driftfleet | (no subject)

[Winn gets a soft smile with that touch. She appreciates his support though she doesn't mean for him to fall into the background so much.]

Mm, that was her name in my world. I'm actually surprised more names are different though. What are the odds you'll always think up the same thing?

It's true - another 5 minutes of thought could've given anyone a completely different idea in their own world - so a version of themselves that led a different life is statistically guaranteed to come up with an alternative.

[ he may be thinking up different names other versions of kara may be using now. ]

Ah, but statistics does not account for unexplained connectivity between worlds. If Atroma can take us from many timelines, there's undoubtedly other communication as well - whether we're aware of it or not.

And yet Erik has been Magneto in every reality I've known or heard about him. [She looks at Vision.] You think we're connected to our other selves?

[ it's an interesting thought. are they connected? at the end of the day they are versions of each other - different lives, different choices - does that mean they're still them though? it's those choices that make them who they are...don't mind him, he'll just be here spiraling into another existential crisis and wondering if every time he's sad for no reason it's because one of his other selves had died, and if illogical anger comes from an evil self being murder-y. ]

I think we must be, yes. It need not be in any way we're able to sense or control, but it can't be coincidence there are many groups of Avengers who call themselves as such, for example.

I never thought about it like that. I've always just thought the divisions between realities could be thin enough that some things were playing out the same way while others change. [but that doesn't preclude the possibility of a connection and it would explain some things better.]

I suppose it all depends on how many realities are out there - if there's an infinite amount, then every single possible mix of circumstances could happen. If it's a finite multiverse, then that much repetition can't be random.

[ it all somehow always comes back to that basic question, that he has no idea how to answer. what kind of multiverse are they living in? ]

[He nods, smiling to himself - it's a good logic problem to consider.]

Or they could both be true. In fact, if we assume infinite realities, there's all the more reason to believe at least some of them are connected.

You know, when we think about them being infinite it's stranger to analyze how The Atroma bring us here. Why do they so often use just one reality in some cases and many in others?

And how often do we think someone is from our world when they are secretly just really similar?

There's gotta be some way to figure out which it is, and how they're connected -

[ super experimental headache inducing physics experimentation? yes please. he won't be able to figure out how to open a breach, let alone open one to the right earth, if he doesn't even know how many earths are out there, right? this is a logical first step! ]

Ease of access? Clustered realities? Consumer demand? Without knowing more of them, it's difficult to understand. Is correlation related to causation or not?

[Kitty's second question is a good one.]

It's possible we can't tell, if the differences are minor enough. We could all be from different realities.

That could really mess with you. Your friend from home, you think, tells you they don't like peanut butter and you remember them loving peanut butter and then you don't know if you remembered wrong or if they aren't actually from your world.

I'm like -- 99% sure Kara and I are from the same world.

[ when you have one friend and you've also spent the last couple of years being pretty in love with her -- you forget nothing. ]

For the most part, it's been the same with my friends. Though I admit I only realized Clint was from a different world when he showed his Blockbuster card; the franchise has quite gone by the wayside in my time.

Kurt is from years into a future I didn't expect any of us to have [Make of that what you will.] so I don't think my percentage can be that high. I just know he feels like family.

[ squeezing her hand is a go. his heart looks like it's been put together by a kindergartner playing with duct tape at this point - it breaks so often. ]

But there has to be a difference. I mean. All these worlds - they exist side by side, right? So something has to be keeping them apart, something has to be different between people from separate earths, something measurable.

All the more reason to value him. Winter and Jim were very much like that, though their timelines were very different. [Well, and they were the same person, so there's that.]

You're probably right, but I'm afraid I haven't the least idea what it could be. Some kind of particle, perhaps?

[She nods and squeezes Winn's hand back.] I managed to meet Jim before he disappeared and met Winter shortly after that. [So she knows how important he was to Winter even wearing the same face.]

You think there's something we could actually detect? [She hadn't thought about that before, but now she is.]

[ he doesn't know either of those people, and again he feels like he's intruding here - on a better conversation they could be having. ]

There always is, it's a matter of finding it. [ did he just stumble on project 2567884? probably. ]

[What's important is that they're here now, and that they can care about each other just as much whether they're from the same timeline or not. The Vision has a feeling Kitty and Winn are getting a good start on that.]

It would be difficult to discover without having two such environments to compare but--I don't see why it could not be discovered.

We might not have environments to compare, but we do have people. Assuming we can do it in a way that is full of consent and not harmful. [She came from a place with some pretty grotesque human (and mutant) experimentation.]

[ there's already one subject whose consent they don't have to wonder about - winn will absolutely be experimenting on himself. the problem is that he and kara don't make a very good control group - what with him being human and her being kryptonian and all. they have so many differences that would have nothing to do with which reality they originated from. ]

I think step one would probably be just taking a lot of measurements to compare.

That would be simple enough, though I admit I may not make a good test subject. [What with being a vibranium-infused synthetic person and all.] And of course, I'd want informed consent.

Mutants might skew the results too, but I guess that's harder to know without knowing what we're looking for.