NationStates Jolt Archive

’Between’

‘Above’ (A wholly inadequate term, all things considered. While not entirely meaningless, it’s certainly insufficient to describe the physical qualities of the realm) is the raw and (semi-) dimensionless ‘Source’, the basic quantum foam that forms the grid of space, time, matter and energy that in turn makes up the universe one experiences in everyday’s life.

‘Beneath’ (Equally inadequate, but somewhat easier to understand, due to the average sentient’s familiarity with the ‘beneath’) is the universe as described by the the classical theories generations of physicists have developed, with a defined time, with proper dimensions for length, width and height, with mass and energy. The realm of flowers and Quiz shows and love and sex and Reality TV and wars and BDSM and compassion and ‘Unbiased’ news services.

‘Between’ (And this is, for once, a surprisingly accurate – Though of course not perfect – term) is the infinitesimally infinite transition between the two, where reality is formed, where dimensions and universal constants are played with despite them them utterly missing.

The drone had, of course, been built in the ‘Beneath’. It was quite unique, in a sense. So far, every attempt to ‘shift’ from the beneath to the between had failed, leaving the objects that were experimented with as slowly expanding clouds of debris and mild amounts of gamma-and x-ray radiation. Granted, over time, they’d been able to get better results – The Intrinsically Insane was still proud to have been the first one actually catching a ‘glimpse’ of the ‘between’ – but this, right now, was the first time they’d managed to shift matter into it.

A surprisingly good result, all things considered. Everybody had expected the drone to be destroyed the instant the shift was done, leaving them perhaps a hundred picoseconds worth of information on the ‘between’, yet, it was still there, almost without damage. Just a bit of radiation leaking, a few sensors suffering mild degradation…

It was an odd place to be. ‘Beneath’, the basic universe as it knew it, could of course not be ‘seen’ in the conventional sense. It was like looking at a mirror… There was just no way to look past it without breaking the mirror. And that would, in turn, rip the drone out of ‘Between’. Still, the faint echoes of background radiation and gravity spilled into the ‘between’, overlapping themselves as certain restrictions of base reality ceased to apply, creating currents and storms. This close to the system – In the ‘proper’ universe, it had been in the outer Kuiper Belt – the bleed-in of the two long-ranged fundamental forces proved to be quite considerable, even excessive… Deeper in, it’d probably smash it. Not necessarily during a mere stay, but almost certainly when trying to shift between the ‘Between’ and the ‘Beneath’.

‘Above’, the opposite of a mirror. Voluminous nothingness, the utter lack of dimensions looking quite boring and, despite being the ‘source’, actually radiating very little in the way of detectable ‘information’ (Of course, technically, the drone has the information all around it. However, properly analysing it is somewhat of a problem. More specifically, it’s flat out impossible) and what little it does radiate doesn’t make much sense.

The ‘Between’ itself is possibly the most interesting bit. The currents and storms form bizarre, complex patterns which – If tracked and analysed properly and in considerable detail – would conform to the positions of the sun, the planets, and the gravitational as well as electromagnetic fields they create.

And all of this is, of course, merging with the currents from the rest of the galaxy (And beyond), forming complex, almost indistinguishable patterns and fields and currents, radiating outwards at insane velocities… ‘Slowly’, merely the speed of light where the mirror that separates the ‘between’ from the ‘beneath’ is, and faster, ever faster the further ‘up’ – Insofar as classic geometry actually applies to the ‘Between’, which is very little - they are.

Currents all around it… Sure, its standard EM drive still worked – Albeit vastly less efficiently so – but withstanding them proved to be a considerable problem.

Eventually, rising in the direction of the ‘Above’, it gained velocity, already caught by the omnipresent currents. It tried some meager attempts to get down, to shift again, trying to throw itself against the mirror – But when you’re going at > c in proper reality, shifting out of ‘Between’ would end you as a brief flash of > c radiation, anyway.

As it was carried away by the currents, its meager, unprepared EM drive incapable of holding its position, its navigational capabilities degraded by the sheer alienness of the environment, incapable of determining just where exactly ‘Beneath’, ‘Between’ and ‘Above’ begin, it eventually plunged into the dimensionless ‘Above’, instantaneously dissolving into its most basic components, beyond considerations of mass and energy, of length, width, height and time.

‘Beneath’ (Proper Reality)

“Hrm. This worked well.”

“Say, is it necessary for you to use, ah… ‘Verbal Communications’? There are faster and more efficient ways.”

“Yes. And if I would use them, I’d eventually end up like you, confined in half a dozen ‘Brains’ on a ship, not even wanting a body. No, thanks.” Ophelia said, quietly diving through the excessive amounts of data the drone had managed to collect and transmit via QE, while at the same time avoiding the endless bickering of the drone’s mind, presently confined in the computronium arrays of the MPU Real Estate.

Well, it’s not every day that you lose your body to the void, so it was probably understandable. But then, it was insured… In any case, the bickering was annoying.

“Hrm. Interesting enough. I guess we have enough to work with…”

“How you manage to use your means for fast and efficient communications to look through the data we got through the probe, but not to communicate with me is beyond my understanding,” said the voice of the MPU, coming out of nowhere. It still creeped Ophelia out. A little.

“I need to think. I think better when talking instead of sacrificing my privacy for speed, thank you very much. Oh, and could you use a slaved drone to talk to me, perhaps?”

“No.”

“Why, thank you. Anyway… Hrm. Looks like a risky place… And drive effects were about equivalent to what we get in ‘Normal’ space…”

“We should be able to increase performance over time, though. Actually, relatively easily. We might manage a thousand times the performance within a month or so, once we’ve refined our navigation to get into higher layers without ending like the drone. That’d give us a nice boost.”

“Well, you’re the engineer. I’m here for the theoretical work.” Ophelia sighed, sipping a little from her drink, mere carbonated water. She wasn’t much into DA’s overall decadence and preferred to keep it simple. “I like those currents… Thousand times the performance wouldn’t bring us much, would they?”

“Well, they’d, sort of. About 23 days for a lightyear, cruising speed, civilian. Make that thirty times for a proper milship in a hurry… about eighteen hours. But at such accelerations, it’d have to see an MPU – Or any other Factory Craft - relatively soon. One-tenth of its drive lifetime would already be was-“

“Yes, yes, I know.” Ophelia waved her hand dismissively. “Terribly slow, when it comes to interstellar distances. We might be able to do something with this currents, though.”

“Also depending on Transit-Space ‘altitude’, really. Thus, also dependent on our navigational abilities…”

“Yes, but it’s better than nothing. Besides, it intrigues me… it’s sort of like an overcomplicated kind of sunwind… In any case, I think we should talk with the others, ne?”

“… NOW you’re going to finally use proper communications?”

“It can’t be-“ -helped.

A fraction of a second later, Ophelia Yamamoto and the Military Production Unit Real Estate joined the ‘Hive’ a few hundred individuals on board of thirty or forty ships formed, all of them more-or-less deeply involved in this particular project. Their work wasn’t done yet, but it shouldn’t take much longer, now. Perhaps two, three more months…

One month later

The subcraft was certainly more than a mere drone, but it wasn't quite enough to be a proper ship, either. Fifty percent were engine, the other fifty percent had once been a single weapons pod, and were nowadays a vacuum filled with older and newer - Which is to say, designed and built within the last month - sensors.

The reason it was a subcraft was simple enough: It had no mind on its own, instead it was linked to its source unit, the MPU Real Estate, which had 'Lend' the subcraft from the SEU I've a Cunning Plan and demilitarised it, turning it into what it was now, an expendable explorer.

Of course, the MPU wasn't directly controlling it, instead allowing Ophelia to have a go at it, which explained why she was presently hooked up to a QE link allowing her to do exactly that. Not a particularly efficient - if fast - method, of course, but it worked. Kind of.

We've gotten better, I see. Ophelia couldn't help it, she just had to smile as she felt the information output flowing through her brain. Wonder how it actually looks like.

We'll figure it out soon enough. Assuming you manage to bring it back safely, of course.

Pft. Ophelia grimaced, annoyed and (Mildly) amused at the same time I'm a reasonable pilot. Besides, I'm using your own resources, so what could go wrong?

In the Between, the subcraft suddenly moved upwards, almost crossing the 'border' to the dimensionless quantumvacuum Above as it was defined by its - Still barely sufficient - navigational capacities.

That.

Oh, shut up. If you wouldn't distract me all the time...

The subcraft itself accelerated, now testing its design maxima and sliding dangerously close along the perceived border to the Above, the vaguely chaotic - If symmetrically so - nature of the Between (Or Transit Space) allowing it to accelerate perhaps a hundred times faster than it could possibly manage in proper reality, - The universe everybody lived in - eventually reaching a velocity relative to proper reality one could describe as 'Considerably c-fractional'. If it continued to accelerate, it'd be able to go even faster, as the theoretical limit its present navigational capacities set was about a hundred times the speed of light relative to proper reality, the practical limit being perhaps a third of it.

For Ophelia, it was oddly fun, dealing with the currents and fields and anomalies and the whole chaos of the Between. Only in an extremely abstract, simplified form of course, and the automatics in the subcraft were running most things, anyway, but still.

Whee!

Mind getting scientific?

Yes, yes... Sorry.

The subcraft turned, decelerating, now heading downwards - Not literally downwards of course, but in an odd, semi-geometric, navigational sense. After all, the Between, just as the Above, was technically located in exactly the same space proper reality was located, forming proper reality to begin with. 'Shifting' into it merely meant avoiding some nuisances and limitations of proper reality while accepting other, different nuisances and limitations - through two ever-shifting, infinitely complex layers of ever increasing - Or decreasing, if one went upwards, gunning for higher velocities - familiarity with the properties of proper reality, spiraling back towards the mirroresque 'plane' that marked the border between the Between and proper reality, and eventually engaged its small shifting unit, nanoseconds before touching the mirror.

As far as the metaphor went, the mirror morphed, sucking the subcraft in - Instead of turning it into a blind and deaf wreck by way of collision, specifically, a collision of semi-indeterminate universal constants in the Between vs. the very much determinate values for proper universal constants in proper reality - which promptly resulted in the subcraft reappearing in proper reality, faster than before, as it hadn't decelerated all the way down, but slow enough to avoid being eliminated by way of relativistic effects showing off the more destructive aspects of their nature.

Ophelia smiled. See? I can do it.

Indeed. Barely. Well... Now we can shift back, and we've managed to rise our navigational abilities far enough to manage a hundred times the velocities and accelerations of real space. Not bad, I'd say.

"And next?" Ophelia had disconnected from the subcraft - Which could easily take care of itself, or it could be taken over by the Real Estate or the I've a Cunning Plan - and instantly fell back into talking the normal, slow, so excessively slow way, most of her mind concentrating on other things.

Why are you ev-

"-en using my processing capacities when you prefer to talk?!"

"Because it's amusing to tease you, dear. Anyway. Next?"

The ship's speakers in the room Ophelia was in - She supposed that it simply vibrated membrans on some of the walls - muttered more-or-less inaudibly about the 'Impossible Woman' it was forced to host, then continued, a little louder, with the topic at hand. "Next we'll outfit a proper ship for shifting. By the time we're done, we should manage navigation with an accuracy factor of about thousand. If you manage to do your wor, anyway. After that, we'll probably slow down with progress-"

"I haven't disappointed you before, have I? Ayway. Yes, I know. It gets a little risky for macroscopic structures, there. Well, that's what you're for, really." Ophelia giggled, listening to the barely audible grumbling of the ship. "I'm sure you'll manage it, over time. Meanwhile, I'm going to work a little more on navigation. We're still having an annoyingly high casualty quote... I don't think a one-in-a-thousand loss is acceptable."

"Quite so. Now, would you mind joining the proper discussion with your colleagues on the other ships? And the ships themselves, of course."

"I'm coming, I'm coming." Most of Ophelia's mind was already busy considering a variety of ludicrously unlikely equations, and how to solve them. Still, it'd probably be useful to cooperate with the rest of the team.

Another month later

"Here, the tea."

"Oh, thank you." Ophelia took the cup of tea she had been offered and smiled at the female next to her, the ships' pilot, waiting curiously, perhaps even a little anxiously for the ship to proceed.

"And here we go."

For a moment there was nothing, then the view the various sensors offered had changed. No longer was there the familiar mixture of cosmic background radiation, radio- and microwaves, and the light originating from the sun, nor was there the subtle hint of potentially obscene energies coming from the nearby ships. All of it had been replaced, leaving nothing but the subtlest of indications that the other ships, the planets, the sun were in fact not lost, but hidden in between - Or below, to use a cruelly simplifying visualisation - layers upon layers of chaotic energies, currents and streams, in the middle of the very foundations of the universe, but still infinitely far away.

Sad echoes of presences so very close nearby, and yet an infinity distant. Ophelia shivered. She had of course expected it to be somewhat odd, but having created much of the theoretical background this project was based on and having lived with the continuing progress, having examined the observed results of their first, early experiments and tests, she had believed that she would remain untouched by illogical, almost romantic feelings, once she'd enter this realm.

She had been wrong, of course, and as a result, her mind was now staring into this realm, feeling relieved and worried at the same time.

She saw exactly what the ships' own sensors saw. Her mind had been altered appropriately, to deal with the excessive amounts of information trying to enter her consciousness. Still, it was liberating, not being limited to the tiny slice of wavelengths a baseline human was limited to, instead seeing everything, not a single photon escaping her - Well, the ships' - awareness, be it gamma rays or the multithousand kilometer waves of what is commonly denoted electric energy.

They were different, of course. Existing, yes, but oddly undefined, almost indeterminate. It was what made navigating this realm such a complicated, almost dangerous endeavour. Mixed in with the sad echoes of events in proper reality - Petawatt beams of energy causing almost insignificant changes, barely hinting at events that in proper reality would be defined as sensor-deafening interference and chaotic destruction - and almost randomly forming and changing currents, it was what made navigating this realm an actually dangerous - Though of course manageable - endeavour.

In its simplest abstractions, 'Between' could be dealt with as an infinite amount of layers, each of them featuring an ever-decreasing resemblance of reality, each of them having its own, distinct properties, barely different from those of the neighboring layers - But 'barely different' was still 'different'.

In such a model, the properties of the electromagnetic spectrum in each layer, together with the - For all practical purposes irrelevant - gravitational properties (Anomalies would probably be the more appropriate term, though) defined them, distinguishing each layer from all the others. There was (almost) no interaction, as every layer would seamlessly melt into its two neighboring ones where those properties changed.

Of course, this abstract model had little to do with reality. It was very clean, very nice, and full of wonderfully symmetric mathematics - But it resembled nothing but a nice, streamlined theory, kind of like early civilisations described the value of pi as 'Three' (And indeed, the infinity of layers essentially meant that no model would ever be hundred percent accurate - Just like calculating more and more digits for pi wold never be sufficient to get its actual value).

In practise, these layers did interact. Violently so. They formed streams and currents, they mixed with each other, they merged and seperated, they changed their values, radically, they switched their geometries and thus positions, they did all kinds of funky things, and more than one scientist was convincend that they - The layers - did have an actual sense for irony, diverting from the nice, clean theory exclusively to make their - The researchers - work harder, perhaps even impossible.

As a result, 'Between' as Ophelia could 'see' it didn't look like the clean, white sheet she had envisages in her early works on the matter, slowly gaining colour, getting darker until the most indeterminate layers eventually plunged into the abyss that was the dimensionless not-really-but-still vacuum.

Instead, there was a wild mixture of properties and wavelengths, constantly interfered with as microlayers plunged into the macrolayer her ship was located in, as asymmetric hurricanes of near-infinite energies within near-infinitesimal spaces ripped perceived seas of relative calmness apart, as radiation shells plunged up and down the layers, most of them not even being observable for the still new, still primitive sensors Ophelia's ship had available, leaving much, too much to her imagination.

At least the colours were pretty. They were still in the lowest accessible macrolayer - With an infinity of layers, navigating in just one layer was impossible. Instead, one navigated in several of them, and had one's navigation system operate with the (Admittedly artificial) construct of a macrolayer featuring 'averaged' properties. Oddly enough, if the 'Between' had actually been as symmetric as the early theories had predicted it to be, this would have been considerably harder, perhaps even making navigation impossible - and the colours were generally faint, rosy, almost pink red reminding Ophelia of her childhood, quickly changing into a weak green, a barely noticeable yellow, a whole rainbow of colours that would have cancelled each other out if it weren't for the asymmetries and constant interaction within the various layers.

Combined with the wavelengths one didn't usually associate with colours - Not with named ones, anyway - and added complexity due to the sun's and its planets' faint gravitational semi-interaction - As far as it could actually penetrate this realm, or at the very least, cause noticeable change due to attempted penetration - it was actually a rather nice, if surreal image, and not particularly menacing.

Still, as the ship approached higher layers - Three macrolayers were accessible with the navigational instruments they had developed so far. Access to more macrolayers was theoretically possible, but unlike the first three, which had been accessed with relative easy, those next levels would take a rather long time to access, due to the ever increasing complexity of the 'Between'. Developing the technologies necessary to do it would certainly require more than the effords of a few dozen ship and several hundred individuals strong core group - accelerating faster and faster - eventually reaching a thousand times the acceleration it would have managed in proper reality, with equal (Internal) energy expenditure - the scenery became less pleasant. Dark tornadoes of untold energies and insane, utterly incomprehensible complexity, not to mention growing geometric impossibilities raced through this higher layers.

Ophelia didn't mind. She liked to watch, anyway, far too taken with the whole scenery, with this first trip - She and the ship were the first two sapient intelligences to travel this realm, as far as they knew, anyway - to care about its menacing and - perhaps - even nighmarish properties.

"Impressive?" the ship - The LEU From Russia with Love - asked. Ophelia had been pleasantly surprised - Finally a ship whose mind kept its body on board, in fact, who stayed at least partly inside its humanoid body, using the ships' own computronium only for the necessary tasks piloting a ship brought with it, rather than actually living inside the computronium, using the ship as one's exclusive physical body. Far more likable than the antiseptic cleanness the MPU Real Estate featured.

And this didn't even touch the issue of the From Russia with Love's rather appreciable physical presence. Visually, that is, though her intellect was no less fascinating.

Ophelia spent a brief moment wondering why she was even thinking in this categories - It certainly wasn't like her usual self, but then she wasn't in a usual situation to begin with - and eventually answered, ceasing to care about it.

"Oh, yes. Though it's a bit of an overload - I don't think my brain was made to deal with this much of an input."

"Well, you can always-"

"Yes, I know." Ophelia sighed, smiling a little - The whole trip was too impressive for her to avoid the latter - and cut down on the input she got from the ships' sensors. "Well, so far, so good... I guess we've succeeded, then."

"Indeed." (And Ophelia couldn't help but to rejoice inwardly. The From Russia with Love or rather, Nicole, had smiled back) "Well, we weren't the only ones working on this king of thing... Though I believe that after we swallowed the other, smaller teams working in our field of expertise, there was only one remaining-"

"Yes, but those seem to have left everyone's field of vision. I think they collapsed. I mean, their source - It had to do with some minor event during the cataclysm, and I heard a few people talk of 'Magic'. I don't think we have to take them particularly serious."

"Well, apparently the few ships and personnel working on the project kind of vanished... Perhaps they're just secretive."

"Whatever." Ophelia shrugged. "Say..."

"Mhm?"

"Don't you think this is incredibly romantic? Especially the lower layers."

A brief moment of silence followed. Then the sensory input changed, showing the lighter colours, again. From Russia with Love, that is, Nicole, smiled almost mischievously. "I think our various experiments need some time to be finished, anyway... Just don't tell your MPU."

"Don't worry." Ophelia giggled briefly as she thought about the constantly changing designations for the factory craft - IPU, MPU, GMU, MMU. Perhaps this time they'd actually keep the designation. "He's a little overprotective, but he's never been..."

"Mhm?"

"Forget it. And be careful, the lingerie's expensive."

Mutual giggling followed. "...And I thought your icy coolness when it comes to this things is... Almost proverbial..."

"It is. Say, you didn't put something into my tea, earlier?"

"Only a little..."

"Naughty."

"And?"

"Everything's perfect. We just have to do the long-term tests, and after that's done, we're finished." Ophelia smiled at the drone floating in front of her. Non-sentient - It was playing speaker for the Real Estate.

Not only non-sentient, come to think of it. Also non-everything. No ornaments, not even polished. Looking at it, one almost started to wonder why the ship had bothered with a casing for its drone.

"Good..." The drone turned slowly on its invisible fields as Ophelia floated past it in the microgravity. "Suppose you've had lots of fun?"

"Mhm? Sure. It's an amazing view."

"I see."

Ophelia grabbed one of the bars to her right, and steadied herself, still floating. Something tickled... Then she caught a glimpse of an 'Insect' leaving her hair.

"..."

"Well..."

She sighed in frustration. Well, can't change that, I guess. "Michelle - From Russia with Love - will kill you, you know."

"Possibly. Nonetheless, I'd have thought that your dedication to your work would withstand such pointless distractions."

"You're worse than me." Ophelia floated on, wondering if she should be angry or amused, still followed by the drone. Left, right, left, left... There was the module.

"Of course, of course. But don't forget... We have some schedules to write up, don't you think?"

Eventually, Ophelia settled for 'both', and, slamming the door into the drone's front - It darted back, momentum forcing it half across the hallway - landed on her feet as she entered one of the rotating habitation rings inside the vast ship, settling for the fake-gravity.

Indeed, time to work... She'd have to visit Michelle every now and then, though.

Over the next few months, work continued. The Real Estate had to explain itself to a variety of ships and individuals - Gossip can be a horrible thing - Michelle/ From Russia with Love proved to be a formidable host - Especially during a three-week stay in the Between, cruising the Oort cloud - but the main work, the part of it that actually required a functioning brain, had been done.

What remained was little more than an exercise in patience, waiting to see if long-term exposure would indeed have little to no side effects, or if there was some serious trouble ahead - They did after all deal with not-so-well-known phenomena - which took time, patience, and little to no skill.

Of course, sitting there, drinking tea and otherwise busying oneself was still a pastime, but...

Well, eventually the test runs had been going on for sufficiently long to allow for the general results to be considered statistically correct.

Unsurprisingly, radiation was a big problem. Rather significantly more so than in proper reality. Still, given ship structure and 'Physical characteristics', it wasn't a serious problem - Until some terrible accident happened, anyway. But that was no different from proper reality.

Other than that, finding one's target destination proved to be slightly more difficult than expected - Layers upon layers of radiation preventing proper navigation, the bleed-in from proper reality adding a bit of chaos for good measure, the likes - but in the end, it worked out, a bit of technical finetuning taking care of this particular problem.

Another issue was the general vagueness of the Between. Not necessarily dangerous, sure, but it could - And indeed, did - screw with the integrity of matter, once it entered the Between. Not a serious risk on its own, of course, as the process took quite literally ages, but in combination with other factors... Well, the next generation of shifting units would probably take care of that.

Michelle looked at Ophelia, on whose chest she would have rested, had there been some simulated gravity on her ship. As it was, the two just kind of floated about, close to each other. "I guess it's a go, now?"

Ophelia smiled. Her work had been fairly satisfying, and in the end, successful - And not only her work, come to think of it. "Yes. Yes it is."

Just production was a bit of a problem - They were happy scientists and enthusiastic hobby-researchers, not a corporation, per se. Disregarding the Real Estate, whose manufacturing capacities were busy with a lot of things, anyway, nobody was capable of mass production.

"We'll surely find someone to produce under licence... Or we'll have a pointless monopoly."

"I'm sure they'll accept... And if not, who cares... There's other things to do in the meantime."

"Indeed..." Michelle's hand stroked over Ophelia's short hair, searching. "Old leecher..."

"Bah. Grant him a few moments."

"If you say so... Want some tea?"