How to send a message to the past using a precognizant rabbit?
Let's say we have a wild rabbit that can see a few minutes into the future. Being a non-sentient animal, it barely registers these abilities, and largely uses it to find food, avoid predators, save time seeking mates, and other such things rabbits do. After several months, some scientists finally manage to capture the thing for study and experimentation.
So after some tests, which determine that there's really nothing different physically about this rabbit, we're left with one incredibly normal yet precognizant rabbit, and a bunch of bored scientists.
So after a while, one of the scientists realized that because this rabbit can somehow receive sensory information from the future, and convey it back to the present, it might be possible to convey a message from the present back to the past! So now the question is: how exactly do we do that?
some limitations:
- the rabbit is limited to only what it can consciously perceive
- the present rabbit is aware of what it will perceive in the future, and will react to it accordingly (seek if good, avoid if bad)
- and you can't kill the rabbit or put it in a situation of unacceptable risk, because we only have the one.
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/73906. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
You are, in essence, talking to yourself. So you need to make a set of rules that you'll follow. Let's say we have the rabbit in a long cage, and we use Morse Code to communicate with ourselves. We can convince the rabbit to go to one end of the cage or another - And designate one end as a dot, the other as a dash.
Now, we get to timing. How do you determine when the rabbit is lying around, or when it's starting to "Transmit" or finishing "Transmitting"? Well, you teach it tricks. Teach it to roll over for starting, and stand on its back legs for a few seconds for ending. On the plus side, luring the rabbit to one end or the other can be done with an all-positive method, without any negative/fear things involved.
Then, you set aside a good length of time, where you wait and do nothing to the rabbit. This time is your receiving time - you want to make sure you don't get interrupted while receiving something.
Once this time is done, do the trick, and start transmitting. In the past, you'll have your observation time interrupted by the rabbit transmissions.
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