Fine Structure

by qntm

"Please can you tell me how far from home you are?" he concludes. The man doesn't need to be asking this, because the information was pulled out of the ship with time to spare, but Xaeyo needs orienting. "Almost four point seven trillion universes," he replies. "We were trying to map the whole multiverse." The man nods. "That's correct. Well, you've succeeded as far as you were ever likely to. This is Universe +1. Unfortunately, it is impossible to travel beyond this point along the multiversal curve. There is a discontinuity in the multiverse. We believe that if you turned around and headed in the opposite direction, you would eventually encounter the same problem from the far side - there is almost certainly another universe, -1, there, confronted with the same conundrum as us. Captain Xaeyo, are you aware that there are walls?" Xaeyo expresses polite incomprehension. "There are walls surrounding and containing us. They prevent certain things from being possible. They block out certain features that the multiverse should have, but does not."