The Limits of Movement, Planck, Einstein, and Howling Coyote Options

[FrankTrollman]

OK, as we know the Movement power allows a critter to increase or decrease a target's apparent speed by a multiple (or divisor) of the critter's Magic attribute. Once the power has been turned on, visual contact need not be maintained (which is great news fort the rest of the thought experiments). While it is maintained the additional speed does not cause untoward effects to the target other than getting to its destination sooner or later - a person's limbs don't get torn off from th sudden rush of speed, a car doesn't burn through fuel at some horrendous rate, and a bullet does not hit its target any harder (just sooner).

And that's great for velocities much greater than zero and much smaller than the speed of light. But let's consider the fact that physics is constrained by a minimum speed and a maximum speed. Magic is, as far as I know not so constrained. Nevertheless, I am forced to ask what precisely happens when you make such an attempt?

Let's say that you have something that's moving extraordinarily fast. Say, half the speed of light. Now, with a mere Force 3 Earth Spirit you can use Movement to about 50% more than the speed of light. Or can you? At the speeds that Shadowrun normally is played at, special relativity isn't called for at all. Instead, we consider velocities to simply add like they do in a classical Newtonian world. But at very high speeds, that's an invalid assumption (at least for non-magical movement). The particle accelerated to three times its velocity would have a speed well less than the speed of light.

So that brings us to the question:

• When Movement doubles, triples, or dodecuples a target's speed, is that merely creating a time dilation sufficient to get it to its destination in a time consistent with having that many times the energy, or is it creating a physics-defying time dilation sufficient to get the target to its destination in a fraction of the time, speed of light be damned?

Of course we likewise have problems at the low end as well. If an object is already as close to absolute zero as it is possible to be, can you use Movement to make its effective speed even less? What happens when those precious Planck Times click by and the object hasn't gotten to the next interval of Planck Space?

-Frank