CoActionDrama

Here are some of the most popular ways of travelling fast through the tremendous distances in space.  Almost all of these techniques are corrective of time/space distortion because of their use, in the same way that a table exerts a force opposing gravity on a box placed upon it.

These are by no means the only ways of travelling through space, there are nearly 150 possibilities known according to the mathematicians, some of which seem very similar, and some of which are a bit, um, shall we say, very theoretical.

Warp Drive

The most famous, most used, and most controversial travel technique in the known galaxy, partly because humans travel the cosmos and they like to get about.

Warp drive manipulates Einsteinian Collateral Expanses (ECE), the geodesic of space itself for lay-beings, to drastically change its size and effect on craft travelling in it.  Although this method of travel has in the past been touted as another way of creating a “safe” hyperspace, this is really quite incorrect, and it would be much more accurate to say that the field generated by warp ship distorts the maniple of space to make distances shorter, and thus itself larger, by parsing the uncertainty of position and replacing the ship hundreds or even thousands of light years distant.

The main drive for the  ship is taken up with the warp field which has to generated in such a way that it not only encloses the ship and completely permeates it, but also encloses enough space to prevent distortion of the craft itself, which would be unfortunate to say the least.

The actual movement of the craft itself is commonly achieved by some propellant, usually oxygen and hydrogen (mined by the Iffen) thrust along the axis of the principle drive direction of the craft at something above 10g.

Artificial gravity helps as these thrusts are uncomfortable for many people and usually craft are configured to be forward looking, that is to say, the craft normal G is perpendicular to the direction of travel, because that is the way the humans like it.

Although there are potentially other ways of propelling most spacecraft even through complex warp fields, (see Hyperspace), simple thrust is the most efficient from a maintenance point of view, a craft in deep space can create a warp field, generally spares are carried on all but the smallest craft, but a thrust can be created from almost anything, other forms require more maintenance and technology.

Warp travel has inherent limits, it may not pass through large gravitic structures, may not originate in any gravity well where the gradient is greater than 0.01m/s, (at least, not if it wants to get out, warp fields have been created in the laboratory, but follow the geodesic of the local gravity field, sometimes with unfortunate consequences for the laboratory equipment and neighbours), it may not pass through open space denser than 3ppm, and it may not originate in any but normal space.  Warp ships must also have live pilots aboard.  Although linear processors CAN navigate warp space, the prevalent dangers and unknowns inherent in such a mode of travel mean that they are unable to react to all situations and can become lost, as not all the galaxy is mapped.  Also, quantum processors, typically used in any kind of pseudo AI, (although very good at faking it, we now know that biology is the source of true intelligence, “AI” is a separate form of intelligence and the debate still rages in educational circles about why this is…), are not responsive in warp space, the distortion seems to interfere with the operation  of such processors, and so although for travel in normal space and AI is often installed, during warp the primary processing on the ship is done by banks of linear processors.  As the amount of information stored on even a small memory ship is now greater than what is required to store an entire lifetimes experience in real time, this is normally not a problem if the parties looking at the data are good at searching.

These restrictions aside, warp travel is very efficient.  Time dilation effects are minimal, the self correcting nature of space travel producing an additional time of (usually) one minute per light year travelled.  This is figured into the travel time calculation by the navigation software.  While the fuel used is great, some of the largest craft use over a billion pounds of thrust while in travel, and the fuel for generating the warp field is equally as expensive, many people, numbering typically over two thousand for a cruise ship, can be moved in relative comfort and safety, with a destination anywhere in the galaxy that the pilot chooses to take them.  A warp ship is often said to be the most complex way to travel, but the flexibility, possibilities for exploration, and the ability to go to place other (safe) forms of travel cannot reach make this the choice for those races that can use it.  Humans, Sirithi, and I’Drothen both favour Warp Drive over other forms for these reasons.

Speed

Warp drive increases the speed as the cube of the warp number.  So Warp 3 is 27 ly/y and warp 9 is 729 ly/y, but the power require in MW increase as the square of the cube, so at warp 3 the field generator already uses 729 MW, and at warp 9 the field uses 531,441 MW, for a travel time of nearly 2 ly/d.  Compared with other forms of travel Warp drive is very energy hungry.  Only fusion reactors can supply this kind of energy, and plasma is inevitably the transfer conduit between systems.  In addition the rocketry need to provide propulsion, and the shielding required can make Warp craft very large indeed.  Innovative designs in recent years where the Warp field itself is used as shielding from the distant warp drive has bought the costs of running these craft down, but they still require considerable maintenance and upkeep.

Wormhole

This can be likened to travelling in a tube in space.  It is the closest to hyperspace, but unlike Hyperspace, completely safe for the psyche.

Wormholes require great power to generate, a dynamic map of the cosmos, and a good idea of the conditions at the other end.  They manifest in forms from small ground based gates, to great space going rings of chaos above planets, sometimes artificially created, and sometime naturally occurring.  The routes are complex, and sometimes it requires extensive travel to arrive at a destination, with changes between types along the way.  The advantage of wormhole travel is that, with one or two notable exceptions, there are no time dilation effects, and where the ends are planet based, the travel can literally use the system as a walk on walk off travel method.  Indeed this practice has become so prevalent in some cultures that travelling half way across the galaxy to work for a period of time is not unknown, thought the practice is limited by the rate of travel, which makes daily commuting over large distances impractical.  Wormholes generally cover 1ly per day, though no perception of time is felt by the traveller of WOWO (Walk On/Walk Off).  Space going wormholes typically have a greater effect on spacecraft, and studies show that the travel time is reduced so drastically because the inertia of the spacecraft is made negligible. Spacecraft have such large mass that their travel time increases by about 23% on average, as it is significantly non-zero.  (i.e. some gravitational effects can be detected with sufficiently sensitive instruments).  Typically such commuters would work month on month off.  Radio waves obey different rules for wormholes and travel at a fixed, (within uncertainty limits), rate of 1ly/min.  This is some of the fastest communication available.

Although some wormholes seem to be natural phenomena, the planet based holes appear to be an already ancient rehash of even older technology stolen from some of the first spacegoers.  It seems that this method of travel  might have previously, in the youth of the universe, been the only safe way to go for a species that had a tough time surviving the high radiation universe of the distant past.  It’s just a theory.

Wormhole travel in ships suffers the same problem as warp ships in terms of the AI etc.  Additionally, since routes are fixed, sometimes are some distance away from the planet of intent, time dilation IS felt when under normal acceleration.  Frequently a warp ship is used, by those who can, to traverse a worm hole, and then reach the destination in a reasonable time.

The Long Trek

MildSpace

The Iffens and the Mandorn use Mildspace to travel in.  Their experiences of space differ vastly in that the Mandorn is aware of normal space, and the possibilities for warp travel, wormhole travel, the Garden etc, but is generally unable to use them because of peculiarities about its’ existence.

The Iffens however, Gas Giant Dwellers, actually experience space in a different way from the rest of the galaxy.  Although they are now intellectually aware of other forms of space, their personal experience of space is a one of a variant atmosphere filled “Mild Space” in which they sail barges along at great speed borne on the vast currents of star force which blows about.  Although they still have to don the vast environment suits, because in deep interstellar space the air does become uncomfortably thin; near gas giants, stars, and other massive bodies it is not uncommon to see a ship full of Iffens floating along and manipulating their vessels without environment suits and using their, somewhat disturbing analogues of hands to pull ropes, set up sails and generally behave as if they were on the high seas while they shift about their boats and mine hydrogen or metals, or perhaps even just enjoying the scenery.

 The Iffens have no inherent understanding of warp etc, they are often amazed that the Warp Ships, which they see as surrounded by a complex glowing nimbus of energy, don’t simply break up in the dense atmosphere they experience.  Encounters between Warps Ships and an Iffens boat can be interesting, because the warps ship sees Gas Giant Dwellers, who otherwise blow up without vast environment suits, floating about in open space.  Debates still rage about the nature of the Iffens existence.  Even the Iffens are not sure what is going on, they often think the rest of the universe, with the exception of the Mandorn, is mistaken.

The Mandorn also experiences Mild Space.  This is different again to the Iffens understanding of it and the possible reactions in it.  The Mandorn generally flies a craft, such as an aircraft to the top of an atmosphere, and then “transfers” into the Long Trek for the rest of the journey.  During this time, the Mandorn can communicate over much larger distances than before, presumably because Mild Space changes the meaning of distance and time, and is less likely to encounter trouble during this time.  It is theorised, though the Mandorn will not confirm or deny this at all, that the Mandorn could travel in normal space, but not use Warp Drove or Wormholes, because the underlying connection between all Mandorn would cease for that avatar.  Nevertheless, the Mandorn will only travel this way unless there is the most dire need to travel some other way.  The closest way for the Mandorn to travel would be the Garden, but this too has problems of isolation.

The Garden

The discovery of the Garden was a huge revelation to the Humans and the I’Drothen who independently discovered this remarkable place.  Theories abound about the nature of the Garden, but perhaps a short description the Garden itself would be useful for those who have never visited this utterly unique place.

The Garden is almost exactly like a large Victorian sculpted garden, with finely kept topiary, hedges, shrubs, roses; there are a lot of these, paths, arboretums, gazebos, artificial lakes, ponds, tiny canals, (all with varieties of fish, some common to the Humans and the I’Drothen, and some not), all thriving and existing on nothing more than the “sunlight” which shines down on the garden permanently, sometimes covered by a few pleasant clouds, and occasionally a light warm rain shower.  The grass is cropped short by sheep, goats, fidant, gaginachi and other unidentifiable animals,  who seem to selectively eat what is growing too fast and nothing else.  They are in any case very rarely seen.  It is know that some insect life abounds, bees etc, but I’Drothen insect life is never seen by Humans.

The Garden, and the Bleak Garden maps to real-space at about 1km/1ly.  In the Garden there are generally hidden doors to planetary “gates”.  A few of these are double doors, they can be up to 72 inches wide, but generally they are a single door of no more than 33 inches.  Obviously this precludes taking many vehicles into the garden, and they are generally frowned upon anyhow, except non-emission electric, (fusion) vehicles.  The Garden pathways are extensive, though there are occasionally places where the Garden is undeveloped.  (These are thought to be un-navigable special anomalies of one kind or another). Generally though, the garden  is navigable enough at speed provided that one keeps an eye out for sheep etc.

Most races are unable to experience the Garden, it is the purview of Humans and I’Drothen who use it extensively when rapid transit between known worlds is required.  The Garden does NOT map 1 to 1 with real-space, and the paths one is required to travel may involve detours and other difficulties unless one is experienced in Garden Navigation.  Bear in mind that whatever equipment is taken into the Garden and left behind is considered to be lost property by it, and could end up in one of the little sheds dotted about the place which store such things, or ejected into space as a danger.

There are, seemingly, rules about Garden behaviour.  It is possible to annoy the Garden, at which point the “researcher” is likely to summarily ejected into real-space.  If this happens to be into a vacuum it seems to be that this is just too bad.  Users of the Garden do not:-

• Kill Animals
• Fish
• Dig up the Plants
• “improve” the topiary, (the Garden seems especially keen on this, when one wag decided the answer was to wear a spacesuit, the Garden decided that the suit itself was worth keeping but the wag was not.  It ejected him anyhow)
• bring unsealed noxious substances in the garden
• no fissile materials of any kind, (power excepted for bikes)
• no dogs
• no Foremen
• no plants, pollen, or indeed fertilised plant material of any kind
• no parrots, though it seems to welcome all other birds except vultures and hunting birds, and some varieties of I’Drothen bird that are generally regarded as unpleasant.  The Garden took a week to make up its’ mind that bird tables were not allowed, but about three seconds flat to let the users know that live alligators and other reptiles were unwelcome
• Balloons of any kind are forbidden, as is anything that flies artificially, with extreme prejudice.
• No digging, ever.
• No Sawing of Wood.

There are other rules but they are too numerous to mention, suffice to say that the Garden may only be used as a transit system, and rest stops are provided for long journeys.

It seems that the Garden will “make an effort” for those on foot, and especially if they are willing to talk to the plants.  Sometimes, a new resting place will appear where there has no been before, if the weary traveller is very considerate of the Garden.  Plant food is sometimes permitted, as the penalty for distributing unauthorized plant food is being spaced, few travellers take it.  Travellers are permitted to pick berries as long as the bush is left more than half full.  Birds have to eat too.  Beware.

Metal of any kind is not permitted, unless it is part of some structure, or concealed about a person.  Thus normal metallic objects that unlikely to be lost are ok, but a bar of gold, or any other metal, would not be allowed.  Bicycles are allowed, and the garden makes provision for these to be left by providing bike racks for commuters.  Abandoned bikes are frowned upon, and the guilty party is likely to be ejected if they do not collect the machine next time they are in the Garden.

No litter, ever.  Not even biodegradable litter.  No sex, the Garden is not a place for a tryst of any kind.  You have been warned.  No Ball Games.  Sweeping up leaves is always appreciated, return the rake to the designated shed afterwards please.

Theories about the Garden abound.  It’s a creation of god; super being; the ancients; the sublimed; the ascendant.  The truth is likely to be much stranger, but perhaps some insight can be gained by looking at the Bleak Garden, which is like the Garden in many ways, and yet completely different.

The Bleak Garden

The Bleak Garden is a wasteland, it seems to some as if the Garden has been taken and warped somehow.  Spatial features clearly map to real-space on some basis which while not one to one, is very close, considering the distances involved, and anyone who can navigate the Garden will soon become used to the other features of the Bleak Garden should they be rash enough to traverse it.

The Bleak Garden renders any gravitic structure as hills, or in the case of Black Holes, lakes surrounded by mountains.  It has been theorised in fact that if there were a path to the Bleak Garden from a black hole, and the traveller could survive the crushing pressures and spaghettification of entering any small black hole, then they could emerge intact from the Bleak Garden.  The hills are volcano shaped, that is to say they have a vent at the top which is the smooth transition into a world somewhere.

The problem with these transitions is that they frequently lead to a world inhabited by the Foremen, who attack other life-forms on sight, frequently eating the results, and although they are extremely primitive, they are numerous, and suspected of being in contact with each other by some special means.  Certainly their verbal communication skills are not up to it.

The Bleak Garden is a rocky unkempt place, there are animals here, and water clean enough to support life, in fact in the vastness of the Bleak Garden there are several tribes of Foremen actively settled.  The Bleak Garden does not eject anyone for anything, except the crime of garbage clearing.  Remove garbage in order to settle down and you will be summarily ejected.  In any event, the bleak garden is known to have a ceiling of a few thousand feet, flyers are allowed, but most sentients who can come to the Bleak Garden are driven mad by a very short time of flying so close to what appears to be a form of hyperspace.

In almost every way that the Garden is organised the Bleak Garden is not.  It is the natural habitat for a primitive, violent, unkempt race.  No-one knows, or any longer, cares how and why the Foremen travel this way, they only want to make sure that there is no way that the Bleak Garden attaches to their world.

No-one in their right mind travels in the bleak Garden without very good reason indeed.  It is known that the Mandorn has been ejected from the Garden once, and suffers disconnection, and cannot use it anyhow.  The Bleak Garden is just chaotic enough to allow extremely short term survival of a Mandorn avatar should it require to travel there.

The Bleak Garden uses the same scale as the Garden for Travel.  A final note, there is no labelling in the Garden, you must know where you are going by knowledge or experiment or experience.  The mapping, as has been mentioned is not quite one to one, and even experience Garden Navigators know that different paths to the same place can bring unexpected results.  Shortcuts are rarely possible.

Hyperspace

There is an almost magical quality it seems judging by the fiction that abounds in the federated empires, about Hyperspace.  In reality no-one sentient can travel there, in fact nothing as smart as even the most abysmally stupid dog, or better, can travel without going almost instantly mad.  Experiments have been performed with frozen, unconscious, and even dead people, and well as with Quantum Inhibitors and other devices, but none of these techniques have proved satisfactory to the relatives or others who have to take care of the remains.  Hyperspace is OUT OF BOUNDS.

Nevertheless, a great deal is known about Hyperspace, and linear processors that are able to deal with it effectively, though any kind of AI is instantly destroyed by it.

Hyper space is a many to one map of the known universe, the mapping is attached to the quantum uncertainty in the position of particles, that is to say that Hyperspace is the universe with the uncertainty removed.  For this reason it is sometimes called non-Heisenburg space, or Non-Einsteinien Discontinuous Congruity.  Measurements of the speed of light show that it appears to travel particularly quickly there, and that it has some mass.

Studies also show that Hyperspace is in fact two spaces, one is called +ve Hyperspace, and one –ve.  It is theorised that Real-space is the balance between these spaces, or to put it another way, that +ve and –ve are the deviation of real-space from the probable.  Hyperspace would then the be the uncertainty in the existence our the known universe, or at least, the physical manifestation there of.

Hyperspace CAN be used, with the right design, to generate reactionless drive in real-space.  The most common form of this is as repulsor, attractors, or lifters for large vessels that land on planetary crusts.  The mass of some vessels is so large that the method, where by fields interact with Hyperspace to manipulate  the mass in the desired direction requires a great deal of computing power to calculate the relative position of +ve and –ve compared to real-space, but almost none to actually perform the manipulation, (on the order of 10 watts for the largest craft).  This works because the Hyperspace manifolds do not move relative to each the other, they are etheric and stationery, but real-space moves differently to both, and the movement itself is influenced by the changing positions of masses within a radius proportional to crafts size.

It is a pity that Hyperspace is so damaging to people, because it by far and away the fastest, most  efficient means of travel.  It moves objects at 1.233 ly/min, and as result of this post etc is moved by mechanical means where this is practicable.  The nature of Hyperspace means that this is not always possible because anomalies etc are represented in hyperspace and affect navigation.

The Hyperdimensions

Also off limits, because of damage to quantum devices etc, and size.  The Hyperdimensions are the balled up spaces where the extra mathematical dimensions of the quantum existence of particles resides.  First accessed before Humanity left Earth behind, these dimensions are the places in which maniple fields are created, and small scale effects take place.  Records show that once it was possible to make Transporter Technology (a la Star Trek), with these maniple fields, but the technology failed when Garden space was discovered.  The relationship between the Gardens and Hyperspace and the Hyperdimensions is not understood, even theoretically, but it has been shown that the existence of the Gardens and the possibility of Fine Large-scale Probability Manipulation (FLPM) are mutually exclusive.  From this follows that the Gardens themselves are some manipulation in FLPM, (or more appropriately FMPM, Fine Massive (or Macro)-scale Probability Manipulation), which precludes the local manipulation of Hyperdimensional entities.  This also implies that space IS totally interconnected at some scale and that all of space and time can be manipulated locally.  Experiments of this nature are banned completely by every known sentient species, and the one or two that have been performed have been wiped out by specialist crews who remain out of contact with other sentients of the rest of their days.  (Which by choice often do not last long).  Nothing is therefore known about them.

Landing

Landing is a unique planet of the Beta Jasorn system.  Generally space travel is not only limited by what species can travel in what medium, but by special anomalies, distortions, storms, accidents etc.  Landing is unique in that it has two portals, (heavily guarded) into the Bleak Garden walk, three Garden gates, access to Mild Space, no less than five wormhole terminals, two in space and three planet-side, (any given planet only requires one portal or each type for efficient operation), and a natural warp path to two other planets, dropping solar sailors right on the doorstep of Gin’Tenian III and Erood IV.

Amazingly this bucolic planet is home a small indigenous non-spacefaring population, the Baclorn, who are a tri-pedal, intelligent, and advanced species who have elected to refrain from interaction with others, except to allow Human Affairs, and numerous staging-posts on their planet, in exchange for advanced entertainment electronics which they enjoy.  The large industry based around these entertainments devotes almost 16% of its complete output to adapting the millions of games produced each year for the Baclorn, whose physiology makes it a non-trivial task to fit the games to suit them.  Landing is very peaceful, and Human Affairs keeps it that way.