Re: What would make you believe?

On Feb 10, 12:41 am, Wildepad <noreplies> wrote:
> A tall young man comes to your door. He speaks with a heavy accent and
> occasionally uses nonsense words. After a few pleasantries, he tells
> you that he's from a parallel universe that is a near duplicate of our
> own except that it's several centuries ahead.
>
> His mission is to change our future. In his universe, a series of wars
> and plagues reduced mankind at one point to less than a thousand
> people. In some universes so closely parallel that there was no
> detectable difference, everyone died.
>
> He acknowledges that his merely popping in changes our 'history', but
> it's their experience that the effect won't alter the fabric of
> society enough to prevent the tragedy.
>
> But there is something you can do. They have records from 'our' time
> and know that tonight's lottery won't have a winner. He's checked the
> numbers from six different games for the past two weeks (as displayed
> on a poster at a gas station he passed on his way from the transfer
> point to your home), and all 552 numbers agree with those on his list,
> indicating high parallelism with their universe. Since the drawing is
> within hours and at a considerable distance, it is highly unlikely
> that his presence will affect the balls drawn.
>
> By chance, you planned to go to the grocery store today anyway, and
> can buy a lottery ticket there.
>
> What, if anything, could he say to convince you to spend a dollar to
> play 'his' numbers for a $65,000,000 lottery?

He walks by a gas station? He should just buy the ticket himself
there; every gas station I've ever been to sells lotto. He could then
stick it in a envelope with a short letter explaining the whys and
whatnots and slide it under my door and go away. That'd be a fun story
to read, right? :)

If he's unwilling and unable to actually do anything to prove any
aspect of his story pre-lotto draw, then talk isn't going to convince
anyone that wouldn't also be convinced by the door-to-door religious
nuts and the rants of homeless people. A handful of people would buy
the ticket just to prove him wrong, or because a dollar is a
reasonable price for such a far fetched story, or just out of the
"what if" factor.

It seems to me if this Descendant Command really wants to ensure my
time line doesn't follow theirs down the drain, they'd forget about
the $65 million and the lottery and take billions from parallel times
and use it to fund a full-on organization dedicated to making whatever
changes are necessary.

--
DJensen