Every 224-Verse Tale opens with the following summarized history of the galaxy, its inhabitants and the technology:
224-Verse: A Brief History
All space-faring civilizations, regardless of individual collective intelligence, reach an inevitable tipping point of exploration potential. The process breaks itself down into two separate and unique phases, each no more or less important than the other. The first is to create the technology and possess the understanding necessary to leave their host planet—To advance in such a way that ingenuity allows for the breaking free of their planet’s gravitational influence and thus stepping proverbial foot into the vast expanse of which it is a part. The second phase is the discovery of jump drive technology. This phase is, more often than not, gifted rather than discovered by one’s collective self. However, as is mandated by Galactic Treaty, the second phase can never, for any reason, precede the first. For with jump technology, the unimaginable distances separating stellar objects become infinitely more approachable for biological beings, which, with a few exceptions, typically live in spans under two-hundred-and-fifty years.
The origins of the technology can be traced back several hundreds of thousands of years to a race of beings that, to the rest of the galaxy, became known as the Transcendence. They began strictly biological and in their ten-million years as dominant species of their backwater world, began to assimilate conscious mind with machine. It was in the early phases of such a melding that the harmonious mathematics required to “jump” through space manifested.
The concept was built upon the reality that while time and distance are restrictions faced by all regular matter, the same laws do not apply at the quantum level. In fact, on such a scale, distance itself becomes an abstraction with particles demonstrating the ability to be two places simultaneously or to become entangled such that what happens to one particle instantaneously affects the other regardless of distance.
As such, by manipulating the individual atoms of both craft and occupants through a process of highly charged neutrino bonding, it was discovered quite possible to enter a quantum sub-state where all points of actual space became more or less irrelevant. Crucial to the process, however, were a pair of entanglement markers to both begin and conclude the matter shift. These became known as jump points.
In the hundreds of thousands of years since the technology’s inception, it has been gifted to some four-million space-faring cultures across a galaxy of one trillion stars (one / two hundred and fifty thousandth).
In the time since no other known culture managed to achieve jump technology without assistance. As for the Transcendence, they would, some ten thousand years after the discovery, complete the metamorphosis into symbiotic machines before eventually foregoing the burden of physical form altogether, taking immeasurable secrets with them in the process. They exist now only as information; elusive and reclusive. Jump technology, however, has remained the primary tool for intergalactic travel with some five hundred thousand registered jump points across the seven million charted star systems.
Government, military protection and policing of roughly seventy percent of the nearly five million recognized sectors fall under the jurisdiction of a massive colonistic conglomerate known as the Galactic Assembly. Often criticized by its own colonies for cultural elitism and conflict of interest with its own business entities, the political body itself has proven crucial for its unification efforts over so vast and varied a span—centralizing everything across the systems within its province from language to currency.
Systems outside of the Galactic Assembly’s influence are often seen as inferior—lacking the latest in technology, medicine, education, etc. However, the Assembly is tirelessly expanding, bringing with it unification and homogenization.
On Jump Technology
Jumping – or instantaneous matter relocation, plays a big role in how colonization of the galaxy functions/ how occupants master the incredible distances of space.
The origins of the technology are not clear. All that is known is that a race that no longer exists physically called The Transcendence originated the physics and tech responsible millions of years ago.
What exists of it today has been handed down through the generations – and to date, no technology has been discovered that supersedes it.
Since it is integral to moving about the galaxy, it’s important to posses at least a basic understanding of how it works:
Essentially the civilian jump drive (which is a stellar neutrino collector) infuses regular matter so that it briefly behaves on the quantum level (AKA where the laws that govern the physics of space/time break down).
The reason for jump points is to provide a start and stop marker for the quantum material – without them, the entire craft and crew would simply cease to exist on the physical plane.
While there are 528,000 registered jump points (meaning owned and run by the Galactic Assembly and thus cost credits to use (think of these as tolls on the thru-way)) – it is impossible to say how many unregistered points there are across the galaxy (but at least several million). The catch there? Unregistered points can be shoddily serviced, prone to failure, lead to dead systems, etc. In other words, enter at own risk.
Lastly, while jumping provides instantaneous travel between two fixed points in real time, the catch is that the further one jumps, the greater the risk of improper matter reassembly. So one would never attempt to jump clear across the galaxy as odds of returning from the quantum state would be miniscule. Instead, a course of multiple jumps would be plotted. It’s not uncommon for a trip from an outer sector to the galactic bulge to require anywhere from 250 – 500 separate jumps.
The drive itself is located on the ship. It consists of one or more neutrino collection rods, which, when activated, bonds via electrical current with the atomic structure of the ship and occupants.
That alone, aside from exposing everyone to dangerous levels of radiation, won’t do anything. However, with the drive activated then passing through the physical anchor point (think an actual gate – be it just magnetically connected pillars, a large circular stargate, perhaps a ship-size toll booth floating in space; there could be many designs out there since millions of cultures have built their takes on the underlying technology throughout the millennia) results in instantaneous arrival to another gate.
The importance of the gates (anchor points) is that quantum mechanics (even in reality) is very unpredictable. If we had a means of making regular matter behave entirely on a quantum level – very strange things would be taking place: Objects could literally blink in or out of existence; exist at two locations simultaneously, become entangled that one would influence the other from opposite sides of the galaxy etc. (These are all real phenomena taking place with the electrons all around us and within us constantly, by the way).
The gates serve as anchor points to unify the material (in our case ships and crews) while preventing it from simply ceasing to exist entirely or becoming scattered into stray particles. So it should be noted that the gates aren’t responsible for dedicated “lanes” through galactic space so much as they are fixed points in physical space that allow for instantaneous transfer of matter to anything with a working (and activated) jump drive.
A good navigator in the 224-Verse would possess a decent understanding of jump points in planning routes. A desperate navigator might try to jump fewer points at greater distances (risking improper or incomplete reassembly in the process) to try and save time. One planning on never returning would try to reach one of the tightly packed systems within the galactic bulge from an outlying spiral arm in a single jump. Simply failing to rematerialize would be the absolute best case scenario in so risky a move.
On Communication
The same method that makes instantaneous teleportation possible also applies to information / communication.
Communication (information) in the 224-Verse uses the photon quantum entanglement method for instantaneous transfer (so basically the gate without the jump drive – which is required to move matter the same way).
On an aside – While the 224-Verse is, of course, fictitious, all of the technological science strives to resemble reality as much as possible. For example, we were actually able to use quantum entanglement to instantaneously teleport a photon from the ground into Earth orbit (311 miles away) using quantum entanglement technology. If you’re interested in reading up on that, here’s the link:
https://futurism.com/scientists-just-teleported-a-photon-from-earth-to-orbit-for-the-first-time
On Humans
While there are hominids very similar to us inhabiting the Andromeda galaxy, it should be noted that they are not in fact of Earthen origin. Similar to Star Wars, there is no interaction with our own galaxy so as to free up obligation of the connectivity taking place in Earth’s future (for all we know, this could all have taken place in the distant past).
Starry Eyed Press 