Parallel Universe "Relatives": Just what is scientifically possible?

[Ragitsu]

I want to create an NPC from another alternate reality that is "related" to a PC. Related how? Well, they're either going to be the "same" (read on to find out why i'm overusing quotation marks) or a brother/sister.

 

Assuming I do not simply want to take the easy path and have the NPC identical to the PC, aside from perhaps a minor detail or two (such as hair color or the absence/presence of a scar), just how much can I alter while keeping them from the same possible bloodline? For instance: could I have a woman that was raised in southern Utah meet a parallel that was full-blooded Czechoslovakian? How about a male version of herself that is the same in all other respects (including temperament)?

In other words: just how far can nature (DNA) and nurture (upbringing) be stretched while keeping an alternate self still of the same relation on another Earth?

[IndianaJoe3]

How much are you keeping in common? If they still have the same parents, they're bound to look similar even if they are different genders (just like real siblings). I can imagine personalities being different if they were raised in different cultures, which would lead to different tastes in entertainment, styles of dress, hair, tattoos, etc.

[Lord Liaden]

Just to address IndianaJoe3's point first, I recently watched a documentary about two orphaned Chinese twin baby girls, each one adopted by a different set of parents. One was raised in Sacramento, California, the other in a small village in Norway. Their lifestyles are totally different, and they don't even speak the same language. Their parents never hid the fact that they had a sister, and the two finally met physically when they were nine years old. Despite their different upbringing they displayed many of the same attitudes, preferences, even physical mannerisms. It's one more example demonstrating that genetics play a significant role in behavior, despite the influence of environment.

 

As far as male-female parallel persons, all developing fetuses start out as female, but some switch genders during gestation, so that doesn't seem like it would be a big stretch. Some personality traits, such as aggression in males, tend to be more prevalent in one gender or another, but not to the point of precluding overlap.

[薔薇語]

I am a bit confused by the question you are posing. You have two characters: each is from a different reality. Being from different realities, they obviously will not have the exact same parents nor be raised in the exact same environments but you are wondering how similar they will end up being. Well, the answer to that question is that they will likely only be as similar as you and I are. 

Now, if your question is that if you take two people will the exact same genetic makeup but raise them in different places, how similar will they be, then your answer is much more confused. They will obviously share a great deal of basic physical features, assuming neither receives wildly different diets and such will play a MAJOR roll in physical development. They might even end up looking very similar to each other. But their beliefs and mannerisms are going to have some strong cultural influences. Perhaps they might develop similar ticks and such, but that might be the extent of their similarities in that realm. 

Now, if your question is that if you take two people with identical upbringings but different genetic backgrounds (potentially widely different), how similar will they be, then your answer is going to be even more confused. Sure some basic like their native language, religious beliefs, etc will be largely cultural artifacts, but their genetics will dictate in large part a great many things; not only the speed at which they develop taught and untaught skills, but their predispositions towards the myriad of diseases, addictions, if they become savants, etc. 

 

If you want two characters to look alike, then you can just handwave things and say the two look alike. There are people in this world for whom you will never meet but will most certainly look quite a bit like you. Not because of ingenious planning and manipulation but out of sheer statistical luck. And if you aren't demanding identical copies, then your room for error, and thus your room for success, is widened a good deal. But if you like the idea of having two individuals have some kind of linkage, there are lots of things you could do. One such example is to have a set of twins separated at birth; one was abandoned in Dimension X and the other in D. Y. Maybe you could have them be literal genetic clones of some progenitor (think of the Clones from StarWars) that were intentionally separated for some reason. Heck, maybe it was even more controlled than that. Maybe the "family doctor" for the two would regularly tweek them as they developed (make sure their bio-chems are matching, implanting similar memories, etc). 

 

La Rose. 

[Ragitsu]

Is it possible to share a significant amount of familial DNA with your other-reality self...even if they are of an entirely different ethnicity altogether? In other words, they took what would have been your "place" where history went down a different path.

I really want to amp up the shock value without resorting to outright magic.

 

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Thank you - all of you - for the responses thus far.

[BlueCloud2k2]

DUNGEON Magazine had an adventure, The Mask of Diamond Tears, were the PC's met alternate versions of themselves. This module required forward planning, as you needed to have stat blocks handy of their "other-selves."

 

Sugguestions given were:

 

Gender Swapping

The Alternate is a Half-Elf where the Original was a pure-blooded elf or Human.

The Alternate is a different Racial Subtype (Deep-dwarf for a Hill Dwarf, High Elf for a Wood Elf, etc)

The Alternate had an inherrent Template (Half Dragon, Half-Fiend, whatever)

The Alternate had a different Archetype for the same Classbuild (Two-Weapon Fighting vs Archery for a Ranger, Necromancer vs Evoker for a Wizard, etc)

The Alternate had a differnet Classbuild altogether (The Alternate is a mage where the Original was a fighter)

 

As far as Sci-Fi goes?

 

Perhaps if the Original is an Ex-Space Marine turned Mercenary, the Alternate never quit the Corps or joined the Navy instead.

Perhaps the Alternate has extensive Cybernetic Augmentation (or lack thereof depending upon the original).

Perhaps the Alternate was infected with a mutagenic virus (or had a bio-sculpt done) and has the appropriate mutation(s).

 

Or you can keep it simple and just have the Alternate just be a female version. *shrug*

 

Also, regardless the differences, keep the differences in Realities small (the Brooklyn Bridge was named The Abraham Lincoln Memorial Bridge, since he was assassinate four years before construction on the Bridge began).

 

Big Changes (such as Parents having a different Nationality) means that that person won't exist. Period.

 

If Jack's mom was French and his dad was an American, then Jack would be Jack (or Jackie if the alternate was born XX instead of XY).

 

But if Jack's mom didn't get with his dad because she married a fellow Frenchman, then Jack would not be Jacques, he would never have been born in the first place.

 

An Alternate cannot be an Alternate if the conditions that would allow an Alternate to be created don't exist.

[Christopher]

Realistically speaking, 99.99999*% of those alternate realities would have no difference in the humans whatsoever. Simply because the one quantum that took a different way might have done so in the vacuum of space. Or the depth of any non-inhabited body. There is a lot of space not occupied by human bodies in the universe.

Even if the difference actually occured on earth, inside a human body you would need a lot of those to even affect one decision. And that decision might as well be wearing blue or green nektie today. And that person would have be anywhere near an important decision to even affect that event with his differently colored nektie.

If they affect humans in a relevant mater, they are more likely to affect any event of the last 2 million years, totally changing history in ways you cannot even imagine. We are trillion times more likely to end up with a world without aristotles, gengis kahn, alexander the great, columbus and hitler then with a gender swapped version of any current person (in the unlikely event we even get something different at all).

Any differences in the past would affect migration and family tress till you can parctically ignore that they are "paralell universes". Because they are totally different in all regards.

 

Mirror universes like in Star Trek and Sliders are a nice tool for a narative. But they are about as realistic as the sun suddenly showing intelligence, setting up a hat and starting to talk to us about how crowdy alpha centauri is with those 3 stars.

Alternate realities/timelines in fiction are always human/sentience centric. They asume that the differences even affect humans, yet never in such a way that stuff is totally different (still the same people being born to the same parents. The same parents even surviving, falling in love and being born themself).

 

The second you decide to introduce a parlell unvierse with only gender-swapping you are already so far of from realism it was never an afterthought.

If you want something semi-realistic, look at "identical/monozygotic twin seperated at birth" cases as Lord Laiden mentioned them. They are the only somewhat reliable case studies about "difference of nature vs nurture" we have. Because they are the only natural cases of cloning we know of.

 

 

*not the complete number. There are going to be a lot more 9's at the end of that.

[Lord Liaden]

Is it possible to share a significant amount of familial DNA with your other-reality self...even if they are of an entirely different ethnicity altogether? In other words, they took what would have been your "place" where history went down a different path.

 

I really want to amp up the shock value without resorting to outright magic.

 

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Thank you - all of you - for the responses thus far.

 

The genetic differences between various human "ethnicities" is miniscule compared to the overall human genome, and mostly cosmetic. No one has yet provided convincing scientific evidence of any significant ethnic-based mental variations that can't be attributed to societal factors.