What if the Traveler is the villain?

by Dagoonite, Somewhere in Iowa, lost in a cornfield., Monday, February 25, 2013, 09:06 (4296 days ago) @ SonofMacPhisto

I had a similar thought, actually. Except more twisted along other lines that I was contemplating for a story I'm kinda-sorta working on.

The Traveler (and the people who made it) have reached a technological dead end. It's not that the technology has reached a dead end, but the people's ability to find new applications for it have. However, culture helps dictate creative paths, and perhaps the best way to jump start new creative paths is to expose a new culture to a technology.

The Traveler itself isn't all that interesting; just bits and bobs of tech. A... primer, if you will. You destroy a good portion of the civilization, and offer this primer as a safe haven to collect up the remnants. Once they're secured and have defenses in place, you put some pressure on them. Bad guys outside, things that want humanity dead.

Humanity has traditionally shown an increase in innovation and research capabilities in times of war or conflict. The eggh... er... people in the labs come up with something, the boys in the field modify it, and technology increases by leaps in bounds. And in ways that this malignant race can't predict. Meanwhile, the Traveler transmits all these discoveries and weird, crazy ideas back to the race, allowing them to laugh and then go "Wait..." as they come up with new ideas themselves.

It's a nice system for somebody who's reached the limits of their creativity, allowing them to keep their superiority without fear and still get a lot of new ideas for their own tech. And if the Traveler still has enough energy to float like that without causing some wicked tidal forces... Well. In case of emergency, you can either shut it down and crush the safe haven underneath, or make it go boom.