Microstory 2489: Coasterdome

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It’s the largest amusement park in the known universe. Varkas Reflex has some pretty crazy stuff, but there’s not as much diversity with their rides. When I say that this one is the largest, that doesn’t mean it takes up the whole dome. In fact, I believe they intentionally left room for expansion, basing their future plans on feedback from the fans. So I’ll use this space to discuss my ideas. First off, the rides they have are great. I have no notes on them. There are so many of them, and they’re all different, and there are hardly any lines, and people just kind of naturally spread out. One thing is when you show up, you’re transported to a different entrance using an underground local vactrain network. So I think they were always aware of the concern for bottlenecking, and deliberately assign you an area to start with. It’s not like you’re not allowed to travel as far as you want, but this helps with overcrowding. I will say that as far as the layout itself goes, there doesn’t really seem to be any sense of organization, which I think is probably a consequence of this multi-entrance thing. There’s no dedicated area for the slower rides, or one which aren’t really rides at all, but still belong in an amusement park. There’s no gaming zone, or eating establishment neighborhood. They’re all spread out, and the map is hard to get a handle on. It’s interactive, so you can tell it what you’re looking for, and it will give you options, and show you the directions, so it’s not like all hope is lost. I dunno, I guess this is how they’ve designed it, and there’s no changing it now. As far as new rides are concerned, you could take the megaengineering aspect of Castlebourne more seriously. I propose a drop tower right in the center that goes all the way up to the apex of the dome. That’s 41.5 kilometers, in case you forgot. It would be the most impressive ride I’ve ever heard of. You could also go to the other axis, and design a coaster that flies around the whole perimeter without any lulls. It would be like the trains in Eldome, but much faster. Of course, organies might face health and safety issues with a ride that long, or a drop tower that tall, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t exist. You just tell people who can’t handle it that they can’t go. I already came up with some great names for these new rides, but I don’t want to share them here, because I don’t want someone to steal them. Perhaps you’re already thinking about these things, I just thought I would offer a few ideas. You can even contact me if you want more. I got loads of ‘em. I’m kind of famous in certain circles for designing the craziest of rides in VR. I have a bit of a following, no big deal. But I’m just telling you that I do have experience, and I’m not just some rando. HMU, if you want.

Microstory 1699: Separate and Actually Equal

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When the small universe of Ansutah was created, a woman named Serif found herself trapped inside. She was trying to get out, so she could rejoin her crew on The Elizabeth Warren, but in the attempt to save an innocent little boy, she couldn’t make it in time. She was not a salmon, but she was not a choosing one either. Her form was forged from stone, and her life sparked by a very powerful chooser. She was created to share a salmon’s temporal pattern. At the end of every day, they would jump forwards in time one year. If this salmon had been left in Ansutah, his pattern would have ceased, as the powers that be would no longer have any control over him. Serif was never being controlled by them, however. Her ability to jump through time was simply part of who she was, and it followed her over the threshold. So she continued to do this, as did her child, once she was born. The Maramon who dominated the landscape were aware of her, and they left her alone. To them, there were three types of humans: the primary gods, who were responsible for their creation, and the creation of the world itself; the secondary gods, who were around when it happened; and tertiary gods, which included everyone else. Serif was secondary, and that afforded her some reverence. If any tertiary god were to be found in their presence, they would probably ultimately be killed. As time went on, the Maramon progressed, but Serif only aged a few years. They were heartbroken and angry to learn that their universe was so small, and they would have no way of supporting their ever-growing population. The Crossover missions had failed, and they were going to run out of usable space on the surface of the planet if they didn’t do something. A group of scientists realized that Serif could actually help.

Serif was responsible for their predicament, as it was she who kidnapped their primary god, and sent her to the Warren, where she could no longer increase the size of the universe. They had always been aware of this, and also of the fact that there was no way she could have known what would happen. Once the world was large enough to include outer space, they lost track of its breadth, and couldn’t tell how small it still was. Plus, as their universe became larger, her home universe grew more unstable, and they understood something had to be done. Either way, that was then, and this is now. Now she could help alleviate the strain. She let scientists study her for decades, which for her, was only weeks. They were able to synthesize her pattern, and graft it onto a living host. It was years before they could garner enough socio-political support, but they were able to institute new policies to make the process mandatory for nearly everyone. At any one time, no more than half the population would exist. The other half would be out of the timestream, and would only return later in the day, after the first half had disappeared. In between was a transitional period, when almost no one existed. Only a few constants were left to provide some level of continuity for the rest of the people. Once everyone realized how dire their overpopulation problem was, war broke out, but Serif’s pattern brought the violence down to negligible levels, and for a time, there was peace. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the best they could hope to achieve under these conditions. They still wanted out of their universe, and they kept trying to reach that goal, but then the situation changed. Their missing primary god was finally returned to them, and she was able to restart the expansion. Suddenly, space exploration was back on the table, as was interstellar colonization, and they owed it all to Serif’s war-ending gift.

Microstory 1692: No Signal

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After the Besananta left its home universe in an attempt to explore the bulkverse, those left behind eagerly awaited their return. They waited, and they waited, and still no one came back. They tried looking for data that the ship might have sent, or that a probe picked up at some point, but there was nothing conclusive. As far as they could tell, the mission was a huge failure. There were some theories, like that travel outside of a brane was possible, but back into one was impossible. However, signals could clearly penetrate the membrane, so that didn’t seem too likely. Perhaps the destination universe was so amazing that the crew decided to stay there, and forget about everyone else. That seemed strange too. They might have encountered some terrible threat that forced them to cut off all contact with Infiniverse. That wasn’t entirely unbelievable, but in the end, these theories didn’t really matter. They had no way of knowing how the mission turned out. Did they make it to another universe? If so, why did they not return? The chances were too high that the ship didn't survive, for one reason or another. They decided to stay, and never try again. Answering those questions weren’t going to do them any good. Just because they could tell that other universes existed, didn’t mean that they were any good, or worth traveling to. They didn’t find any other life here, so they were going to have to make do. That was what they did. They chose to expand back out into the stars, so that before too long, aliens did exist, because a civilization that started from a colony a thousand years ago was no more similar to them than one that had evolved on its own. Here they remained for the rest of the age of their universe. Some cultures died out, while others thrived, while more rose up. This was the way things were supposed to be. People weren’t really ever meant to explore the bulkverse at all. It wasn’t designed for travel, which is why it was such a fluke. The Infiniversals just had to recognize this truth.

Microstory 1649: Birth of a Brane

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This will be the last new universe that I tell you about. The next fifty little stories will give you some more information about the previously discussed universes, in the same order. They may just contain more details that I didn’t mention before, or specific stories that, in some way, encapsulate what it’s like to live in these places. I’ve talked about the Maramon before, and told you that they come from a universe called Ansutah, but I’ve yet to describe that universe for you. It’s one of the smaller ones, and I mean that literally. Natural branes are infinitely large, meaning that they keep expanding as time within the membrane persists. Where one ends is synonymous with when it ends, because the size is a function of time more than it is space. C-branes operate differently, however. They’re only as large as they need to be in order to fit the story within, and to satisfy its characters. If said characters have no need to travel to the next star over, then that star will not exist. They may think that it exists. They may even be able to observe it. But it will not really be there. It will be a hologram, and only when something changes about their future will that universe expand in order to allow them to go there. Until that happens, this hologram is being projected on the inside of the membrane. It’s like a big wall that would kill you if you crashed into it, but as I said, that doesn’t matter, because it’s impossible to reach that wall. The universe will grow at least as fast as you can fly through space. Unless you’re in Ansutah. This is because Ansutah is not entirely a c-brane. It’s not entirely natural either, but it is complicated, and its limitations provide for a terrible little exception, which forced the residents to reassess their values.

Salmonverse is both a natural brane, and a c-brane, because of The Superintendent’s access to it, and his uses for it. At one point, a spaceship left a rogue planet called Durus, bound for a return trip to Earth. This ship was only designed to accommodate a small crew, and maybe a few passengers. It just wasn’t that big, because it didn’t originally need to be. Due to some socio-political issues, the crew decided to adapt the ship, so that it could fit dozens more people. They couldn’t build extensions, because the engines wouldn’t be able to handle more mass. They installed pocket dimension generators, which gave them extra space, without making the ship proper any larger. Something went wrong in one of these pockets. A girl was born with the power to make the pocket grow, and a boy was born who could conjure entire beings. Now, even a pocket dimension generator has limits, so the only solution—if they couldn’t simply put a stop to the growth—was to separate the pocket from the ship, and indeed, Salmonverse itself. This was how Ansutah was born. It should have continued expanding from there, but the girl was taken from the world just before the connection was destroyed. This started causing problems for the ship, and also stunted the growth of Ansutah, limiting them to a very tiny solar system, and a wall that actually could be reached. The boy, meanwhile, continued to breathe life into the world, and these Maramon started to procreate on their own, and over the millennia, the population rose to the billions. They didn’t know that their universe was limited, or that they would collide with the membrane in an attempt to explore the stars. Once they learned this, they grew angry, but it didn’t stop them from propagating the species. As they were hunting for a workaround, the population continued to climb, making their efforts all the more vital.