History Fanfic / TheManyWorldsInterpretation

* FirstContact: Subverted. The Caltech nerds (and Penny) are the first people on Earth to unambiguously make contact with "aliens" - who turn out to be from the Discworld. One of the visiting aliens is young, red-haired and attractive enough for Howard Wolowitz to forgo the usual "take me to your leader..." stuff. His first words to the alien visitor are ''Are all the women on your planet as hot as you?''. An "alien" visits. [[KavorkaMan Howard]] makes a pass at her. And when the Caltech crew visit the Discworld, a specialised aspect of quantum theory allows them to take the Internet with them. An Unseen University faculty member, given a resource allowing him (at least in theory) to tap into the accumulated knowledge of an entire planet, immediately asks if you can get lots of pictures of, er, young ladies, in ''artistic'' poses with urns and lengths of gauze. Yes. The Senior Wrangler ''immediately'' latches onto Internet porn. Mustrum ridcully, on the other hand, harrumphs about this sort of thing [[NotSafeForWork Not Safe for Wizards]].

* FirstContact: Subverted. The Caltech nerds (and Penny) are the first people on Earth to unambiguously make contact with "aliens" - who turn out to be from the Discworld. One of the visiting aliens is young, red-haired and attractive enough for Howard Wolowitz to forgo the usual "take me to your leader..." stuff. His first words to the alien visitor are ''Are all the women on your planet as hot as you?''. An "alien" visits. [[KavorkaMan Howard]] makes a pass at her. And when the Caltech crew visit the Discworld, a specialised aspect of quantum theory allows them to take the Internet with them. An Unseen University faculty member, given a resource allowing him (at least in theory) to tap into the accumulated knowledge of an entire planet, immediately asks if you can get lots of pictures of, er, young ladies, in ''artistic'' poses with urns and lengths of gauze. Yes. The Senior Wrangler ''immediately'' latches onto Internet porn.

* TurtlePower: Raj the devout Hindu believes absolutely in Great A'Tuin the world-turtle. It's the founding point of Hindu cosmology, after all. However, Dr Koothrapali the academic cosmologist has difficulties fitting the Discworld into the standard Hertzsprung-Russell curve.

* LeParkour: Johanna demonstrates the essential Assassin skills of roof-running and edificeering. After a moment's hesitation, Penny joins her. She does, after all, have previous experience. Lucy adds this to her proven skill of ''breaking and exiting''. Things get interesting when the LAPD respond to a concerned citizen's telephone call.
* MatterReplicator: When Ruth joins the Discworld's away team, HEX accepts, with sulky bad grace, that she needs local resources to enable her to blend in. Penny has a moment of near-orgasmic bliss when she witnesses several thousand dollars appearing on the table, apparently from nowhere. HEX explains he is capable of manipulating quantum probabilities at a high level, and it is not vanishingly impossible for three thousand US Dollars to appear out of nowhere.[[note]]HEX has previously explained to Leonard that he is bankrolling the expedition by exploiting the American banking system via SalamiSlicing.[[/note]] Penny, coming out of her dollar-induced trance, demands Leonard and Sheldon ''really'' get to work at this quantum stuff, now she has seen a practical application of the physics.

* GeniusLoci: Empirical Crescent. It doesn't look like it's ''sentient''... but it's definitely '''''alive'''''. Things that look like fake doors are more like ''potential'' rooms, with the doors only in place to mark places where the rooms may eventually form. Sheldon wonders, since it's alive, exactly [[FridgeHorror what it's living off]], to Ponder's quiet horror.

* UnfortunateNames: When sorting out a little problem with would-be street muggers, Johanna encounters members of the Los Angeles Police Department called [[Theatre/WestSideStory Krupke]], [[WesternAnimation/TopCat Dibble]] and [[Series/SledgeHammer Captain Trunk]]. Apparently there is also an Inspector Series/{{Columbo}} in the murder squad, and a mounted policeman called Officer [=McLeod=].

* YearInsideHourOutside: As the days and weeks pass in Roundworld, Johanna wonders about how to explain returning to Ankh-Morpork, in winter, several apparent minutes after she departed - with a sudden overnight Californian suntan. [[spoiler: This is indeed remarked on when Johanna makes a flying visit home.]]

* ChickMagnet: Ponder Stibbons, after Penny and Bernadette demonstrate the striking similarity he has to an [[Film/HarryPotter obscure fantasy film actor]] called Creator/DanielRadcliffe. [[note]] Pratchett's artists take unholy glee in drawing Ponder to resemble Film/HarryPotter[[/note]]

* MemoryWipeExploitation: In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'', the {{Magitek}} supercomputer HEX is developing more and more sentience and more and more of a SnarkKnight sense of humour. In this fanfic, HEX is part of an exoplanetary survey team sent to make contact with intelligences on Roundworld, based at a place of learning called [[Series/TheBigBangTheory Caltech]]. When it becomes necessary to explain to the local representatives why they have been visited from another planet, HEX opts to explain in full ''why'' people like Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter are vital to the survival of the human race. His strategy is to explain in absolutely full detail, leaving nothing out, and then to wipe Leonard's memory of all the detail.[[note]]leaving only a gut imperative that they Caltech gang ''must'' devote themselves to the problem of creating viable space colony ships to get humanity off a dooomed planet[[/note]]. Leonard Hofstadter, as HEX anticipates, absolutely ''insists'' on a BrainBleach at the end. This is after hearing that Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah-Fowler will work out the sex thing and in fact go in to have a large family. HEX has told him so. In possibly un-necessary detail.
* MenagerieOfMisery: Two academically-minded people from the Literature/{{Discworld}} cross to [[Series/TheBigBangTheory Pasadena, California]]. While quantum research Wizard Ponder Stibbons is finding lots of things in common with people like Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter, his co-researcher Johanna Smith-Rhodes, an Assassin by education and a zoologist by vocation, is being shown the animal handling facilities at Caltech by an excited Amy Farrah-Fowler. After a very big wince at Amy's casual terminology - she dismisses orang-utans as mere monkeys [[note]]Johanna knows the Librarian. Who is very defintely an ape[[/note]], Johanna looks around her, at bare spartan cages, not big enough for their occupants, in a warehouse room with no windows, and is horrified. Reminding herself not to get angry, she starts reforming the animal-handling culture at Caltech.

* MemoryExploitationWipe: In the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'', the {{Magitek}} supercomputer HEX is developing more and more sentience and more and more of a SnarkKnight sense of humour. In this fanfic, HEX is part of an exoplanetary survey team sent to make contact with intelligences on Roundworld, based at a place of learning called [[Series/TheBigBangTheory Caltech]]. When it becomes necessary to explain to the local representatives why they have been visited from another planet, HEX opts to explain in full ''why'' people like Sheldon Cooper and Leonard Hofstadter are vital to the survival of the human race. His strategy is to explain in absolutely full detail, leaving nothing out, and then to wipe Leonard's memory of all the detail.[[note]]leaving only a gut imperative that they Caltech gang ''must'' devote themselves to the problem of creating viable space colony ships to get humanity off a dooomed planet[[/note]]. Leonard Hofstadter, as HEX anticipates, absolutely ''insists'' on a BrainBleach at the end. This is after hearing that Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah-Fowler will work out the sex thing and in fact go in to have a large family. HEX has told him so. In possibly un-necessary detail.

This is an ongoing crossover fiction by Creator/AAPessimal and brings together the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'' and ''Series/TheBigBangTheory''. Specifically, ''Discworld/TheScienceOfDiscworld''.

Add HEX, the supercomputer, who is governed by [[Discworld/TheScienceOfDiscworld the Prime Directive of the Roundworld Project]]: to get human beings thinking and working about the need to get off the planet and colonise Space in large numbers. And to nurture those brilliant scientific intellects who will contribute to the space colony mission. But as with every occasion where the Wizards have entered the Roundworld to intervene, Something is out there trying to stop them...

* TheEarthPrimeTheory: The Roundworld in this tale is one where the cast of ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'' exist for real, as opposed to being actors and actresses in a TV show. It is hinted to be an alternative Earth and not the Roundworld Prime of Discworld/TheScienceOfDiscworld novels. But then, the Wizards have created, potentially, a ''lot'' of alternative earths. And perhaps the ''true'' prime for all manifestations of Earth is the ''Literature/{{Discworld}}''...

* HomeworldEvacuation: In canon, ''Discworld/TheScienceOfDiscworld'' books believe this is inevitable and will occur sooner rather than later. The challenge for Discworld's wizards is to get humanity on Earth prepared for the moment it has to leave a dying planet and colonise the stars. (no later than the middle 2200's). In this version of Roundworld, insights made by eight intelligences operating around Caltech, Pasadena, in the early 2000's will be key to humanity's survival. Therefore Sheldon Cooper in particular has to be kept alive to make his key realisations, and all eight have to be steered in the right directions...[[note]]Lord Vetinari forensically sums up the reasons why seven out of the eight are vitally important. Much to Penny's perplexity, he doesn't get round to the reason why [[MyFriendZoidberg she]]'s a vital part of the key.[[/note]]

* ValuesDissonance: [[invoked]] There is a clash of cultures between Earth and the Discworld. While watching ''Film/LordOfTheRings''. Ponder and Johanna cannot help but think in terms of ''real'' Dwarves, Elves and Werewolves as they are known on the Discworld. This confuses Sheldon and the gang. Johanna (and Ponder) also express the common sense notion that Aragorn should give up the big dreams and take a nice steady job with a pension plan, like Captain of the Watch in a city somewhere.

* ALadyOnEachArm: On Cosplay Night at the Comic Book Store, Raj practically begs to be photographed in between "WonderWoman" (Penny) and "ComicBook/PoisonIvy" (Johanna) so he can claim online bragging rights. The girls happily indulge him.

* {{Cosplay}}: Johanna and Ponder are prevailed upon to attend a Cosplay night at the Comic Book Store. Ponder goes as Franchise/HarryPotter; Johanna as Pamela Isley. When a third Assassin joins the team, the boys speculate excitedly on getting [[TheChiefsDaughter Ruth N'Kweze]] into the appropriate costume to cosplay [[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Lieutenant Uhura]] or [[ComicBook/{{Storm}] Ohoro Monroe]].

* {{Cosplay}}: Johanna and Ponder are prevailed upon to attend a Cosplay night at the Comic Book Store. Ponder goes as Franchise/HarryPotter; Johanna as Pamela Isley. When a third Assassin joins the team, the boys speculate excitedly on getting [[TheChiefsDaughter Ruth N'Kweze]] into the appropriate costume to cosplay [[/Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries Lieutenant Uhura]] or [[ComicBook/{{Storm}] Ohoro Monroe]].

* {{Cosplay}}: Johanna and Ponder are prevailed upon to attend a Cosplay night at the Comic Book Store. Ponder goes as Franchise/HarryPotter; Johanna as Pamela Isley.

* SomeOfMyBestFriendsAreX: Johanna, who on Earth is using the cover story of being a South African academic looking to be hired by Caltech, has a torrid interview with Janine Davis of HR, who fears that the new hire has certain unreformed old-school [[amoralAfrikaner Afrikaaner]] ways of thinking. It doesn't help when Doctor Smith-Rhodes protests that one of her best friends is black. This is true, but from somebody with [[BlackSpeech a South African accent]] sounds suspicious.

* SomeOfMyBestFriendsAreX: Johanna, who on Earth is using the cover story of being a South African academic looking to be hired by Caltech, has a torrid interview with Janine Davis of HR, who fears that the new hire has certain unreformed old-school Afrikaaner ways of thinking. It doesn't help when Doctor Smith-Rhodes protests that one of her best friends is black. This is true, but from somebody with [[BlackSpeech a South African accent]] sounds suspicious.

* WhiteGangbangers: The expat South Africans Johanna meets in Pasadena. To her horror she realises they are stuck in UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra, but not before a certain Ms. Janine Davis has clocked her in their company. A terse interview with Caltech Human Resources follows the next day.

* MaamShock: Johanna is called ''ma'am'' by respectful Caltech students. She isn't sure if she likes it or not and it reminds her she's just turned thirty.

* VirtualSoundtrack: Available on the author's account on YouTube, unless it has been deleted. Search for YT user [[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEO8domx9Lb34st1kGAOtR15rvCeqmPTI Pragmatist23]].