More Fine Structure badgery

[pozorvlak]

It's become apparent to me that many of the mysteries in Fine Structure depend on the precise order in which the stories occur. Time to get systematic. Obviously, this whole post is full of spoilers.

Comments

[anonymous]

OK, first, in my opinion, it seems that all the immortal women are the same person, with different names. Second, and I'm fairly certain this is obvious, each Crash is a method of preventing nuclear war. So, none of them will involve nuclear blasts. As we know from 'Two Much Information', the Crash involves wiping information, but does not kill people directly. Nuclear weapons then, are out of the question.

Now, I'm going to present my version of the order of events. You see, it is my theory that the order the stories are placed on the site has nothing too do with there chronological order in the story. they are ordered according to the date at which Sam wrote the story (or rather, the date when he posted the story). Of course, the fact that parts of it could theoretically take place on Eden complicates things. Also, since we know Sam loves time travel, there could be some of that inside this story. Anyway, here is my order of events:

[Crash 1-8 occurs prior to this]

Crash Zero

The Nature of the Weapon

The Big Idea

Two Much Information

[Crash 0 occurs]

On digital Extremities

Power of Two

Taphophobia

Amber

Indistinguishable From Magic (It's possible that Mitch is not discovering his phasing ability here. Rather, he's revealing it to someone, much like Anne reveals her immortality in Two Much Information).
Paper Universe

Exponents

2048

Two Killed in "Transporter Accident"

The Four Dimensional Man

Zanjero (I'm not sure where to put this. It's the sixteenth year of the line, so it should occur six years after Power of Two. Unfortunately, there's no dates attached to them, so this doesn't really help.)

[massive catastrophe] (THIS IS ONLY A HYPOTHESIS. Presumably, Anne does not succeed in setting off a crash, humanity discovers nuclear weapons, and blows most of itself up. Of course, another possibility is that this catastrophe is some ridiculously powerful line member being Born.)

Section 1 (paragraphs one and two) of The Big Idea (The Big idea seems to contain several stories, disjointed in both time and space.)

Crushed Underground

Forgotten Things in Space (This would occur somewhere after the catastrophe, probably spanning multiple portions of the entire catastrophe.)

***

Of course, I still have a few problems, The Astronomers Loss doesn't seem to fit anywhere in either version of the timeline. Second, parts of The Big Idea need to placed in different crashes, but I'm not sure which ones they are. Any suggestions?

[pozorvlak]

My suggestions are all above, and many of them helpfully include dates :-) They'll probably need re-examining in light of TMI, and Sam's recent one-character change to ODE (see if you can spot it!)

Your idea that the Line/A-layer stories take place after Crash Zero is interesting, but I don't think it holds water. First, the two immortals call each other "Anne" and "Mitch" at the end of TMI, suggesting strongly that those are their real names, and thus that the Anne Poole and Mitch Calrus we meet in the Line stories are at the beginning of their lives. Second, the world of Crash One is described repeatedly as being "littered" with archaeotechnology, and no mention of this is made in the Line stories. Third, the Line stories are full of references to modern-day culture and institutions - Pink Floyd, Google, Area 51 - strongly suggesting that it's meant to take place in the present day. Fourth, the name of the story arc is "1970-". The conventional way of writing the lifespan of a living person, born in the modern era. Anne Poole and/or Mitch Calrus.

[pozorvlak]

Done - see this post.