Adventures in Mallspace

I developed this theory with a friend of mine: all malls are really the same mall: they just have different parking lots. No matter where you go in the country, the malls all have the same look to them, and the same stores in them. The Universal Mall exists in some sort of warped spacetime bubble: this explains both why it's so easy to get lost and why prices are so high. (warp-field generators aren't cheap.)

But since all malls are the same, you can go into your neighborhood mall, I can go into my neighborhood mall, and if we look long enough, we'll find each other. However, Brookstone's Uncertainty Principle dictates that it's impossible for me to find the exit you entered through and vice versa: you can't use a mall as a teleportation device. You'll get horribly lost if you try.

However, since a mall exists to exchange goods and information, there's no reason we can't trade with other star systems, even if we can't actually go there. The latest SETI initiative is beaming the blueprints for a mall to Alpha Centauri: if the aliens build a mall from the blueprints, we can meet with them in the mall. Our mall is already so chock-full of Californians that nobody will notice a few bug-eyed tentacled aliens wandering around the place.


July 18, 1996

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