Morrow Research Centers

[cosmicfish]

Time travel settings always fascinate me, so I tend to look at those mechanics, what they imply. I've always assumed some kind of Observer Effect was in play in TMP to explain why the war happened despite someone being able to prove it - the timeline is immutable in all areas related to known events, so attempts to stop the war was futile but a lot could be done in the shadows, as it were.

In addition, I was always bothered by the advanced tech - where did it come from? The far future, after recovery? Seems unlikely and also unsatisfying. Dedicated but secret research? Seems unlikely that a small team in secret could do so much that the larger scientific community could not.

But time travel gives an out. This is a quick idea on how.

On one of his trips just prior to the war, BEM is met by someone who knows the recognition signs for the Project. This someone hands him two cases to take back to the start of the Project. The first contains a powerful and highly reliable laptop computer. The second contains a bunch of folders, one labeled BEM, the rest numbered in order.

Opening the envelope addressed to him, he finds instructions from the CoT to set up secret research centers and allocate trusted, read-in research staff. The research centers are to be numbered - the first gets the computer and the first envelope, the rest just get envelopes. The first one is to be established first and will let him know when the rest should be stood up.

When the first center opens their envelope, they find instructions on using the computer. Inside is all the public research done in the world prior to the war, along with as much of the private/secret/proprietary research as could be obtained. There are instructions on how to make more computers and tools starting with 60's (or whatever decade) technology. Once they've cranked out some copies, they stand up the other research centers, giving each one a brand new computer and the appropriately numbered envelope.

Center 2 gets all of the original data plus everything that Center 1 had produced prior to the war. Center 3 gets all if the above plus the output of Center 2. And so on. The research is linear and causality is preserved (no Bootstrap Paradox) but centuries of narrow research are folded and done in parallel so that by a decade or so prior to the war the last Center has advanced things to the point where fusion reactors and cryotubes and everything else the Project needs has been completed. Center 2 has the info to build the tools and instruments they need using contemporary technology, Center 3 has instructions on how to use those tools to build Center 3's tools, and so on. In a few years the last Center starts up with <1nm nanofab and other technologies.

Prior to the war, after their work has been delivered, the Centers are mothballed. The younger members (still probably pretty senior, there is little value in bringing in new staffers after the Center is stood up) are frozen and distributed to Project sites. The rest are given the option of cryotubes to be opened after recovery, or riding out the war on a private island far from anything worth bombing (available as a story seed or simply as a memorial).

Any thoughts?

[mmartin798]

Just so I am clear, I think you are describing a system similar to Moravec's time-loop logic. See near end of attached.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Generally in research it seems to be that there are two ways to increase the levels of research: -
1. more money
2. more time

I've never been that happy with the time travel aspect of The Morrow Project and looked for ways to resolve that problem. My preferred option was to apply both of the principles mentioned above - time, money
I typically took the approach used by W.A. Harbinson in his Projekt Saucer set of novels.
In that story, the main character starts as a young boy in (I think) the late 1800s. He has an epiphany and realises the Sun will eventually die out and thus so will humanity. From that point on he is driven to find a way to get humanity into space to colonise other planets.

He ends up becoming quite amoral and using people as just another resources but his research becomes the source of the flying saucer and alien abduction events throughout the world.
The prime point here though, is that he has something like 40 years of research time and during the 1930s-40s he makes himself available to the Nazi government of Germany so he can make use of all their resources to further his research. So, he gets both time and money.

I quite like the idea of Morrow Research Centres and I think with sufficient resources (i.e. money but also time), they could probably reach some level of advanced tech needed to make the Project viable.
But obviously, how do you keep such places secret and how do you get all the funding necessary?
So I can understand why the original writers of TMP chose the time travel method even though I prefer not to really make use of it myself.

[cosmicfish]

Just so I am clear, I think you are describing a system similar to Moravec's time-loop logic. See near end of attached.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novikov_self-consistency_principle

Very similar, yes.

[cosmicfish]

Generally in research it seems to be that there are two ways to increase the levels of research: -
1. more money
2. more time

I've never been that happy with the time travel aspect of The Morrow Project and looked for ways to resolve that problem. My preferred option was to apply both of the principles mentioned above - time, money
I typically took the approach used by W.A. Harbinson in his Projekt Saucer set of novels.
In that story, the main character starts as a young boy in (I think) the late 1800s. He has an epiphany and realises the Sun will eventually die out and thus so will humanity. From that point on he is driven to find a way to get humanity into space to colonise other planets.

He ends up becoming quite amoral and using people as just another resources but his research becomes the source of the flying saucer and alien abduction events throughout the world.
The prime point here though, is that he has something like 40 years of research time and during the 1930s-40s he makes himself available to the Nazi government of Germany so he can make use of all their resources to further his research. So, he gets both time and money.

I quite like the idea of Morrow Research Centres and I think with sufficient resources (i.e. money but also time), they could probably reach some level of advanced tech needed to make the Project viable.
But obviously, how do you keep such places secret and how do you get all the funding necessary?
So I can understand why the original writers of TMP chose the time travel method even though I prefer not to really make use of it myself.
The amount of time and money already devoted to research should massively eclipse what TMP can bring to bear through conventional means even ignoring the issues of secrecy. Inventing anything like a cryotube will require massive investments in other fields, often for completely different purposes, and while you could get lucky that is narratively weak.

Time travel gives BEM the certainty and evidence to convince the CoT and everyone who needs to crawl into a cryotube. He is not the first one to predict WWIII, and without time travel I don't see how TMP exists as anything but a handful of people with off-the-shelf hardware wandering around right after the bombs drop.

As to the secrecy, the research would be the easiest thing to conceal in the whole Project. A relative handful of people, limited facilities and equipment, a few locations. If you can move hundreds or thousands of armored vehicles and thousands of people with weapons and explosives at hundreds of locations then the research centers should be easy, especially since they don't need to survive the war.

I've been doing scientific and engineering research for more than a decade now. With thirty years and a trillion dollars a year I don't see cryotubes happening starting with 50's or 70's tech.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Good points in regards to convincing the CoT.
I've never had enough people interested in TMP to get more than one campaign happening - and that one didn't last long - so some aspects of the game obviously escape me! :D