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                  Darry's Introduction to the Panverse

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There's a line from a book Ryan picked up during one of our library 
raids (an Earth analogue, I think, fairly normal late 20th century) that 
has always stuck in my mind as being a masterpiece of understatement. It 
looked like some kind of travel guide (which was why Ryan was 
interested, of course) but it turned out to be an off-the-wall SF story, 
and the universe it described wasn't that useful to us at the time, so 
he (I still had a brother at that point, rather than a sister) gave up 
on it. He said it was pretty funny, though, so I gave it a try. _Hitch-
hikers' Guide_ to something or other. Anyway, the line.

'Space is big.'

Which, given that most of you readers probably come from a universe in 
the Great Koosh (we'll get to that in a bit), or at least a natural-
mundane universe, won't come as a shock. And you know how the story 
goes...

You're standing outside, looking at a white table which is one metre 
square. Then you lift off, and shoot into the sky, and the table's a 
tiny dot and you're looking at a couple of city blocks, then the whole 
city, a country (or state, if you live in one of those stupidly big 
countries), a continent... then the Earth's this little ball and there's 
the Moon off to one side.

And it keeps going, until the galactic clusters look like wisps of 
teased-out cotton wool on black velvet. Somewhere in there, in that 
inconceivably vast collection of hydrogen and helium (and a few 
impurities), there's a white metre-square table. *Boy* is it 
insignificant!

Okay, so space is big. Let's ignore all that for a while, and go back to 
our table. Actually, let's ignore the legs as well.

So there's our table-top, white, one metre square, and a couple of 
centimetres thick. Freeze frame for a moment, and have a good look. It 
extends across a certain amount of space relative to us (down/up, 
left/right, towards/away), and a certain amount of time as well 
(earlier/later). Unfortunately, it takes a bit of training to see all 
four of those directions at once (and if you think perceiving four 
dimensions is hard, you should try *five*).

Instead, let's try turning the tabletop, as though it was on casters. 
Watch what happens. The bits that are most to the left move towards us. 
The bits that are closest to us move to the right. The bits on the right 
move away, and the ones farthest away move to the left. Keep going until 
the (originally) leftmost bit is as close as possible. Congratulations, 
you've rotated the table through ninety degrees.

Let's try that again. The bits that are uppermost move earlier. The bits 
that are earliest move down. Bottom-most move later. Latest move up.

We've rotated it through ninety degrees again. What used to be the 
table's 'before' now looks like 'down'; its 'after' is 'up'.

And, of course, we see a square pillar extending from below to above -- 
past to future. It's not straight either; presumably the table hasn't 
been out in the street the whole time. So the pillar bends. And if you 
take into account the Earth's spin, and its orbit, and the Sun's proper 
motion (very few tables last long enough to travel an appreciable 
fraction of a galactic orbit), the pillar is a leaning spiralling 
spiral. Of course, the ends look interesting, and certainly aren't 
square. But that's not what we're looking for. Turn it back.

Let's try turning it again, this time in another new way. Unfortunately, 
we've run out of common terms. Let's make up a new direction: 
criss/cross.

Leftmost moves crisswards. Crissmost moves right. Rightmost moves 
crosswards. Crossmost moves left.

Hmm. It appears we've run out of table as well. All we're left with is 
an infinitely thin strip directly in front of us, extending a metre away 
and a couple of centimetres down.

But what's that we see?

(Since this next bit actually depends a lot on where you are, we'll 
pretend you're in an Array structure, up in Saille+ Crenelated Aardvark 
or somewhere like that (more on that later).)

To the left and right of our table-strip, spaced roughly one metre 
apart, are more strips! There are occasional gaps in the sequence, which 
get more frequent the further we look until the strips eventually peter 
out.

What we are seeing are the *analogues* (a new word to remember) of our 
table in a sequence of parallel universes. Not all of these universes 
have an analogue, hence the gaps: universes further away are more likely 
to be different, it seems (true enough in this kind of structure, not so 
in others).

This is fun. Let's turn the table again. This time, turn the 
towards/away direction into another new one (foo/bar).

Now we have an infinitely thin hair, a couple of centimetres high. And 
all its friends, in a square grid pattern.

One more turn (baz/qux): a point in a cubical lattice.

Right. Up until now we've been concentrating on the analogues of a 
single object. If we allow ourselves to perceive everything in these 
universes, what do we see?

Well, all the dots got brighter for a start. And the gaps in the lattice 
have all filled in. And it goes on for a very long way...

Zoom out, like before.

Your lattice is now an infinitesimal part of a blaze of solid colour, in 
a tiny corner of a vast, fractal Superstructure (remember that word too) 
the width of an entire universe.

If our table is insignificant in its universe, that universe is just as 
insignificant in its Superstructure.

Let's go somewhere else. There's an interesting bit not too far (as 
these things go) from our original universe: a Multifold Array 
structure. Zoom in on that.

Not only are there the cubical array of dots, there are also rods and 
planes.

These are yet more universes, using different sets of dimensions to our 
original one. For example, some of them use our (cross/earlier/up/foo) 
as their (up/right/away/later).

(Why don't we see these alternate universes all the time? Because you 
can't actually *see* an infinitely thin object; this is only a thought 
experiment. Though they do affect each other at a very low level.)

So it appears we can get from one universe to another not only by 
stepping crisswards a pace, but also by turning foo.

All right, enough with the silly names. Let's stop using these relative 
dimensions (up/towards/etc.) and get to know the official 'absolute' 
labels.

(How do you get an absolute co-ordinate set with no preferred 
directions? The same way you get an absolute measure of longitude: the 
guys with the biggest navy force their preferred reference point on 
everyone else.)

Beth, Luis, Nuin, Fearn, Saille, Peur, Dur, Tinne, Koll, Quert, Muin, 
Gort, Ngetal, Straiph, Ruis, Ailim, Ohn, Ur, Eodha, Iodha, Amloik, Oir, 
Uilleann, Eashadh, Iphin

Why the Ogham alphabet? In honour of a Keltoi civilisation we have a lot 
of respect for. It has *nothing* to do with Shareez's tree-fetish. Also, 
it has twenty-five letters; the best mathematical theories available say 
it's completely impossible for there to be more than twenty-five 
dimensions. We haven't even found a universe with a dimension beyond 
Iodha yet, so there's plenty of room to expand before we have to start 
adding more trees on the end when the theories are proved wrong.

Of course, those guys with the big navy (who like our co-ordinate system 
so much they force everyone to use it) have their capital universe's 
'later' direction (its entropy vector -- another term to remember) 
pointing dead along the Beth axis, and use Luis, Nuin and Fearn as their 
space dimensions. Universes outside that particular array structure 
rarely have their axes so neatly aligned.

Take our original universe, for example. It's in the Saille+ Crenelated 
Aardvark Superstructure, which means that (a) its entropy vector points 
*mostly* in the positive Saille direction, and (b) its space dimensions 
point *mostly* in the Nuin, Koll and Quert directions. This latter is 
worked out because if you take all the known universes that share those 
two properties, and display them suppressing all but the next-lowest 
dimensions to its space dimensions (ie. Fearn, Muin and Gort), the 
resulting Superstructure looks more like a crenelated aardvark than any 
of the other views that only share the first.

With the twenty dimensions we're aware of, that makes 5,814 
superstructures for each of the forty entropy vector groups -- 232,560 
in total. If the theories are correct, and we eventually reach all 
twenty-five dimensions, that becomes 12,144 per group and 607,200 in 
total. Each containing untold billions of universes. Of course, there 
could be more.

One of the reasons the twenty-five dimension limit seems reasonable is 
because of the Great Koosh.

Universes whose entropy vectors point somewhere between Beth and the 
outer side of Fearn do not branch under any circumstances; others do. As 
we look at the universes from inner Fearn through to Ur, the trend is 
that they branch at less and less important decision points -- from 
being forced only by massive temporal paradoxes almost into Peur, to 
country-affecting decisions in Ngetal, to trivialities like the exact 
pattern of raindrops on a window in Ur.

Once into Eodha and beyond, however, the universes all branch at a 
quantum level. *Every* possible 'decision' causes a branch. If we were 
to try our table thought experiment in one of these universes, we would 
find an infinite fractal sea of table slivers in any dimension set we 
cared to use. This collection of superstructures has a definite centre; 
universes explode out from it in uncountable branches; it was dubbed the 
Great Koosh for its apparent furriness. And according to our best 
theories, moving the entropy vector up the dimensions past Eodha and 
Iodha just means more Koosh.

Some small measure of the scale of this branching can be gained from 
this example: you, the reader, are (by pure statistics) almost certainly 
from a high-dimension universe. That means that somewhere there is a 
universe, identical to yours in every respect save that fifty billion 
years ago, on the opposite side of your galactic supercluster, a single 
free neutron happened to wait a microsecond longer to decay. Given how 
many free neutrons there are in the universe's history, and all the 
different times they could decay at, how many *completely* *identical* 
copies of you are there? Never mind all the 'almost identical' ones... 
mere *space* is not big!

The Great Koosh is also sticky. When a traveller enters a Great Koosh 
universe from the outside, a new branch is made. The traveller is then 
split into a near-infinite number of copies, which go through every 
possible set of experiences. Some of them will get back out of the Koosh 
sooner or later: they all reintegrate at the (statistically) most likely 
time of re-emergence. However, the traveller will almost certainly be 
weakened by the loss of those copies which did not leave.

This unimaginable collection of superstructures, from Beth+ to Iodha- 
(so far), is collectively known as The Panverse (a really important word 
to remember). Simply put, it contains *everything*. If we discover 
something new, it is merely outside the *known* Panverse; *nothing* can 
be outside the Panverse, by definition.

The Panverse is our playground. But only if we can navigate safely.

Now, you might be asking, how do you get from 'Saille+ Crenelated 
Aardvark' to 'Saille+/Nuin/Koll/Quert'? Simple: your navigation database 
knows. Given that the precision of our cutting-edge inter-dimensional 
devices is measured in nanoseconds and angstroms, and need the range to 
cover entire universes, the actual co-ordinates of a point requires 
twenty (so far) 32-digit hexadecimal numbers to specify the position, 
and a further four sets of twenty numbers to specify the orientation of 
the entropy vector and space dimensions. Since for most applications 
this is extreme overkill, most people prefer to use the colloquial 
system: specify the nearest axis to the entropy vector, the 
Superstructure, Structure and (if necessary) Substructure titles, and a 
numerical code within that to determine the universe, then colloquial 
terms to specify galaxy, planet, city, year and date. The navcomp will 
take it from there.

So, for example, our friends in the Keltoi have an address as follows:

[Fearn- Ribbon Fountain: Muin+ Helical Spread: Sparse Mist: TL 17-2-16]
[Centaurus Wall: Virgo SC: Milky Way: Sol: Earth: Keltoi Federation: 
Llandegfan]
[GA 145/04/02]

...which breaks down thusly:

Fearn-: The universe's entropy vector points mostly towards the negative 
Fearn axis. Actually, it's +0.68 Luis, -0.73 Fearn, +0.06855 Dur.

Ribbon Fountain: Its space dimensions are mostly Luis, Tinne, Quert; if 
you take all the universes in (Fearn-/Luis/Tinne/Quert) and only show 
the Nuin (as up), Koll and Muin dimensions, they form a neat fountain-
like spray of flat ribbons.

Muin+ Helical Spread: The Ribbon Fountain superstructure is symmetrical 
and highly complicated; this structure -- a spiralling pattern at the 
ends of a set of ribbons -- is needed to narrow the location down more. 
Many addresses skip this intermediate step.

Sparse Mist: At the ends of the Helical Spread structure the universes 
become very spread apart. The substructure designator reduces the size 
of the area in question to the point where numerical codes become easy 
to use.

TL 17-2-16: Simply, which universe (rather, timeline) in the 
substructure, using the standard view's co-ordinate set.

Centaurus Wall: Virgo SC: Milky Way: Colloquial name of the target 
filament wall, supercluster and galaxy. Many universes outside the Great 
Koosh don't have superclusters; a lot don't even have galaxies.

Sol: Earth: Colloquial name of the target solar system and planet.

Keltoi Federation: Country designation. This is an area equivalent to 
Alba, Cwmri, Erinn, Breton and the north and west of Sassun. (If you're 
from a Hamburger Reaches-type universe, that would be the British Isles 
minus the Home Counties, plus Brittany.)

Llandegfan: City (or equivalent area); Llandegfan on Mona is the 
Federation capital.

GA 145/04/02: Local date system in a standard year/month/day format. 
Monotheism never developed in this universe, so the usual 'CE' or 'AD' 
designation is inappropriate: the inhabitants of this Earth agreed to 
begin a new year-numbering system (the Galactic Age) when the Epsilon 
Eridani colony made first contact with the Chrrrr. (Astronomical data 
tells us that GA 145 is the equivalent of modal CE 1797.)