On a hard sci-fi dream--various ideas, DysonSphere et al.

So I'm not sure if I'll get more than a short story out of this idea, but I had a really cinematic, terrifying, and engaging dream that I would like to explore and see if I can use it in a story.

The general questions on all of these are whether they would be practical in any context, what purpose could they serve, and would it be explainable with more than a Hand Wave but not requiring a derailing digression?

For context, in the dream, I was monologuing about my involvement in the events leading up to the present, while overseeing (panning, even) around the setting. It was reminiscent of a film prologue, in retrospect.

Setting:

• It took place on the interior face of something like a Dyson Sphere (the solid-shell variant, not the more realistic variants described on that page) built around a black hole, and run by robots/machines with humanity subjugated and used for slave labor and/or an energy source of some kind.
  • I got the impression that the gravitational force generated of the black hole was somehow being used to produce energy in the facility.
  • There was a sense of "no one leaves this facility", so it was possibly just on the inside of the event horizon, or maybe that was more of a thematic idea that just tied in with the idea of a black hole's event horizon.
  • It may not have been an actual black hole, as it was visible from the inner surface of the sphere; it might have been described as visually similar to the novo-vacuum from Schild's Ladder, which is described as a faintly glowing sphere, but instead of faintly glowing, it was dark and just slightly reflective, like the surface of a pool of ink or oil. It was definitely massive, though—the sphere was large enough to hold all surviving members of at least two races and probably more, and the object in the center was at least Luna-sized.
• Humanity was being processed en masse, though into what I don't know. I remember thinking of energy, but rather than Matrix-style human batteries for the robots, I feel like they were helping to maintain or power the facility itself somehow.
  • The actual processing took place in large, high-ceilinged warehouses full of beds or cots like hospital beds on the floor of the warehouse, where the unprocessed humans were restrained until being processed. They were fully conscious during the entire process.
  • When it was their turn, the humans were physically moved by large stationary machines that looked like blue-and-silver upper bodies, but with gruesome hands comprised of numerous implements, almost like Edward Scissorhands hands. They were taken to an upper area of the warehouse. I didn't see (or don't remember) the actual processing, but no bodies remained afterward. (This part of the memory is pretty nebulous, so could easily be tweaked if necessary.)
• I was somehow responsible for the machines subjugating humanity, in a way that is more relevant to plot than worldbuilding, but it's worth noting that during the events of the dream, I was conscious and aware of my involvement, but was also a willing ally or servant of the machines, in a role of authority over the surviving humans. I remembered my role in the takeover, but I was definitely not the same person in the present, since I did not willingly betray humanity; somehow my free will had been affected between the takeover and the present, or my memories might have been altered, et cetera.

So what are my options for that Dyson Sphere-type structure? Could gravitational forces be used to generate energy without invoking Sufficiently Advanced Technology? What could be the purpose or use of the mass-processing of living humans?

Obvious sources of inspiration for the dream:

• Mass Effect 3 in the processing of the humans.
• Halo 3 or Halo 4, maybe, in the Dyson Sphere (it's the only work I've encountered that had something vaguely similar).
• Final Fantasy X for the visual appearance of the processing machines. (They looked similar to the ghosts that cast "Doom".)
• Dark City, a bit, for the general dark atmosphere and feeling that there was a much greater force in charge, and the slightly Kafkaesque sense of helplessness and pointlessness.

edited 13th Jan '15 10:47:25 AM by SolipSchism

The issue with a Dyson Sphere is that any species that builds one no longer requires it. Because they already have the resources and power to build it. The most I can remember for a Dyson sphere for Halo was the Forerunner planets, and those were armored fortresses meant to keep something safe.

Right. Fully solid Dyson sphere's are impractical, but not impossible. The most obvious reason I can think of to build one would be to conceal something inside it. The main problem is what to do with the heat being generated within the sphere. If it isn't dumped somewhere, the sphere will eventually glow as hot as whatever is generating the energy within. Solve that problem and the rest is mostly handwaving.

Using gravity for energy- Well, sure, that's what water wheels do, after all. Or tidal forces. The problem is that gravity alone wont do anything, it require another force or object in motion to generate energy (for example, the sun powers the evaporation of water which makes river wheels possible; the moons orbit around the Earth powers the tides). See here. If the black hole is rotating, then that might do it.

I always thought that using human brains for their computational power could make a lot more sense than as a power source, a la the matrix. The organic human brain is the most sophisticated and complex object we know of, perhaps it's easier and cheaper to repurpose them than it is to construct artificial minds.

Blame!'s reason for a Dyson Sphere is that the machines building it never got the order to stop.

Well, to be perfectly honest, I'm only calling it a Dyson Sphere because it's an artificial hollow sphere that has been built around an apparently natural phenomenon of some sort, either a black hole or some other sort of Negative Space Wedgie, which partially suggested a Dyson Sphere to me, but obviously it's not a straight example. Whether it's actually designed to collect energy or not isn't as important as the question of what such a structure in general could be used for.

Again, all of this came from a dream, so I'm not expecting every detail to be fully realized in a believable framework, but if there's a way to justify a structure like this, I want to explore the possibilities.

As for whether they'd need it by the time they could build it, perhaps any energy-generating properties are not intended to generate enough energy to sustain a civilization or empire, but just for efficiency—i.e., "We were going to build this thing anyway, we may as well build in some capability to generate energy while we're at it so that we don't have to import massive amounts of resources."

That's true. As I understand it, apparently in the original draft of the Matrix, they were planning to have the humans used as processors, but they were worried that Viewers Are Morons and wouldn't understand it, so they went with human batteries instead.

I will explore the idea of spinning black holes, neutron stars, see if there's any useful hypothetical information about wormholes, etc.

Any idea for what such a structure could be used for aside from energy generation? Maybe playing it as a variant of a Dyson Sphere is the wrong tack to take.

edited 14th Jan '15 9:57:26 AM by SolipSchism