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"There was a time when one old eccentric guy with a notebook could do something important to science. Now even the resources of a major university are often not enough."
- Jerry Pournelle
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| Post Office | ||
| A vault used to store time capsules left by travelers to the past; not your usual delivery service. |
Time travelers would sometimes send themselves messages in the far future. They had to be kept someplace safe; you also need to make sure that they are not opened prematurely; that might cause a paradox.
| We use the Fed to house the vault somebody nicknamed the "Post Office" many years ago, no doubt because the vault is clogged with packages that are not delivered for years or centuries. The Post Office is one of those weird side-effects of time travel. It proves once more that paradoxes are possible, though only strictly limited ones. .. |
| Technovelgy from Millennium,
by John Varley. Published by Berkley Books in 1983 Additional resources -
|
It is an unusual package delivery system. The business model of most such systems is based on the shortness of the delivery time; this system is based on the length of the delivery time - sometimes many millennia. See also Time Capsule from the same novel.
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'Nemourlon armor of reasonable weight resists penetration by most fragments and any bullet that is not both reasonably heavy and fairly high-velocity.'
'Several thousand of them formed the positioning grid on the rubble pile.'
'Its slack walls tightened, bulged, were crossed by ripples and waves of movement.'
'Norman... had never ridden any motorized device that lacked onboard steering and balance systems.'
You will note that HG Wells also figured out the aspect ratio of the future!
'As though a switch had been turned off, the pain stopped...'
'At the ringside opposite them a table had been removed to make room for a large transparent plastic capsule on wheels.'
'... he realized that the moving thing inside was - of course - a robot.'
