Cosmology

With its existence of psionics, Striker’s cosmology is idiomatic (thought is the substrate of the universe), not materialistic (all things come out of the physical, including thought).

Thought is therefore a cosmic potential, somewhat like the maya of Hinduism. In the Striker universe, this is realised through three strata: the corporeal, the ethereal, and the hypereal. The corporeal is the physical space that you would observe through a telescope. The ethereal (sometimes called subspace, fluidic or scersic space) is a reality (that many would call spiritual) through which strikers travel, and the hypereal is the stratum of ideas. One way of understanding this is to consider the corporeal as the place where the physical laws hold, the ethereal is where they are formed and the hypereal is where they are conceived.

Corporeal Births

The corporeal universe is born through a big bang out of the vacuum potential of a previous universe. This is normally possible where the temperature is low and the entropy is high.

Eventually the Stelliferous Era of our own universe will end. This means that all of the stars will have burnt out and there are no new stars being born to replace them. In the era that follows the Stelliferous, that of the Degenerate, all stars are in their degenerate forms. During this time, much more of the universe’s matter is spead out in the form of radiation. The era that follows the Degenerate is the Relic. In this era all matter is either in the form of evaporating black holes or radiation. The universe becomes quite unstable and a new big bang will emerge.

At some point along this evolution, there will exist regions that are high enough in entropy, smooth enough in energy distribution that the chance peaks in the vacuum potential become non-negligible and can provoke the birth of a new universe (and a new big bang).

Such births are fairly unlikely during the Stelliferous era, owing to the lack of regions of enough flatness. The only place in the observable universe where such conditions may fall close to this is in the so-called “Eridani Cold Spot”. This is some 3 billion lighyears distant from Guild Space, so even if a big bang was happening now, it would be billions of years from now before we saw any noticeable effects.

Births are more likely during the Degenerate Era, and become a near certainty in the Relic Era.

The vast distances and times involved are why you do not normally observe stars from a previous universe. It is more likely that any observable remnants would be black dwarves, dark neutron stars, or black holes that have not evaporated yet. Out of those three, its the black holes that are most likely to reveal their provenance as being from a previous universe.

The Ethereal

Understanding of the Ethereal is central to understanding quantum mechanics, but also how strikers, portals, psionics work. Unfortunately understanding the Ethereal is extremely difficult, giving rise to many methods of study with varying scientific rigour.

Owing to the the fact that strikers exist, and travel in the ethereal, it's possible for people to observe the ethereal by looking out a window. However, the observer's problem is that they are not looking at the ethereal through a window from Corporeal space, they are themselves in the Ethreal and the familiar ship surroundings are a construction of their minds, or ore specifically, their memories. The observer realises that by looking around them, they are in the Ethereal and are attempting to look back into the Corporeal. They may also see, for the first time, its illusory nature. One of the main jobs of the striker rod apparatus is to harden the interior space and make it seem more corporeal, so as to protect the occupants, mostly from themselves.

Without this, the occupant would be nakedly exposed to the Ethereal. This does not generally have physical consequences, but psychological ones. Without any buffering, the occupant can be rendered insane quite quickly.

The elastic nature of the ethereal makes it difficult to visualise, let alone explain.

By returning to look out of the window of a striker, you can get some idea of what the Ethereal looks like on a large scale. In the traditional view of space you see stars and other points of light in a vast 3-dimensional space: You can look up or down (height), look side-to-side (width), and look further out (depth). In ethereal space, the first thing is that there are more than three dimensions. The fields of stars become more like a manifold of blankts, that seem to drift past each other, move and reveal whole new pockets. Your own point of view, and your current disposition, determines what parts you see. Whatever sense this view makes is more or less for you to determine. The view is not necessarily at a large scale either. Often it is because that is what makes the most sense to you, but you may find yourself being close to things (more accurately finding your attention drawn to nearer things). This may not be stars and planets but renditions of things that you may be familiar.

Parallel Universes (or the Realms)

With the quantum foam at the base of our existence being alive with the potentials from the hypereal, universes grow up in parallel with each other, separated by dimensional veils. The physical closeness of these realms belies how distant and undetectable they are to each other.

There are a near infinity of parallel worlds, each one playing out slightly different possibilities. The close ones tend to be similar to the realm known as Guild Space. Although Striker considers many, many realms, there are four that are most commonly featured: Guild Space, Jerrimoo Space, Nexus Space and Gausst Space. It was between these four that the Rift Wars were fought.

Implication for Time Travel

While time travel is possible, it is difficult and it has some unexpected effects.

Travelling forward in time is possible without leaving the timeline of the universe, as you can simply use the time dialation effects of relativistic travel. Although maintaining speeds close to that of light for appreciable periods of time involves a lot of energy, it is certainly possible.

Travelling back in time means to escape the timeline of the universe you are inhabiting and re-enter it sometime in the past. Owing to rather complicated reasons arising from the conservation of energy, the universe you enter is astronomically unlikely to be the one you left. You will arrive in the past of a parallel realm. Given that there are close to an infinity of parallel realms, you will have close to no chance of returning to the realm you originally left.