CORE MOEBIUS Technological Glossary
Fold technology
Fold Comm
Derived from Fold Drive technology, Fold Comm warps a cylinder of space to allow particle/waves to travel faster than light. This requires a Folding Engine on both sides, one to fold the cylinder and the other to unfold.
Cylinders can be made pseudo-coherent, allowing them some persistence akin to elasticity. However the links are subject to the same stresses as a normal Fold Drive and distance to the Folding Engine makes adjustment problematic.
Sounding the Fold walls with active sensors allows more advanced Fold Comm technology to maintain connections longer.
Using smaller, Fold-capable drones to jump in stages avoids needing a clear route. The disadvantages are the delay during the stages, their lower compression capacity, and the delay during read/write operations.
Therefore Fold Comm channels are preferred where possible, e.g. in relatively open space or inside structures, including space ships or even sapient bodies.
Fold Drives
A group of similar technologies that fold or compress space to allow travel faster than light. A Folding Engine will create a Fold or bubble, often hourglass shaped, that allows a ship to disconnect space/time.
Similar to the pressure zones created by an airplane wing, the shape of the Fold then moves ship and Fold at FTL speeds.
Fold Drive accelerations bleed through the Fold. Therefore they are limited by the amount of acceleration the ship and its crew can handle as well as the amount of bleed, with better Fold Engines creating less bleed.
Nonetheless, even simple solid state Fold Drives can be used in Fold torpedoes reaching accelerations of thousands of Gs, with the torpedo itself handling hundreds of Gs.
And various technologies, not in the least Narin, are used to protect crews from high accelerations.
Folds are very sensitive to gravity. Even early Fold Engine development will have engines able to manipulate the fold to remains stable. However these manipulations are subject to light speed within the stable Fold.
The larger the Fold, the less it can handle extreme fluctuations in matter against the fold wall.
Sensing across a Fold wall is problematic as the Fold smears any information. Rather than a continued, smooth movement, Fold Drive use is therefore punctuated by brief unfolded periods to allow information from the universe to cross into the Folded space.
The length of these depends on the advancement of the Fold technology, however typical early tech will be sufficient for millisecond 'blip' stops. Longer blips can be used to launch weapons, allowing them to exit the Fold space.
While it's possible to Fold space inside an Existing Fold, intersecting two Folds is always catastrophic and the usefulness of this action rarely out balances the risk.
Blipping allows safe travel up to and past light speed. As a Folding ship reaches FTL speeds, however, the information (either gravity or light) entering during blips might not be taken in and acted on fast enough for safe travel.
At this point again smaller Folds offer better reaction speed.
Extremely advanced Fold Technology allows for probes to be extended significantly ahead of the main Fold 'enclosure', negating these issues somewhat.
However even with these measures and in a small ship (for example a courier torpedo) speeds of fifty to maximum a hundred times light speed are the limit.
The only way to go faster is to travel either inside large, stable, long range 'Highway Folds' or to use a similar Fold created by a one-time use 'Jump Drive'. See there for more information on cross-galactic travel.
Finally, Fold drives tend to produce a high level of disentanglement, making use of entanglement based communications uneconomical.
Fold Bomb
A Folding Engine can be set to fail catastrofically, converting a large percent of its matter into energy. Also known as Nukes, Lances or Shredders, they are the initial weapons of many Fold-capable species.
Simple version are pre programmed with a specific course. Very advanced versions allow for Fold Comm links between the user and the Bomb, making course adjustments possible.
A Fold Bomb's destruction is only limited by the matter it can bring into contact with the failing Fold wall. Often a conventional explosive is used to compress enough matter into the relevant, zone, other times nukes.
Surf Bombs
Extremely advance Fold Bombs can use Standing Wave Resonating Collapse Wall, commonly known as Surf Bombs, to release enough vacuum energy to destroy entire planets and even stars. Surf bombs and the knowledge to produce them are forbidden under both Amalgam rules and Top Dog agreement. It is rumored that, though Core Moebius Ancients enforce the Top Dog agreement, some Amalgam Factions have stashed the means to produce such a weapon.
See also Gravity Needler for a different type of Fold technology weaponry.
Gravity Needler
Despite its name, this is actually an offshoot of Fold technology. Similar to Fold Comm, a Fold is elongated. It is then caused to collapse from the creation end.
Simple Gravity Needlers cause damage by cutting with the vacuum caused by the collapse. More sophisticated tech inserts particles in the Fold and have the collapse convert their matter to energy.
If the Fold is not stable enough, this energy can end up inside the Folding Engine. The limited control over the length of the Fold as well as the fact that sufficient contact with matter will collapse the Fold prematurely limits this weapon.
Extremely advanced needlers can, however, shoot into and through matter.
Highway Fold
Mature Fold Technology allow the creation of an elongated Fold along which objects (even with no Fold Drive of their own) can be moved. The inside space of such a Fold will be shorter than the outside space.
It is possible, but dangerous, to use one's own Fold Engine inside a Highway fold. Often instead a specifically calibrated highway Authority engine is leased. Smaller ships are carried in trains.
In many parts of the galaxy networks of Highway Folds exist and flourish. Most of these are created, managed and guarded by the Amalgam.
Use of such networks by Core Moebius ships is forbidden, but subterfuge or bribing can give occasional access.
Destruction of these networks is forbidden by both Amalgam rules and Top Dog agreement, the latter mostly to avoid stricter controls that could inhibit their own movement.
Jump Fold
One-time use Fold Engines creating a temporary Highway Fold. Stability depends on the reach of the Fold; anything longer than a dozen light-years tends to have a lifetime of less than a minute.
As a Jump Fold does not have an exit Folding Engine, it is simply switched off when the desired distance has been traveled. However, the longer the fold, the less safe the collapse can be done, again limiting the length to around a dozen lightyears.
However, using their own Folding Engine inside a Jump Fold can allow a ship to travel this distance in hours. Repeated jumps allow galactic travel at practical speeds, comparable to many species’ sailing ages.
Though the Fold Engines used for Jump Folds are cheaper than either those used for Highway Folds or regular ship-based Folding Engines, the cost is still prohibitive for most species.
It's not unusal for less advanced species to opportunistically travel along Jump Folds newly created by others. By remaining close to the Jumping ship, the hitchhikers try to avoid the instable parts of the Fold Collapse.
This precludes anyone hitchiking without either sufficient stealth or the permission of the jumper.
Narin technology
Narin
Compact dimension, and a mirror where standing waves compute our reality. Natural waves penetrate only several Planck lengths into the Narin dimension though it is believed to be linear infinite.
It's possible to manipulate singularities in five dimensions to overwrite Narin waves. Such Narin technology allows manipulation of reality ranging from the creation of simple particles up to the creation of a virtual reality computed deep in Narin space.
Limitations are the propagation of the Narin waves in the 3 unfolded dimensions; the nature of the standing wave resonance means the effect is limited to a 450 meter radius sphere outside the manipulation point.
Overlapping spheres do not reach further across normal space even if the interference patterns push the waves deeper into Narin.
The top speed of waves resonance and travel in the Narin dimension is equated to the speed of the lateral travel along other dimensions, that is the speed of light. The elasticity of the medium is not constant but varies under gravity by up to .10 percent.
To push waves deeper into Narin requires interference of several singularity points. Clustering singularities close enough together to allow the creation of complex standing wave 'clouds' deeper in Narin is the main difficulty in developing Narin technology.
The modelling of the standing wave behaviour and computations is relatively simple, as is the creation of 'game of life' like self-extending clouds. There are rumors that entire civilisations have uploaded into Narin space.
However as Narin space is linked to the unfolded 3 dimensions one would have to be in the right spot to sound Narin space and detect them. Likewise such a civilisation would have to travel at lightspeed given that Fold Drives have no equivalent in Narin space.
Crucible drive
A polygon-shaped Narin particle emittor subject to Newtonian physics. The stream of emitted particles can be set to different types, densities and speed. When used as a drive it’s often set to simply emit hydrogen.
Setting it to emit high speed neutrons or heavy ions has strategic and tactical uses but is illegal in most traffic control systems and considered impolite.
Crucible device
By combining Crucible drives into a cube a device is created whose reactions are in balance yet which is capable of emitting large amounts of matter. A crucible device can create planets, atmospheres and even stars.
By keeping the Narin computing simple the results are predictable, however it’s quite possible to produce complex elemental combinations.
Hornshaped Crucible devices can guide these elements into chemical reactions and thus create the basic building blocks of an ecosystem. Indeed, advanced Narin tech could produce protein soups straight from the emitter.
It’s estimated that Crucible devices are responsible for up to 10% of the matter in the universe.
Aegis
A Narin device, shaped like a polygon, that destroys all particles touching it. Simple Aegis devices are used as shields.
Advanced Aegis devices can select for specific types of particle, for example to clear Crucible emitted gas from traffic lanes or to clear planetary environments. It’s possible for an Aegis to be coupled to a Crucible, which allows the device to convert specific types of chemicals into others, again usually to clean environments.
Very advanced Aegis technology allows for projectiles to reach ahead in Aegis space and disable an Aegis shield, making them a staple of cheaper military tech abandoned by more advanced cultures.
Entropic technology
Entropy technology
What is commonly seen as entropy is in fact a force working between adjacent ‘parallel’ universes along several angled dimensions. These dimensions are assumed to loop.
Stacked with alternating ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ states, adjacent universes' interactions tend to make them similar.
Over time, this effect is self-reinforcing. This exerts a ‘pulling’ force that allows universe bundles further away to differentiate in steps or 'shocks'.
This is the static model; the computations of reality in all dimensions, including Narin etc, rapidly (but not instantaneously) reproduce across the entropy dimensions (because there are indeed multiple dimensions) and are to some extent mirrored.
Altogether, this creates a random noise level of non-activating fluctuations. These can peak, leading to vacuum fluctuations.
However, normal physical interactions in one universe represent robust computations that can spread quite far and tend to bundle universes.
Life, working against entropy, does exactly this, meaning universes with life are common in the entropic dimension and tend to gather in self-correcting bundles. This self-correction is as strong a force as actual entropy.
Self-correction allows for quantum fluctuations to be annuled by macro-physics. It also prohibits the separation of bundled universes by means of time travel.
This is countered over time, time in the sense o a function of the entropic computations. Eventually, universes that were once similar will merge again.
However, depending on the impact of the changes, a new bundle might be started that creates enough intermediate steps to differentiate permanently.
It is possible to influence the computation in the entropic dimensions by using Narin computation. This allows beginners to ‘scan’ and research the entropic dimensions.
Advanced tech allows manipulation of other dimensions, eventually displacing parts of out universe into a sufficiently different parrallel one, swapping states so to speak.
Theoretically, the entropic dimensions could be used the same way as Narin tech is used, but the additional computational rules make it uneconomic.
However, understanding how real-world manipulations can be either countered or reinforced in the entropic dimension gives a terrific advantage in planning any such manipulation; from creating particles to xenocide.
It’s widely rumored amongst those aware of the Entropic dimensions, that the existence of Core Moebius is caused by the Entropic preference for life.
Without taking this into account any analysis of the Core would predict an seemingly inevitable collapse; mutual destruction or a much higher species eradication rate.
Weapons
Weapons are very advanced technology, only barely tolerated at Core Moebius. They combine the macro-physical fold drive with extremely Narin technology.
Typically, a Weapon exists as a cluster of Narin processes. Each process can combine up to a million Planck length Narin Nodes that possess multiple Fold generators.
These generate Fold tunnels thin enough to not collapse quantum waves as they approach particle/waves.
This allows the tunnels to be generated without the normal need for feedback interaction. Because of their thinness, they can shorten space-time much more than a normal Fold.
Though far too small for particles, the Folds have guiding effect on Narin processes. As a result, A Weapon node can copy itself to a distant location at about three million times light speed, and exchange data with the original at the same rate.
Even an originally Narin-based Mindstate can thus be moved a thousand times faster than Fold speeds.
Actual Narin based mindstates are very rare, with most Narin Mind processors recreating a Turing machine similar to macroscale processors. Although these are still subject to light speed, their size make them much faster than the original, often biological processor.
Quantum processes can be used for further efficiencies.
These half-Narin processors can also be recreated with Folded signal pathways, especially where longer pathways are inevitable. This results in impressive processing speed improvements.
On the side, a Weapon can take any processor that is not already condensed to true Narin processing, and recreate it in Narin, optimizing its architecture.
In short, a Weapon can take any mind, and make it think between a hundred- for already optimized-and a billion- for biological minds- faster. All minds will end up functioning at speeds very close to eachother because of the hard limit of true Narin processing.
So the mindstates can move much faster than light, think faster than light (literally) and be given information from a Fold probe network that operates at similar speeds.
Weapons would be capable of much more were they given free reign, instead two limiters apply.
First are built-in equalizing limits; Weapon using combatants are much faster than anyone not using a Weapon, but amongst themselves are matched.
This likely avoids classification of Weapons as a forbidden technology by Core Ascended.
Secondly, the Weapon simulation of a Mind foregoes total body recreation, using the Mind’s own feedback loops to avoid shock. It also uses the Mind’s own processes to select which data to offer and in which shape.
This way, to a Weapon user, the world looks like time stands still, without having to deal with doppler and lightcone issues.
Much of this is done in optimized, true-narin approximations of the original process, whose results are fed back into a model.
But the heavy use of the Mind’s own resources bleeds back into it’s conscious. It feels as if their mind is being leeched, and in fact over enough cycles, significant process replacement can take place.
This means there is a time limit to Weapon use. Use it to long, and the default personality processes of the Weapon will start replacing your own.
CORE MOEBIUS Travel information
travel
Travel time around the core.
Speed along Highway fold: 0.1 light year per hour. (876 x lightspeed)
Jump Fold speed: 0.01 light year per hour (87.6 x lightspeed)
Fold Drive speed: 0.005 light years per hour (43.8 x lightspeed)
Core Moebius circumference: 6 .3 light years
Round Time Jump Folds: 630 hours
Rail Round time: 11 days
Fold Drive: 52 days
Inner Wall Circuit circumference 13 light years
Round time Highway Fold: 130 hours (5 days)
Travel time from Core to Inner Wall Highway nodes: 100 hours using Jump folds
Inside the Core, there are over 1.3 billion stars; in comparison, there are four hundred billion stars in the milky way.
There are more than two hundred billion species living in the core.
This is easily explained by the fact that many of these species were artificially generated. Many stars generated several generations of species, too. Many factions arrived at the core leaving most of their species at home, then were joined by descendants that were species upon themselves. The bulk of the two hundred billion are mere holdouts, some no more than 50 individuals, while others contain trillions of individuals. Still; there are half a much species in Core Moebius as there are stars in the milky way.
Any counting of the amount of individuals is bound to fail spectacularly. But we can guess.
Start with one trillion for each of the 22 largest bubbles, a hundred trillion for the dyson sphere, and let's not count the computronium- except to say that at least a trillion natural beings live in access spaces computronium sphere, too!
123 trillion people, give or take ten trillion.
The next level of bubbles; 200 with half a trillion people, 150 with fifty billion people. The rest about a billion each; 110 trillion, again give or take ten. Core total so far: 250 if we round.
The next size down; 5000 trillion.. If you're confused, imagine the vast emptiness of the larger spheres.
So we're at 5,250 trillion, give or take 500.
One size level down again. 300,000 bubbles with on average 10 billion people. 30,000 trillion. 35,250 total, give or take 3,525.
Next level. 7.5 million bubbles with on average 2 billion people. 15,000 trillion. The size of the hardware in these spheres, the fact that they contain inefficient stellar gas cloud environments, makes for a dip in the curve. 50,000 trillion total, give or take 5,000 trillion.
Down. 185 million bubbles. 1 billion people per bubble. 235,000 trillion people total.
Again. 4 billion bubbles with maybe half a billion people each. 2,235,000 trillion total.
Next. 110 billion bubbles. Because these don't have stars, the density increases. 2 billion people per bubble. 222,235,000 trillion people total.
Then we come to the most densely populated bubbles, many of them stuffed with habitatants. 2,500 billion bubbles, 1 billion inhabitants a piece. 2,500,000,000 trillion people, in this range alone. Our total rises to 2,722,235,000 trillion people.
Finally the density numbers start dropping again. 50,000 billion bubbles at perhaps 50 million people. Still, that's again 2,500,000,000 trillion people. our total goes to 5,222,235,000 trillion people.
1,500,000 billion bubbles have a only a million inhabitants. Our total rises to 6,722,235,000 trillion people.
30,000,000 billion city-sized bubbles have only 25.000 inhabitants Yet that's 750,000,000 trillion people; the total goes to 7,472,235,000 trillion people.
800,000,000 billion bubbles no larger than 16 km, housing perhaps 500 people on average. The total is 7,872,235,000 trillion people.
16,000,000,000 billion bubbles are only 2km across, and house on average 20 people.
Our total comes to 8,200,000,000 trillion people. Many live in the spaces between the bubbles, and in general, a round 10 billion trillion people is assumed.
That also makes it easy to calculate the average per species; fifty billion. But again, of some, only fifty individuals or less remain!
Letss try for some perspective again; most planets in the Amalgam, if we exclude gas giants, top out at 1 billion people. The Amalgam covers only 30% of the Milky Way's 400 billion stars. At an average 1 inhabited planet per star, the total number is 0.120 trillion billion people. This is the population most people picture when thinking about the Amalgam, yet it's a mere percentage of their actual population.
Though the Amalgam discourages habitat, they are common, and add up to 1.7 billion trillion inhabitants. And adding the gas giant population, which can reach 2 planets per star with over half a trillion inhabitants, we reach 130 billion trillion.
