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Catalogue No.: Omicron-XK9732331-C0-P5-12, Media Type: Textbook Excerpt, Title: On the Subject of Ley Travel (Earthling Edition) - "Introduction and a Brief History of Ley Particles," Author: Bosun Dal Tremor of the Cartographic Flotilla, Additional Text: Margin Notations by Mephit

Before one can properly discuss the nature of how Ley Particles and their confluences into Ley Paths allow for FTL travel without the requirement of opening a wormhole or draining a sun, it occurs to me that the reader should have a brief history of our discovery and naming of these particles to grasp onto.

This sentence has been circled with an arrow drawn from the below note to the sentence

Mephit here, yes that was a single sentence. Bosun Tremor, Dal to his friends, can be a bit long-winded at quite inconvenient times. He is, however, possibly the best Ley Cartographer who will ever live in his universe, so bear with it. I'll throw in a joke or two to keep you entertained. On with the knowledge!

As with much of this book, the scope of such discussions will be in relation to earthlings as this version is translated into Earth languages for training earthlings on Ley travel. If you were wanting more information in regards to a different collection of sentient species or a particular culture or culture cluster, please contact the Cartographic Flotilla Library Vessel on its service line and ask about an edition of my book for the pertinent species. That being said, let us continue.

Bright red underlining on the last sentence.

He only talks like this when he has to sound smart, way less formal after a nice wine. Feels like he has to be a fuddy-duddy to be respected, poor thing.

Humans first discovered an unorthodox particle they could not explain on deep space scanners in the Earth year 2350. By that time, enough deep space probes had been launched in order to more quickly achieve a relay time of only 17 years, 92 days and 15 hours from furthest probe to Earth using Colonel Alvin McTalbot's, of the Independent Scottish Navy's Communications and Navigations Division, then famous "Informational Railgun" technique of near-simultaneous blitz uploads across a series of satellites or other terminals/relay points. As completely useless as this would be today for communicating from even just Sol System to Alpha Centauri, It was brilliant for picking up never before seen data in almost-real-time.

Another underline, this time on almost-real-time. Angrier looking underline.

I checked all 977 pages and the reference material and additional guides, Dal you scatterbrained little shit! NOT A SINGLE MENTION OF WHAT THIS MEANS. Had to have a foreword about the history of particles, can't be arsed to mention time-slippage. Time slippage happens across any amount of space-time that is being warped by an object that warps or bends space-time itself. This includes black holes, but in Universe-78735-Zala, aka the Prime Ley Path Universe, Ley Paths also do it. Dal explains enough to see why that's important to know but never actually mentions that almost-real-time means that time slippage was at least 99% overcome if any occurred. In other words, they saw 2 minutes worth of footage without going over 2 minutes 3 seconds in terms of human time measurements. Carry on.

This data was incredibly strange and difficult to even fully process on standard equipment, leading to then United Nations of Earth Second Chancellor Harlan Quell to propose a plan to use an improved relay to search for the source of such particulates and additional information. The initial Long Chain Project was signed into Earth policy in Earth year 2352 and would set off almost 450 years of intergalactic discovery in an attempt to do so. Of the many discoveries made by the LCP of 2350, as it came to be known, one which was noteably missing was a source for the mysterious particles. Instead, in 2807, when the LCP took was starting to take almost 30 years to get information from the furthest satellite to Earth, near lightspeed travel became possible with the invention of the Horace-Lader drive and its use of near-perfect reclamation of the photoelectric effect and the underlying continuous yet infinitesimal breaks to space-time involved to power vehicles travelling at approximately 2.88x10^8 m/s, closer than any human would ever achieve prior to joining the IULPS (Intergalactic Union of Ley Path Societies).

Another underline starting at with many exclamation points and an expletive followed by the word

SPOILERS!!!!!

This same year, First Chancellor of the United Nations of Earth Malia Varayev championed a new plan that left behind the continuing updates to the Long Chain Project and instead called for a one way manned flight by volunteers towards the newly predicted center of these particles (at this year commonly denoted McTalbot's Particles or Fairy Particles due to the former being responsible for the method of discovery and the latter being what humans thought they resembled). This operation was highly contested and debated for almost a decade until on December 12, 2816 of the Earth calendar The infamous Operation Heaven's Darts was signed into policy and launched. It would launch one of the darkest and most brutal periods in Earth history, so much so that to this day all Earthlings, humans included, hold a month long vigil starting on December 12 every year to commemorate the Month of Peace, the first month of Heaven's Darts in which no genocides, mass murders, forced disasters, or any other large scale death toll or oppression took place for the last month until the year 3030.

A simple arrow points to this last sentence.

I wish I could say that Dal was kidding or exaggerating, but he is actually going easy on the matter. There was a continuous series of horrific disasters and poverty crises forced by corporations who took advantage of Clause 19 in that policy that started almost exactly a month later. They only hit other humans at first. Dal says more, but he is kind to his reader. He doesn't wish you to have to dwell on the darkest portion of human depravity most members of the multiverse have ever seen in order to understand Ley particles. He simply wants to address the elephant in the room lest anyone forgets it. Personally I would go into every detail if I could, but I have actual respect for Bosun Dal Tremor. So... for gorey details see Cataloge No. Chi-JP9393321, I won't write them here. For Dal.

The process began by designating a number of private organizations that were not under direct governance of the UNE as targets for incentives to aid in the search for volunteers under what is now infamously known as Clause 19. This clause left a number of openings that led to private organizations propping up the efficacy of the UNE and the ability to make incredibly powerful actions and decisions with next to no oversight as time went on. Humans, as of 2817, were the only large population sentient species as cohabitant species would not be discovered until the 2900's and engineered species were in their infancy. As such, these organizations used economic, social, political and environmental data to ensure large swaths of human volunteers. Over time the UNE would, far too late, recognize its mistake and begin to further and further curtail harm that could be done to humans in order to receive incentives to generate volunteers. In 2873, the human population began to suffer greatly from the now 56 year process of volunteering to be shot into deep space and never heard from again in a single human lifetime. Human colonies on Mars and the Moon were beginning to finally show promise of true self-sustainability at this time and freight relay to colonies outside the asteroid belt were capable of helping there be a Sol System for humans to live and claim as home rather than just one or two planets and planetoids, however it was determined that it would not be enough to save the human race from extinction in the next few decades without serious action. This led to the UNE, slowly becoming the United Planets and Colonies of Sol behind the organizations' backs at this point, made its firmest action to prevent human harm with the Humanity Welfare Act the same year, a policy designed to stop rampant harmful genocides and environmental disasters in their tracks. Instead, it only directly protected humans and, as engineered species were no longer in their infancy, led to the private sector of Heaven's Darts to begin committing slavery and genocide on inorganic sentients such as androids, genetically modified sentients such as Siriusians (named for Sirius, the Dog Star), and genetically engineered sentients such as homunculi in order to achieve their continuingly less realistic incentives goals. When subterranean reptilian species Homo Herpetus aka Tariks were discovered in the early 2900's, and later the semi-aquatic species known as the Meeri in 2940 and the smaller mammalian species called Mauskin in the 2990's, they, too, became part and parcel of the actions of these organizations. The latter was folded into the private sector's "volunteer searches" shortly after the passing the Anti-Deification Act of 2989, an act which the beginning to burgeon UPCS passed to put incredibly strict guidelines on the production of engineered sentient species and the rights inherent to these species as sentient beings. Finally, In the Earth Year 3028, The UPCS announced its official status and separated itself from the entity known as the UNE completely, leaving behind only those most loyal to private sector causes, and led a 2 year military campaign alongside all species, cultures and races of sentient people in the known Sol System against the United Private Militaries of Earth and Allied UNE forces. It was an incredibly one sided affair that ended unilaterally in the UPCS's favor and led to the complete dismantling of Heaven's Darts and all of its components and constituencies on Earth Date May 19, 3030. This date is now known as Mayteenth across all Earthling colonies and is celebrated with planetwide feasting and partying in honor of the end of progress at any cost as well as the beginning of the unification of the Earthling species.

Mayteenth is circled.

You have no idea how many jokes you will have to hear about 3030 vision that day. It's beyond obnoxious but the wine and music and drugs and food are to die for. Hell, even homunculi like Dal whip up amazing libations for Mayteenth, and they don't have a sense of taste. Some places it can be quite Bacchanalian in fact, I recommend at least visiting once for it.

Not three months later, the first ever transmission to return from a Heaven's Darts vessel was received on what all Earthlings refer to as Contact Day. The transmission was a recording of the third crew to leave Earth, a hundred-person cruiser named Zephyr 1 captained by Marla Moore, announcing the playback and data of a received transmission along with a large file of all notes. A second recording arrived a few days later detailing even more information that showed many references to the Fairy Particles in the received transmission as well as new study data on the particles themselves. 3 weeks later Zephyr 1's third and final transmission arrived detailing how it would be the final transmission ans Quartermaster Alan Moore (Captain Marla Moore's brother) detailed he was the last surviving crew member and would be jettisoning beacons until the ship decayed due to local time slippage in order to aid further vessels in finding it. QM Moore also detailed the last of the notes and how he intended to set up all data to be able to be collected by the LCP relay as quickly as possible with the aid of further ships. Over the course of the next 35 years, all information from every ship that made contact with one of QM Moore's beacons or those of his eventual successors. The original transmission received by Zephyr 1 itself was returned in full with no corruption as the final transmission by any Heaven's Dart vessel, along with the signoff "So long and goodnight everyone, the stars are calling me to the airlock."

The quotation is underlined with a doodle of a grimacing emoticon face next to it.

Dal doesn't always understand just how grim some things sound, this included I think. I think he just thought this would give a final feeling to the Heaven's Darts era. I honestly couldn't tell you if he realizes that person decided to take a long spacewalk without a helmet. Either way, bit of a yikes yeah?

This final transmission in 3065 marked the beginning of the Era of Cryptography for all Earthling species as the UPCS scrapped all non-localized space travel programs to instead focus on strengthening all Sol colonies and the decryption of the Deep Space Transmission Alpha (we now of course know Zephyr 1's discovery as the Ley Protospecies Transmission). It would take until the year 3315, almost 250 years to the day of receipt of final transmission, before retired UPCS Starfleet Commander and veteran of the Sol Unification War Dr. Sparky 'Sparks' McGruff and his team of the brightest minds of all of the Earthling species cracked the transmission wide open to reveal astounding information all about the then mysterious particles. It contained details from some sort of Protospecies about how these particles could be measured and why current equipment would have had trouble measuring them. It contained the name for what they were, calling them Flux-Oriented Aspatial Achronal Metatransitive particles when translated to English. The name became shortened to FOAAM Particles, however the name didn't translate well into other languages and presented a problem for communications. When the section detailing that these particles had a tendency to confluence into various sized flows both terrestrially and celestially was released, scientists quickly also discovered how to see such confluences on planetary surfaces and were startled to see they looked exactly like old human descriptions of Ley Lines, a phenomenon that had since spread to the consciousness of all Earthling species. As a direct result, all Earthlings now call these particles Ley Particles and their confluences as Ley Paths to ease communications. The most important section detailed how to use these Ley Paths to travel by charging them in specific ways to allow travel in directions along these paths only available by warping space-time. In 3363 Arcturus Fran became the first person to perform Ley-Flight in a single-person probe vessel that completed a path from Earth to Jupiter and back in less than an hour in local space-time. Most exciting of all, the pilot, also the Chancellor Adjudicator of the UPCS at the time, came back unharmed, the same age, and with almost minimal fuel costs. The Chamber of Chancellors of the UPCS immediately began a race to be able to use Ley-Flight for deep space travel in order to find the source of the Transmission or Ley Particles themselves. This would last for almost 900 years while Earthlings and now Solians, as sentient species who were non-native to Earth had long ago been discovered and created by accident by Earthlings, expanded the UPCS to achieve the resource load necessary to make the First Ark.

First Ark circled.

This time he's not mentioning it because everyone knows about it there. Big effing ship that transported a bunch of Solians to The Convergence and got the UPCS accepted into the IULPS. You know, the spoiler from earlier that still hasn't been explained? Anyways, the project is interesting and its development and broader context can be found in Catalogue No. Chi-SPT999332.

The remainder happens quickly as the First Ark finalizes building in 4212 and launches 10 years later with over 2 million Solians on board carefully selected for research and contact purposes. In 4224, The Convergence, a massive asteroid turned into a house of government for the IULPS. Solians expected to be met with the Protospecies but instead were met by hundreds of societies who had all discovered The Convergence as a result of some version of the same transmission. Ever since, all Earthling, and further Solian, species have been working with each other, the IULPS and the Cartographic Flotilla, and the Archivist Scionate to attempt to catalogue and discover the many nuances of Ley Path science as well as any information discoverable about the Protospecies that seems to have put everyone else on the right path for Ley-flight so many eons ago. As a scientist and Ley-cartographer, I recognize that this has little to do with the scope of this book and discussing aspects of Ley-flight, Ley travel, and the Ley Paths and science that make both possible directly. However, as a PERSON first and foremost as well as a Bosun with a duty of care to other people in this universe, I must reject this notion entirely. These discoveries you will read were not made in a vacuum and they instead exist in the context of countless choices of endless historical figures who worked to make them. Some of these discoveries were paid for in countless lives and dignity, others in a near resource collapse from overzealousness. Some were even paid for in sheer good luck, as in the case of Arcturus Fran's first flight. And yet others were paid for in kindness and care and unity. We people make decisions as to the context of the research we make, the maps we draw, the flights we take and so much more, and for ill or for good it will always change lives, potentially for generations. As my last thought for this foreword, I implore that, as you read and educate yourself all about Ley travel, you also educate yourself with a duty to use that information to do no harm. Thank you, and enjoy the book.

The last paragraph is almost illegible without aid from a layer separator program removing Mephit's edits as it is covered in various scratchings and scrawlings of laughter onomatopoeia (haha, hoho, etc) with a paragraph beneath it all.

Oh Dal, how hopeful you can be sometimes. And yet I know you are not reading this edit calling out how hopeful you are. I wonder why that might be? Ah well... end of notes.

Instead of a name, Mephit signs off with what appears to be a symbol of a smiling set of jaws.

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ickysmelly · 8 days

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Catalogue No.: Epsilon-122274893(a), Media Type: Video Transcription, Title: "Welcome to the Multiverse!"

The recording begins with a marker beep and then a black title card with the above information before transitioning to a dimly lit portion of a room.

There is a single lamp, an old green desk lamp that one only finds in films and the offices of rich people sitting on a small round wooden table. It lights very little of the room, just enough to reveal a single round decorative rug beneath a red leather wing-backed armchair and part of a faded forest green wall. The floor is not visible, nor are any people.

The sound of footsteps begins to advance with the slow, thudding clunks of boots walking on metal grating. It is unclear from which direction for several seconds as the sound grows louder without revealing a source.

Until...

A figure, tall and completely dark save for a blank white comedy mask, emerges face first from the darkness before it stands and approaches the camera. The tallness becomes more clearly unnatural, or at least not human certainly. Slender tendrils made of an unknown dark substance gently whip and flow at random around the back of its body. It at first appears to be wearing a jester's hat with three points until they simultaneously pull themselves back to appear more like the equivalent of its hair. It is impossible to tell in this lighting to see if it has real feet and hands at the end of its arms and not just the appearance of hands. It reaches the center of the shot on the rug in front of the armchair.

"Welcome, future travelers, allow me to introduce myself," it says with an unnaturally polite candor and a distorted unrecognizable accent. It gives a sweeping bow before looking down the barrel of the camera to speak. Rather, one assumes it is looking that way, its mask does not have eyes visible in the eyeholes.

"My name is Mephit, and I am a traveler of the multiverse, and this-" it makes a grand sweeping gesture to the darkness slowly illuminating with rows of fluorescent lights turning on with a clunk to reveal... endlessly many books behind it "- is my library, also known as everything one could ever need to know about traveling the multiverse." For a second a flash like teeth appears at the mouth of the mask, apparently indicating a smile.

"Allow me to explain some as I am sure you think this a hoax or a production and I must disabuse you all of that notion," it says to the camera. "This library is currently inaccessible to all but a very countable few across the multiverse to whom I have entrusted-" another flash like teeth, fleeting as before but this time it doesn't stop talking "-the responsibility of helping me share the information of this library. That being said, all you will have to do to verify this information in your universe is to find-"

The video choppily switches to Mephit having a whiteboard with a diagram of Earth drawn on. Ten locations, each remote and mostly in different continents from each other save for three overlapping in North America and two in Asia, are carefully labeled on the far too neat diagram for a whiteboard. Mephit is pointing to one in Alaska as the chop clumsily jumps to its new audio."-any of these points, however this one in what you Earthlings-175 call the Aleutian Islands with the shown coordinates has the strongest focal window. The focal window will be the 'glimmery portal-looking thing,' as my associates suggested I put it, through which you will be able to see this library. The Aleutian Islands on is hidden in an abandoned crab hut which gives the most privacy out of these as well, but don't all go at once or else you'll-"

The video chops just as carelessly and jarringly back to Mephit as it was before the whiteboard appeared, as though this was inserted to be one of many such videos each with a different explanation cut in at this point. Another quick flash, each one frustratingly revealing nothing about what lies behind the mask. "-and I do hope that has cleared up how to verify this is real," it says in the same strange voice that sounds more and more as multiple voices at once before fading back into one vocal sound.

"With that out of the way, we can get to your truly burning questions. For example," it says gesturing in the same ethereally flowing manner, still giving no clues as to what it has for hands, "what am I exactly? Or who am I really? Perhaps even what is it I want?" Flash "Well, I am indeed a researcher and traveler as I have said, but I am an ageless one. How did I become ageless? Was I born that way? Well that's not important yet, simply that I have been alive and ageless for longer than the combined ages of thousands of universes that have formed, unformed and even reformed across various points of space time."

Here it begins to pace slightly across the rug when it pauses as it speaks. Its arms are folded behind its back as it faces the armchair briefly when it finishes speaking and its "hands" can finally be somewhat seen. Its arms, and presumably therefore its legs, are just flexible trunks sprouting from where shoulders would be that end in jagged finger-like protrusions that don't necessarily seem to be holding the same shape. It turns to stare into the camera again before it is able to be confirmed.

"That's a lot of time, isn't it future travelers? And just imagine: the vast majority of it is spent almost completely alone save for an occasional adventure with a member of the more mortal species who figures out how to find me. It's..." It trails off stopped in front of the chair again looking off into the distance, "It's lonely." Its head snaps back to the camera. "And can easily grow boring, hence why I research and collect for my library. However, as of late even this has grown somewhat tiresome and I find myself in need of a new hobby."

It sits down in the armchair and grabs what appears to be a glass of wine from a portion of the table not well lit by the lamp. Its free "hand" rests on the armrest and splays its currently talon-like fingers over the edge. It swirls the beverage in the glass before speaking.

"That's where you come in. You see I figured that if I play this right, I can make my new hobby just as long lasting as my old hobby and even help with my loneliness. How? Well of course by teaching you lot how to travel and what sights to see and avoid. Not only will I get to find and talk to those competent enough to reach my library, I can even generate entire new fields of research for myself to get excited about! And you-" it pauses to sip the drink through the mask and swirl it once more "-well you get the adventure of your short little lives. Creatures beyond your imagination, places beyond your comprehension, all this and more awaits you. Of course, from here I can only ask you to join, it is up to you if you do or not. If you do not wish to join, simply close this video and continue normally with your life and you will forget in time what you have seen here."

The last sentence is delivered in a tone that is equally chilling in its politeness and certainty. The silence afterwards is amplified a thousand times over in the few seconds before it speaks again. The seconds begin to stretch and distort to the viewer's vision but the timestamp never changes. The silence begins to ring, then howl, then roar until it is a storm of silence as the viewer looks into where this being's eyes would be and feels the weight of thousands of universes worth of certainty staring back from the nothing. The moment ends suddenly as Mephit speaks again.

"But! If instead you wish to join, you will follow some careful instructions. First, you will find an empty room and declare your intention to this video, or the audio or transcript if you are unable to use video. Then, when you receive a location on your nearest device that communicates location information, you will go to it. You will then see something. You'll know when you see it, trust me. You will take notes until you can no longer discern new information. You will know the place to send these notes with your communication device shortly after. Then you will return home and wait. If you have passed selection, you will begin receiving training videos and articles from my library in a place I have determined is convenient for you. How have I determined all of these things?"

There is a flash again, but it is far overshadowed by the weight of the laughter that echoes forth from its mask as it tips its head back. It is impossible to mistake this laugh as friendly. It is heavy, dangerous, but not an active danger. The laughter equivalent of seeing a crocodile's eyes peek above water.

"Spoiler warning! Oh my goodness you aren't possibly ready to know that; it would make you soil your garments and run away babbling. Be patient with knowledge, future travelers, as knowledge may be power, but that does not make it your power to wield. Things will be clear as they should be, and until then-" it stands and sets the glass back in the darkness where it again disappears "-I must bid you a fond farewell and happy researching."

One last flash before it turns on what would be its heels and walks back into the library. As it continues forward with only the sound of its footsteps to fill the space, the lights begin to clunk off one by one, clunking louder and louder as they approach Mephit. The lights continue at the same speed for over a minute after Mephit is lost to the darkness until only the desk lamp is visible for light. As the footsteps disappear and suddenly stop being audible, the lamp clunks off with a noise far louder and more ominous than any of the others thus far. The video clicks off about ten seconds after

#rebug #friend writing!!#IM SO EXCITED #been waiting for these to come out #writing #original story #science fiction #scifi #mild body horror #mild horror #multiverse #cosmic entity #alien oc #mephit

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