> It's sort of like looking down a well, but it's well of time, where each time I look, the well is one unit deeper and there's another new snapshot of me looking down the well added to the top.
I had to go digging, but it reminds me of the novella Cascade Point by Timothy Zahn. In it, spaceships can travel through hyperspace, but skimming the edge of parallel universes in this way causes the occupants of the spaceship to see visions/hallucinations of their parallel-universe-selves standing nearby. Being able to see the various results of major decisions in your life -- some which lead to the death or grievous injury of the parallel-universe-self -- is quite a shock to most people, and thus it is customary for all passengers to be asleep for the hyperspace travel portion. But all captains are required by regulation to be awake for the transit, and thus in the story this captain must muse on his life-choices, alone on the bridge, because he runs a passenger liner.
It's a bit of a wooden, flat story, with a somewhat basic plot, but I thought it was a neat concept-and-consequence of FTL.
I had to go digging, but it reminds me of the novella Cascade Point by Timothy Zahn. In it, spaceships can travel through hyperspace, but skimming the edge of parallel universes in this way causes the occupants of the spaceship to see visions/hallucinations of their parallel-universe-selves standing nearby. Being able to see the various results of major decisions in your life -- some which lead to the death or grievous injury of the parallel-universe-self -- is quite a shock to most people, and thus it is customary for all passengers to be asleep for the hyperspace travel portion. But all captains are required by regulation to be awake for the transit, and thus in the story this captain must muse on his life-choices, alone on the bridge, because he runs a passenger liner.
It's a bit of a wooden, flat story, with a somewhat basic plot, but I thought it was a neat concept-and-consequence of FTL.
A blog post with a quick mostly-spoiler-free review: http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2014/01/review-of-cascade-p...