Areivay

 

The Eridanian style city of Fezzree on Zanihostra

 

Areivay is sextuple star system 151 light years from Earth. It is a region rich in rare elements and exotic matter , thanks not only to the presence of a massive white dwarf in the system ( Areivay E ) but also due to a supernova that occurred in the area 25 million years ago which left a dense steller remant and a small nebula enriched with heavy elements and exotic particles.

 

The steller remant was once as far as current theories suggest a supergiant binary near the K class sub-giant Hoxley 145. The more massive of the close orbiting pair died a quick death leaving a white dwarf that sucked the material from the second star as it swelled into its own supergiant phase. The supergiant and its super-dense companion with its bright accretion disk must have been some sight to any beings in the area. Fossil records show that a number of worlds in the region had developed complex biospheres, and in the case of Mondragon (Areivay CD III ) achieved some degree of sentience and a stone age civilisation.

 

Sadly for any life in the region the Nemesis Binary ( a phrase used by the present day locals to describe the apocalyptic pair ) the super-dense remnant reached the point where it could no longer swallow anymore of its twin and exploded in a Class I Supernova. The super-giant had its extended chromosphere blown away and the core of the star shot out of the cataclysm ( where it is currently believed to be heading out towards the galactic halo at a distance of some 1500 light years presently.

 

This is the most widely accepted theory of the history of the Areivay cluster. The Boxeat Institute of Pelragi (Areivay A IV ) have suggested another , far more chilling explanation, involving a mighty war and the use of strange matter viruses and a complete contempt for life in general. Needless to say theories of wars between god-like powers are controversial but the Boxeat institute site legends of such wars being passed down from civilisation to civilisation over the intervening millions of years.

 

Anyway, irradiating the nearby systems at the speed of light the supernova spelt doom for any life in the region. For millions of years the former viable worlds were left sterile , testament to the awesome power of nature or the appalling behaviour of ancient warlords with more clarketech than sense.

 

After a while another civilisation that preceded the Gardeners but had the same desire to spread carbon –based oxygen breathing life throughout the universe terraformed those sterilised worlds, even resurrecting the stone age victims of Mondragon who prospered for 30,000 years before taking part in a mass transcendence and disappearing from corporeal existence forever ( though locals claim to have seen some mysterious and wonderful things in the less travelled parts of the Cluster.)

 

Gardener influence in the region later appears to have been minor. Perhaps preferring to preserve the local biospheres, stepping in only to nudge planet killing asteroids out of the way of viable worlds (many of the stars are still quite young with a lot of debris drifting around from their birth and the after effects of the supernova and dispersal of the nebula.)

 

When the first warp probes from the Community first reached the cluster in 2413AD claims by most of the major players at the time were made for colonies in the region. Something of a scramble for cluster and its most prominent star system began, spurred on by the richness of the region, the number of already viable worlds and the possibilities of clarketech artefacts lying around.

 

The first venture to reach Areivay was a Virginis Demopoly colony ship in 2422AD called Bubblegum Crisis which settled on the Lacustric Subtype world later christened Maquele. A Barnardian expedition to the twilight sub-type world of Agamemnon followed two years later to be followed by colonists from the Mensan Archipelago who settled in the seas of Maquele, a large group of Irodian immigrants from Odette Major,and a joint venture between Asterion and Eta Cassiopeia that settled on Mondragon. This was just the start of the influx, soon Areivay would become a very multicultural system similar to that of Regulus.

 

The EoArean world of Zanihostra (Areivay B V ) was easily terraformed by settlers from Keteir, and Epsilon Eridani and a group of Martian co-operatives by the end of the 25^th century and by then most colonies in the system were well on their way to becoming fully established.

 

Agamemnon orbits the red dwarf Areivay F which in turn is in a close embrace with the white dwarf Areivay E (nicknamed “Satan’s Pearl” by the locals .) They orbit each other every 35 days enabling Satan’s Pearl to cast some ghostly illumination on the dark side and when the orbit is favourable the white dwarf can even be seen during daytime. The star system has a number of asteroid colonies in orbit around E and F mining the rare elements churned out by Satan’s Pearl when it was in its death throws. Exotic matter manufacture is big business, some of the bolder ventures even mining matter from the white dwarf itself. Needless to say these operations are unmanned, aside from the deadly radiation the intense gravity of the stellar core has been known to trap some scooper vessels and tear them apart. The miners of the region are a pretty adrenaline fuelled lot who when not risking life and limb around Satan’s Pearl are enjoying extreme sports on Agamemnon.

A valley on the dark side of Agamemnon, Satan’s Pearl casts its ethereal glow over the landscape.

Mondragon is a Thalassic subtype viable world subject to some tidal flexing not only from its large moon , Henderson’s Claim but from the binary nature of its twin suns. Both Areivay C and D are G class main sequence stars that spin around each other every 2 days and 14 hours. Many cities along the coast take into account the seemingly chaotic tides that the two stars inflict on the otherwise benign world, similar in design to the cities in the Tythane system in Old Space. The Western ethnic influence is strong on this world, many languages from Earth are still spoken as well as the more standardised Anglic and Comspeak tongues. Signposts and billboards cycle through a host of languages to cater for all groups which gives Mondragon cities a feeling of movement and colour.

 

Mondragon is also home to the Mondragon Xeno- Archaeology Institute, investigating not only the history of civilisation on the world but examples of clarketech artefact sightings ( rarely do they last long enough for a substantial investigation) through-out the cluster (Areivaian economic influence in the region is strong.) Success include the uncovering of a number of memory devices deep in a cave on the northern most arctic continent of Meths which is believed to have the uploaded consciousness of a number of the original inhabitants of the world in 2675AD. Should researchers be able to decrypt the minds and download them into a viable platform the information gained would be incredible.

 

Maquele is the most populous of the worlds in the system. Orbiting a F2 type main sequence star it is home to most of the corporations who have vast industrial installations through-out the system. Virginis cybernetics are commonplace in the immense techno- polises, uploaded minds can be seen strutting their new fashionable android bodies on the boardwalks and plazas of the world. Garland war-gamers pit their machines against each other on the scorched world of Kyoshi-Santana (Areivay A IV) and the Ganymedian moon of Urisei (Areivay VI g )

 

Sakjaki on Maquele. Here all six stars of the system can be seen though Areivay EF is very faint.

 

Recently Areivay has begun construction of an immense and bold project that only a system of this size could afford. Already experiments with the exotic matter and rare elements drifting around in the system have led to faster, smaller cheaper warp engines, increased wormhole efficiency ( Areivay has on of the largest wormhole nexii in the whole region ) and the development of a number of intriguing branches of physics and metric engineering.

 

Now the System Congress have approved the funding for construction of a “ Star Chamber” a concept which its creators hope will allow all sorts of temporal fun without contradicting causality.

Summary
Here is a brief summary on how the Star Chamber works:

·         The Star Chamber uses a process to generate a slight negative energy density within the walls of the device.

·         This isolates the interior with the surrounding space-time.

·         The Transit Chamber acts as a Helmholtz resonator and acts as a natural amplifier.

·         The interior of Star Chamber produces it's own local time, by using Lorentz contraction.

·         The Lorentz contraction is produced by bombarding the traveller with special Electromagnetic (EM) fields.

·         Some EM fields can cause quantum transient events (Quantum Leaps), and causes the traveller to split into two or more relative states.

·         The actual mass of the traveller may move from one relative state to another by using quantum tunnelling.

·         The presence of a negative energy within the walls of the Star Chamber makes interior more probabilistic and sensitive to conscious thoughts.

·         The interior of the Star Chamber is sensitive to conscious thoughts as other past or future moments in time will exist as probabilities. Thinking of a past or future moment will cause that probability to become higher than the present time. (For example sum-over-histories)

The star chambers detractors ( and there are many outside of the Areivay cluster) joke the first future possibility that will be discovered will be that the Star Chamber will tear itself apart and kill everyone for millions of kilometres around!

 

Despite those fears the Areivians are for the most part confident that their project will show positive results. Interested groups have swarmed from all over known space, including outside the Community. The most prominent of these groups are a large influx of Omegerists from the Eta Cephei Theo-Democracy and Enlightenment volumes.

 

Viewed as cranks and cultists by some in the system but as bringing a refreshing viewpoint by others they believe that the Star Chamber has the possibility of reaching the future Omega point and allowing conversation with their future selves on having reached Godhead.

 

No-one amongst the current players on the galactic scene has yet brought such a project off the drawing board and the megascale construction could either benefit the Community or obliterate itself and its observers. Time will tell.