Coretechs

Galactic Coordinated Time

The exact date in the galaxy is uncertain, but it is theorized as being somewhen around 2600 CE in pre-metric time system. Due to this uncertainty, time is now measured in cycles since the Catastrophe (AC). Years before the Catastrophe are not tracked, as humanity is uncertain of what happened beyond scattered documentation and fragments of recovered data. Across the galaxy, time is measured as GCT — Galactic Coordinated Time. It consists of four components: cycle, day, segment, and unit.

• Cycle

This is the number of cycles since the Catastrophe, with a cycle being 100 days.

• Tenspan

Possibly an evolution of the archaic construct known as a 'week'. A tenspan consists of ten days.

• Day

The number of days in the cycle, a number from 00 to 99.

• Segment

The day is broken up into 100 segments. Each segment is almost a "quarter hour" of old Earth time.

• Unit

Each segment is broken up into 1000 units. Each unit is slightly less than a second of old Earth time.

The official format of GCT is cycle.day/segment:unit GCT:

193.99/59:586 GCT

This example represents 193 cycles after the Catastrophe, the 99th day, 59% of the day has gone by, and a bit over half of that segment has transpired. That would be just over 53 years in the pre-metric time system.

Jump Gates

The technology that powers a jump gate is not currently fully understood. Jump gates are stations built alongside what appear to be established and stable Einstein–Rosen bridges that allow for safe travel between two fixed points in the galaxy. It is not currently known if we possessed the technology Before the Catastrophe to engineer these phenomena ourselves, or whether we harnessed naturally occurring bridges and built the gates around them.

There exists a complex and hitherto undiscovered connection between the bridges, the gating technology of their associated stations, and the Mesh itself which runs through them, linking each destination and jumping point together in a vastly sophisticated network of quantum dynamics and energy transference.

Space Stations

From the notes of Dr. Horatio Lazbender - Benevolent Dynamics.

Space Stations represent humanity’s last sanctuary after the Catastrophe. All of mankind now resides on stations orbiting various planets through a number of systems around the galaxy. Every station was affected to some extent by the galaxy-wide Catastrophe that occurred 62 cycles ago, some managed to maintain some semblance of order but most suffered catastrophic loss of life and infrastructure.

Today, each station that is operational bears some mark of their unique trials during the Catastrophe and most denizens honor the time proudly, like a cultural battle-scar. The cycles after the Catastrophe offered a period of cultural evolution that allowed each station to develop a very distinct and unique social ecology of sorts. Survival is both a traumatic and tempering situation for a species to go through, and it is fascinating to see the different paths inhabitants of different stations traveled through to get there.

From a technical point of view, the bulk of existing Space Stations are built into asteroids and similar existing celestial bodies while a smaller number consist of completely engineered structures built from the ground up. It is presumed that building most stations into asteroids provided the maximum amount of structural integrity and protection from the elements of space. Power is derived from immense reactors that run efficiently and, by and large, automatically. Water reclamation is also present in almost all stations but is, obviously, not an efficient manner of producing an adequate amount of drinking water. It sufficed, barely, for the emergency situations that we found ourselves in after the Catastrophe but, thankfully, now ice mining has begun to resurface as a viable method.

Space Travel

Nasry Kalifax - Senior Shipwright for København Shipyards

We are in a position quite to the history of our strange and eccentric little species. We possess science and technology which we know, by and by, how to utilize, but no longer remember why. Much of the research at Benevolent Dynamics is committed to rediscovering the workings of science from Before and space travel is, I believe, at the forefront of this research.

We have vessels that are capable of traveling interstellar distances, of braving the dangers of space and taking us between stations. However, we do not currently possess more than a rudimentary working understanding of how their engines work. Every day, we reclaim a little bit more of the knowledge we lost to the catastrophe but we are still quite a number of cycles away from being able to design ships from the ground up.

What is understood is that all primary drives consist of an antimatter engine and utilize “Tea Kettle” mode (where excess heat is diverted to create steam for maneuvering thrusters) when more delicate, specific movements are required.

The shipyards of København currently possess the most advanced understanding of interstellar ships and still the best they can do is jury-rig existing technologies to fix or maintain a vessel. We understand how the plasma coils work, we know how to mine the fuel and what is needed to make sure it is of the correct consistency not to result in a violent, exothermic reaction (this last came with a lot of trial and error) but we’re still figuring out how to put it all together!

What we’re saying is, bear with us and watch this space!

Planets

”The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” Maya Angelou.

We live among the stars, drifting through the Black on orbital stations that emulate the conditions we require to stay alive. Our life, however, did not begin up here. It began far below, on planets that we can look down upon from our lofty perches and dream of returning to.

However, we cannot. At least not right now…

When the Catastrophe struck, it was sudden and with neither mercy or prejudice. Waves of devastation swept across the galaxy, affecting each station in equally catastrophic but unique fashions. Some facilities suffered station-wide decompressions, leaving entire populations of corpses floating eerily through nearby space. Other stations suffered slower shut downs, offering denizens some scant chances of survival.

The situation on the planets inhabited by humanity were far less random. What can be surmised based on patches of records and echoes of communications that survived the network shut down, drifting through local meshes to be partially retrieved is that planetary defenses across the galaxy malfunctioned. They unleashed their hefty payloads onto the planets they were installed to protect, wiping out all life in a matter of segments.

This has, to the best of our understanding, been corroborated by consistent analysis of planet surfaces, indicating nuclear wastelands as far as any sensor can see.

This is not to say that our understanding of the current situation nor what transpired over 200 hundred cycles ago is clear and complete. The Catastrophe resulted in a massive and galactic network shutdown that took us cycles to reinitialize. Irreparable corruption and loss of data meant that we have only fragments of panic stricken reports from that time to try and piece together past events.

Added to that, not every station has access to functional long range observational equipment to correctly analyze the situation on planets below. Even our knowledge of which moons and planets were actually colonized cannot be guaranteed as 100% accurate. A situation we are striving to remedy as jump gates are repaired and more and more systems return to the fold.

It should also be noted that, based on reclaimed Omni-Reality footage and fragments of imagery scraped from the mesh, it would appear we, as a species, were less than respectful of our terrestrial hearth and homes. Data indicates massive scales of pollution, deforestation, even entire landmasses relegated to waste disposal on our own home planet of Earth.

Some wonder, perhaps, if our current plight is the result of some cosmic, karmic retribution, ousting us from the homes we no longer deserved…