The universe is but one in a sea of infinite others. Each is called a brane,
and is swimming around a sort of hyperdimensional metaspace known as the
bulk. Do not confuse these with alternate realities. Any similarity between
two branes only occurs because one was modeled upon the other. Some of them
are natural, but some are conceived in the minds of people. The latter can
last indefinitely, or collapse quickly, and are usually created through
dreams, or fictional storytelling. An example of the former, on the other
hand, will not resemble any other. It may have humans in it, or it may not.
Its physical laws may feel familiar, but that will be coincidence, not
because of some inherent interversal connection. No matter what, each
universe is independent, through both time and space. And it is extremely
difficult to travel between them. Interversal travel has only been invented
twice in the entire histories of the entire bulkverse, and every means of
travel beyond it has been based on that original technology. Because these
branes do not operate on the same timeline, there really isn’t any such
thing as the first, but one did inspire the pursuit of the other.
They called it The Crossover, and the biggest reason the one group of people
who encountered it were capable of replicating its function was because they
were immortals who were billions of years old. They called their version the
Nexus Network. It started out as a way to jump between systems in a galaxy,
before expanding to other galaxies, and eventually all over the universe.
Once the process was fully automated, and left to conquer the cosmos, its
inventors decided they needed a new challenge. They chose interversal travel
as that challenge, and proceeded to spend millions of years working on the
problem. That was how difficult it was.
Getting out of one’s current brane was the easy part, but navigating
the bulkverse, and finding somewhere to land was all but impossible. The
best computer in any universe is usually not anywhere near good enough to
make the necessary calculations. Once those calculations are made, however,
the system that utilizes the data doesn’t have to be very large, or even all
that complex. After all that time figuring out how to travel to other
universes, this small group of immortals had to come to terms with the fact
that their latest challenge was over, and they had nothing more to do with
the rest of their eternal lives. There was talk about building more systems
in these other universes, but they weren’t sure that it would be worth it.
Their home universe had quadrillions of people in it, spread across many
galaxies, and they needed a way to reach each other quickly and
conveniently. In these other branes they visited, the population was always
a lot lower. They expanded within their galaxy, and into neighboring
galaxies, in some cases, but their levels never reached a meaningful
fraction of the number the immortals were used to. Even further down the
timeline, they seemed to be doing okay with their own technological
advances. Still, there were a few cases where the group’s means of
instantaneous intergalactic travel would be quite useful. In salmonverse,
they didn’t build a full network, but they constructed a handful of them in
strategic locations. One of them was Durus. The Durune were aware of
temporal manipulation, and psychic abilities, and even a hint of other
branes, so they were deemed worthy of being connected to this very small
network of replica Nexa. It was constructed in secret at some point, and
discovered in 2195. But they weren’t allowed to go anywhere yet.
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