Sci-Fi over Fantasy: A Lunatic With No Associated Degree Attempts to Assign Scientific Principles to The Locked Tomb
or,
Pre-Resurrection Timeline, Space Installations, and Several Hot Takes
Welcome back, deranged devotees of the Locked Tomb! In THIS installment of my descent into madness (wherein I noticed Tor classifies TLT as Sci-Fi and thereafter lost my mind*), we're going to build a wobbly Pre-Resurrection timeline out of John's piecemeal testimony. In the spirit of Science, I consider this a team project! Your thoughts, opinions, insights and corrections are strongly encouraged.
Pick your fighter:
When does the “Pre-Resurrection?” take place?
(under the cut)
Approximately now / plus or minus 10 years (different timeline/alternate universe)
In the Near(ish?) future, 100+ years (projected real-world timeline)
Nuance / I am bald / What is time, really?
You there! With the reading comprehension! I bet you can predict my conclusions. Let's stumble through them together, hand in intractable hand.
Population Math: Whether You Like it or Not
On the first fucking page of NtN, John claims the population of Earth is currently 11 billion. So how many people are alive on Earth right now? Thanks to Internet, I've been informed it's approximately 8.3 billion. Rough estimate of when it reaches 11 billion humans? Around the year 2200, or 175-200ish years from now - HEAVY on the -ish.
This seems technologically reasonable to me, the Increasingly Esoteric Wikipedia Tags Winner of 2026. We invented the airplane 122ish years ago and landed on the Moon only 66 years later. SIXTY SIX. Humanity said “oh shit, you can go up??” and just never stopped. 175-200 years to achieve further space exploration while continuing to drown in maudlin social crises? Yeah, that seems about right.
(By the way: If you're clinging to John being a tumblrina, You can decide whether tumblr lasts hundreds of years, there's a future social media equivalent, or a secret third option.) (I choose Immortal Tumblr)
While scrambling for last-ditch solutions, John recites a litany of space installations, outposts and projects that already exist in his timeline (he also mentions fusion batteries but that's not the point right now, unbelievably). These locations are ideal options to “restart” humanity, being away from the scene of the crime Earth and at least partially constructed. They'd have plenty of dead scientists and support staff to play dollies with, which we know John likes.
In order of appearance, and with associated information:
Mars
“What about the Mars installation? We've still only got room for five million tops out there, and we haven't worked out how to feed them either.”
There's already a vast network of existing infrastructure on Mars for humans to starve in. Neat!
House Candidate: The Second. It's right there, pre-fab, includes the people killed by John in the Apocalypse (helpful??), and we all basically agree on it. The next may be more divisive...
The Shell on Uranus
“What about Uranus, what about the shell we're building there?”
All we really know about Uranus today is that it's *probably* composed of a thick layer of ice over a big fat sexy ocean. It seems a great candidate for human habitation, and a shell/bubble structure on its surface is a logical housing candidate. It's past Mars and towards the Kuiper Belt. "Why not," says I, in the Year of Our General Ignorance 2026.
Not my circus: there's a tangled web of mythology about castration and Aphrodite being Uranus's daughter, being borneded from the sea from her dad's cut-off balls as a tall blonde hottie rising from the ocean on a half-shell. This may intrigue you but my current field is grasping at scientific straws, thanks.
House Candidate: The Third.
Oh, just you wait.
Unless John’s testament fully redacts a settlement or project large enough to house/support large numbers of people off Earth (and boy do I have feelings about that!!), this would be the best place after Mars to take advantage of corpses and water or whatever The Shell facilitates. You know, the Third Place to Go.
It strikes me that the only three (3) people we've ever met from the Third seem VERY comfortable moving in water - unusual among the Houses. (yes, Harrow and saltwater, don't distract me; bitch can't swim)
Everything else I have is about buttholes, bc of Uranus and Ianthe in my ear (Whatever you Classics freaks are up to would be incredibly useful here)
The Kuiper Belt Installation
“What about the Kuiper installation?”
WHAT ABOUT IT, JOHN? The Kuiper Belt is a huge area around the whole solar system, so it's (probably) not in a fixed location. A space station is sensible given a permanent installation on a celestial body would move away from Tau Ceti as it orbited the Sun. In my mind, this structure served as the "last stop" for travellers before exiting the Sol system.
House Candidate: the Mithraeum
As the last lone outpost of humanity, the Kuiper Belt Installation would be the closest anyone, including John, could get to the escaping Billionaires. If everyone working there died, it was already a grave - and a perfect place to “start fresh.”
....like Mars and Uranus.
(Harrow touches on much of this in John 5:4, which will likely be my next subject.(?))
Before I go lie face-down on the floor, hear me out: in all those descriptions of Places to Put People to Save Earth, where's a super close place we could shove a few billion?
like, The Fucking Moon?
The problem is that citizens of the Moon would still be highly dependent on Earth for supplies, which doesn't really help our planet's struggle. At that point saving the Earth and Moon become one and the same.
Now, wouldn't that be interesting?
++++++
Previous installments of this series can be found here (the catalyst), and continued here and here (if you want to turn your brain into sludge)
I love this scene so much, Pyrrha tries to joke her way out of a difficult conversation only to be met with the kindest possible way someone can say "I just think you'd make a shitty wife"
I think one of Gideon's funniest moments is when she learns that Pal and Dulcie have a Thing and she's so distraught about it because she feels like a complete homewrecker. Like she just made one of her first ever friends, this weird little man whom she diagnosed as Bitchless upon first sight, and then she learns he actually does have A Single Bitch but it's the woman she's been flirting with nonstop since she got there. So naturally her reaction is to start mourning for him because literally, how was her new bestie The Most Bitchless Man Alive ever supposed to compete with her
“She died. She can’t come back, even if you keep her stuffed away in a drawer you can’t look at. You’re not waiting for her resurrection; you’ve made yourself her mausoleum.”
theartofmadeline
tangentwithtanner
yousharknotpass
origamiaround
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