[voice] [locked to all player characters]

[ryuuzaki]

[You may know the drill: the low, calm, somewhat English-accented voice of a young man.]

This is Ryuuzaki, speaking for Communications.

From the viewpoint of network traffic, there are still no signs of any new arrivals this jump. The department will let you know if anyone turns up.

Those of you who have been monitoring the length of jumps: do you know how long this one lasted? Is it possible to tell whether or not we've moved at all?

Did anyone find new items in their lockers?

We can't check on the drive itself, but we can determine whether or not there's anything further to discuss.

[Talk of past jump drive malfunctions leads to concern about potential current ones... other than the usual. Or does the lack of new arrivals mean it's now functioning as it's supposed to?]

Comments

[tadashiwashere]

What systems of measurement are in place on the ship now for the jumps? Are they any?

Hearing that there's not much chance for crossover if there are any failures is a little comforting, but if the jump drive -- or the anomalies the jump drive forms -- are affecting the ship in various ways, it sounds like cross-system failures might be the least of our concerns.

I'm sorry for all of the questions and the worrying. I'm just trying to understand what we're up against.

[ryuuzaki]

It's understandable. It's best that everyone is as up to speed as possible.

To my knowledge, there are clocks within the ship and clocks on the exterior, although this is a relatively recent innovation on the part of some passengers. We didn't have them a year ago. The passage of time they measure is not consistent between the two locations: devices outside of the ship have shown weeks or months passing during a jump, when the clocks inside the ship showed no significant passage of time at all.

A few years spent on the ship with monthly jumps may equate to nearly a century passing outside of the ship.

[tadashiwashere]

Centuries... wow. That's a lot to take in.

I'm curious. The passage of time isn't consistent? Has there been any pattern to how much time passes outside the ship? Is that something I should be addressing to a different department?

[ryuuzaki]

I'm not aware of a pattern, no. I'm hoping that the people who have been involved with measuring it will speak up here. I'm not sure that the efforts were connected to a department... if they were, it might have been Engineering, or Xenogen, or the result of some kind of cooperation between them.

Prior to those efforts, there was a woman named Jaye who had the capability to survive jumps outside of the pods by taking the form of an insect. She didn't do it every jump, but on the occasions when she did, a few years ago, one jump took a month, the other took a year.

That may not have had much to do with the distance we traveled, given the way the drive operates -- it's possible that we spent the entire year in a wormhole.

You're aware that there are small black holes in various places throughout the ship? They should be physically impossible.

[tadashiwashere]

Actually, I wasn't aware of that. Black holes? They have to be something else, because you're right -- that's a physical impossibility. This ship wouldn't exist anymore if there was an actual black hole aboard.

What sort of properties do they have?

[ryuuzaki]

To my understanding, they don't have the gravitational pull of a larger hole. Maybe it's because of their size, or maybe because it's all the ship can sustain... that is, if they happened to be any larger, we wouldn't be here talking about it. Whether something is actively constraining their size and their properties, or it's all a string of luck, I'm not sure. But it seems like even small ones should be impossible. I don't think we're aware of what caused them. Anomalies related to the jump drive would be my guess, but past that, I don't have any specifics, and I could be wrong.

Take a look. A passenger fell into one a few years ago. They didn't come out.

[He attaches this video to his comment.]

[tadashiwashere]

[The minutes tick by after Tadashi's last text. Before, he was operating under the heading of theories and speculation. The video makes it much more real and reveals yet another terrifying facet of life aboard the Tranquility. He sits in his room for what must be nearly ten minutes before he drags a hand down his face and selects their conversation.]

From what I remember from my courses at SFIT, the smallest a black hole should be while still sustaining itself would still be the size of a mountain. Even those are theoretical. Anything smaller than that should quickly expend its energy -- they shouldn't be able to stick around.

That's just my understanding. Astronomy isn't exactly my field of expertise.

Are the black holes contained to certain segments of the ship? That video... how did that passenger stumble into that situation?

[ryuuzaki]

Not my field either. I have some knowledge of various scientific topics, but I wouldn't call it expertise. Still, if even laymen can agree that the holes shouldn't exist because their presence is a violation of basic physical laws, what's creating them? What's keeping them around?

As to the passenger -- they appear to be made of stone there -- they went wandering in the dark hallways, or they got lost, I'm not sure which. The creature attacking them in the video is a manticore, and for obvious reasons, we've never been able to count their population... I think it's possible that they may be like the things we've been seeing lately, creations of someone's mind, which wouldn't make them any less real.

A number of people have gone into the halls and come out unharmed; while it's not a good idea, there's also no absolute guarantee that anything terrible will happen.

To my knowledge, the holes are mostly located in the corridors, but the exact location may vary. The layout seems to change with every jump. Mapping the halls has proved impossible, but there are always people who want to try.

[tadashiwashere]

Wait, if those creatures are potentially creations of someone's mind, could we.. I don't know what the proper term will be so I'm going to go nerd fantasy on this -- banish them? Un-summon them?

Is it possible to impose any control over the creation of someone else's mind?