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"A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content."
- Theodore Sturgeon
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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 Millenium,
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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'And he had been sent with troops, supplies and bombs to command Russia's most trusted post, the Moonbase.'
'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
