u/Offset997

Hello everyone. I recently found this sub and thought I would share my own encounter.

It was in the early or mid 90's. My brother and I were visiting our dad on visitation rights for a week or so. He was working late at a garage and brought us along.

So my brother and I were in the parking lot playing with one of those roller platform things that mechanics use to slide under cars. Racing it, crashing it, trying to get each other hurt... you know... normal kid stuff in the 90's.

When he pushed me to the side alley, I saw a man with a hat standing there. It was one of those perception things where you can just tell it was solid, not just a shadow. It didn't do anything aggressive or scary. He just turned and walked, like he didn't mean for us to see him. Not really threatening, it was more of a feeling of "oh, sorry... don't mind me..."

He went into the side wall of the garage, and he was gone. No doors.

I asked my brother if he saw him. My brother asked if I meant "the man with the hat." We both saw him, and we were both wide awake.

And no. We didn't take Benadryl. We WERE hopped up on sugar.

In the time since this encounter, I since learned about shadow people. Depictions back then included babies, some kind of blob, and of course... a man with a fedora.

It was fascinating to learn much later that he's a shared experience from DPH. But I wonder how many people know that he can be encountered outside of a trip, or even outside of sleep paralysis.

TLDR: wide awake, two witnesses, solid form but not really threatening.

What the title says. I love hard sci-fi narratives, but it sometimes gets hard to develop these setting due to how much we all love to scrutinize the technology present.

I'm not judging. I've wrinkled my brow at The Expanse a couple times, and I love that show.

So below I'm listing some key elements of how travel is handled in my setting. The story I'm writing is early enough in development that I can make changes if I need to, or if I receive some excellent suggestions.

I'm not posting this in a physics or science sub. I'm interested in narrative strength over realism. I just need to know if the realism is "good enough" to enjoy.

1. FTL is limited to a fixed stargate infrastructure. These stargates were built by a hyper-advanced civilization that held a monopoly on the technology and wiped themselves out in a "cosmic whoopsie" three decades ago. The FTL gates are rotting, jeopardizing the empires that grew reliant on them, and the technology is just too far advanced to understand, replicate, or even maintain.

2. Travel within a star system can take days or weeks depending on the trip. The maximum speed a ship can reach is about 0.02c. This is called "super-cruise" or sometimes "super-c."

3. Acceleration or deceleration to and from super-cruise is not instantaneous. It can take up to 12 hours depending on the mass of the ship. During this period, the crew must be confined to gel-filled crash beds so they aren't pancaked. Once max speed is reached, acceleration ends and the ship coasts on momentum, allowing the crew to inspect and perform maintenance.

4. Super-cruise is NOT determined by engine power, but rather the strength of electro-static field generators that protect the ship from dust and micro-impacts while traveling at extreme speeds. These fields generate *massive* amounts of heat. Some of this heat is steadily vented in transit, but not enough to prevent damage from prolonged usage. Ships at super-cruise need to make coordinated stops to deploy their radiators every few days.

5. Traffic lanes exist. These lanes are surveyed for safety and cleared of dangerous obstacles either by large financial and trade organizations or by military pathfinder divisions. Lanes are curated with tight-beam communication relays and emergency rescue posts. Ships not using a traffic lane do so at extreme risk, and often need to reduce their speed to give their static fields a chance to deflect space pebbles. Lanes constantly shift due to gravitational objects and shifting dust pockets, meaning the age of a survey matters when a captain chooses a route.

Thoughts? Suggestions? I would even love to see how other sci-fi writers handle travel.

I know I should just let go and enjoy writing the story but I can't stop wondering if it'll be picked apart instead of enjoyed. It makes me nervous, and I start to question if it's even worth sharing.

Has anyone else experienced these before? I used to all the time, though I spent my childhood in tornado alley so I never thought much of it.

The thing is... I was never afraid in these dreams. Exhilarated would be the better word. Even purposeful. There are often other people around, and in these dreams I feel like I'm the expert guiding them to safety: pulling mattresses over them in the bath tub and violently throwing things out of the closets to make space.

Then I go outside to watch. These were the most vivid dreams I experienced. I always loved the smell of the air and the wind on my face.

Can anyone relate?