Essay prompt:

  It is well established through all evidence that the continual expansion of the universe as we know it is slowing down. In this essay, please discuss the evidence that supports this, and then compose some potential solutions to the problem under the assumption that the expansion will one day cease, and instead begin to collapse inward.

  -Essay Prompt that led to the Universal Hypermass Project Proposal

  Kris:

  Kris often found herself filling her empty time with anything and everything anyone might ask for her help with. It wasn’t widely known by her classmates, but the government officials had all somehow eventually learned that Kris had a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of history.

  All sorts of things were lost to time in civilizations as old as those around Sylpharia. The world as a whole had once been home to incredibly detailed records from every age. All of those records had been housed within the Citadel’s digital storage banks. That proved inconvenient for a number of reasons.

  Foremost among those issues was the restriction of access to knowledge for all of Sylpharia’s suppressed races. Most technology was only accessible to specific sections of the public, or simply members of the government. In the case of Anviens or Raviens, they only had access to information that pertained to their own field of work. It was a sort of war on education that helped to maintain the divide between the ruling class and their ‘lessers’ on a massive scale.

  That all went out the window with the revolution. For whatever reason, the ruling class had all tried to upload their minds to the databanks of the Citadel to ride out the inevitable fall of their empire. Instead, Constance had turned on them. As a personal attendant to the Emperor, she had suffered in her own way for her whole life, and then took the opportunity to kill the man and all his aides in their final acts of desperation.

  That also ‘fried’ the databases. That was the public story, notably without any evidence.

  Kris and her class were one of several groups of students that had learned their whole lives on hard copies dug up in old libraries all over the world. And then, in assisting Alynne’s new technology division, they’d worked on copying all of that information into a new database.

  Which had helped her in a lot of ways as a youth. She had very quickly latched onto the short bursts of joy that came from helping others.

  It had hurt so much more than she thought it would when her own mother had nearly killed Mari with her request. Avoiding her mother and burying her head in busywork had led her to Alynne’s new project.

  Kris sat in the secluded lab beneath the Citadel, fiddling with a microscope and several fragments of the magic metal they’d discussed prior to Mari’s meeting with the leading council.

  “This is so interesting. Whoever designed this is a genius.” Kris let out an impressed shiver that she’d been suppressing. She took the sample she’d been studying and set it on a workbench, then pulled some goggles over her eyes as she brought a fine cutting tool towards the piece.

  With some effort, she reshaped the sample into a rhomboid, using tools and instruments to measure out each angle. “If I’m right, then there’s some basis in mathematics here. Geometric for certain. And I have a sneaking suspicion that the angle adjusts the flow rate.”

  She withdrew the small object with a curious eye, ensuring there was an additional shield between herself and the finished design. She had better survival instincts than the person she lo— liked. Her heart thrummed at the thought, but she ignored it.

  Before she began, she extracted a small mechanical timer from her pocket and started the clock before slipping it into a pocket within the baggy sleeves of her uniform’s robe. Grasping the rhomboid in a pair of tongs, she double checked the exact dimensions. Then, she brought a spherical object of the same material close before tapping the two together gently.

  The moment the sphere touched the rhomboid, the sphere was repelled firmly.

  On the other hand, the rhomboid was the center of a pulse of kinetic energy that shattered the tongs, wrenching her hand in the process.

  “Dammit. Ouch. The rotten—!” She bit her lip as she shook her hand, feeling her thumb heating up from the rush of blood to the area where it had been twisted in the handle. She immediately turned towards the nearby cooler, retrieving a small glass bottle of water to press against the swelling joint.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  When she turned around, she found her mind immediately leaving her injury forgotten.

  The rhomboid was hovering in the air. Among the many stories of other worlds that disallowed trade with Sylpharia, almost all of the magical societies possessed flying vehicles. And she had a feeling she suddenly knew how.

  “If I can contain the blast, then use the hovering property, I could probably retrigger the effect, even if it wears off. The issue is…” Kris glanced at the formerly shiny red sphere she’d used for the experiment. It had turned black and was resting on the table right where it had fallen.

  Kris pulled the timer from her long sleeve, then held it up as she watched the hovering test object like a hawk. Then, she waited. And waited. And waited some more.

  Minutes later, she was getting sick of holding up her timer. So she set to work on a simple sensor that could stop the timer in the event that the rhomboid moved at all.

  “Still, the sphere was quite small. Barely the size of my pinky nail in diameter. To think such a small battery has so much power application. Still, it somewhat proves my hypothesis. The designer of this was a genius.” Though she had to admit that it had also killed a lot of people, potentially slaughtering entire worlds.

  The issue with mana was that it was poisonous in larger quantities to all living things. If the saturation of mana within an area became too high, it would twist wildlife into monsters. Entire worlds had become entirely overrun by them. Somehow that sacrifice was deemed acceptable collateral damage, but it was famously the end of several civilizations.

  Kris was finally witness to why it was deemed ‘acceptable’ to some. The answer was stupidly easy for her. Anyone with enough resources and knowledge could study the concepts behind mana and derive how to use the cure.

  Magic.

  Kris had studied the basic structure underpinning mana, then realized someone had packed a bit of a puzzle into the nasty side-effect of their universe-altering weapon. Geometric proofs had been the solution. Something any teen in mathematics class might notice if they looked close enough. More advanced civilizations had looked at the puzzle and deemed any society incapable of solving their puzzle to be too primitive to deserve to survive.

  Frankly, it was rather simple for her. The issue for Sylpharia would be the lack of resources. With the abysmally low amount of mana on their world, even if she found incredible ways to make life easier using magic, there just wasn’t enough mana around to make use of it.

  She eyed the hovering rhomboid with an appraising eye.

  “If I made a set of identical pieces and fueled them enough to allow something to hover perfectly, I’d only really have enough material to get one or two passengers to fit.” She frowned thoughtfully as she drummed the desk with her left hand, her right one being pressed firmly to the cool glass of the bottle.

  “Whoa.” A startled voice came from nearby.

  Kris turned to see Mari in her wheelchair, escorted by Alynne.

  “Impressive progress, Kris. I doubt I could’ve come up with such results so quickly.” Alynne was eying the hovering piece of shining red gem-metal with fascination.

  Kris set the bottle down and moved over to Mari’s side, offering her left arm to help the girl stand. Then, they ambled their way closer to the sample. The timer still read a bit over twenty-three minutes.

  “A very small energy supply was needed to make this hover unwaveringly for over twenty minutes so far. Not sure what it can hold, weight-wise. I just haven’t tested all the properties, really. But it all works using the angle measures and side lengths. Entirely geometrically. The various parameters that define the object allow for the mana to be converted into phenomena.” Kris couldn’t hold back her excitement as she relayed her initial results.

  “Hmmm. So that’s a three dimensional magic formula, in a way. Have you tried two dimensions? Like writing?” Mari held steadily onto Kris’ forearm, but her eyes had settled suspiciously onto the swelling around Kris’ thumb.

  “All in due time. Two dimensional script only seems to have two dimensional outcomes, though. I’m not sure how to apply that in a meaningful way just yet. Powering those seems like the real problem. Besides, we exist in a four dimensional world.” Kris pointed to several massive calculations scrawled across the boards nearby.

  “Four?” Mari frowned.

  “Yes, four. Right now, we are beneath the Citadel. That’s an X and Y coordinate on the world, followed by the ‘below’ representing the Z coordinate. What people miss is the ‘right now’ part that represents the time axis. If you don’t define all four, people won’t know where and when you are. So, we live in four dimensions, people just don’t always think of it in obvious terms like these.” Kris shrugged, pointing next at the defined effects by dimension within a three dimensional object.

  “Wait. That means that if you could create an object with a fourth dimensional parameter, then Magic could affect Time?” Mari’s jaw remained open, her eyebrows knit in concern.

  “Keep that between the three of us. I’m putting a gag order on it entirely. Not even the rest of the council.” Alynne’s tone brooked no argument.

  “Agreed. That’s a scary thought.”

  “Copy that.” Mari piped in with an unusual phrase. “Oh, sorry. New old habit, maybe.”

  “So, what brings you both over?” Kris sidled a little closer to Mari, enjoying any excuse to be nearer to the dark-haired girl.

  “We were going to check on the storage lockers. It makes sense that only the corresponding people from each pod could open each one.” Alynne nodded her head in the direction of the honeycombed wall of the room they were in. Each hexagonal space was sealed by a vault-style door that had a number etched into the surface.

  “Ah, of course.” Kris gently helped Mari around the tables and workbenches for her project, then they approached the door labeled “001” that had the largest space along the wall out of all the lockers.

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