Erase/Restore a species from History (Red Dwarf Inquisitor Gauntlet)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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In the Season 5 Red Dwarf episode The Inquisitor, a rogue android travels time/space judging those he considers “unfit to live”, those being judged are judged by their own personality, they have to justify themselves/their lives or they are erased from history, and replaced with someone who never had a chance to live, when the subject is erased from the time/space continuim, they never existed in the first place, as far as history is concerned they never existed, they are a null entity

The Inquisitor performs the surgical removal and the rewriting/re-knitting/repairing of the timeline with a Temporal Gauntlet

By the strangest coincidences, you happen to find The Inquisitor’s Gauntlet during your travels, it fell through a rip in the time-space continuim however, and it has been damaged, it no longer works on humans, however, it does work on other organisms, plants and animals

The same rules apply, if you use the Gauntlet to erase one entity from existence, you must replace it with another, the damage to the system limits you to restoring a currently extinct entity

There is also a cumulative random 5% chance of failure each time the Gauntlet is used, the more you use it, the more unreliable it becomes, if the gauntlet malfunctions in use, it erases itself from the time-space continuum, and it erases the hand and portion of arm of the person wearing it, it basically vanishes taking the wielders hand and forearm with it

After all, it did fall through an Orange Whirly Thing in Space, some damage was inevitable…

I would limit myself to no more than three uses of the Gauntlet myself, and here’s what I would erase/restore

Erase Ticks, useless, bloodsucking parasites that are only good for spreading disease
Restore Trilobites, I always thought trilobites were cool, and they’re certainly more useful than ticks

Erase Mosquitoes, another useless disease-carrying insect
Restore Dodo birds, I always wanted to see a real, live Dodo bird

Not sure what the third use would be, I’d simply hold it in reserve until I figured something out

Bear in mind, the Gauntlet deletes all instances of the target lifeform throughout time/space, so if Mosquitoes were deleted, animals that eat Mosquitoes would have simply evolved to eat a different insect instead, since mosquitoes would never have existed anyway

What lifeforms would you Erase/Restore?

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I can’t say that mosquitoes are my favorite creature, but there are an awful lot of them and like everyone else, they are food. Get rid of them and we would see unintended consequences all the way up the food chain.

Unfortunately, I can’t think of a single species that hits the trifecta of “Noxious enough, insignificant enough, and worth risking an arm over.”

Can we declare the Phelps clan a species?

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Good point about 'skeeters being food for other animals, but remember the function of the Temporal Gauntlet, it erases the target from existence (mosquitoes never existed), so any animal that currently eats them will simply eat a different insect once the Gauntlet has completed it’s temporal wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey thing

lets use Purple Martin birds and Dragonflies as examples of mosquitovores

Pre-Gauntlet use, they evolved to eat mosquitoes
Post-Gauntlet use, they evolved to eat <some other insect>

as far as the Purple Martins and Dragonflies are concerned, they’ve always eaten <other insect>

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Oh, that makes it a lot easier. I choose rubus strigosus. Nasty little things.

ETA: Damn – forgot about the arm thing. I guess I’ll keep picking them out, after all.

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Not that I have a specific target in mind, but is the glove limited to animals? Or could it be used to eradicate grass burrs and bring back giant ferns?

But to the original OP, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings much to never see another fire ant. Bring back the quagga or Tasmanian wolf.

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Yes, the Gauntlet would work on plants

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Can it be used to delete viruses and/or diseases?

I’d wipe out AIDS and bring back one of the feathered dinosaurs, like Archaeopteryx. If I can’t get rid of AIDS I’ll pick the cane toad. Horrible things.

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The only limit on the Gauntlet is that it no longer works on Humans, due to Orange-Whirly-Thing-in-Space induced damage, any other form of life can be deleted

Rhombus good idea on using it to eliminate viruses and diseases

just remember the cumulative random, dangerous, yet dis-arming (bad pun, I know, couldn’t resist :wink: ) 5% chance of failure, the more the Gauntlet is used, the more unreliable it gets

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Fire ants.

I’d replace them with anything. Anything would be preferable over fire ants. Heck, I’d take giant, ravenous, man-eating Pleistocene clams roving the country side over fire ants.

Barring the clams, I’d replace them with passenger pigeons.

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Then I shall put it on my left hand. Good thing I’m a righty! It occurs to me that one cannot gain any fame or fortune from this device…very clever. And just to clarify, we each have an individual gauntlet, right? It isn’t being passed around?

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MacTech:

You are (and I say this with complete respect and awe), such a nerd.

I would get rid of cockroaches. I’m not sure what I’d replace them with. I just want them to go away.
By the way, The Inquisitor is my favorite Red Dwarf episode.

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Agree with Love Rhombus actually. There go Cane Toads.

Although it would leave us in a quandary about what the Queensland State of Origin football team’s mascot would be?

In return I’m not sure what to restore. A dinosaur would be neat, but not practical I think. Tasmanian Tigers would be a good option. Maybe one of Australia’s past megafauna. A 300 kilo wombat? :eek:

Fire Ants would be good to go, (not a problem yet in Oz, but some of them have sneaked into Brisbane in the last 2-3 years somehow) and bloody Sand Flies (Grr hate them) but not sure I’d risk more than one shot with the gauntlet.

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Argg I forget the name but that really really poisonous Australian spider

Yay Google! Funnel web spiders!!!

I second archeopteryx for a comeback.

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I just wanted to say that I did will have reported MacTech to SpecOps 12, of the Office for Special Temporal Stability, since I believe that a TimeCrime has will have happened.

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See, I didn’t pick something big to bring back, because I figured they’d face the same people problems as, say, the big dinosaurs. If we brought back T-Rexes, they’d be so reduced in population as to only be in zoos, and where’s the fun in that? Either that or we’d all be fighting on armored dinos like that old cartoon, which would actually be cool.