So I was thinking more about this whole universe building thing, and this whole having a goal to create a story that also addresses important modern fears, eithics and uncertainties. It's harder than it might first appear. For example, I really like my rift idea, but if that is a dominant mechinic, the mechanic itself imposes consequences on the universe in which it exists. Because I really want the topics addressed to relect the real universe, I sort of want the mechnic to be based in a plausible reality, but that greatly restricts the nature that a mechanic can take. For example, the rift has to be predicated on a physical concept (or you can use some much less scientific concept, e.g. aliens) to drive how it works. You could I supposed take aliens or fantasy though and tweak the concept to work however you want, but even that's difficult to match to the way you want it to impact the story with respect to the elements that are fixed in there basis of the real world.

For example, I want the darkest and brightest futures to diverge in somewhat specific ways with respect to various technologies. I could pretty much take the current world, or the world from some point in the past and create two worlds that diverged from that point, but then if I add a rift mechanic, I'm forced to make choices. I could choose to put the rift in place and imagine the divergence thereafter, or I could choose to imagine the divergence from now and then put the rift in place. In writing this and thinking about it, I realize I haven't been very clear with myself about what I actually want. I think the main thing needs to be the fact that one path is super idealisticly the brightest path in my mind, and the other one is the darkest. Like, based on who the leaders are and how they choose to use and distribute technologies.

Let me try again. The plot should take place in the near future (20 to 50 years from now). The rift should not allow anyone access to the opposite side directly... Okay, this (going from jumbled thoughts sraight to what I want) isn't working well... Coming back to this paragraph after finishing the next one, I'm going to make it about how I want the rift mechanics to work. Most people have a counterpart, but only rarely are counterparts actually identified. Only some people can interact through/with the rift at all. Why is it limited? What does it mean to interact? It could be like a shared dream world where lucid dreamers were the ones that could interact. There could be an aspect of mind control a la Tristan's Tale. Something still feels wrong about this; I'll have to keep working on it.

This paragraph contains unorganized ideas because obviously I haven't come to very many definitive conclusions about what I want outside of the "ethical" issues. Sci-fi vs fantasy? Prefer sci-fi, but that seems harder. I want there to be enough technology differences that are outside of what we think of as technology that the universe is clearly fantastical. Maybe I don't care about sci-fi vs fantasy. I think I do actually want to chuck the notion I have of sci-fi and fantasy as clearly distinct, well-defined boxes. I think I'd rather just have some world elements that I consider sci-fi, and others that I consider fantasy. If it works out that I can justify the fantasy as sci-fi in retrospect, great, but if not, that's fine too. The sci-fi elements that I care about are AI, bio-engineering and novel consciousness manifestations including mergings. The rift can be purely fantasy.