Deep-level Technology

The science of Patternistics was crucial to the emergence of the galactic empire. Patternists recognize multiple levels of reality. Phenomena familiar to humans exists on Home Level. Deeper levels generate all the possible alternatives of our Home-level universe. Patternists continually search for Deep-level patterns useful for manipulating reality. Concepts such as space, time, matter and energy are no longer central. Only the patterns that give rise to space, time, matter and energy on our Home-level reality are important.

The same patterns may be interpreted in multiple ways. Thus, on Home Level, we perceive our familiar phenomena. But on deeper levels of reality, alternate interpretations of patterns give imperial scientists handles to bypass the lightspeed barrier and achieve practical intragalactic communications and travel.

Perhaps the best understanding of the empire's Deep-level technology available to Twenty-first Century humans can be found in the writings of David Bohm. Bohm refers to Home Level as the explicate order or the manifest world, while deeper levels are the implicate order and super implicate order.

Bohm explains "... it is possible, not only for the manifest level of ordinary experience, but also the quantum level underlying it, to emerge from a still deeper implicate level in which the classical Cartesian notions of form, order and structure have more or less dissolved. ... such ideas, underlying our classical notions of space-time and measure, would have to arise as limiting cases of this deeper implicate order." (D. Bohm, B.J. Hiley:The Undivided Universe p. 374)

Bohm foresaw the possibility for superluminal communications, writing, "Our proposed ontological explanation of the quantum theory ... implies nonlocality and this would seem to contradict relativity ... But it is possible to propose a deeper theory of the individual quantum process which is not relativistically invariant and which nevertheless leads to Lorentz invariant consequences for all statistical results, as well as for the large scale manifest world. In this theory there is a preferred coordinate frame in which the instantaneous transmission of impulses is in principle possible, so that there is no contradiction with nonlocality for individual quantum processes. In other words, we say that underlying the level in which relativity is valid there is a subrelativistic level in which it is not valid even though relativity is recovered in a suitable statistical approximation as well as in the large scale manifest world."(D. Bohm, B.J. Hiley:The Undivided Universe p. 346-347)

Patternists have discovered multiple means by which to transmit messages instantly across the galaxy. Because deeper-levels subsume multiple instances of shallower universes, guiding the messages to a Home-level receiver in the same instance (timelime) as the sender is the major problem.

LZ-nodes, the least reliable form of Deep-level communications, simply insert the messages into the Deep by removing all Home-level phenomena from the target area. The message will reach its intended recipient by lucky chance. Sending multiple copies of the message may or may not help.

Farfling towers powered by soul-gems are more reliable than LZ-nodes. Soul-gems are Deep-level artifacts that exist simultaneously in all the farfling towers throughout the galaxy, providing guiding waves that keep transmissions on a single timeline.

Farfling can support communications in full sensory detail to allow gatherings to take place in a virtual space that feels real to the participants. Small objects may even be passed from one node in the enfoldment into another, though too great a flux will cause the glowworms interfacing with the Deep-level radiation to fail. A well-known case of such failure is when lovers Kuleng and Smenirk attempted to conceive a child in an enfoldment.

Intragalactic communications can also be effected by mindseas, who know how to transmit Deep-level impulses, or by Deep-level alien beings whose aid can be obtained.

During the Decadent Epoch and the Contested Era, mindseas held a mind-net consisting of over three thousand mind-rivers, one posted on each of the Empire's planets. Horl's mind-rivers were copies of originals who remained in the capital, and they could exchange messages independently of a mindsea. By the time of Quintillion's reign, the mind-rivers had lost the ability to act independently. Unlike mindseas before him, Quintillion did not need to go into trance to hold the mind-net. He held it continuously, while doing other things, and exhausted the mind-rivers.

As with communications, several methods of transporting people and goods quickly across intragalactic space have been utilized.

The simplest, and slowest method for crossing the galaxy is by means of ships that are able to transform for infusion into deeper levels. The deeper a ship can go, the faster it crosses the galaxy.

Because a downleveled ship navigates a realm where many Home-level universes are fused, care must be taken in upleveling to return to the same universe the ship left. Ships may cross timelines and vanish. A ship may also lose patternistic integrity on upleveling and splinter along multiple timelines, destroying everyone and everything on board.

Transways have powerful patternistic engines that reconstitute spacetime to effect an instantaneous translation of objects in their target zone to a set destination. They do not take into account alternate timelines that branch out with the reconstitution, and require the guiding beam of a queue crystal, generally one aligned with a soul-gem, in order not to lose travelers. When transways are not aligned, travelers will still be transported to their destination, but they will find themselves in a parallel universe.

Trans-Gates were Quintillion's answer to travel problems when the Empire's soul-gem was shattered. Like transways, they would directly shift travelers between two points. Instead of a queue crystal, Nander gatekeepers would guide travelers with their Deep-level senses. When it was discovered that gatekeepers were demanding blood sacrifice as payment for their work, the Circle of Experts cut off funding, and the trans-gate system was never completed.

Chronon-twistors directly alter the spacetime anchors of any object within their target zone to instantly transport those objects to another region of spacetime. But they do not reconstitute spacetime itself, so branching timelines are not a problem. They generally offer multiple destinations. Alterations to spacetime anchors may be partial or temporary. A temporary, partial twist will end when the subject recoils to its original place in space and time.

Because the universe is in constant flux, the configuration of forces needed to transport matter constantly changes, and a chronon-twistor can easily fall out of sync and cause bad translations. Its engines require frequent adjustment by someone with enough mindpower to foresee the effect of those adjustments. A chronon-twistor can also provide novel destinations in the hands of an expert twistorian.

They are called "twistors" rather than "twisters" because of their connections with the mathematical concept of twistor space.

Powerful Deep-level machinery, such as that which runs the imperial museum, can provide museum goers with the experience of visiting the past or alternate timelines by recreating those alternate or past universes in their every detail.

Deep-level artifacts cast a fusion-field that pulls things around them down to their level. This is dangerous, as objects acted on by forces of different levels tend to split along timelines. Soul-gems and their splinters are generally safe, as their quasicrystalline structure keeps Deep-level radiation trapped inside. Only the faintest glow of a soul-gem's power escapes its lattice. But when a soul-gem is linked with artifacts such as swords or farfling towers, the spacetime-destroying power is directed outward.

Soul-gems are called such because they contain the pattern of a Deep-level personality, or soul, within their lattice. This pattern determines the wavelength analogue that is emitted when the soul-gem is tapped. The soul-gem picks up the pattern from its environment as it crystallizes into its gem form. It may have a human soul, or the soul of an alien lifeform, or even the soul of a planet.

Any Deep-level object or energy becomes a weapon when it intrudes into Home Level, but citizens with mindpowers traditionally have enjoyed flaunting Deep-level weapons, especially swords, forged with the patternistic integrity that keeps them from unfusing. The swords are often, but not always, linked with soul-gems that infuse the blade with their radiation.

When a Deep-level item needs to be carried safely on Home-level, or when a Home-level item needs to be transported through the Deep without downleveling, interlevel containers are required. These items are composed of layers. For safely handling Deep-level items, sheaths for Deep-level swords, for instance, the outermost layer will be of Home-level stuff, and the innermost meshing with the deepness of the artifact to be contained. Transition layers are made up of matter-energy in a pattern that is interpretable on both inner and outer layers.

For safely transporting items that would be damaged by downleveling aboard Deep-level ships, special shipping containers are used, the most reliable those produced by the Zero-0 Company. These containers are made from multiple layers, with the deepest of them, a Deep-five layer, sandwiched between shallower layers ranging from Deep Four to Home-level. When the ship carrying such a container downlevels, the outer layers fuse and become transparent, down to the layer equivalent to the ship's fusion field, but the inner layers and the goods inside the container are protected from alteration.

Freezing chests are a very specialized type of shipping container. They also protect goods contained within from downleveling aboard a ship, but they also form a time pocket around their contents to keep it in stasis. They are used when transporting persons with mindpowers, such as mindseas or Nanders, because such persons would break free from Home-level restraints in the Deep and threaten shipboard patternistic integrity.

When Attequol founded the Empire, he erected massive energy temples on every planet, each one drawing enough power from the Deep to supply the planet's energy needs. Rathax destroyed the temples, and they were never rebuilt. However, small energy wells are easily constructed. They make use of the fusion field generated by any Deep-level material intruding onto Home Level. A constant stream of particles is directed toward the intrusion, and refiners enclosing the fusion field harvest energy from the random bursts of unfusing that result.

Architecture, like downleveling ships, can be designed to safely downlevel contents. One such edifice is the Mini Milky Way on Bri, built by Quintillion. Beneath its dome, visitors will find the entire galaxy reproduced. Given the correct cues, it will downlevel successively to Deep Four, giving prospective pilots a taste of the Deep.

Time pockets are small encapsulated spaces inside which the flow of time is altered compared with the surrounding space. Time may be accelerated or slowed-down. It may be reversed, or reciprocal. The membrane surrounding the time pocket may be permeable to radiation or mechanical disturbance, with all matter passing through having its chronons adjusted during the passage.

Another method for rapid travel between points in space and time is a time labyrinth. Fashioned from purified chrononic material and anchored by a soul-gem, the time labyrinth has a few spatial endpoints that can be visited at any number of points in time. As with a chronon-twistor, visiting past moments will cause timelines to split.

The Stairway of Ice was not built by the Empire, though it was essential to the spread of humanity through the galaxy. The Stairway consists of successive steps, each a level deeper than the preceding step. As deeper steps lie beyond time, and thus eternal, the Stairway must be considered a natural phenomenon, though the shallowest steps connecting it to Home Level are human artifacts. The exact number of steps needed to reach the deepest Deep, the center of all creation, is unknown.

Bohm recognized the possibility of successively deeper levels, writing, "As in the particle theory, the implicate order manifests in the activity of the particle through the quantum potential. It is clear that in field theory there is a super implicate order that manifests in the field beables. ... At this point a little reflection shows that the whole idea of implicate order could be extended in a natural way. For if there are two levels of implicate order, why should there not be more? Thus if we regard the super implicate order as the second level, then we might consider a third level which was related to the second as the second is to the first. That is to say, the third implicate order would organize the second which would thereby become nonlinear. ... Evidently we could go on indefinitely to higher levels of implicate order." (D. Bohm , B.J. Hiley:The Undivided Universe p. 380)

A concept vital to Deep-level engineering is patternistic integrity. It determines whether a collection of patternistic bits uplevels as a unit or scatters across timelines. Patternistic integrity unites the collection with a single identity. The function of imperial soul-gems is to provide patternistic integrity for the Empire as a whole. Radiating a Deep-six light analog from the tops of farfling towers, the soul-gem "tints" farfling messages to make them visible on its chosen timeline. Ideally, the soul-gem bears the imprint of a mindsea-emperor, so that soul-gem and mindsea work as one, but this has not often been the case.

During periods when neither mindsea-emperor nor soul-gem existed, the Empire's patternistic integrity depends upon Deep-level pilots who carry messages and travellers between systems. Inevitably, some pilots will uplevel onto different timelines than others, draining resources and events from the Empire. The divergence can be minimized when pilots make periodic visits to Lal to reintegrate with their original shared timeline.

While other emperors strove to maintain the patternistic integrity of their realm, Rathax saw greater possibilities in letting it go. He had plans to rule the multiverse, and in order to achieve his goal, he needed to sweep away the timeline anchors to be found in Attequol's energy temples, which also served as farfling towers for his soul-gem. Rathax traveled the galaxy, destroying towers to free their planets from Attequol's timeline. With planets freed, Rathax could visit the same place again and again on different timelines, each time seizing local treasures and transporting them back to his home base on Lal. His wealth would become infinite.

Other citizens, especially those with no ties to Lal, where the soul-gem remained to the last, did not fare so well. If they crossed timelines on an interplanetary hop, they might find their credits vanished when they reached their destination. They might no longer have a niche. Another version of themselves might be living in their home, or they might find themselves in a universe where they never had been born.

As his final act, Rathax destroyed the Temple of Lal and the soul-gem, along with himself, leaving his successors to deal with chaos.

Pilots of downleveling ships must see to their own ship's patternistic integrity, whether or not a soul-gem shines or a mindsea sits on the imperial throne. Good pilots always perform an integrity check before every flight. The Deeper they fly, the more necessary this becomes. There are no formulas to follow. The pilot must survey their ship and cargo like an artist, employing Deep-senses to spot dissonance. If something is amiss, they must make repairs or rearrange cargo to restore a pattern of underlying wholeness. In flight, it is a pilot's right, and duty, to throw overboard a passenger or stowaway who threatens a ship's patternistic integrity.

The loss of patternistic integrity will cause a ship to unfuse and scatter its bits randomly across timelines when it uplevels. Minor accidents happen when the dissonance is less severe. Cargo or passengers may vanish onto other timelines, or they may appear from other timelines as time-orphans. Everything on board is rearranged on the molecular scale when the multiple instances that were fused in the Deep fly apart again upon upleveling. Passengers usually slip their internal glowworm links. Travellers with mindsize may return to Home Level with new outfits or hairdos they have winnowed from the Deep's possibilities.

Patternistic integrities can be nested. Though they may be members of an empire or a shipboard group, lifeforms also have individual patternistic integrity. It allows them to flow through time with an identity that unfolds from the Deep anew at every quantum refresh. Each conscious moment sees the superposition of possible futures, but the lifeform remains intact when the possibilities resolve into a single past moment.

To lose patternistic integrity is to die. When the mind plunges Deep, but does not return to its Home-level timeline, the body loses patternistic integrity. It becomes a collection of independent cells, until cell death leaves a collection of molecules.

Crystalloids have patternistic integrity on the cellular level, but not as a whole, because all of their processes have become automatic. They react to stimuli, but they are not considered conscious, and have no memory of any post-crystallization action.

Bioids have patternistic integrity on the glowworm level, but not as a whole, because their programming does not allow multiple possible future actions. Glowworms themselves are programmed, but retain enough characteristics of living organisms to be considered alive.

Imperial scientists hypothesize that matter itself has patternistic integrity and would dissolve into more basic bits if it was lost. Emperor Quintillion contended that overuse of Deep-level technology could bring about this disaster.