona, the question visible on his features. "Uh..." she said, and immediately went about flipping dummy switches with intense concentration.

"Ramona, I don't have time for this, and my headache is starting to get worse. Where is the manual? Tell me now."

"I kind of... threw it away."

Roger glared. "Where?"

Ramona didn't answer. Roger picked up her helmet.

"The commode."

Roger sighed and got up to retrieve it. He found it crumpled and drifting in the vicinity of the waste collection system. Before actually handling it, he maneuvered himself around it, inspecting it from all sides and angles for 'waste material'. Finding none, he snatched it out of the air and propelled himself back to his seat. He glowered at Ramona.

"Sorry," she said. "I kind of got a little frustrated. Hey, I didn't wipe my cula with it, ok?"

Roger rolled his eyes as he uncrumpled the manual. "So I have discerned," he said as he opened it. "Ok, lets see. We'll check the breaker circuits first. You say the cooling laser crapped out... uh, malfunctioned first?"

"Si. And then..."

"And then the RCS computer powered down. Right. The question is, why?" Roger checked the index of the manual, then flipped through it, stopping at the desired section. He spent a few seconds tracing circuits of the schematic diagram with his finger. "Here we are. The cooling laser is on the same circuit as the RCS computer. And... ok, yeah. The main computer is on a sub-circuit to the RCS computer. That would explain why the RCS computer went down when the laser went down. So, all we have to do is reset the breaker and the laser and the computer should come back online." Roger furrowed his brow and looked at Romana with mild distaste. "Really Ramona, you should have been able to figure that one out. We just need to reset the breaker switch. At the worst, we'll have to replace a fuse." Ramona huffed and sat back in her seat, arms crossed, a scowl etched across her brow. Roger proceeded to unscrew the service panel in the ceiling to permit access to the breaker switches. After a few minutes, he had the panel removed and was shining a small flashlight into the recessed area.

"Aha. There we are, the laser and the RCS switches are both thrown. Looks like the main computer is ok, it just rebooted is all. I'll see if I can get the communications software to load again once I get these switches back on." Roger flipped the breakers back to their 'on' positions and replaced the panel. "That should do it."

Roger turned back to the main console and hit the power up switch for the RCS computer. Nothing happened. He frowned. This was not good. Oh yes, the laser. Stupid... I have to power that up first. It really was stupid, Roger thought, that the RCS computer and the cooling laser were on the same circuit. Not only that, but the RCS power feed depended on the laser being powered up before IT could be powered up. Who boy, this design really stinks. This thing is supposed to be built around triple redundancy, and here we have basically what amounts to... well, negative redundancy. He would have to have a talk to some engineers when he got back on the ground. For now, Roger concentrated on the task at hand. He powered up the laser.

And again, nothing happened.



What happens next is Roger has to pilot the shuttle back into the atmosphere on manual control. He has no approach info so he's off course and winds up having to land in Dallas TX. He punches a hole straight through the protective UV tent that covers the city and lands it on a train, the only straight path in a city full of buildings and houses that is relatively vacant. This train is huge, as are a lot of 'future trains', and it is hauling pig shit for processing into methane. Roger lands right in this car full of pigshit. At that moment, the cooling laser is jarred back to life, and as the excess heat is beamed away, the shuttle winds up trapped under several meters of frozen pigshit.

 

[coelophysis]

I didn't read the sample posts yet. But I did read your first post. I like the idea a lot. I've had a concept pretty similar that I was always playing in my mind that I'd tell people I'd make a movie of if I ever had the access haha.

You mention the people with the evolved brains, being able to contact the higher powers and that these people were special in some way. A suggestion, atleast how I see their status anyway, is that they're sort of an angel-like figures(even if they are slackers, think of Jesus, he was a hippy) sent down specifically from god.


I'm really digging your idea. You know there are websites out there that you can publish your book online and put it up into their store and you can buy one and have it shipped to you and have other people buy it.

 

[malfunkshun]

Thanks for the suggestion on the online publishing thing. I might try that once it's finished. And thanks for the character suggestion too. I don't think that these 'evolved brain' people are necessarily going to be angels, but I definitely have it in mind that at the end of the book, one of them is going to die and 'transcend' into something more... maybe you could call him an angel by then.