| "Pico-sub-atomic bodies are intricate books of finely-scribed records; and we ... we are children armed with crayons." | |
| --Gregory Stansivlaw on the G-Gun project | |
The Stansivlaw-Tomekin device -- or "Gobblediegook Gun" (G-Gun) as it is commonly known -- presents us with further evidence that the human race is still quite low on the evolutionary ladder climbing towards godhood. As far back as the mid-Twentieth Century, the beginnings of a theory of atomic bookkeeping existed. However, even in the current millenium, understanding the actual mechanics behind the information-storage capacity of atoms is simply a level of thinking that neither we organic beings nor the AI's we build can get our respective brains and processors around.
The closest we've ever come, to date, is the invention of the G-Gun. Researchers were hoping for a device that could convince rocks they were stuffed turkey; instead, they ended up with a weapon of significant power. It is projected that all loss of revenue in stuffed turkey sales were more than made up for by the lucrative weapons trade.
To the layman, the G-Gun works on a few simple principles: Point it at something, feed in a LOT of power, and pull the trigger--thus the something is now nothing (more-or-less). Essentially, the weapon rearranges the information of atoms, caught in the narrow beam it emits, so that it makes no sense on the plane of the universe on which matter exists. The smallest versions of the weapon are tripod-mounted and weigh over 200 kilograms. Most common G-Guns are found as medium-to-heavy class tactical weapons systems aboard starships. The largest known G-Gun was a massive device half the size of a destroyer-class warship. It was destroyed upon it's inaugral firing by occurances officially described as "crazy (explicitive deleted)"
A low-power G-gun shot will not even be able to overcome atom's natural tendancy to NOT have themselves written out of existance. A medium-power blast will result in a significant explosion at the targeted area as atoms are written out of existance, and/or into antimatter, radioactives, and all matter of nasty explosive things. Add a bit more juice and things start getting wierd. Clusters of atoms--even entire molecules and crystals begin to make some strange sense out of the chaotic MSA-realignments and bigger explosions are possible.
Extremely high power shots of a G-Gun, in practice, have always turned both the attacker and attackee into rapidly expanding clouds of gas; but theoretically, against unimaginable improbability, could also turn either, neither, or both ships into a neutron star, a stuffed turkey, two of the three stooges, or any number of equally odd things. Thus, all G-Gun systems now come with power regulators. It pains me to tell anyone not to play with guns, but messing with the energy governers on any G-Gun is NOT advisable.
One of humanity's greatest inventions, the gravengine is essentially a graviton particle producer, but it allows a two-fold use that has become the standard for all space travel (except, of course for the Teegs).
First, the engine uses its graviton field to mold space into a bubble around the engine itself and whatever else lies within its area of effect (which is determined by the operator); an entire ship can be enclosed within this bubble -- essentially, the ship is removed from the normal universe and enters a microverse of its own. The occupants of the ship are then isolated in every way -- there is no known method of communicating or passing any influence between the ship's microverse and the normal universe.
Second, the gravengine (by a quirk of flawed design) is able to bias one 3D side of its bubble with virtual particles, thereby propelling the bubble through normal space. Depending on the size of the gravengine, accelerations of up to 100 gravities are possible. Even small one-man or mini-robot ships can easily accomodate a gravengine, which generally makes up about 20% of the volume of a ship. The ship itself and its occupants and cargo perceive no Newtonian or relativistic effects (such as high g-forces and space/mass distortion at near-c velocities), and objective velocities of 99.9999c are achievable, given enough time and running-room ... at which point, the gravengine's bias can no longer further accelerate the bubble through normal space. The only disadvantage to gravengine-propelled ships is that there can be no visibility through the horizon of the gravity bubble; passengers are completely blind, and must rely solely on the navigation computer for correct positioning and movement.
| Gravengine Travel Time Calculator |
As should be obvious, even without the help of the Gravengine Travel Time Calculator, travelling a distance of X lightyears requires somewhat more than X years of real time. This amount of time passes equally in normal space and within the ship's gravity bubble -- among the effects of Relativity that fail to affect passengers is Lorentz time-contraction. For this reason, passengers often make use of sleep-systems (e.g., suspended animation) so that unbearable boredom does not overtake their minds. However, some races of HyperHumanity are known for superior mental discipline, and they pass the time studying, enjoying entertainment, philosophizing, or working on various pursuits.
Re-entry into normal space while moving at high velocity is extremely hazardous. Though the ship and passengers immediately assume the velocity and relativistic aspects of the gravity bubble, with no sudden imposition of momentum (which would of course destroy ship and occupants), nonetheless and unprotected vessel moving through space at a considerable percentage of the speed of light is susceptible to dangers of all sorts: normal light from the direction of motion becomes blue-shifted into dangerous frequencies, and even the smallest particles of interstellar dust or gas assume perilous force when encountered at such speeds. Some larger ships equip themselves with field-shields that can gravimetrically or electromagnetically repel some of this radiation and colliding matter, but it is generally unwise to propel oneself through the universe without the absolute protection of a gravity bubble.